Customer Reviews

Flashforward

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(49)
3 star:		(32)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

In the very near future of 2009, two physicists working on a complicated experiment accidentally thrust the collective consciousness of the entire world ahead twenty-one years. Although the "flash forward," as it's later named, lasts only minutes, the aftermath is catastrophic. Not only are millions of people killed in accidents caused by their sudden and brief departure from the present (i.e. plane and car crashes, falls down stairs, etc.), but those who survived find themselves emotionally rocked by their respective (and sometimes shared) glimpses of the future. The two scientists are left to piece together what happened, while also trying to figure out whether or not the future they all saw was fixed or just one of many possible outcomes.

I enjoyed this book very much: the story itself was fascinating, and thought-provoking, and the author is clearly an intelligent man with an intriguing imagination. However, I had a big problem with the execution of the story; Mr. Sawyer's a great storyteller, to be sure, but an awkward, almost amateurish writer. While the book was an easy, accessible read, I found it to be equally as clunky and frustrating in parts -- especially his shockingly excessive use of the word "doubtless," which was so abundant that it became distracting and, toward the end, grated on my every nerve. (How his editors let it go to press with such a glaring flaw is beyond me.)

Still, I recommend this book to anyone who's interested in time travel and is looking for some light sci-fi reading. And, in spite of my feeling toward the author's technical skill as a writer (or lack thereof), the story itself was compelling enough to make me consider the idea of reading some of his other books.

If you are a fan of the TV series, DO NOT buy this book. I am not saying this so that you can avoid the possibility of learning something you shouldn't know about what's coming up in the series. I, and I'm sure others too, started reading it with that very same motive once the mid-season hiatus took place. And I can assure you, you will NOT learn ANY of the series' many secrets if you read this book. The two are as different as can be, and the only character from the book that has any prominent role in the series is Lloyd Symcoe, and his character and its circumstances are VERY different. The creators of the TV series simply took the initial idea from the book but have developed characters and situations that are entirely unique. After getting hooked on the TV series, I must say that I find the book to be very disappointing. The series drives on intrigue, suspense, action, mystery, but the book is grounded in very dry science. The selection of the main character says it all: the TV series puts a federal agent at the heart of the story and watches as he tries to uncover secrets (a very wise choice), while the book revolves around the scientist who caused the "flash forward" and his team of scientists. I can't spell it out any clearer. While I do not wish to put down the novel or the novelist (who I applaud for his capable handling of very highly scientific concepts), I am more impressed by the way the show's creators have adapted it into something much more. This is a very good example of how to take someone else's fascinating idea and turn it into something that a greater audience could appreciate.

A good idea, but handled wrong. Much of it isn't very believable, and I've read some pretty far-out stuff that was made believable by skilled authors. The characters are definitely cardboard cutouts, as many other reviewers have stated. I'm not even sure the author had a clear idea who they were. (You get the idea that Lloyd Simcoe is generally reserved/timid in the beginning of the book, but then later on he walks out on a press conference, unflustered, saying something like, "That's it. I'm outta here." I think I laughed out loud at that.) The dialogue is just sad, and there's very little action. The writing is pretty terrible too, with cliches littered here and there---and a decent editor was certainly called for.

I thought the concept was good. But, as I said, the execution was poor. I would have liked to have seen how everyday citizens reacted to their future visions, and how they tried to change them or help them come to fruition. Less pseudoscience, more fiction.

The one thing that made this novel a somewhat mixed pleasure is the authors need to explain all. Not only the question why and how a flash forward is possible, if we live in a predetermined universe or if we can change our fate, but to top it with his vision about the fate of humanity.

That last piece was a) totally unnecessary for the rest of the story, but b) left a very stale taste in the mind. In other words: it diminished an excellent book to (just) very good.

I observed the same thing in "Calculating God". If Sawyer just knew when to stop, it would IMHO make his novels so much better. A similar story is told by James Hogan in "Thrice upon a Time" and since it is much more focused, it is a better novel.

In this one the potential is there for so much more, but the author overreaches. In a way he was on flash forward too...

First, don't think this is the same story you will see on the new TV show based (very loosely) on this book. The characters, circumstances and even the duration of the flash forward event are completely different. While I have enjoyed the first few TV shows, I absolutely loved this book.

Set at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN the protagonists are physicists searching for the Higgs Boson. Robert Sawyer does an excellent job at creating a believable setting and using some very good speculative theoretical physics as the basis for the story. The author clearly knows his physics. The action is fast and fascinating - this is a page turner, very hard to put down. This is a book that stretches your mind while you are reading it, and which I will remember with the best of the Sci-Fi I've read. This was the first book I have read by Sawyer, but if the other ones are similar, I will rank him up with my favorites - Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein and Pohl.

Having watched the Flash Forward series, and being left hanging by its untimely demise; I thought that I would read the book to find out the "end game". No dice. The book is so different from the TV series and vice versa, as to be almost unrecognizable! Except for the basic idea of the flash forward itself, there is little in common with the two. Only 2 of the characters are the same, Lloyd Simco is the lead , there is no FBI, no hospital... etc. Quite frankly... I preferred the TV series to the book. More complex with a double touch of conspiracy.

