Gregory Benford - Timescape

[The Master™]

I know that LittleMissAttitude has read this, and said that it was one of her favourites...

I'm currently reading it, and am finding it very heavy going... There is an unusually high concentration of Science Fact information... And I think I'm getting lost in it... I have a fair grasp of Time Travel/Temporal Mechanics, but some of this stuff that Benford puts on the page is something for Theoretical Physicists and the like...

I'll carry on reading it, 'cos I just love the character Ian Peterson (from the Council)... He is a strange one!!! HAHAHA!!!

[littlemissattitude]

It's been a long time since I've read this one but, yes, I remember it being pretty science-heavy. Then again, Benford is a physicist if I remember correctly, and his books tend to do that. Keep it up; if I, who doesn't know much of anything about physics, could make it through, so can you.

Another good one of his is "Cosm" (I've reviewed it here: http://www.chronicles-network.com/bo...-reviews-1.php if you're interested). Again, he really gets into his physics, but its a good read. Not a perfect novel, but then few are. I liked that he got into a good bit of philosophy there, as well. Hard not to do when writing about the creation of universes.

[I, Brian]

Just to say that I edited the link, as it wasn't working before - netwrok instead of network in the URL.

[The Master™]

Originally Posted by littlemissattitude

It's been a long time since I've read this one but, yes, I remember it being pretty science-heavy. Then again, Benford is a physicist if I remember correctly, and his books tend to do that. Keep it up; if I, who doesn't know much of anything about physics, could make it through, so can you.

Another good one of his is "Cosm" (I've reviewed it here: http://www.chronicles-network.com/bo...-reviews-1.php if you're interested). Again, he really gets into his physics, but its a good read. Not a perfect novel, but then few are. I liked that he got into a good bit of philosophy there, as well. Hard not to do when writing about the creation of universes.

Thanks for that recommendation... Once I've gotten through my current stack, I'll see about getting a hold of that one...

[littlemissattitude]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

Just to say that I edited the link, as it wasn't working before - netwrok instead of network in the URL.

Oops! See what happens when I don't proofread and don't follow the link to make sure it works. Bad lma. Thanks, Brian.

[The Master™]

Well, this book is really starting to become a pain... If I wanted to read all about tachyons, and pocket universes in great depth, I'd read something more specialised on Theoretical Physics... I'm gonna give this book a rest for a little while... I don't like doing this with any book, but I really need to before the book goes out the window...

So, I've started on Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man (1953) and already, in the first few pages, I like his writing... This book might make a good book... With police being mind readers - to stop murders before they are committed!!! A little close to Minority Report... Will keep you posted on my progress with this classic!!!

[moon_dog]

I read this very book a few years ago. The science did make it pretty hard going, as did the lack of any real action, but the ending was totally worthwhile when finally I got there. Quite a cool story of trying to avoid an all too real environmental doomsday through realistic science.
Pretty glad I came across this forum and this thread in fact as I have been twisting my head trying to remember the title of it ever since the film "Timeline" was released. (Timeline is completely unrelated.)

[Neil040]

Originally Posted by moon_dog

I read this very book a few years ago. The science did make it pretty hard going, as did the lack of any real action, but the ending was totally worthwhile when finally I got there. Quite a cool story of trying to avoid an all too real environmental doomsday through realistic science.

I know what has been said about it being a bit science heavy but I remember it fondly myself.. very cool story indeed if you perservere.. loved the tachyon stuff..

[Quokka]

I really liked Timescape and have since read Cosm and eater. I always check for anything by him when im in second hand books shops, but can anyone else recommend anything in particular by him?

[Dave]

I think Benford's idea in Timescape was to present a scientific puzzle from the perspective of working scientists, which was something not done before. I think that he largely succeeds with that by managing to include academic politics, a struggle for funding, disinterested grad students, personality conflicts, the effect on family relationships of obsessions with work, and sensationalist news media. All of that does detract from the tachyon-pulses-as-communication-to-the-past hard science fiction idea, and most of the characters, while interesting, are unlikeable; some very unlikeable indeed.

Having said that, I didn't find it at all hard-going. I enjoyed many of the character interactions. I didn't feel that Gordon deserved Penny, and although they married in the future, they had split up, proving his mother correct. The misogynist, haughty, Ian Peterson does get a kind of comeuppance in the original future. For all his political power and wealth, he was left alone with his sick, aging parents, without a partner; a prisoner within the house he had fortified, with insufficient food supplies, for what looked like very few remaining days anyway. Ironically, he is the one person, without whom, nothing would have changed.

I thought that the conclusions in 1963 that the signals could only be from an alien civilisation in space, or that Gordon himself was a fraud, was very realistic.

The ending could be better, but it has dated with time passing. Obviously, written in 1980, Benford thought he had now brought the story full circle. Reading it now, you want to see what the future characters did in the alternative timeline that was created after 1979.

I'm not sure that the paradox works myself. These things are capable of giving head-aches but I wondered why Ian Peterson could find the note in the bank vault if the timeline had now been changed. It was suggested in the book that the note did not change anything at all; that it was only the prevention of the assassination of Kennedy that changed the future, but surely it was giving the chemical and biological information on the algal blooms to the past that made any changes capable of preventing the ecological disaster. Since those were some of the very first messages uncovered, then the nexus for timelines must have occurred earlier.