Customer Reviews

If I Knew Then: A Nightmare Becomes Reality

5 star:		(4)
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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Definitely the most exciting and interesting sci-fi book I have read in years. A terrific work from a first-time author. If you love sci-fi and sex you will not be able to put it down. Through the vehicle of mind transference Carleton Heaviside allows you to explore sexual fantasies in explicit detail: old man in a young man's body, man in a woman's body, woman in a man's body, young woman in an old woman's body - all graphically described(this book is not for the faint-hearted or unsophisticated adult). A true joy from beginning to end. I can't wait for the sequel.

I thought the premise had a lot of potential. The idea of experiencing life and kinky sex in another body - younger or older, man or woman - could have been explored much more thoroughly by concentrating on fewer subjects and omitting much of the pseudo-technical detail. As it is, the book-within-a-book and so many different characters undergoing mind transplantation merely skimmed the surface of what could have been a fine story. For example, there isn't nearly enough detail about the kinky sex and there is way too much detail about the engineering underpinnings of the plot.

Even though the book is longer than the average novel, it still left me feeling like I was reading "Readers Digest" -style condensed chapters of what might once have been a pretty good short novella, interleaved with a fantasy electrical engineering textbook. What this book needed was less imaginary science and much more attention to detail in good old fashioned plot and character development.

What a surprise! A book from an unknown author whose writing skill has been kept a deep, dark secret from the literary community. I obtained my copy of "If I Knew Then" on the recommendations of friends who had read the book. I'll admit that at first I found the book's length, at 486 pages, somewhat daunting. But from the opening pages onward, I was hooked and set aside other matters until I had finished the story a mere three days later. While I have a moderate interest in science fiction, I found the book's SciFi premise, as laced with its sexual fantasy themes, so offbeat as to be both amusing and irresistibly captivating. In a way, I think author Heaviside slyly invites the readers into mentally writing their own versions of the story's fantasies as they read the printed page. If other readers are similarly provoked, the author may have tapped into a very successful formula. In spite of the book's adult-erotica content and its technology discussions, I found the writing to be both literate and engaging--and definitely not dry. Why else would I have had so much trouble putting the book down? Regarding the question of whether the book would be more of a man's book than a woman's, I had heard of an enthusiastic male reader who was so protective as to not let his wife read the book. Still, the people who had enjoyed the book and recommended it to me were women. So go figure! Listening to separate conversations among male adults and among female adults (most notably about getting a second chance at life) I think that the book's allure is a result of its dealing frankly with the kinds of things most adults think about but hesitate to discuss openly. If so, that would appear to be a reasonable formula for a secretly good story.

This was a superb book. I'll buy anything Heaviside writes now, especially along this same subject line. Heaviside is incredibly creative and he backs up the mind swapping concept with beautifully crafted psuedo science just waiting for someone like me willing to suspend disbelief to immerse in the plot.

A great 486 page book - hard to put down.

The book is written at a level which is capable and craftsmanlike (apart from the author not seeming to know that an ellipsis should contain only three periods not fourteen), but has little to recommend beyond that. There is never a point where I as the reader think, "Wow, I wish I had written that!" All the characters speak with the same dispassionate, clinical voice; none of them seem to have any emotion (apart from the occasional "I am angry now" moments that they quickly get over), as if each character is an unfeeling interchangeable robot... which may be the point of the book, that every person is exactly the same except for their bodies, but I would disagree with that point fairly strenuously. This leaves the book with no emotional core; it's simply all about the plot. This would be almost acceptable if the book were simply porn, but the introduction makes sure to remind us that it is not just porn (though I must admit that in tone and plotting it reminds me of several uninspired porn stories I've read in the past). Since the characters don't have distinct personalities, the only thing that makes them different is the collection of events (often involving forced transformations) that have happened to them, and so for almost every character, we get a huge relatively uninteresting (once you get past the fantasy elements that the book tries so hard to make seem unfantastic) info dump on how it is they got to the point where they are now. And once we get past 450 pages, even the main characters start getting sick of hearing other people's stories. And speaking of odd writing choices,there is also an incongruous scene (in the story within the story) set in a comedy club featuring an aging comedian (with aging material) telling jokes. While it came as a bit of a relief in the middle of a tedious stretch, it had no relevance to the actual story, so its presence seemed remarkably out of place. And it calls attention to itself by having the antagonist mention to the main character (who is supposedly writing this scene) that he should keep this scene short.

So, the writing style is not a strength of this book, but what about the plot? Well, as the author goes to great lengths to explain, the concepts of brain-switching and body-switching are not new concepts and the fact that the author does explain this over and over again almost makes it feel like he's trying to make clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no creativity behind the plot elements; perhaps the author mistakenly feels that like a scientific paper, his writing needs to cite its references. That said, one feature of the book has a certain potential novelty, the concept of the main character writing a book that we, the readers, get to read. However, that novelty soon wears thin as we see that the book that is being written reflects the current (and, we presume, future) life of the main character. The repetitiveness of the first part is a bit annoying, since we've already read through the main character's adventure up to this point once all ready, and it wasn't that exciting the first time. And to make matters worse, just as every character speaks in the same way, the main character writes in the same exact style as the author (which isn't totally unexpected, but it negates one potential source of interest). And yet, this novel-within-a-novel still could have been interesting had more care gone into explaining the main character's choices in what he writes, since we are told that he is writing from an outline imposed on him, but we don't get to see the outline, only the end result. Is he resisting the outline, embellishing the outline, or following the outline exactly? How does he feel about writing what he must realize will be his own tragic future? We don't really get any information about that until nearly 200 pages in, and not much even then, though it turns out that there are reasons behind the reader being kept in the dark.

