Book review: How to Build a Time Machine, by T. E. Willis

I’ve been reading the science fiction book “How to Build a Time Machine: The amazing account of John J. Clifton, a time traveller from the year 2151” (2018), by T. E. Willis.

Willis raised funds to write the book with a successful Kickstarter campaign.

I found the book listed as in the Wikipedia page for “Novikov self-consistency principle,” which I consulted while writing my last post on time travel (see also my book [*], Chapter 11). In “How to Build a Time Machine,” John J. Clifton, a time traveler from 2151 stranded in our time, explains that:

“Time ‘self- resolves’ to prevent paradoxes from occurring. This is not a new concept. It used to be called the ‘Novikov’ or ‘self-consistency’ principle, but now we simply call it ‘self- resolving causality’”.

This book captures the attention of the reader at the beginning and holds it until the end. Some (too many) science fiction books are too boring to read, but this book is a real page turner. For this alone, it deserves five stars.

Clifton explains how time travel and other forms of high tech future magic work. He uses all the buzzwords (e.g. wormholes, exotic matter, quantum entanglement, quantum computing, AI-powered brain implants…) found in frontier science, extreme physics, and hard science fiction, in a way that is credible enough to suspend disbelief and enjoy the story.

Clifton also releases history files with highlights of our (inevitable) future.

The first part of the future history unveiled by Clifton is horrible: Tens of millions are killed in a bloody nuclear civil war in the US.

Then things get better. Messages from an alien civilization more advanced than ours reveal the physics and technology of traversable wormholes.

The resulting sci/tech developments change the world (e.g. in Clifton’s time instant wormhole transfers have replaced air travel), open the way to other worlds in the solar system (the stars must wait for better tech), and permit traveling backwards in time.

Clifton’s files are realistic and detailed, covering not only sci/tech but also the related regulatory, social, and political issues.

At the end, Clifton is taken away by the government, which tries to silence the story. The reader is left (deliberately I think, see the Kickstarter video) with the impression that the story could be true.

[*] My book “Tales of the Turing Church: Hacking religion, enlightening science, awakening technology” is available for readers to buy on Amazon (Kindle | paperback).

Please buy my book, and/or donate to support other Turing Church projects.

Cover picture from Pxhere.