Science Fiction, from its earliest days, has been decried by its critics as immature, pulp fantasy. Often this has been a well-deserved comment, as all too much science fiction is neither good science nor good fiction. Take an intelligent twelve-year-old to the movies with you and you are likely to hear, "Well, the alien was cool, but space is a vacuum and you couldn't hear the explosion, and the fire wouldn't have burned like that cause there's no atmosphere to burn, and anyway, why weren't they all floating around, cause everyone knows there's no gravity in outer space!", or some such. But many modern day science fiction writers, following the lead of such giants as Arthur C. Clarke and Issac Asimov, now incorporate good science into their works--thus the term "hard science fiction." Stephen Baxter is one of the hardest of these hard sci-fi writers, and his co-authorship with Clarke of "The Light of Other Days" fulfills its potential as the book is rich with the consequences of a speculative technology. In this case, we have, not time-travel, but time-vision and omni-vision. With the development of the "WormCam", a videocamera that can see macroscopic images anywhere in the universe and anywhere in the past, humanity faces a crisis of self. Compounding the issue is the impending crash of a gigantic asteroid into the Earth, which seemingly cannot be averted and which will almost surely destroy all intelligent life. (That the asteroid is called the Wormwood, the camera is the WormCam, the place the camera was developed is the Wormworks, and the phenomenon on which the technology is based is the Wormhole is all a bit much, and leads to some confusion on the part of the inattentive reader. But that's another can of worms...) Clarke and Baxter relentlessly pursue the consequences of the total loss of privacy, the abuse of power, the subsequent counter-measures, the demise of society's most cherished myths, the effect on religion, and so forth. I can easily imagine a brain-storming session between the two writers--it must have been quite exciting, with ideas and their consequences flying fast and furious. Hard sci-fi fans will love this book, and as an exploration of ideas, it is very good indeed.
But there is another side to science fiction, and that is the personal side, the fiction more than the science. And here, frankly, like so much "hard sci-fi" writing, I feel that Clarke and Baxter have let their readers down a bit. It is one thing to say "society will be affected this way by this development" and another thing entirely to write a tale with characters who are caught up in those developments that the readers care about. The first is *telling,* and it is the domain of dissertations, newspapers, science journals. The second is *showing,* and it is the true ART of fiction writing. There are so many good writers of fiction now, who create very compelling characters that truly grip us with their dilemmas--James Lee Burke, James Hall, Michael Connelly (none of these are sci-fi writers, admittedly) to name but a very few. It seemed to me a great shame that the ideas of this book, which were very interesting and well-thought out, were hung on such weak characters. Indeed, at times the story-line, such as it was, was abandoned just for such "telling" writing as "quotes" from books and journals, etc. published about historical or sociological research. I should have been prepared for this when the first character to appear apparently dies of a heart attack at the end of the first chapter and no mention of him is ever made again. Although I often decry the lack of good editing, as so many of today's writers seem to me to "over-write", and a compact book of 200 pages or so is a rarity today, in this particular case I think the authors simply needed more space to tell their tale in a more compelling way. If this had had the characterizations of Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land it would have been an instant classic. But I'm afraid that in its current state it will not gain a wider appeal beyond hard-core hard sci-fi fans.
