Customer Reviews

Timescape

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

A lot of the reviewers of this book obviously read it not expecting hard SF. Another big chunk did not expect character developments approaching what one would expect from non-SF.

This book is full of details on the science that are highly believable, and as exact as feasible without messing up the plot. That's the point of hard SF, and it succeeds marvellously. For those of the reviewers that expected "mainstream" SF or a non-SF fiction it is a major distraction.

It also spends a lot of time on character development, which is unusual for hard-SF, and many reviewers seem to have expected traditional hard-SF.

On the other hand if you do love hard SF but find most hard SF to have two dimensional characters, this is a book for you.

The book juxtaposes 1963 and 1998. In '63 America had survived the missile crisis, and there appeared to be progress all around - the test ban treaty was being signed, the economy was booming, and the centers of education in California were seeing a massive growth, with a bustling research establishment. Kennedy was pushing the space race. In '63, Gordon (one of the main characters) were assistant professor, had a sexy,sexually liberated girlfriend and was frantically working on a problem that could make his career. It was all good.

The books 1998 is a world in crisis, mostly described via the impacts it has on the main characters - a research team at Cambridge and the rather unsympathetic Mr Peterson - responsible though tough at work, but an chronic womanizer outside of it. The ecology is badly messed up, and we get to see it not just in terms of headlines, as you might in more typical hard SF (i.e. food production is down, fish is dying off, blah. blah.) but in terms of how it changes social structures and the daily lives of these characters.

The two are tied together by the experiments of Gordon and the group at Cambridge and the groups attempts at telling Gordon how to solve the problems they are facing, while attempting to avoid a paradox.

The group succeeds in communicating through time, but does it succeed in fixing the problems of the now they live in? How do you avoid a paradox? What happens if you create a paradox? These ideas and their resolutions are fairly routine in science fiction now, but I have not previously seen anyone handle them so thoroughly and in such a believable way.

Some complain about lack of character development, but I would claim that anyone who does so does it because they would not normally read hard SF. Some complain about too much character development because they are looking exactly for the hard SF. It's perhaps an awkward combination.

I too found myself wanting to skip ahead at various points, but not because I found parts boring, but because the development of the problem kept me in a lot of suspense. But I'm glad I didn't skip ahead - the "filler" material some have complained about was vital to the feel of this book.

It was "filler" material that provided the tie in with the Kennedy assassination that provide answers to several major questions of the book. It was filler material that demonstrated the mood of the respective time periods and give you the basis for judging the time after the "turning point". "Filler material" expanding on the characters explained much of their motivations for acting the way they did instead of always doing what might have been the logical way to behave for a typical cardboard scientist in typical hard SF.

And the end is stunning in terms of the way it describes time. Only one other time have I had a similar reaction to the end of an SF book, and that was with Arthur C. Clarkes "The City And the Stars" (read it!) which sent chills down my spine (I don't think any piece of fiction have ever done that with me before) for it's haunting image of how limited our view of time is by our viewpoint and our physical existence.

but a lot of people expected it to be and thus the wildly conflicting reviews posted by customers. The sci-fi in this book is really light and anyone who has even a modicum of interest/knowledge of the genre will understand the basic concepts (tachyons, time travel, etc.). The novel is really about PEOPLE, not the sci-fi, and how they deal with implications of time-travel, ecological disaster, and competition for resources. The main characters are likable and somewhat tragic, people muddling through their careers, fumbling toward meaning in their lives amidst chaos around them. Though the novel is dated (having been published in 1980), it still has relevant topics for our time. I would suggest reading this book if you are interested in the human side of sci-fi, but personally, I thought the time-travel aspect was well done and not over the top, with just enough mystery there to make it real. It reminded me somewhat of The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov in which communication between a whole other dimension and humans was tricky at best.

A Nebula winner, and one of a handful of hard SF books considered a classic. I`ll admit that hard SF doesn't gel well with my personal reading tastes with its emphasis on scientific explanation and frequently stock characters; however, I have enjoyed some immensely, such as _The Forge of God_, and this novel only proves that Hard SF CAN be both technically fascinating and be superby piece of literature and characterization as well.

Initially, Timescape caught my attention with its central premise of a dying future (well, 1998, the future when the book was written) finding a way through tachyon messages of contacting the past (1962). But the book does tend to tread water for a long time, and some of the character conflicts get a bit tiresome. But in the finale, which contains a stunning surprise, the strange science at last coalesces into a emotionally stirring vision of time as a landscape. It was at this moment that I saw the book itself become a whole-and an admirable whole. As the thoughtful afterward points out, the book tackles many different types of stories, not all of which will appeal to every reader. Give it shot, even if Hard SF insn't your thing.

It is one of my favourite books (it explains my e-mail) since i discovered it in 1982, in a paperback edition. It is not a common SF novel, nearly a main stream one. That's why it could, as some other reviews show it, disappoint a few readers. It is in fact a hard SF novel but which doesn't shy on caracter developpement. It is also a fine novel in its structure opposing two area, one full of promises (the sixties), the other dark full of fear (1999, the present of the novel). It is quite an original novel with its attempt of realistic description of scientists at work and their intercine rivalry bu with their very humane private life. It exploits cleverly scientific speculation about time travel communication by Faster than Light Particles and parallel universes. It is also a complex novel as its protagonists slowly realise the truth. In brief one of the finest Benford novel, close to the more recent "Cosm".

