It's easy to to pigeonhole Gary Paulsen as an outdoors survival author, but you never really knew what genre he would write next. The Time Hackers is an example of this, a work of speculative fiction sure to stretch the conceptual limits of kids who read it. Twelve-year-old Dorso Clayman and his friend Frank Tate live in a future that has seen a spectacular tech breakthrough. Using the right computer chip, real scenes from history can be projected for viewing in the here and now. We can witness U.S. Civil War battles, visit the Renaissance or Dark Ages, or even dial all the way back to the Ancient world and watch Jesus minister firsthand. However, actually traveling backward through time remains impossible, and looking at the future is, too, as that time period hasn't yet occurred. Still, the new paradigm opens up myriad options for education and entertainment...until an anonymous someone begins transporting rancid, decaying objects from the past into Dorso's locker at school.

Frank is skeptical of Dorso's claim that someone is defying physics to send real objects from the past—objects that vanish mere moments after arrival—but he sees it for himself when a prehistoric woolly mammoth appears in Dorso's vicinity. Soon both boys are routinely finding themselves snatched back into the past, landing in the middle of dangerous scenes from history. This is no visual projection: Dorso and Frank are at physical risk from Civil War bullets and pirate swords, but who is responsible for putting them in peril of life and limb, and how? Time travel is supposed to be impossible.

Dorso and Frank could report these alarming developments to the police, but would they be believed? Probably not, and besides, this is their chance to solve a major mystery by themselves. Messing around with the time-space continuum is a threat to humanity, and the person doing so needs to be stopped. Dorso recognizes a certain young man who appears every time they are pulled into the past, a man who seems to realize that Dorso and Frank don't belong there. Is he a villain attempting to tinker with history for malicious reasons, or just fiddling with technology for his own amusement? Dorso and Frank have to find out before something goes wrong and the human race is snuffed out by a brilliant rogue with more power than any individual should wield.

The Time Hackers has a few moments of good humor, and the concept is impressive, but lots of opportunities for a transcendent story are missed. The time travel element could have brought the narrative full circle in deeply surprising, satisfying ways, but instead the final reveal feels lukewarm, forgettable. The book's best insight is its portrayal of tech censorship; as soon as this magnificent window into the past was achieved, society elites began censoring what could be accessed, based not on public opinion so much as their own oligarchical view of what people should be allowed to see. In that respect, Gary Paulsen foresaw the concurrent rise of thought tyranny and Information Age technology. All things considered, The Time Hackers had a lot more potential, but I won't complain too much about the final product.

I don’t have much to say other than this was a fun, quick read that I found at the library. I loved how they left the gamesters or whatever they called them in the past. I thought that was hilarious. I also loved Frank and the way he thought and how ok he was with everything that kept happening to him. He seemed like it was just another day in his life.

This book wasn't the best.

This had a clever premise which became less and less believable as the story went on.
In the not-so-distant future, technology permits the viewing of the past via your laptop computer. Oddly, you can get both sight and smell of the past, but not the other senses, through a form of projective hologram.
A middle schooler begins finding surprises in his locker, apparently things projected from the past in strange ways. This leads him and a friend into a bizarre adventure in which someone appears to be playing deadly pranks on the two of them, ones that endanger reality itself.
Paulsen's explanations of what is going on keep breaking down, even in the resolution, where a scientist "explains" things. The adventure story is fun, but abrupt and never quite making sense. I did like the two main characters quite a bit, though.

A fun, though brief, story with references to history and science. Good for an older reader who doesn't want a long book.

Woolley mamoths, pirates and Bethoven all in the same story? That’s what you get when you travel trough time. Time Hackers is a Science Fiction book about two kids named Dorso and Frank whose computers get hacked and the hackers send the boys back in time. They go on crazy adventures in the past. At any moment, the boys can get sent back in time which problem because they never know when it is going to happen. Dorso Clayman and Frank Tate teenage nerds who are not noticed by anyone Both boys try hard to figure out how to stop the time traveling and who keeps sending them back in time. During all the time traveling they keep seeing this person, who looks different and suspicious. They find this is one of the hackers but could there be more? I liked this book because it was interesting to find out where the time hackers were sending them. I also really liked that there was a lot of action in the story. I liked that the book had short chapters but what could have been better is describing the setting not when they were time traveling. The Time Hackers is a great book for anyone who likes science fiction or time travel.

