Phil Hornshaw - So You Created a Wormhole: A Time Travelers Guide to Time Travel

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Copyright 2012 by Phil Hornshaw and Nick Hurwitch

Cover design by Diana Kolsky

Cover illustrations by Aled Lewis

Book design by Pauline Neuwirth

Interior illustrations by Aled Lewis

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PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley trade paperback edition / April 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Pubication Data

Hornshaw, Phil.

So you created a wormhole : the time travelers guide to time travel /

Phil Hornshaw and Nick Hurwitch.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-101-56156-0

1. ScienceHumor. 2. Time travel in literature. 3. Space and time. I. Hurwitch, Nick. II. Title.

PN6231.S4H67 2012

818.602dc23

2011038455

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

Brandi Bowles, a kicker of many asses.

Dr. Emmett Brown, whose brain damage made this all possible.

James Cameron, a visionary of horrific robot futures.

Albert Einstein, an incomparable genius.

iam8bit (Nick Ahrens, Jon M. Gibson, Taylor Harrington, Amanda White), for their fearless support of all things nerdy.

Jenni Frisbie, for believing in our book.

Bob Gale, for his contributions to our childhoods and for keeping Marty from fading away.

Brian Greene, whose writing and Radiolab appearances made us smarter (we think).

Alex Griendling, for his killer 2011 Time Travel Calendar.

Stephen Hawking, for spaghettification and using his brain powers for good.

Aled Lewis, for converting our vague instructions into incredible illustrations.

Brandy Rivers, for her infinite enthusiasm.

Steven Spielberg, for all those gifts of imagination.

H.G. Wells, for inventing the luxury time machine.

Robert Zemeckis, whose brilliant movies helped shape our futures.

Caitlin M. Foyt, whose laughter and encouragement sustained us.

Amanda White, whose support and reasoned advice calmed many would-be freakouts.

Our legion of friends-turned-editors, who helped when self-assurance faltered and typos threatened to overthrow us.

Berkley/Penguin, and its team of do-gooders who are helping to save time traveler lives in the name of science:

Andie Avila, a phenomenal editor who managed to make sense of all (or most) of what we wrote.

Pauline Neuwirth, the book designer who fit together scraps of burned paper from us to make the thing youre holding in your hands.

Tiffany Estreicher, for helping convey whatever we were gesturing wildly about into reality.

Pam Barricklow, who made sure it all went smoothly.

Erica Martirano, for the management of marketing, and therefore, the saving of less well-connected time travelers.

Rosanne Romanello and Jodi Rusoff, for their excitement and dedication as publicists.

Diana Kolsky, for creating a spectacular cover despite our constant meddling.

And finally,

Ricky the Intern, for his brave sacrifices in testing lots of this stuff to see if it would work. Youll always be remembered, Randy.

W HAT YOU HAVE here is The Time Travelers Guide to Time Travel. Nine times out of ten, that makes you a time traveler.

We know what youre thinking: Um, Im not a time traveler, Im just interested in this robust and well-written piece of literature. WRONG. This book is the worlds first and only field manual to time travel; ergo, it spends most of its existence traveling through time.

And because a guide to time travel is so very likely to have traveled through time before, the authors have deduced that nine times out of ten, the reader of the guide must also be a time traveler. In fact, it is not unlikely that this guide has been clandestinely placed in your path precisely to create a time traveler out of youprobably by a You From the Future, in an attempt to shape your destiny.

Thats where QUAN+UM comes in. Trust us:

Here at the Qualified Users and Negotiators of Time Travel Universal Ministry, we must fiercely discourage any further interest in time travel. For one, the authors are enjoying the ride quite enough without the bridge and tunnel crowd gumming up the works with long lines and an endless barrage of flashbulbs (history is not your personal museum tour). And with the exception of one particularly annoying intern, most of us here at QUAN+UM have dedicated our lives to the study and protection of the space-time continuum and the support of officially sanctioned time travelers. You may think that riding a triceratops is hilariouswe have respect for that triceratops. Without us, future generations of time travelers would have to find out the hard way why triceratops-riding is for work and study purposes only.

Plus, lets face it: You shouldnt be time traveling. You dont even have any credentials. The long and short of it is, youre probably going to screw this up. And in travels through time, unlike regular old boring life, a mistake can mean a lot more than an unsightly mustard stain. Ever imploded a universe before? Well, now is not the time to start.

Furthermore, if you are that rare exceptionthat one out of tenit means that you are not a time traveler. Which means it is not too late to stop you.

The authors, despite failed personal goals and dwindling wages, will at least succeed in stopping one more fool from taking a chance to screw up history, kill him- or herself in horrific fashion, or disallow the evolution of puppies.