Michael Crichton was the writer who made me want to be a writer. The way he blended cutting-edge science and rollicking action popularized the technothriller genre. All my early attempts at writing fiction were in many ways an emulation of his style.
I read through most of Crichton's catalog in my pre-teens, but I didn't get to arguably his last great book, Timeline, until my second year of high school. My English teacher, Mrs. Coan, assigned the book for us to read.
Timeline's premise is that a group of young archaeologists go back in time to save their mentor, who's stranded in 14th century France. He was sent there by a company that found a way to exploit quantum technology and pioneer time travel.
Like Jurassic Park, the plot's credibility relies on the plausibility of the premise. Mosquitos stuck in tree sap with a belly full of dino DNA sounds true. So does Crichton's explanation of quantum theory in Timeline. His brilliance shines in the way he disguises fiction in exposition.
Crichton begins by illustrating the wave-particle duality of light. Note how one of the trusted characters, Stern, plays right into Gordon's hands at the top of page 129.
Can you spot the deception? It's in the paragraph immediately above the illustration on page 129. When you detect individual photons (or electrons) passing through a slit, they don't produce an interference pattern. They behave like particles, not waves, and therefore follow a linear path. This only happens when you detect individual photons, and it's one of the great unexplained mysteries of science.
Popular Mechanics breaks it down better than I can:
The idea behind the double-slit experiment is that even if the photons are sent through the slits one at a time, there's still a wave present to produce the interference pattern. The wave is a wave of probability, because the experiment is set up so that the scientists don't know which of the two slits any individual photon will pass through.
But if they try to find out by setting up detectors in front of each slit to determine which slit the photon really goes through, the interference pattern doesn't show up at all. This is true even if they try setting up the detectors behind the slits. No matter what the scientists do, if they try anything to observe the photons, the interference pattern fails to emerge.
Crichton completes the deception on page 130:
It's so intuitive, it must be true, right? After this, all that's left to do, creatively, is build a plausible technology that transmits a person through the interference created by these nonexistent photons, and you've got the setup for multiverse travel—specifically, time travel.
What I admire almost as much as Crichton's craft is his gumption. Surely he knew a small percentage of his readers would know he was fibbing to his audience. He went ahead with it anyway, trusting the majority's credulity and suspension of disbelief.
It's a lesson I take to heart. In my sci-fi books, I strive to limit technology to things the reader recognizes. My natural tendency is to get carried away and focus too much on the Xs and Os of the world instead of on plot and characters. It's an issue I worked on for my second book, Seeds of Calamity. (Although I've been told by some they preferred my more detailed debut, Tendrils to the Moon.)
Read and see for yourself. You'll find the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity here. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. For a free digital copy of Tendrils to the Moon, sign up for the mailing list on the right side of the blog page. Or, if you're viewing this on a mobile device, click here. I appreciate the support!
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