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book2016

Time Travel: A History

Disciplines:
history of science
science writing
culture/cultural studies

Summary

A 2016 book by James Gleick tracing the cultural history of time travel from H. G. Wells to the digital present.

Core Contribution

Demonstrated that time travel is not merely a science fiction device but a cultural technology that changed how humanity conceptualizes its relationship to the past, future, and the present moment.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Time travel as cultural symptom (the obsession with moving through time reflects modern anxieties about acceleration, memory loss, and the irreversibility of change)
  • Wells as origin point (argues H. G. Wells invented not just a story but an entirely new mode of conceptualizing human history as navigable)

Historical Influences

No recorded historical influences.

Intellectual Lineage

History of ideas Popular science writing Cultural studies

Allied Works

The Time Machine by H. G. WellsChaos by James GleickThe Information by James Gleick

Contemporaries & Peers

No recorded contemporaries.

Minds Influenced

No recorded minds influenced.

Intellectual Posterity

No conceptual posterity found.

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