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How to Build a Time Machine: The amazing account of John J. Clifton, a time traveller from the year 2151.
This is the amazing account of John J. Clifton, a temporal specialist from the year 2151. Stranded in the present, Clifton contacts two New York journalists to share what he knows about the future. Clifton shares an enormous amount of intriguing information about time travel, self-resolving temporal causality, artificial and anti-gravity, an alien civilization called the Luyteni, fusion power generation, and even detailed instructions on how to build a time machine.He also provides historical files about the American Conflict, a civil war that will shortly devastate the United States.
217 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 15, 2018
2 people are currently reading
8 people want to read
About the author
T.E. Willis
3 books3 followersTaun Eric Willis was born in Arizona and spent his early years learning to appreciate the conflicting beauty that is the American Sonoran Desert. As a boy, he chased “water dog” salamanders in the Salt River basin, camped with friends in the Tonto National Forest, and gazed at Halley’s comet from a remote desert trail beneath a sky crowded with stars.
Willis took an early interest in computers. At the age of 10 he was caught hacking into the mainframe of an internationally-known cell phone manufacturer in order to utilize their code compiler. He learned from his mistake… that is to say… he learned how he had been discovered, and was not caught again.
On the first day of his high school computer class, Willis informed his teacher that he had already finished the textbook. He tested out of the class that afternoon and, with the teacher and 4 senior students, chartered the school’s first advanced computer programming class.
As a young adult, Willis lived in Japan for two years. He cooked rice crackers inside a cave in the mountains above the Tenmangū shrine with a group of Shinto priests. He was also treated to a private tour of the Mazda automobile plant while masquerading as an American auto executive. Willis speaks Japanese and maintains a love for the Japanese people and culture to this day.
For more than 25 years, Willis has developed software systems for some of the world’s most notable companies and government entities. He is a world-renowned cryptographer, has patented authentication processes, and was recently interviewed by a United States congressional committee on the topic of cyber security.
Willis began writing at an early age, reporting for his middle school newspaper. While you may not recognize his name, the odds are you have read something Willis has written. In just the past two years, Willis has authored more than 100 editorials or news articles focused on United States constitutional or second amendment issues. Many of Willis’ articles, published through news websites, blogs, and social media, have been read by more than 1,000,000 readers. Willis is a firearms enthusiast and is the administrator for the Second Amendment Coalition Facebook group.
From an early age, Willis was influenced by the writings of Frank Herbert, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Clavell, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Lloyd Alexander, Anne McCaffrey, and Ray Bradbury. “How to Build a Time Machine” is Willis’ first novel and has been described as an interesting “blend of Arthur C. Clarke and Tom Clancy”.
Willis is married with five children and is presently working on a sequel to “How to Build a Time Machine”.
Willis took an early interest in computers. At the age of 10 he was caught hacking into the mainframe of an internationally-known cell phone manufacturer in order to utilize their code compiler. He learned from his mistake… that is to say… he learned how he had been discovered, and was not caught again.
On the first day of his high school computer class, Willis informed his teacher that he had already finished the textbook. He tested out of the class that afternoon and, with the teacher and 4 senior students, chartered the school’s first advanced computer programming class.
As a young adult, Willis lived in Japan for two years. He cooked rice crackers inside a cave in the mountains above the Tenmangū shrine with a group of Shinto priests. He was also treated to a private tour of the Mazda automobile plant while masquerading as an American auto executive. Willis speaks Japanese and maintains a love for the Japanese people and culture to this day.
For more than 25 years, Willis has developed software systems for some of the world’s most notable companies and government entities. He is a world-renowned cryptographer, has patented authentication processes, and was recently interviewed by a United States congressional committee on the topic of cyber security.
Willis began writing at an early age, reporting for his middle school newspaper. While you may not recognize his name, the odds are you have read something Willis has written. In just the past two years, Willis has authored more than 100 editorials or news articles focused on United States constitutional or second amendment issues. Many of Willis’ articles, published through news websites, blogs, and social media, have been read by more than 1,000,000 readers. Willis is a firearms enthusiast and is the administrator for the Second Amendment Coalition Facebook group.
