Time Traveler: 1491

Time Traveler #1

by Robert D. Oberst

Transported rack to 15-century Ireland, Rand Joins the Global Revolution.

The Time Traveler series steps back to a time, when printing technology revolutionized Europe, when for the first time books are printed in English. Before they are lost to the ravages of time, our hero searches for priceless, ancient texts to preserve for posterity.

After Rand completes his lucrative app, Venture Capitalists steal it. Seeking solace on a backpacking expedition to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, he slips and is swept into turbulent rapids. Nearly drowned, bruised, and battered, he seeks shelter in a hidden cave, where glowing lights lure him in and a mysterious force overcomes him. Barely able to move, he wakes in the bed of a beautiful maiden who nurses him back to health. While recovering, her farther, Ireland's first printer, teaches him how to operate the press. At their sponsor, King Edward's, castle, Rand meets the beguiling Marie, a captivating, French royal, bibliomaniac with whom all the lords-including the formidable knight, Reginald, are infatuated. Marie induces him into competing in the Games, where he excels and wins her favor-along with a formidable enemy.

297 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 5, 2021

About the author

The "Time Traveler Series" is Rob’s first venture in historical fiction. As a management consultant, he wrote innumerable pieces for S&P 500 organizations to enable them to harness the latest revolutionary technologies. Progressively honing his craft led Rob to try his hand at writing fiction. Similar to his other books, his latest novels in the “Time Traveler Series” are packed with fascinating history and action-packed stories that translate to modern times, such as the parallels between the current digital revolution and the 15th-century’s printing revolution that, through the rapid spread of knowledge, transformed the world, which inspired the Renaissance, the Reconquista of Spain by Isabella, the subsequent discovery of America by Columbus, and the Protestant Reformation with Henry the VIIIth.

Over twenty years observing how digital technologies evolved, curious about how these would continue to effect our lives over the next twenty years, he wrote first book 2020 Web Vision , which remarkably predicted how these would enhance our homes, businesses and society, especially during the pandemic that presciently struck in 2020. Fortunately, the virtual technologies foreshadowed in the book enabled us to continue to work, learn, shop, eat, and socialize safely, thereby saving thousands of lives. 2020 Web Vision appeared in over a dozen countries on five continents, in universities such as Harvard, and at research facilities.

In the early two-thousands, concerned about our economy, Rob developed a model that predicted a serious recession in 2008. After the Great Recession, he looked for an overarching cause and found that similar crashes had occurred for over the last 150 years, back to the Civil War, encompassing the Great Depression too. The extensive model showed that these long-term downturns occurred whenever a large generation such as the greatest generation or the war boom baby generation retires, and withdraws their overwhelming financial force from the nation’s economy. The prescient model, contained in The Financial Time Machine predicted slow growth for the U.S. and other major world economies for over a decade.

Following his death, Rob discovered his father’s Olympic diary recalling his extraordinary adventure to Paris for the "Chariots of fire Olympics". Gene also excelled as one of the stars of Notre Dame’s first successful football teams led by legendary coach Knute Rockne, the winningest coach in college history. Intrigued by numerous articles in his scrapbook, Rob delved into the era—the “Golden Age of American Sports”, to write Gene ‘Kentuck’ Oberst. Intrigued by the discovery of fifty letters between Gene and Knute describing how Knute acquired his six coaching positions and made it possible for Gene to marry his wife, Catherine, Rob wrote Renaissance Olympian . It follows Gene throughout his college coaching career as he interacts with the legendary coaches and athletes of the 20th Century including his subsequent time as a popular professor and artist. Website = https://globalfuturepress.com/

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book..took me awhile to finish. To many books, so little time

[arthur w watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good time travel story

This was a time travel story that was centered around books and knowledge I would be interested in reading the next in the series

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a story of a man burnt out from his highly stressful career, betrayed by his boss, who is seeking peace and a sense of wellbeing once again. I loved the descriptive narratives which paint an imaginative fresh look at what we see in our everyday lives. For example, “lumbering SUVs seemed like a herd of slow-moving water buffalo, me a nimble cheetah in their midst” describing driving through city traffic and “an immense red-orange egg yolk” describing the sun. What I found most enjoyable is the lessons on the history of the Grand Canyon. Who knew that you can travel a few million years of earth’s history on a hike? One of the main challenges for the hikers is the withdrawal from technology addiction. Can you imagine not using your smart phone for a week or more? No Netflix or Amazon Prime – oh no! Our main character has a mishap and ends up in the year 1491. Is he dreaming or starting a whole new way of living in the past? I wasn’t happy with the ending, I wanted to find out more about the friends left behind and if they gave up on finding the main character. Maybe this will be in the next book.

I won this book on Goodreads.com

[kathleen r. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Incredibly Boring

This is quite likely the most boring and plodding time travel books I have ever read.
Honestly to be fair I actually stopped about halfway through because I just couldn't take anymore.
The dialogue between both historical and present day persons is clumsy and does little to bring any of the characters to life.
The "accented" speech is tiring and thick, giving all the people that same stilted and unmelodious patter with poorly placed banter that fails to breathe life into the story.
Page upon page passes without moving the action forward.
The history of written structure is probably accurate but bulky with colloquial expression and overly pompous declarative phrases that seem oddly out of context.
I love the genre of TT stories but this one is tedious and overly obnoxious with strained dialectics that do not seem to be appealing.
It's a long and dense story that failed to keep my interest, and I found myself reading sentences over and over without knowing what the point was supposed to be.
I gave up on page 251.
The only thing this helped was by allowing me to take more than a few naps.

[Pat Oberst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great concept! A very intriguing storyline. While fiction, the author combines experiences of the main character, Rand, with an historical account of the development of the first printing press and its impact on the global spread of the written word through the duplication of books. The author creates interesting symmetry with the more modern global spread of information via the internet and software technology, representative of Rand’s modern-day profession. Transported back in time 500+ years, Rand apprentices with a novel printer in Ireland, ultimately traveling across the sea to England & beyond to sell newly printed books and gather ancient, one-of-a-kind texts for duplication. I whole heartedly recommend this book and look forward to future books in the series.