I won't rehash the plotline here, as you can find that in almost all of the other reviews.

What I find as the major weakness in the book is the excessive inclusion of filler material intended to add depth and literary value to the story -- self-conscious attempts at characterizations and descriptions which only serve to cast a purple hue over the prose.

As written, the non-married relationship between the "Past" protagonist and his partner does not ring true, and the numerous passages spotlighting these two characters only slow down the story while adding nothing of value to it.

Likewise, the injection of commentary by these same two on 1960s politics and pop music comes across as forced attempts by the author to add social relevance to his writing. If this was a screenplay, I would see it as simply an excuse to provide fodder for a soundtrack album of moldy oldies, a la "The Big Chill."

The story is much more successful when the author sticks to the scientific and academic descriptions, of which he obviously has considerable expertise. Some of the scientific explanations provoked questions in my mind which I wish the author would have addressed, but I found the story (the scientific parts of it, anyway) interesting enough, and felt it was a satisfying read overall.

This is truly a well written novel even without the hard science. With the hard science in, it is truly excellent. Greg Benford deals with two different times in history, 1998 and 1963. The 1998 timeframe has the world in the beggining of a great calamity due to pesticide overuse. A group of physicists develop a method to send a message back in time to warn 1963 scientists of the disaster in hope of preventing it. Most of the 1998 timeframe deals with the disaster and the various social problems developed from it.

The 1963 scientists start to recieve transmissions during an experiment unrelated to the future. What happens is that one group of scientists are labeled kooks because they originally believe that they may be recieving information from outerspace. What the readers find out about scientists is that they are just like everybody else and will fight over trivial matters instead of concentrating on the work. The 1963 timeframe is recieving information about long chain molecule chemicals of which it has no knowledge yet and this has set off the controversey.

Timescape is chock full of hard science. Benford has written a book based on sound thoery of tachyons and more than one possible universes including mini-universes. He has made the theories easily understandable without clouding the explanation with intricate math. The reader can gain a working knowledge of both multi-universes and the idea of tachyons. The fact he was able to weave these heavy ideas into a well written story is amazing. This book is well worth the effort and is highley reccommended.

Perhaps if it had been half as long, the book would have been twice as good.

For anybody who complains that Science Fiction struggles to gain respect because of poor development of characters, I offer this book. The characters are uninteresting and actually take away from some of the Physics ideas and concepts of this book. I suppose we were supposed to relate to the human side of this story, but that could have been done quite as well and with about 100 pages or so less.

Perhaps the inside dealings of the characters' every day lives was done purposely. For the science in this sci-fi book was wonderful and the idea was great. So much so that the inclusion of the meanderings of the characters every day lives served as filler which in turn acted as a form of building suspense.

My recommendation...read the book, but skip over certain sections. They don't add to the book, but on the other hand they don't take away from it either. Otherwise its a good sci-fi offering.

Let the tachyons flow.

I read this book many years ago and loved it and I have been recommending it to others and buying copies for them in the time since. I had a need to get a replacement copy for myself and came to Amazon for that purpose. I was surprised to see the distribution of ratings of reviewers so spread across the entire range and so I read a few. It is amazing just how many people can fail to grasp the point of a book such as this. Is there any formula which says that a science fiction book has to depict action? This book unveils the process of scientific discovery, showing how a scientist has to have enthusiasm and talent but also dogged persistence, a capacity to ignore criticism and even to remain deviant. Benford describes how an individual unravels a problem like a fictional detective unveils a murder mystery. The book shows also the ambiguous nature of institutional support for scientific investigation, with apparently altruistic characters being quite ruthless and egoistic. This story does indeed develop characters who have flaws, scientists who have lives outside of their scientific endeavours which can detract from their focus. But their lives revolve around solving a problem and how many of us have had the experience of meeting obstacles in thinking, of emotional intrusions, which nevertheless can be removed by the passage of time and by the action of unconscious processes of thought. How many of us are without flaws and have difficulties in our interpersonal relationships? I thought that was something that we were meant to enjoy in fiction. The science is brilliant, the notion of parallel universes seems to solve many of the paradoxes of time travel and the social psychology of scientific discovery is better depicted than it is in the professional treatises on the topic. Alternate history is another genre that can be hard to get a good grasp on and make persuasive and the author does a great job here also. This book is more than science fiction, it borders on science as fact. It deserved its awards and it further deserved reprinting as a classic in the field. Benford is a truly great author in the genre.

There are no weird aliens or laser blasters in Gregory Benford's brilliant work of science fiction. Instead, what we have here is a story of physicists at opposite ends of a time tunnel (reminiscent of the tunnel technology we use to secure Internet communications today). From this dry base, with these dull-sounding characters, Benford has created a story which is so absorbing that the reader is hard pressed to put it down all the way to the terrific ending. As the ultimate test, I lent the book to my wife (no science fiction reader) while we were on vacation. She would not put the book down until she had finished it

...buried in 500 pages of tiresome drivel.

Fortunately it's easy to skim through or even skip 30 or 40 pages at a time without missing anything "important." I gather the author is a college teacher and he's larded the book with endless, mundane details about life in academia. Some authors, like John D. MacDonald or Raymond Chandler, brought their stories to life with accurate descriptions of places or times; Benford, unfortunately, decided to unload his accumulated store of meaningless trivia into this novel and he is not a good enough writer to make it at all interesting.