I feel like I’ve been dropped into a Pink Floyd album cover.

For those of you not familiar with the English rock band, let me explain: Over the years, the band has chosen for their album cover art and promotional posters (with the exception of “Dark Side of the Moon”) a series of photographs/illustrations that often feature the breathtaking but empty English countryside, deserted streets and odd monuments. The Monday Book Club July selection, Alan Lightman’s “Einstein’s Dreams” (Warner Books, $11.95, paperback), is a lot like that: lonely, beautiful and surreal in a not-necessarily-bad way.

Lightman

For “Einstein’s Dreams,” Lightman has written a series of vignettes (“stories” isn’t really an accurate term because there is no defined plot) that imagine various concepts of time. The short chapters are linked by the premise that this is what Einstein dreamed about as he crafted his theory of relativity and other concepts. For example, in one world, time slows with altitude and the wealthy people build their communities high on stilts and mountains in an attempt to stay young:

“Many are not content to simply locate their homes on a mountain. To get the maximum effect, they have constructed their houses on stilts. The mountaintops all over the world are nested with such houses, which from a distance look like a flock of fat birds squatting on long skinny legs.”

In another world, “time is a visible dimension. Just as one may look off in the distance and see houses, trees, mountain peaks that are landmarks in space, so one may look out in another direction and see births, marriages, deaths that are signposts in time, stretching off dimly into the far future. And just as one may choose whether to stay in one place or run to another, so one may choose his motion along the axis of time.”

Although the various concepts of time are the focus of Lightman’s writing, the complexity of it all is sometimes a little mind-boggling. For me at least, the best thing about the book was Lightman’s writing style; his words are spare but lyrical, airy and dreamy and having the power to carry off his complicated ideas.

As Monday Book Talk discussion leader Carol Campbell sees it, Lightman’s book addresses two primary issues: the possibilities of time perception and experience. “You can only experience in accordance with what you think,” Campbell mused in a recent e-mail. “I wonder if people agree with that statement.”

Campbell plans to include this question in her discussion of the book at 6 p.m. in the Taylor Books art gallery on July 25. Other planned discussion topics are:

* Background on how Einstein developed his theories of time and how these ideas relate to his other work during the same period.

* The concept of time as it has changed through different ages.

To contact Regina C. Davis, use e-mail or call 348-7936.