My parents used to buy and sell second hand books, in bulk, as a business. It was quite clever actually ā when you donate items to a charity shop and they fail to sell, theyāll go to the next store in a small circuit of 3-5 stores. If they fail to sell by the end of the run, they go to landfill. My dad picked up the skill to be able to tell whether a book was worth money often within a few seconds of holding it, so heād offer to buy every book regardless of condition for a nominal cost (2p if I remember correctly.) Any he didnāt want heād donate to shops supporting a different charity and give them another chance to be bought.
As a result my 2 bedroom childhood home had approximately 12,000 books in it at any point in time ā it was actually pretty wild. My sister and I would sometimes be asked to help fetch books (each set of bookcases was a genre and then organized by author name) and my dad would occasionally hand us a book he thought weād enjoy and then weād give it feed it back into the machine when we were done.
One day, my dad gave me a book I remember vividly which I really enjoyed. At some point, I no longer had the book. And Iāve never been able to find it again despite my best efforts and days worth of research. Iāve purchased around a dozen books hoping it was āthe oneā, but it never was. Iāve hoped that the mass crawling of data for AI corpora would have Claude or his buddies help me succeed, but they never did.
Thematic & Content
The book is written in the style of a non-fiction book about time travel from the standpoint of being published some time in the 2050s.
In the first section, time travel in popular culture is summarized starting with H.G. Wellsā āThe Time Machineā and talking also about Back to the Future. It goes on to talk about how time travel was ādiscoveredā āin real lifeā and then talks a bit about the theory in a non-mathematical way. I seem to remember teleporting matter/people as being part of the discovery journey.
Another section then talks about time machines and the key components that make them work, showing basic diagrams of key parts. Kind of like how every car has an engine, suspension, exhaust, etc. Within this section, some popular models are shown and explained in a high-level.
Then, a section about the rules and laws of time travel including that you must never go back, some stuff about vaccinations and the implication of time travelers on them, and what happens when you break the rules. We are introduced to the concept of the ātime policeā and some notable cases where laws were broken, or where scenarios led to new laws being created.
Finally, a few top tips on where to travel to that are pleasant.
The book really was approaching time travel like a practical skill, similar to how a car manual would approach driving.
Aging the Book
I moved out of home in 2013, so the book had to exist before then.
Design
The hardback book was a standard size (approx 16x24cm or 6x9.5 inches). It was silver with a black line drawing of a wormhole on the cover. It had a blue dust jacket and I seem to remember a DeLorean being on the cover but Iām not 100% confident about this.
The illustration style was similar to this stock image I found, with small annotations. There was a bit less detail on account of the illustrations being small.
Am I Losing It?
I have considered that this book might be an amalgamation of different ideas or books I may have seen, but I remember it so well. And The Reply All episode āThe Case of the Missing Hitā, where this was a predominant theory just to be debunked with the discovery of So Much Better by Evan Olson makes this a hard theory to accept.
And, I know I sound like I need help with this one, I have also considered the book doesnāt exist yet ā that I am yet to write it and then somehow send it back to myself in my small London childhood home in the right timeframe.
Thatās the level of desperation Iām at with this one. Any help is appreciated.
Appendix A: Books It Isnāt
The non-exhaustive list of books that I have purchased or assessed and confirmed that it is not:
- Time Travel: A History by James Gleick
- How to Build a Time Machine by Paul Davies
- Time Travel: A Writerās Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel by Paul J. Nahin
- Time: A Travelerās Guide by Clifford A. Pickover
- The Complete Guide to Time Travel by Stephen Stanley
- DeLorean Time Machine: Doc Brownās Ownersā Workshop Manual by Bob Gale and Joe Walser
- A Travel in Time by Camryn Jones
- The Time Travel Chronicles: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction edited by Crystal Watanabe
- All Clear by Connie Willis
- Time Machine Tales: The Science Fiction Adventures and Philosophical Puzzles of Time Travel by Paul J. Nahin
- Time Travel in Einsteinās Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time by J. Richard Gott
Appendix B: Books It Could Be
These are the books I have purchased or otherwise acquired that havenāt yet arrived so I canāt confirm their status at this point:
Currently none.