News spread recently that Spike Lee acquired the film rights to the memoir of afro-american physicist, Dr Ronald L Mallett. Aspiring to reunite with his deceased father, Mallett made it his life long ambition to unlock the secrets of time travel. His memoirs, aptly titled Time Traveller, are his unusually lucid accounts of his personal sacrifices and scientific discoveries upon which he built his theoretical premise on how to build a time machine. Published in 2006, and leading up to a rather detailed explanation how a light-circulating time machine could feasibly operate, Mallett became an overnight celebrity with his peer-reviewed findings, getting the ball rolling for what may be this century’s greatest scientific discovery.
Anytime you put the words ‘Spike Lee’ and ‘Time Travel’ in the same byline you have my undivided attention. Much like Mallett, science fiction played a significant role in my developmental years, ever since Back to the Future the concept of time travel and its bounty of philosophical paradoxes left an indelible impression on my psyche. In his memoirs, Mallett takes great care to document the history of time travel both in science fiction and in physics. From H. G. Wells The Time Machine, to episodes of Star Trek, to even arcane examples like Frequency starring Dennis Quaid, this slim hundred-odd-page tome is short on style, but rich in content, disproportionately less of his personal life (considering how much dramatic use could have been made of it) and keeping more of the focus on the shoulders of giants that led to his discovery. The content hits that perfect stride of being scientific enough to be informative and clear enough to be grasped by the laymen.
I enjoyed the read for its educational value, a kind of primer to the quantum and relativistic orbits of knowledge that are usually hermetically sealed from me. Having read my share of scientist memoirs over the years, I find it informative to see how these individuals interpret their own actions, in what way they try and frame the complexities they work with on a day-to-day basis for the benefit of posterity. In Time Traveller, Mallett only ever made concessions as to the ethical problems of time travel when they were brought up in the pop culture he consumed. Perhaps this was a stylistic choice, but the impression is that of a disconnect between the ethical dilemmas posed in the make-believe of science fiction and the brute determination to make time travel a reality in his academic research. Once he also mentions the bureaucratic problems of science in its relationship to funding and military coercive force. Here he talks of a case where laser research was deemed valuable for military use and the scientific program became a matter of national security irrespective of the scientist’s wants or desires. Yet the same disconnect continues with this anecdote, Mallett never really showing any indication that the potential ethical and bureaucratic realities of his work could result in destruction and mayhem. What shines through is this blind determination, the problems to be solved, tunnel vision. While admittedly fascinated by the concept of a functioning time machine built within my lifetime, I still believe that serious deliberation must be made by society as a whole as to its impact before turning on the switch. From this memoir, I see none of that restraint, none of that pause, and that troubles me. Much like soldiers are made to be killing machines, scientists seem groomed or naturally inclined to be thinking machines, hoping perhaps that someone else will sort out the ethical ramifications of their actions. If only it worked that way.
This discussion currently has 9 responses.
January 24, 2009
I’m currently about 30 pages in to this novel and liking it a lot.
January 25, 2009
His story is a fascinating one, although I still haven’t picked up his book and read it. I’ve been meaning to though. And obviously, he is not just some nut, being a distinguished physics professor at UConn.
Still, I follow the Stephen Hawkings argument of time travel. It is possible to “travel” into the future, but not the past, which can be proven simply by the fact that time travelers from the future have no visited us yet. That can still be argued around, of course, but it makes sense – otherwise, perhaps, traveling back in time would also include traveling to a different plane of reality (i.e. switching dimensions, something we have zero proof of even existing).
We all seem to have a time traveling fetish here, by the way.
January 25, 2009
(kinda spoiler, talking about one of the limitations of Mallett’s time machine, below)
well I could say a lot to counter the Hawkings argument as Mallett gets into it with some fascinating out there ideas that would make for great science fiction, but the more down to earth answer he poses and in fact is a limitation of the theoretical time travel he is exploring is that you could only go back as far into the past as the first moment the machine was activated. So if the first operating machine was made in 2010, only then would you have time travellers visiting. There is an argument how you could get around this limit but, like I said, it makes for more great science fiction than realism.
One of my favorite films is Primer, and I loved the idea explored in it of nesting machines within one another, it almost hurts my head to think of it, but I would love to know if there was anything remotely plausible about taking Mallett’s ideas and nesting them so as to go further back in time.
January 26, 2009
SUPER interested in time travel. Jay Cheel made a great documentary about time travel which I really enjoyed and Jonathan turned me on to the more “feel good” of time travel stories with “The Time Traveller’s Wife.”
January 27, 2009
This sounds like an interesting read. I’ve always enjoyed these kinds of books, especially when it comes to time travel.
And Andrew, don’t get me started on The Time Traveler’s Wife…man, what a beautiful book that is.
January 28, 2009
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January 28, 2009
Awesome that Mallett’s time machine works exactly the same as the one did in PRIMER. Curious that he doesn’t reference that movie (or Donnie Darko) in his book, but rather opts for The Butterfly Effect.
Great read though.
January 28, 2009
His analogy of gravity solved one particular quirk of physics I never had a grasp on, and at least now I have a small idea of.
January 29, 2009
I will have to rewatch Primer, but I do not remember any mention of frame dragging in it?
I guess Primer would have been coming out simultaneously with when Mallett was writing or just finishing this memoir, it is a shame, I would love to hear his opinions of it, as it is to my mind, the most mature of the time travel stories. Nearly the most complex things I have absorbed, but then I watch Lost, and five seasons in, trying to untangle the thousand things going on, damn, makes Primer look easy.