Einstein's dreams
A fictional work in which a twenty-six-year-old Albert Einstein, working in a patent office in Switzerland, imagines possible worlds in which time works differently as he formulates his theory of relativity.
Stats for nerds
15recommend
22mentions
22people
2008–2025years
68% recommend32% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > If that last thought intrigues you, you might enjoy reading Strange Life of Ivan Osokin by P.D. Ouspensky.
Also Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman, a collection of short stories where each story is a universe where time functions differently than in our own.
- I'd call myself an Alan Lightman fan (Einstein's Dreams is a lovely book) but I think he missed on this one.
- Since that was bad, and the topic is wonderful, may I offer something very good on this topic instead?
It is a book called Einstein's Dreams. Thank me later.
- Slightly off-topic (as usual), but this reminds me of the book Einstein's Dreams. Different ways of thinking about time.
"The book consists of 30 chapters, each exploring one dream about time that Einstein had during this period."
The chapters are versions of the world where time has different rules. In one, the closer you get to the town square, the slower time moves. In another, people build higher and higher houses, since you age more slowly the higher you are from the surface of the Earth. And so on...
- The books I always fall back on giving as a gift:
Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom A superintelligence is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds.
Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman A modern classic, Einstein’s Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds.
Remembrance of Earth's Past by Cixin Liu It is hard to explain how deep my love for this series is. My all time favorite science fiction but what it is is just page after page of ideas that get more and more fantastical. Can't recommend this enough
The Three Body Problem (PartI) The Dark Forest (Part II) Death's End (Part III)
- I would surely read Einstein's Dreams and SuperIntelligence.
