Time Gate: Hurtling Backward Through History

The ideas in Time gate may not, as one reviewer has put it, be unique or new anymore - including the idea of cloning dinosaurs or its support of Gould's punctuated equilibrium theory, mars panspermia, life under the ice of Jupiter's moon Europa. But that's the point: these ideas were very new and unique 20 years ago, before such things as "Jurassic Park" brought them into every household. Today they have turned out to be correct and may even be "old hat," but in 1982 they were attacked quite loudly. The reviewer below expresses a common misunderstanding, when he talks about attacks, against this book, from the scientific community. Let me correct this misunderstanding, which arises from the deliberately confusing name given by the attackers, to themselves (namely, "scientific creationists"). The scientific community did in fact support Pellegrino's "heresies" and even gave him shelter in the united states after his laboratory was destroyed. The destroyers were not "scientists" but quite the opposite: anti-evolutionists who called themselves "scientific creationists" - which should probably be enshrined somewhere as the biggest oxymoron of the 20th century. In New Zealand these scientific creationists included Dr Richard Bliss and "Icons of Evolution" author Jonathan Wells (of the Unification Church). In the U.S., about 1984, the book was in fact publically burned by Rev. Jerry Falwell's organization, along with books by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., in front of a library in Cleveland Ohio. The so-called "scientific creationists," the anti-evolutionists, claimed only to want "equal time," with Darwin,in the classrooms. The history of "Time Cate" revealed, at least in New Zealand (where it was banned completely and the author was put on trial literally as a heretic), what could happen when religious extremism masquerading as a plea for "equal time" ended up in full control.

Basically, the concept of "Time Gate" is pretty much similar to the much more famous book "powers of ten" (but with more text and less images). Starting in New York of 1984, the book examines how the World looked at various points in the past. The first step is 4 years, sending us to 1980. And each further step is twice as large as the previous one: Thus the second frame is at 1972, the third is at 1956 and so on... the book goes on until the Big Bang is reached after 34 steps.The book has quite a few cool photographs depicting the various time periods. The explanations are concise and clear. Now you are probably asking: What the heck is the connection between this nice little book and the review by that guy from Seattle? (If he is really from Seattle...)I'm as baffled as you are. The fact is, a copy of "Time Gate" was available in our Californian school in 1987. I don't know what happened in New Zealand, but in the USA the book was never banned or even publicly condemned by scientists. The reason it isn't available today is simply that it is a 16 year old book. Only best-sellers survive that long, and "Time Gate" was never even close to such success.I don't know. Maybe it's just a marketing trick to lure innocent readers to buy a used copy... Anyway, if you can't find the book at reasonable price, don't buy it. For despite it being a very fine book, "Time Gate" doesn't contain anything incredibly unique. The concept of "powers of ten through time" has been explored in countless other works. About the only thing that makes it real special, is the fact that the Twin Towers are shown in the first few frames (1984, 1980, 1972). Still, I don't think this alone would make it worth hundreds of dollars, although some people might think otherwise.

There's a reason this book is auctioned or sold to collectors at a premium (amount), even in bad condition. In it, you will read how life on Earth could have been added to, or helped along, by microbes blasted from the surface of Mars by asteroid impacts billions of years ago, how dinosaurs might be cloned from DNA carried by blood feeding flies preserved in amber, how extraterrestrial life may lie hidden in new oceans waiting to be discovered beneath the surfaces of Europa, Ganymede, Titan - and how Chaos Theory keeps it all from falling apart. All of these things are now acceptable, but not 2 decades ago, in New Zealand, to "Scientific Creationists" who put Pellegrino on trial as a heretic and a "corruptor of youth" when he spoke about and dared to publish his theories. This book has a history stranger than most any other. One of the reasons "Time Gate" is so rare is that it was banned and then publicly burned in New Zealand, where pellegrino was stripped of both his university position and his home, and where his laboratory was literally smashed to pieces by an angry mob. It must have been all the more horrifying, when he fled to the United States, to see his books publicly burned in a trash bin, by Creationist extremists, in front of a library in Ohio (New Zealand extremists, who have dogged him in the American courts up to the present day, might actually have organized the American burnings - which moved Ray Bradbury to send Pellegrino the original manuscript of "Farenheight 451," personally inscribed with New Zealand slurs - - - Now THAT just HAS to be a collectable!). Pellegrino did finally have the last laugh. In 1993, the New Zealand government gave Sam Neil an award for ACTING in the movie based on the same dinosaur cloning theory for which they threw Pellegrino out a decade earlier simply because he came up with it (Yes, you're reading this right: They gave the actor an award, and trashed the scientist). A Purchasing tip: The hardcover is the one you want. Most dealers deeply discount it because it is "without dust jacket." The truth is that there never was a dust jacket. The hardcovers were attached only for shipping to libraries, and only 1000 of these originally existed. Note also that while the book was so widely condemned that it never saw a second printing, it did have almost unprecidented influence in both Hollywood and NASA, and even before publication caught the attention of Isaac Asimov, who wrote in the Foreword: "I have myself written well over 300 books now, on all sorts of subjects, so I have small cause to envy any other writer, but I envy Pellegrino this book. I wish I had written it. My consolation is the knowledge that, had I written it, I would not have done anywhere near the beautiful job he has done, and that, in any case, reading it has been for me almost as much fun as writing it would have been."