Remember when you first learned the concepts of space and time? It all seemed so incomprehensible and yet wonderfully fascinating. Suddenly you were pondering all of these "what ifs" -- what if we could move back in time? Or what if we could leap forward? The notion of alternate realms was fantastic, the imagination overrun with possibilities.
Balancing the exuberance and creativity of youth with the wisdom of adulthood, Alan Lightman has taken some of these questions and expanded their possible answers into a singular novel entitled "Einstein's Dreams."
The book is set in Switzerland in 1905, where a young Albert Einstein is working as a patent clerk. Lightman's elegant, brilliant conceit is to create a journal of Einstein's dreams during those pivotal months before he finished creating his theory of relativity. In each dream Einstein imagines a world in which time has a different definition and possesses characteristics contrary to our own -- and, ultimately, his --concepts of time.
"Einstein's Dreams" is a short novel, and each of the dreams takes only a few pages -- hardly enough space to fully delve into all of the aspects of each imagined world or to sufficiently discuss the intricacies of time and all its implications. Nonetheless, Lightman is effective in creating alternate concepts of time that are at once entertaining and intriguing; he creates questions for readers to ponder on their own.
In one fascinating dream, Lightman imagines a world in which scientists have discovered that time flows more quickly the closer one gets to the center of the Earth. As a result, the entire population, save a few, has moved into the mountains, and every house is built on stilts in an attempt to move as far away as possible from the Earth's core.
The belief is that the higher up you reside, the longer you will live, even though the difference in the flow of time is so small it's barely detectable. Those who live on the ground are shunned, while those in the mountains become obsessed with remaining forever young. As a result, they deny their bodies certain necessities, and, ironically, "the populace... become[s] thin like the air, bony, old before their time."
In one dream Lightman creates a world in which the flow of time is reversed. In this realm we are born old, with all of our memories of life, and as time moves, we become younger and younger. Lightman describes a man standing at the gravesite of his friend. A sad scene becomes a moment filled with hope: The man looks forward to when his friend will be alive and they will be young, drink ale and talk again.
Another dream challenges us to define how we would live if we knew time was finite -- if, for example, we knew the world would end very soon and we knew the exact day and time. Perhaps the world would be in chaos and would break out in anarchy. Or perhaps, as described in the dream, people would quit school and work in order to spend time with loved ones. People would forgive each other, hearts would mend, wounds would heal and strangers would take the time to get to know each other. Instead of a world filled with insanity and despair, it would be a world filled with talk and laughter.
Lightman is a writer of remarkable creativity and ingenuity. A professor of physics and writing at MIT, this 1993 book is his first work of fiction. He beguiles the reader with his accessibility, yet provokes a good deal of thought. Like Ray Bradbury, Lightman spins whimsical science fiction, devoid of wars or aliens. "Einstein's Dreams" is clean, simple and challenging. Take the journey -- there's no time like the present.
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