From the Bookshelf: How to Invent Everything

Happening to see a comment about a book called “How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler” did amuse me. After glancing into a copy at a bookstore, I wound up asking for a copy for my birthday. Not expecting to travel back in time, much less wind up stranded in the past, I suppose that even as I accepted on some level the book’s framing conceit I was also ready to see it as “a brief primer on science and technology,” similar in some fashion to the “tech trees” of the Civilization computer games. Still, from my first glance into the book I’d been mulling over its particular time travel model, which used a now-familiar idea that “changing history creates an alternative universe” (thus avoiding accusations of “paradox”) but let its time machine (assuming it’s still working) bring you back to the unchanged universe you started from. As if to keep things from getting too comfortable, though, I also took some interest in a flowchart that narrowed down just when you’re stranded. It did remind me of my impression “the twentieth-century Doctor Who series” often had the TARDIS simply unable to be directed to a desired destination, although I’m not familiar with the entirety of the show then.
( No user serviceable parts inside? )