As with many other reviewers, I purchased this book after the TV series - which I loved - was canceled. Mr. Sawyer tells a compelling story - it's quality science fiction - but be aware that the book goes in a completely different direction than the TV series. The book is much more straightforward, while the TV series added many layers of characters and complexity, presumably for the Hollywood effect. Perhaps the TV series tried too hard leading to the show's demise? Usually the book goes into more depth than the screen version, but here it's the opposite.

Without spoiling anything, the only character the TV series keeps pretty much the same is Lloyd Simcoe. Most of the other TV characters are based from the book, but the TV writers twist things a great deal. Also, the flash-forward in the book is 21 years ahead, vastly different from the TV series. In short, the TV series only used the most basic and general ideas from the book. The book has no FBI angle; it's strictly the physicists and society that the plot centers around, and there's no deeper conspiracy at play.

I think many of the negative reviewers are being unfair. They are giving the book a low rating because they were frustrated when no answers to the show were provided, but that's not the purpose of the book; it was written before the TV series! One should review this book as a separate entity. Again, it is vastly different from the Tv series, but I still enjoyed both. It was cool to see a different take on the same theme.

So yes, if all you want is answers about the TV series, don't bother. If you want to enjoy a fun piece of sci-fi as it's own entity, I highly recommend it.

After seeing the first episodes of the TV series I wanted to know more and thought I find it in the book. However the book has not much to do with the TV series, except the idea of the flashforward, but nevertheless the book is fun to read, especially if you are interested in physics.

The book starts out compellingly when a science experiment intended to recreate conditions present moments after the Big Bang (of course I didn't actually understand this) instead causes everybody on Earth to glimpse 21 years into the future for two minutes. This produces major physical, psychological and political repercussions on a global level. But the scientist who ran the experiment, Lloyd, only seems to feel a passing guilt for causing mass tragedy (death and destruction from accidents that took place when everyone lost consciousness; people suicidal over their futures). There's not a lot of introspection into his lack of guilt, or, conversely, any investigation into the god complex he would likely get sucked into. Instead, he's inordinately worried about whether or not he should marry his fiancee given that he saw himself with someone else in 20 years.

Much of the rest of the book similarly focuses on the mundane concerns of the not-very-interesting protagonists and fringe players: Lloyd's partner Theo becomes obsessed with preventing his murder that's 21 years away -- while that's not mundane, it's not that interesting to anyone except Theo; another scientist is just happy to learn that in two decades he gets laid -- this doesn't bring comic relief to the story, and just undercuts any grander implications. Speaking of grander implications -- there aren't many. There's no true, visceral emotion to the book, and no sense that anybody has learned anything. And ~~~~~ SPOILER AHEAD ~~~~~ the fact that Lloyd actually wants to be immortal, floating in a robo-body above the Earth, watching it disintegrate, doomed to hover around the cosmos for eternity while just about everyone else has been dead for millions of years, sounds like an unthinkable horror rather than a euphoric fantasy.

Although I read quite a bit of science fiction, this book would never have caught my eye if I hadn't recently started watching the television series that it inspired. Anyone else interested in the book because of the TV series should understand up front that there is relatively little connection between the two. The central idea -- that all of humanity's consciousness is unexpectedly shifted into the future for two minutes -- is the same, and both stories share a character named Lloyd Simcoe, a scientist who may or may not have been responsible. But otherwise the plots differ in every detail.

The broad themes are similar, exploring variations on the conflict between free will and destiny. There are characters who are inspired by their visions to seek out and cause the future it reveals; others rebel against or fatalistically resign themselves to their disappointing futures, with varying degrees of success. So the television series and the novel probe the same philosophical questions. But details ranging from the length of the future jump (21 years vs. 9 months) to the characters, setting and storyline are different, giving rise to completely different narratives. Some of these choices were inevitable due to the different formats. The television show must reach the 9-month event horizon by the end of the broadcast season, after all. FBI agents make for more compelling prime-time drama than particle physicists, and mysterious, partially glimpsed bad guys keep us tuning in to find out what happens next.

It is the wider themes, however, rather than the plot details, which make it an intriguing science fiction book. The flash forward in time provides an intriguing and original way to explore questions of consciousness, free will, and even time travel. These are all fascinating questions and make for interesting speculative fiction in Sawyer's hands. I also enjoyed the digressions into the philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics: the observer paradox, many-worlds theory, and so on. These were generally integrated well, without sounding too much like didactic asides.

The biggest flaw of the novel is the somewhat weak writing and editing. There are typographical errors that should never have made it past a middle-school teacher, let alone a competent editor -- "you're" for "your", "differ" for "defer", etc. If you're the type to notice this sort of thing, it will bother you. And the characters and dialogue, while serving to move the plot along fine, lack the depth and sparkle that characterizes a truly outstanding book.

The flaws are enough that the book is not destined to become a classic. But as some of the Nobel-hungry physicists in the book come to realize, intellectual pursuits need not win awards or immortality for their authors in order to be valuable. It's enough that the book is fun to read. The characters are fleshed out well enough that we do care about what comes next, and the speculative themes of consciousness and free will should provide ample food for thought for most science fiction fans.