Great stuff Eric. Looking forward to the rest.

I can imagine it does happen all the time with sci-fi authors, particularly ones that base their story on modern day earth. Novels like Dune and Ender's Game that are set on places away from the planet human beings live on won't run into the same technological advances. But as I learned from the forward to Ender's Game, the hook to a story is about building a character and relationships, not necessarily about coming up with some unique technological idea. Curious to see whether Johann is that character or it ends up being Tristan Mack or someone else who has yet to be introduced.

Timeline is very interesting, overall it's not my favorite Crichton work, I preferred Sphere, Congo, Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain, and Disclosure, so I wouldn't read it unless you were curious about exploring the similarities, but it was a really interesting take on backwards time travel and also a historical journey to Middle/Dark Age conflict in France.