I just finished reading a novel called Ghostwalk, by Rebecca Stott. Stott is an academic whose speciality seems to be the history and philosophy of science, and the novel is based around mysterious events which occurred while Isaac Newton was studying at Cambridge in the 17th century. The narrator is asked to complete a biography of Newton begun by her mentor, who has recently died in strange circumstances. In doing so she finds herself seeing and hearing people and scenes from Newton's time.
What caught my attention after reading this book (which is basically a ghost story) was the comments on the cover. Several of them said things like "this will make readers think differently about what history is" and "you will begin to wonder if what happened then can affect what might happen now."
This theory of history, or time, touched on in the novel, appears to be based on quantum physics theory - that moments in time, like sub-atomic particles, can connect and become entangled, allowing passages between past and present. Is this really a potential theory of history? if so, it's not fully developed in the book. Much more convincing is the author's portrayal of a researcher so deeply engrossed in her research that she can recreate historic events in her mind's eye, which become "real". She can do this because in Cambridge she is surrounded everywhere by history in the form of old buildings - as she says at one point "Nothing is ever quite lost while there are still a few old buildings standing sentinel. " That's the best and the only feasible basis for time travel in my opinion.
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