As with the air disaster book, Timeline purports on the surface to be one thing, but once you get into it, the book turns out to be entirely something else. At first exposure, Airframe was an unnerving exploration of the technology that keeps airplanes in the air. But gradually you realized that Crichton had really mounted that embarrassing hobby horse of critic-hatred, one that superstars from Frank Sinatra to George Clooney have mounted, decrying the inaccuracy, mendacity, unprofessionalism, and sheer sloppiness of journalists. That's not a particularly cinematic premise, and sure to raise the hackles of hacks everywhere . Even worse, as far as an adapter is concerned, the air disaster investigator at the heart of the book, once to be played by Weaver, all too often finds herself in passive situations, at the mercy of weather and wind, of planes and pilots.
Timeline imposes similar impediments to smooth cinematic translation.
But in reality it is a brief against Bill Gates, and the exploitation of modern technology for amusement. Gates is another stand in for John Hammond in Jurassic Park, which was itself a reconsideration of ideas that Crichton had already put forward in Westworld. As long as the potential adapter of this book keeps its real priorities in mind, though, he will make sense of a text that is in fact three separate books in one. Amid the swirling dust, they think they hit an Indian or an old geezer who seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Several characters are introduced, however, including an Indian policeman, who fail to figure in the rest of the book.