Timeline by Ken Follett

I was unexpectedly home in New Jersey and ran out of books, so I ransacked Jo's bookshelf. She has always liked Michael Crichton so I was in luck. I ended up lugging it back to Boston, hardcover and all. Part science fiction, part historical fiction, 100% action.

This was a fun book. It's about a high-tech company in the near future who figures out a way to time travel. Their corporate goals intersect those of a group of academics who are excavating a 14th century village, the Dordogne in France. The academics end up getting sent back to 14th century France, and that's where things get interesting.

I had forgotten how good Michael Crichton is! There were no particular passages in the book that I thought were exceptionally well-written, but I could not put the book down. Reminiscent of Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, this book demonstrated an author's comprehensive and extensive understanding of a reasonably obscure topic (in this case both particle physics and French history) brought into a great story.

The preface, written with the book in 1999, made me chuckle. Crichton writes of the futuristic setting for the book: "It is a world of exploding advances on the frontiers of technology. Information moves instantly between two points, without wires or networks. Computers are built from single molecules. " Check, check.

Definitely a good read, specifically for you science types out there.