Guided Reading Level T.

Dorso finds a dead body in his locker and then it vanishes. He and his friend Frank discover that someone has been manipulating time through Dorso's computer. Frank and Dorso involuntarily travel through time to catch the time hackers.

This book is great for grades 5-6.

This was the first Paulsen book I've ever read, and overall, I wasn't terribly impressed with the ending. The story had a good amount of suspense and intrigue, but the resolution was a bit flat and unsatisfying overall. The story could be a good jumping-off point to learn more about the infancy of cybersecurity (the book was published in 2005, so it's quite out of date in some ways), and it would be entertaining for those readers who like time paradox stories. The book is not hard science-fiction, so there are a lot of relatable aspects that readers will be able to envision without much difficulty, and the story may be a good entrance into science-fiction for readers who have not explored the genre.

The Time Hackers, by Gary Paulsen, is a fantastic read that combines such suspense between its very little pages.

Time Hackers is about two boys, Dorso and Fred, who end up finding out that the situation that there in could change the whole world.

This book takes place in the future, so all of the common things we do today are history and a bore in there world. Like TV for example, is watched by no one. Same with writing, everyone writes electronically now on tablet notebooks.
Long story short, Dorso ends up discovering that a few weeks ago when he sent in his laptop to get fixed, something was put in his notebook that could change their whole life as we know it.
In their time, scientists discovered that you could bring the past to the present by hologram.
Well, this crazy smart dude ends up discovering that if you could bring a hologram to the present, real life should be able to be transported too. If your wondering how in the world is this done, it has something to do with the speed of light and reflecting it forward into todays time.
The guy who invented this chip is all against violence, so he would've never done anything bad with it. But on the other hand, the people who found out what he discovered and decided to use it to play games. The two 'time hackers' who stole this guys chip were playing a game in which one person tries to stop the world from extinction, while the other one tries to save it. But they don't even realize that being in the past could make the whole world blow. Because when matter combines with antimatter it could end the world.
The master mind who invented this chip realized that people could die if the past would change, so he thinks.
If you went back in time and killed your ancestor, you would've never been born which means your ancestor would still be alive and so one. It's a very confusing theory, but it makes sense when you think about it.

Will Dorso and Fred ever make it out of this tragic happening, or will the whole universe collapse before their eyes?

Read The Time Hackers to find out!

Never thought Gary Paulsen would disappoint. This is a little time travel, science fiction thing he wrote and I don't like it. I own it, along with several other works by Gary, but only read it today because of three of the sweetest fifth grade girls you would ever want to meet. They all approached me at my desk on Friday at school with concerned looks. Two of them explained that they had both checked out separate copies of the book at our school library on Thursday afternoon. One had already finished the book and shared it with the third girl. The other was about half-way through. When we looked, we discovered that it was in our Gary Paulsen box. The concern? "It keeps talking about naked ladies and watching women take baths." They showed a passage to me and using as much context as I could, I briefly explained that the the main characters are adolescent males and that as kids get older, they begin to get curious about the human body. "And if you have any questions about that sort of thing, ask your parents." I also explained that if they felt uncomfortable, ever, about anything they were reading, they could always just stop reading and abandon the book. Having read it now, I can tell you the naked lady stuff (time travel, historical figures, hoping to catch some dames in the nude) is very minor, but not to an innocent fifth grade girl. The reason I personally don't like this book is I don't really care for science fiction (as much as other genres) and TIME TRAVEL is really hard for me (I'm too much of a realist). So, not a good fit for a fifth grade girl, but I'll be keeping my copy in our classroom's Gary Paulsen box just the same.

A fairly decent junior high time travel story.

It was fun, at least at some parts... I think that Gary Paulsen did a lot better on other books, but not this one. I only liked some parts of the book, like the end, and probably the time where they were traveling around through time.