<I><B>IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME....</B></I><P>Once widely considered an impossibility--the stuff of science fiction novels--time travel may finally be achieved in the twenty-first century. In <I>Breaking the Time Barrier,</I> bestselling author Jenny Randles reveals the nature of recent, breakthrough experiments that are turning this fantasy into reality.<P>The race to build the first time machine is a fascinating saga that began about a century ago, when scientists such as Marconi and Edison and Einstein carried out research aimed at producing a working time machine. Today, physicists are conducting remarkable experiments that involve slowing the passage of information, freezing light, and breaking the speed of light--and thus the time barrier. In the 1960s we had the "space race." Today, there is a "time race" involving an underground community of working scientists who are increasingly convinced that a time machine of some sort is finally possible.<P>Here, Randles explores the often riveting motives of the people involved in this quest (including a host of sincere, if sometimes misguided amateurs), the consequences for society should time travel become a part of everyday life, and what evidence might indicate that it has already become reality. For, if time travel is going to happen--and some Russian scientists already claim to have achieved it in a lab--then its effects may already be apparent.