timeline 20c and 3audios and 2lp floor michael crichton

Yet the truth was that the modern world was invented in the Middle Ages. And the medieval period – all those knights in clanking armor and ladies in gowns and pointy hats – was so obviously irrelevant as to be beneath consideration. Studying history was as pointless as learning Morse code, or how to drive a horse-drawn wagon. The modern world was compelling and new, and the past had no bearing on it. Temporal provincials were convinced that the present was the only time that mattered, and that anything that had occurred earlier could be safely ignored.

He had a term for people like this: temporal provincials – people who were ignorant of the past, and proud of it. That’s the world of Timeline, I had fun writing it, and I hope readers enjoy it, too. But in the end, I had uncovered a world where you are may be killed if you pick up a glove from the floor where you are in mortal danger if you say you are “gentle ” where pastry is made to look like animal intestines where monasteries are used for tennis courts where a woman who cuts her hair short risks death where gunpowder explodes if it gets wet-in short, where nothing is as we’d expect it to be. This required a tremendous amount of research, and it took me almost twice as long to write as any other book except Jurassic Park.

I wanted to talk about what knighthood was really like. And I wanted to write a story that dealt with the reality behind our cliched images of knights and courtly love. But in Timeline, I wanted to write a time travel story that took its premise seriously. Wells just uses time travel to make a point about the society at the time the novel was written. In recent years, most time travel stories have been comedies, or allegories. What would it be like? Would it be frightening? (I think it would be.) Would it be more dangerous than space travel? (Much more dangerous.) What would make you go anyway? So I began to think: suppose it was really possible to travel in time.

I hadn’t written an adventure story since Jurassic Park, and I thought it was time for another one.

Timeline 20c and 3audios and 2lp floor michael crichton