The Accidental Time Machine

Joe Haldeman's latest novel, The Accidental Time Machine, is a book perfectly described by its title. Graduate student Matt Fuller accidentally builds a graviton meter that also functions as a time machine, with two major limitations:

1) It only goes forward, not backward;
2) Each jump through time is twelve times longer than the last.

The machine starts out jumping a few seconds into the future; by the time Fuller's ready to try a full-fledged experiment, with himself along for the ride, it takes him a month forward.

The machine isn't really controllable, or navigatable. The only thing it's indisputably good for is escaping your present time; which is good, because Fuller has a knack for getting into trouble.

This is my first Haldeman novel. It's readable (and it helps that I'm a total sucker for time-travel stories.) Some of the entries are weak: the future period ruled by a fundamentalist theocracy (complete with a holographic Jesus Christ) reminded me intensely of Heinlein's Revolt in 2100.

(Hey, I'm linking myself! That's a triumph of blog depth! Or self-indulgence. Don't answer that.)

The ending is disappointingly incoherent; I have no clear understanding of what happened, and I'm not sure that I'm meant to. It may just be a mystery of unthinkably-advanced science and time-travel weirdness. But I'd at least like to be clear on my unclarity, if that makes any sense.

Come to think of it, the entire plot- invent forward-going time machine, explore the future, get into trouble, keep moving farther ahead- was Poul Anderson's novella "Flight to Forever." Which was, frankly, done a lot better.

But this wasn't too bad. Like I said, I'm a sucker for time-travel.