Malale read two books, half before the plane, half on the plane, and half after.
---
"Timescape" by Gregory Benford - scientists in the 90s try to send messages to scientists in the 60s in the hope of averting an environmental disaster that threatens all life on the planet.
-
Analysis - of course, if they were successful, there wouldn't be an environmental disaster in the first place. Or, we think the transmission of the message will give the past the information to prompt unwittingly the disaster (so if they did not send the message to the past the disaster would not happen, but if that was the case they wouldn't have need to send the message in the first place) All these sorts of fun things are part of the book, but it manages to avoid any simplistic paradox by having all sorts of pathetic characters and little scenes that appear as outside the plot. One character is a terrible womaniser. He likes to have his way with married women. Perhaps the crisis prompts him to desperately spread his seed for the sake of future humans, and we are supposed to think in the long term, to disregard petty feelings like jealousy and so on.
(Of course jealousy is not a petty feeling, it is extremely ruinous. Only sociopaths go around sleeping with other people's wives thinking it is for the greater good - - but I suppose that is the point, sociopaths being defined by society, ready to collapse as it is)
I would feel reasonably comfortable recommending this book, but would like it to be twice as long. As it is we have an intriguing sense of a future (I mean, their present) almost unwittingly sacrificing itself in the hope that they won't happen.
---
"Tau Zero" by Poul Anderson - a space-ship intended to transport a crew of fifty to a new earth-like planet for colonisation experiences a spot of bother when the engine starts accelerating infinitely (or something like that - this book likes to discuss now and then equations and all that, but all we need to know is that it starts going very fast, and can't slow down, and because of relativity and jazz, the universe starts to age &tc)
-
Analysis - generally, the idea is good, and there are a good few moments of terror when the engines get messed up, but the book is far too short and rather cursorily written as regards its setting and characters to succeed at its attempt at cosmic transcendence.
--
Read these books anyway, as they are quite pivotal works of SF. An alternative couple could be:
Appleseed by John Clute - gets the manic far far future right
Inverted World by Christopher Price - wonderful description of messed-up world, ruined by the tying up of things in last 20 so pages.
Nothing is perfect anyway, so please enjoy things when you can !
two books read
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I enjoyed these book reviews. I want more.
ReplyDeleteI remember a book which was handed to me surreptitiously by Malale himself - "The Sound of His Horn" or somesuch , it was about a man transported to a sort of Nazi alternate dimension, where he is hunted by cat women.
For me, all time travel paradox stories have been ruined by the sudden dawning that only matter and energy exists - time is a man made concept, there is no future or past, just one big now, and the only form of time travel possible would be to rearrange the universe's matter back to an earlier state - which would have no bearing on future/past events and hence no paradox problems.
ReplyDeleteAh, but some transformations of matter require irreversible steps, therefore "time's arrow".
ReplyDeletemartin amis wrote a book called "time's arrow", about a nazi man who experiences time backwards, hence the jews emerge as though being born from the bonfires, then are taken naked to the gas showers, then they have clothes etc. But Philip K Dick's "counter clock world" is a more subtle and wierd book.
who wrote that nazi time hunting book, i remember it being quite strange and goodish.
Another good pulpy time paradox book is "the fall of chronopolis" by barrington bayley. i think that is what the book is called, and sometimes he has a J as a middle name. He is still alive now, british and neglected, i think he has a website where you can promise him some well-deserved food.
ReplyDeleteother barrington bayley books
"the knights of the limits" short stories that push the limits of all the various sci-fi tropes from the 50s to 70s
"the garments of caen"(sic?) a novel about intelligent garments, ie. clothes. It is better than it sounds.
and I think he wrote the zen gun too. But I can't check because I am not in liverpool.
There are all sorts of neglected british writers. the poor darlings
it is a shame to allow personal belief systems to get in the way of the fun of time paradoxi
ReplyDeleteThing is, Proteus, that even assuming the universe is arrayed in the manner you describe, the only ones who can experience it as such are the thrice-enlightened megaminds of the planet Buddhanin. The rest of us are still trapped on the plane of temporal progression, and must take whatever steps we may.
ReplyDeletelet's not have a fight about it !
ReplyDeleteperhaps through our deaths all our inteferings with matter and energy are reset, and the ultimate aim of the universe is to have a grand stillness, except for those annoying people who don't die or put their garbage out in quadrant 8-29
see samuel beckett: Ping, Lessness, &tc.
how did christopher priest become christopher price?
ReplyDeleteand I mostly withdraw my concern for that book's ending/