From an early age, Willis was influenced by the writings of Frank Herbert, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Clavell, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Lloyd Alexander, Anne McCaffrey, and Ray Bradbury. “How to Build a Time Machine” is Willis’ first novel and has been described as an interesting “blend of Arthur C. Clarke and Tom Clancy”.
Willis is married with five children and is presently working on a sequel to “How to Build a Time Machine”.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 19, 2019
This is a valuable lesson that I should monitor my Kickstarter pledges more closely. I admit I did not read through the samples as I did not have time and was just intrigued by the book's premise.
The book has a promising and exciting idea - an account of a time-traveller stranded in our days. However, it soon reminded me of my own high-school attempts to write a book. The book has two parts - recorded interviews with the traveller and his submitted accounts of the future. There is a minimal story in the two hundred page book.
The transcripts are filled with technobabble which does not make much sense if looked into. At first, I thought it is a smart way of showing the change of language in the future, but then you realise that the time traveller was according to the story stranded in our time for four years which would be enough for him to catch up. Also, supposedly he has a datastem device that helps him to fit in. However, he stumbles in describing even a usual airport. The science in this part is also outright wrong. I did not expect a working equation for time travel, but I would prefer to have no equations than ones with nonsensical integral notation. Same as the stock photos in the second part, these equations add nothing to the book and just take up space. The science in many parts seemed at first correct, but crumbles as for example magnetism appears to be mixed with gravitation without the realisation that they are different forces. Also, there seems to be a naive bias towards travelling into the future which does not make any sense as far as I can tell from my studies during my PhD (which dealt with time).
The future-historical account seems to be a somewhat researched view of the future. Yet, I found it for some reason quite unreadable (as opposed to Silmarillion or an actual history book). Some of the events are interesting, some seem to be small jokes or pokes for the current political situation (e.g., vice-president Shapiro), but then there appears to be a lot of half-finished ideas. A US civil war is surprisingly civil if you allow the pun, as opposed to our experience with basically any civil war in the current world and even the old US civil war which seems to support the elaborate review of "Reads like republican propaganda at times". The science in this part also suffers in multiple instances, for example, a fusion reaction could not spew plasma after its magnetic field has been destroyed.
The book also has many other small shortcomings that would be forgiven in a captivating read, but in this case, they just add to the descend in ratings. The main ones are stock photos that do not make much sense (how did the traveller even provide them and the scientific ones are just simple coil images), useless renaming of AI as SDU.
All in all, I regret supporting this book and even wasting my time reading it. It would be more suitable in a condensed form as a blog post of "my ideas for the future". If you want to read hard sci-fi, then read some with actual proper science in it (Martian) or just a science book.
The book has a promising and exciting idea - an account of a time-traveller stranded in our days. However, it soon reminded me of my own high-school attempts to write a book. The book has two parts - recorded interviews with the traveller and his submitted accounts of the future. There is a minimal story in the two hundred page book.
The transcripts are filled with technobabble which does not make much sense if looked into. At first, I thought it is a smart way of showing the change of language in the future, but then you realise that the time traveller was according to the story stranded in our time for four years which would be enough for him to catch up. Also, supposedly he has a datastem device that helps him to fit in. However, he stumbles in describing even a usual airport. The science in this part is also outright wrong. I did not expect a working equation for time travel, but I would prefer to have no equations than ones with nonsensical integral notation. Same as the stock photos in the second part, these equations add nothing to the book and just take up space. The science in many parts seemed at first correct, but crumbles as for example magnetism appears to be mixed with gravitation without the realisation that they are different forces. Also, there seems to be a naive bias towards travelling into the future which does not make any sense as far as I can tell from my studies during my PhD (which dealt with time).
