The Light of Other Days - Book Review
The Light of Other Days - by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter - is a great SF book about wormholes from the quantum foam being used to watch the present and past, and transfer data.
I've read plenty of complaints that the characters are pretty flat and undeveloped, and I can't disagree. Almost all of the focus is in the tech and its consequences, and some interesting imagined visions of the past.
The focus on the tech and on what happens what privacy disappears (plus when you can really watch history), however more than made up for it for me.
Meanwhile, it also wonders about what would happen to people if they knew a mountain sized asteroid was coming to Earth in 500 years. That part felt a little silly to me - it is hard to believe no one would be able to design some sort of Von Neumann machine (self-replicators) with mass drivers to change the trajectory or just mine the asteroid with all that lead time.
What happens to the human race in the end, and their big project was particularly nice, too.
Overall, I really liked it and strongly recommend it.
I've read plenty of complaints that the characters are pretty flat and undeveloped, and I can't disagree. Almost all of the focus is in the tech and its consequences, and some interesting imagined visions of the past.
The focus on the tech and on what happens what privacy disappears (plus when you can really watch history), however more than made up for it for me.
Meanwhile, it also wonders about what would happen to people if they knew a mountain sized asteroid was coming to Earth in 500 years. That part felt a little silly to me - it is hard to believe no one would be able to design some sort of Von Neumann machine (self-replicators) with mass drivers to change the trajectory or just mine the asteroid with all that lead time.
What happens to the human race in the end, and their big project was particularly nice, too.
Overall, I really liked it and strongly recommend it.
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