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When you step into a time machine, fax yourself through a
"quantum foam wormhole," and step out in feudal France circa 1357,
be very, very afraid. If you aren't strapped back in precisely 37
hours after your visit begins, you'll miss the quantum bus back to
1999 and be stranded in a civil war, caught between crafty abbots,
mad lords, and peasant bandits all eager to cut your throat. You'll
also have to dodge catapults that hurl sizzling pitch over castle
battlements. On the social front, you should avoid provoking "the
butcher of Crecy" or Sir Oliver may lop your head off with a swoosh
of his broadsword or cage and immerse you in "Milady's Bath," a
brackish dungeon pit into which live rats are tossed now and then
for prisoners to eat.
This is the plight of the heroes of Timeline, Michael Crichton's
thriller. They're historians in 1999 employed by a tech
billionaire-genius with more than a few of Bill Gates's most
unlovable quirks. Like the entrepreneur in Crichton's Jurassic
Park, Doniger plans a theme park featuring artifacts from a lost
world revived via cutting-edge science. When the project's chief
historian sends a distress call to 1999 from 1357, the boss man
doesn't tell the younger historians the risks they'll face trying
to save him. At first, the interplay between eras is clever, but
Timeline swiftly becomes a swashbuckling old-fashioned adventure,
with just a dash of science and time paradox in the mix. Most of
the cool facts are about the Middle Ages, and Crichton marvelously
brings the past to life without ever letting the pulse-pounding
action slow down. At one point, a time-tripper tries to enter the
Chapel of Green Death. Unfortunately, its custodian, a crazed giant
with terrible teeth and a bad case of lice, soon has her head on a
block. "She saw a shadow move across the grass as he raised his ax
into the air." I dare you not to turn the page!
Through the narrative can be glimpsed the glowing bones of the
movie that may be made from Timeline and the cutting-edge computer
game that should hit the market in 2000. Expect many clashing
swords and chase scenes through secret castle passages. But the
book stands alone, tall and scary as a knight in armor shining with
blood. --Tim Appelo
内容简介
In an Arizona desert a man wanders in a daze, speaking words
that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body
swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the
world archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site.
Suddenly they are swept off to the headquarters of a secretive
multinational corporation that has developed an astounding
technology. Now this group is about to get a chance not to study
the past but to enter it. And with history opened to the present,
the dead awakened to the living, these men and women will soon find
themselves fighting for their very survival--six hundred years ago.
. . .