Crichton Goes Back To The Future

Timeline by Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton may do more research and impart more knowledge in one of his novels than any popular writer since James Michener. The similarity ends there. Suspense usually drives Crichton's stories while Michener's tended to be lush productions made for the miniseries format before television executives even knew such a thing existed. That is not to say that Michener wrote poorly, merely that Crichton's continuing success in print, movies and television shows that he has a finer on the American public's contemporary drama pulse while Michener's stories seem a bit tired.

The expectation of a new Crichton work is what makes Timeline such a surprising disappointment. Like Michener (you knew the comparison was not simply based on research, didn't you?), Crichton gorged his muse with facts and apparently did not know when to say when. The result is a mishmash of 14th century French history, a bad business novel, a series of lectures of quantum mechanics disguised as dialogue and the beginning of a really bad murder mystery that is abandoned shortly after its introduction.

Readers are left with no sense of what they are supposed to be reading. The entire novel is this kitchen sink of concepts and unfulfilled plotlines. Crichton typically writes in a much tighter manner, but like a chef with a poor sense of timing, his recipe comes out with some dishes undercooked and others well prepared but cold.

The Plot In Exactly 100 Words

A young tycoon's latest business is the ultra-secret method of time travel through the use of quantum mechanics. The story shifts between the company's efforts to shroud its work and a rescue operation mounted by young archaeologists in 14th century France. They are the protégés of a clueless division chief who becomes trapped in the past at a site now being excavated. A renegade faction in the company mounts an effort to save the team over the owner's wishes. They succeed and seize control of the company's technology by exiling the tycoon to a time when the plague is active.

What Works Well

Crichton has obviously done a commendable amount of research in preparing his book. That attention to detail is one of the hallmarks of his work. Indeed, reading Airframe may be akin to an introductory seminar in aircraft engineering. To that end, his historical descriptions of France in Timeline are drenched with authoritative detail.

The notion of a breakthrough in quantum mechanics allowing temporal movement is likewise appealing, regardless of the obvious limitation that science does not yet provide for such activity. One cannot help but learn a smattering of science as well as history as Timeline plods along.

What Doesn't Work

The plot is fractured with some stories left incomplete and others overblown. Readers are left with the impression that this is simply a high-falutin' version of the Dungeons and Dragons gamers lost in another world novels that saturated the fantasy market in the 1980s.

Character development is wooden, with stereotypes from each necessary camp called forward. This extends to peripheral characters as well and strikes me as formulaic at best. When the reader simply doesn't care what happens to the characters, the act of reading becomes a chore rather than an inspiring activity.

The Bottom Line

Making the spectacular seem plausible is Crichton's forte. He does so by making the science stand up to a layperson's scrutiny, a point from which suspension of disbelief is around the corner. Unfortunately, the topics addressed in Timeline are not as exciting as dinosaurs or as a realistic as airplanes. Combined with a setting that few care about, boring characters and pacing problems, Timeline is best left on the shelf.