Science fiction's early tales unfolded in shadowy settings with beakers and test tubes illuminated by gaslight. Today, this literary form usually unfolds in sleek
laboratories lighted by the dim glow of computer screens. But most of the moral and ethical issues raised by man's pursuit of knowledge continue to crop up in this literary form, as is evident in
Michael Crichton's new thriller "Timeline''.
"I think what's happened is that we have, in this century anyway, been able to work with extremely fundamental technologies in both nuclear technology and genetic engineering and it gives us
enormous power'', Crichton said: "I don't know that we have changed in any way to make us better stewards of that power''.
"Timeline'', the story of a private company's time machine that uses the latest in quantum physics technology, is not the first time Crichton has run up his own warning flag. In his bestseller
"Jurassic Park,'' dinosaurs were reawakened with the help of the newest genetic engineering discoveries in order to create a theme park.
The firm in "Timeline'' plans to send people back in time as part of a commercial venture, a new type of cultural tourism. Problems crop up when an archaeologist gets trapped in 14th century France,
but even as he sends an SOS through time the chief of the commercial project insists his new contraption is benign and peaceful, benefiting mankind.
Crichton, tall and lanky, speaks haltingly, measuring and weighing each thought: "I have sort of funny ideas. I think, for example, that there was a great value served by atomic testing that no
one ever wanted to think about. I would like to see one bomb a year set off and have every leader from the world go to see it. Everybody gets together and watches this baby go off and goes home. Just
so you know what we are talking about. I think the nuclear testing made it less likely that the bomb would be used in the early years.''
In "Timeline'', the archaeologist lost in time manages to get his message through to the present and a search party is sent into the past to retrieve him. The team, graduate students on his dig, are
sent to the Perigord region of France where knights in armour wage brutal wars.
The time is nearly a quarter of a century into the Hundred Years War and seventh months after the English capture France's king at Poitiers. The search party's first encounter with the locals in 1357
France is brutal and bloody.
Before this fictional rescue team could be transported back in time to France, Crichton travelled there himself to better understand the setting for his adventure: "I went to all the locations
that are in the book, and it was a very, very focused trip because I had already written two drafts of the book. I had drawn up a list of the places that I wanted to go to before I ever left, very
much like a location scout for a movie.'' He chose the mid-14th century as a stage for his adventure because he was lured by its chaos and the fact that it marked the start of knighthood's
decline.
In his research, he found that some of the 14th century's history was quirkier than what he could have imagined: "I was not aware that the monasteries were used to play tennis to such a degree
that they would build monasteries just to have the tennis courts''.
Two cats in "Timeline'' named H.G. and Wellsey are a nod to one of the great-uncles of science fiction, H.G. Wells, who wrote "The Time Machine'' and "The War of The Worlds.'' "How can you not
make a reference? I think anything to do with time travel has to, in some way, acknowledge Wells. I don't believe Wells was the first to write such a story, but he was certainly the first to write a
story that broadly captured people's imaginations'', Crichton said: "Wells made a sort of metaphorical point about the present world''.
Readers of "Timeline'' are treated to a brief overview of quantum physics, but Crichton does not expect anyone's eyes to glaze over with the explanation of its basic workings: "I rewrote it a
number of times, trying to make it as clear as I could. After that, you sort of just have to let it go and hope for the best. Audiences are smarter than most people think they are. There is not only
a tolerance for complex information but a taste for it''.
Crichton, who paid his way through Harvard Medical School by writing medical thrillers under the pseudonym Jeffery Hudson, is an avid reader of science journals to keep up with the latest
developments: "Everything now is all hyped. Every discovery . . . it's all the greatest thing that ever happened. Sometimes I'll think, `That's pretty important', and sometimes I'll think, `No, it
isn't going to get off of the ground'''.
So, if time machines could be built, could they be used to right the wrongs of the past? Crichton is not so sure. He uses the example of a baseball game in "Timeline'' to show just how difficult it
would be for someone to go back and change history: "What could you do as a single person to change the outcome of a baseball game?''
Offering an anecdote to illustrate why trying to change history could be pretty tricky, he tells of Jay Forrester, a professor of management at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, who has
helped corporations increase their efficiency: "Forrester made computer models of large organisations, businesses. He then matched these models with the real world and became an adviser for
companies that were in trouble and were trying to figure out what to do. What he discovered in, for example, a computer company that was trying to increase its sales was that everybody he talked to
had an idea of what was wrong and everyone understood what was wrong. But it turned out there were only a handful of people whose actions would have any affect on the outcome. Everyone else might as
well have done nothing. So I think it's in the nature of complex systems that we don't know where the triggers or levers are'', Crichton said.
Michael Crichton: Timeline. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
Freitag, 14. Jänner 2000