Time Storms

Time Storms: The Amazing Evidence of Time Warps, Space Rifts and Time Travel
by Jenny Randles
Piatkus , £17.99, ISBN 0749921595

When you make extraordinary claims, you need extraordinary evidence. So why is the introductory story of a “time storm” so vague? There is no specific “when”, just sometime after World War II; no “where”, just somewhere in the Himalayas; and no “what”, just a red cloud and a feeling that time stood still. All this as a recollection “decades later” by a lady with “failing eyesight and deteriorating health”. Her “sincerity” and “mesmerising recall” are praised, but whether such memory is accurate and precise is not considered (p. 1).
The first part of the book is devoted to brief case histories of strange clouds, glowing mists, tingling bodies, altered states, anti-gravity events, floating cars, jumps through space, trips through time, and disoriented people who are “not all there.” (p. 77) Most stories are sourced to UFO publications and archives, to interviews with and letters to the author. In other words, they are difficult to check.
In part two the author refers to quantum physics, Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle, and chaos theory to show that “relativity, far from precluding time travel, in some ways almost makes it a certainty” (p. 106) and “perhaps this confirms mystical ideas that our consciousness must exist in a timeless, spaceless, realm and only our material bodies are locked into the permanent illusion that time flows in a linear way.” (p.110) Perhaps, maybe, it could, it might if I wish it to be… “conclusions must be tentative.” (p. 225) Among all the could-be’s and perhaps’s, the author doesn’t seem to know either.
Nevertheless, she tries to convince us that time warps and time travel not only are possible, but are everyday phenomena. It could be I don’t believe a word she says.