“In a world where time is a sense, like sight or like taste, a sequence of episodes may be quick or may be slow, dim or intense, salty or sweet, causal or without cause, orderly or random […]” (Lightman 1993: 89)
In the real world memory and the sensory register are affected by fully embodied experiences that take place within a very specific time and space. What if these fixed variables of time and space were to be disturbed? In a series of short poetic vignettes, Alan Lightman’s novel, Einstein’s Dreams, presents such worlds where time and space behave differently. In one, time is an infinite loop, in another, the higher you go the slower time is, in a third, there is one place where time comes to a halt, and in another everyone knows the world will come to an end at a particular date and moment.