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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mind-blowingly cool SF, August 2, 2002
I've been reading James P. Hogan's SF since the late 1970s, when I picked up a copy of his second novel, _The Genesis Machine_. I still haven't read the "Giants" novels, but I've read quite a bit of his other stuff.He's got a nice range, from hard SF like this book to espionage thrillers like _The Infinity Gambit_ to nonfiction essays on various controversial subjects. (You can read a lot of his nonfiction on his website...) The emphasis in his science fiction is on "science"; he knows his stuff and the physical theories on which he founds his novels are pretty plausible. He's also got a keen eye for the absolutely mind-blowingingly cool detail: some event that seems entirely ordinary but has such profound implications about the nature of reality that you just put the book down for a moment and go "Wow."... Since he's one of my two favorite living SF writers and the only one of the two who writes "hard" SF (the other is Spider Robinson), I've lately been trying to figure out where to start reviewing his books. I picked this one because it registers so high on the Mind-Blowing Coolness Meter, but I could really have started anywhere. No spoilers here: all the details I'm about to divulge appear within the first few pages of the book. Here's the underlying premise: the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct; it's possible for quanta to interfere with their own counterparts along other branches of events; it's also possible for _information_ to be passed from one branch to another, and even from the future to the past, with devices that detect such interference. One of those mind-blowing details occurs during a test of just such a device: a woman deliberately mistypes a word on a computer keyboard, but it appears correctly on the screen -- _because the quantum interference detector is determining the output by averaging all the possible futures_. Similarly, the woman finds it amazingly easy to draw a perfect circle on the computer screen, because the device averages _out_ the random errors introduced by her and all her counterparts along the other branches of the Multiverse. That's just a taste of what this novel has in store for you, and it's just background; the plot is even cooler, and I won't spoil it for you. Let it suffice to say that you'll get your mind blown at least once every forty or fifty pages; every time you think Hogan has run out of tricks, he manages to pull out another one. His characters are, if not altogether gripping, at least interesting enough to keep the plot moving (Theo Jantowitz, for example, is a charming academic curmudgeon) and his standard theme -- "good science getting screwed up by government and corporate interests" -- is treated with Hogan's usual realism and flair. In general it's a well-written and hopeful book that explores a fascinating "rational mysticism" that I sort of hope turns out to be true. (And I'm not sure why a couple of the other reviewers are dissatisfied with Hogan's handling of a certain "moral problem"; in fact it's not only addressed repeatedly but very nicely resolved.) But again, I just picked this book to review because I had to start _somewhere_... He's all-but-unarguably the finest writer of "hard SF" out there today.
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by James P. Hogan
by James P. Hogan
by James P. Hogan
by James P. Hogan
by James P. Hogan
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