bob_tomato's Full Review: Gregory Benford - Timescape
It's 1998 and mankind is doomed. Chemicals developed and utilized in the middle of the century have triggered changes in the oceanic food chain that are lethal to the rest of the planet.
It's 1962 and mankind is doubtful. A science experiment in La Jolla, California seems to be receiving a message from outer space, but the decoded words are too familiar, too close to home to be believed.
In 1980, author Gregory Benford published Timescape, and won that year's Nebula Award for the book. Benford was praised for the straight-forward presentation of real science and cutting edge theoretical physics of the day. Specifically, Timescape is about tachyons, which are basically thought to be faster than light particles; Benford's doomed scientists construct a sort of telegraph spanning space and time, seeking to warn their preceding colleagues about the dangers posed by the chemicals.
In 2007, Timescape still works fairly well as a piece of speculative sci-fi. Benford didn't try to predict the technologies of 1998, nearly twenty years into his own future. With chemistry at the heart of the problem in the book, that central premise holds together today. Einstein's work and the theoretical physics of tachyons are also relatively unchanged over the past quarter century, so this part of the book works as well. The premise and the solution can still hold interest even today - however, the book does have a fatal flaw.
In any time, this book is fairly boring. Benford paints a bleak picture of doom in his 1998, and contrasts it with a bright and sunny southern California in 1962. He takes time to develop a few characters in each time period, and he gives them some relationship issues, as well as some cultural and political items to discuss, all in an apparent effort to fill the spaces between long discussions of hard science. The relationships add a little color, but at times, they seem to be in an entirely different book from the science portions of Timescape - they just don't mesh very well. There's just not enough drama in the science to make you care, and the potential effects that could be caused by the science are never explored or exploited - this book COULD have been pretty interesting, if Benford had decided to spice things up with more liberal use of his time telegraph and the affect it could have on both ends of the Timescape.
From my perspective, Timescape doesn't really work, despite an interesting premise and factual science to support the main plot points. The possibilities suggested by the premise are endless - what might or could happen if scientists separated by twenty five years on our planet began talking to each other? What effect could this have on our common timelines? But Benford rarely ventures into the possible, sticking firmly to the factual, and makes only one major change to the history of Timescape, and even this change is not explored very much.
My recommendation is simple: Gregory Benford's Timescape is a book for those who enjoy speculative discussions of hard science; those looking for the exciting possibilities of altering history with nifty time machines should look elsewhere.
The author of Tides of Light offers his Nebula Award-winning SF classic--a combination of hard science, bold speculation, and human drama. In the year...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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