And while there is the potential to be entertained by two storylines intertwining, the story of what happens to the main character and the story being written by the main character, instead the two are mostly separate. For approximately 300 pages, we are simply forced to endure the second with only occasional glimpses at what's happening with the main character. And while I kept hoping to see some actual conflict (with the main character trying to find some way to fight against the seemingly all-powerful antagonist), for 200 pages there is none beyond the initial kidnapping, apart from some quibbles about what the main character should write. After 335 pages, we get the conclusion of the main character's novel,but that doesn't fully end the novel's story, which is a bit of a disappointment since we've had to slog through 335 pages just to get to an ending that isn't any kind of ending at all (a "grand finally" rather than a "grand finale"), though to be fair, the lack of ending does tie in to what happens in the real world. The real conflict doesn't get started till page 450 (out of 483), so it's a long tiresome wait until then (and with only 33 pages left, the story concludes rather quickly as one might imagine). Spoilers: the conclusion of the story simply involves the main character getting to be just as all-powerful as the antagonist and taking him and his allies by surprise, so the conflict is quickly dealt with... clearly, not the most exciting ending ever.

There are no thrills or excitement in the plot. It is simply a series of transformative events (some related in flashbacks) that happen, with no emotional effect upon any character (except when someone's mind has been altered to give them an emotional effect) and since the majority of the book is a fiction within the fiction (though with, it turns out, a remarkable amount of truth to the fiction), the events feel less meaningful than they otherwise would, despite seeming to be foreshadowing what may happen to the main character. And since the characters are basically railroaded into what's happening to them with no real chance to change their lives in any meaningful way (thanks to the seemingly all powerful antagonist), it all seems like an exercise in futility to even care what happens to them. Also, considering that this is one of those stories in which a person's mind can be rewritten, it would be difficult to care about a character anyway (even if the writer were capable of making us care) since he/she may well be a drastically different person at the drop of a hat without any sort of character development being required to muddy things up.

Okay, so the characters are interchangeable emotionless robots and the plot's nothing to talk about, but is the story at least believable (apart from the usual suspension of disbelief required for science fiction)? Not from my point of view. The author suggests certain unusual occurrences as being reasonable. For example, a grown woman (5' 6" tall) is disguised as an 11 or 12 year old male child by simply changing her hair and binding her breasts; personally, I think her height alone would make this an improbable impersonation. Furthermore, someone who knew the woman fairly well (having spent the night pretending to have sex with her) is unable to see through this impersonation. And there is a bit of an "icky" moment where this supposed-boy has a sexual encounter with the main character (a grown man), where the reader does not discover that the boy is actually the grown woman until a bit later, making one feel like one is reading child porn. (Not to mention that around page 300, there is what appears to be actual child porn, featuring a 9 year old girl (with the mind of a 47 year old woman) having a sexual encounter with a 12 year old boy followed by a 40 year old man. Ick!)

Another improbable suggestion is that a sixteen year old boy and a thirteen year old girl are commonly believed to be exactly the right ages to date each other, though that pales in comparison to the previously mentioned passage. A third improbable suggestion is that a woman who was sexually abused and brainwashed would not have any emotional repercussions but instead would come to enjoy sex so much that she can't go without sex, requiring multiple partners regularly; this is perhaps a part of the genre (in which people amount to emotionless robots who can be reprogrammed to become anybody or anything) to an extent that suspension of disbelief should kick in, but I found it hard to accept. Another oddity is that there seemes to be only one sexually transmitted disease in this universe (HIV); people are often worried that they might catch HIV (and are frequently tested for HIV) but they have no fears about any other sexually transmitted disease, as if they don't exist. And so forth. There is no sense of reality in this book.

And to make it even worse, the suspension of disbelief necessary to enjoy a science fiction story is stretched to the limit or beyond by the fact that the antagonist has access to so many different technologies (three different types of memory implants (knowledge, ability, and dreams), an olfactory stimulant that causes a man exposed to it to rape the nearest woman, a teleporter that (among other things) can be used to exchange brains, an advanced aging process, a de-aging process which can include a ludicrous even for science fiction trigger such as vaginal penetration by an actual penis followed by ejaculation or giving another woman a clitoral orgasm by using one's tongue) A science fiction story centered around a single fantastic element is far easier to swallow than one in which a dozen different fantastic technologies are proffered as part of the story, especially when there is only one man (the main antagonist) and his organization who has access to these technologies even if there is a minimal attempt to explain the source of one of these technologies.

Overall, I find little to recommend in this book. This was a book that after only about thirty pages, I was already thinking, "How many more pages are left in this book?" Unfortunately, this book is nearly 500 pages long, meaning that I had much more to get through before I finished it. I would've stopped earlier but I felt it necessary to finish the book because writing a review without reading the entire book would be unfair and this is a book that badly needs to be thoroughly reviewed. To be fair, it does pick up around page 400, but by then, it's a little too late. Perhaps if the book were a few hundred pages shorter, it would be easier to recommend.

This was by far the best written book I have ever read. This book makes the DaVinci Code look amateurish. I really loved this book. A truly amazing book written by a brilliant writer. I have read a ton of stuff and nothing is so detailed, precise and done with excellent skill. The technical parts are described in such a way that you understand and see it as if you are there. A real page turner that you absolutely cannot assume or guess what will happen next. You haven't read a great book until you have read this one.