[Read 10/2007] Science Fiction. 2007

The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman is a fun, quick read. Ok, “mind candy”. This is on par with Camouflage for character development, i.e., not much. Mathew, an ABD MIT grad student builds a detector in his prof’s lab. He finds out by chance that hitting the “reset” button causes the machine to jump forward in time. However, each time it is used, it goes forward about 12x further (few seconds, an hour, few hours, a day, etc.). Mathew can’t duplicate the machine. His girlfriend recently dumped him, and he loses his lab position to rival. After a ~15 year jump he finds his professor used his notes and had taken credit for the discovery (and won a Nobel). But the professor still can’t duplicate the machine. More jumps into the future, and he meets Martha. He is “expected” at MIT, but it now is the Institute of Theosophy (and no tech). Mat and Martha jump forward, meet an AI, some future “humans”, etc.

Recommended for an Airplane Read.