The future-historical account seems to be a somewhat researched view of the future. Yet, I found it for some reason quite unreadable (as opposed to Silmarillion or an actual history book). Some of the events are interesting, some seem to be small jokes or pokes for the current political situation (e.g., vice-president Shapiro), but then there appears to be a lot of half-finished ideas. A US civil war is surprisingly civil if you allow the pun, as opposed to our experience with basically any civil war in the current world and even the old US civil war which seems to support the elaborate review of "Reads like republican propaganda at times". The science in this part also suffers in multiple instances, for example, a fusion reaction could not spew plasma after its magnetic field has been destroyed.
The book also has many other small shortcomings that would be forgiven in a captivating read, but in this case, they just add to the descend in ratings. The main ones are stock photos that do not make much sense (how did the traveller even provide them and the scientific ones are just simple coil images), useless renaming of AI as SDU.
All in all, I regret supporting this book and even wasting my time reading it. It would be more suitable in a condensed form as a blog post of "my ideas for the future". If you want to read hard sci-fi, then read some with actual proper science in it (Martian) or just a science book.
November 3, 2018
I backed this book on Kickstarter being intrigued by the synopsis. Even though the book started out interesting (an interview with the time traveler) it rapidly changed into a report of the future for the next hundred years. There's no story in here whatsoever. For the most part, the book is a dry, scientific manual of possible technologies and wars to come. The strange thing was, after a while you start to believe all of it , simply because it is written so dry.
If you're into in-depth descriptions of a future war in the US (between Democrats and Republicans) and how we colonized the moon and Mars, this is a book for you. If you're looking for a story, with characters, emotions and plots, ignore this book big-time. I'd give the book 1 star if I'd had to rate it for it's "story". Three stars for the fact that it successfully makes you wonder if some parts of the account are really from a time traveler.
If you're into in-depth descriptions of a future war in the US (between Democrats and Republicans) and how we colonized the moon and Mars, this is a book for you. If you're looking for a story, with characters, emotions and plots, ignore this book big-time. I'd give the book 1 star if I'd had to rate it for it's "story". Three stars for the fact that it successfully makes you wonder if some parts of the account are really from a time traveler.
January 26, 2019
Full disclosure time: I got this book through a Kickstarter campaign. The campaign write-up sounded good, so I became a backer. Well, I've finished the book and I have to say, I found it mildly interesting. John J. Clifton is a temporal specialist (I.e., time traveller) from the year 2151. He finds himself stuck in our present and makes contact with a news organization regarding his background and circumstances. Clifton provides an overview of the physics of time travel and also describes several future events, including the development of time travel, colonization of the moon, and eventual travel to Mars. To sum up: a mildly interesting book.
November 28, 2018
Very interest hard SciFi take on time travel, quite technical.
December 22, 2018
Reads like republican propaganda at times
December 19, 2018
The concept of the book is very interesting and it has a nice mix of storytelling and pseudo-science. I especially like the flow of the interview process and the style with which this was described. It reminded me of certain sections of World War Z in that it was a recounting of events that had already occurred.
One of the major drawbacks for me was the significant section on the future American civil war where that country is split along ideological lines. It is always true that the victor writes the history and in that respect the author presented the imaginary future history very well, but it was not believable. In almost every battle the one side was outnumbered, but managed to incur more casualties on the opponent than they themselves lost. Time and again the side with upper hand in troop numbers, equipment, supply lines, and infrastructure were not only loosing, but acting like spoiled little children.
All in all I liked the sections on the technological developments, expansion, and the interview process, but the entire book was relatively short and a significant portion was devoted to the aforementioned civil war.
One of the major drawbacks for me was the significant section on the future American civil war where that country is split along ideological lines. It is always true that the victor writes the history and in that respect the author presented the imaginary future history very well, but it was not believable. In almost every battle the one side was outnumbered, but managed to incur more casualties on the opponent than they themselves lost. Time and again the side with upper hand in troop numbers, equipment, supply lines, and infrastructure were not only loosing, but acting like spoiled little children.
All in all I liked the sections on the technological developments, expansion, and the interview process, but the entire book was relatively short and a significant portion was devoted to the aforementioned civil war.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews