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Other Days, Other Eyes

by Bob Shaw

3.89 of 5 stars 3.89 · rating details · 90 ratings · 8 reviews

Mass Market Paperback, 158 pages

Published March 8th 1974 by Pan (first published 1972)

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Dec 05, 2010 Manny rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts

Science-fiction writers often miss out on the credit they're due for correctly predicting the future, just because they got one niggling little detail wrong. No fan of hard SF should have been surprised by WikiLeaks: it was obvious that, sooner or later, technology was going to make it impossible to keep secrets. The only question was the nature of the technology used.

Well, T.L. Sherred probably got there first with his classic 1947 short E For Effort, and then there was Isaac Asimov in 1956 wit...more Science-fiction writers often miss out on the credit they're due for correctly predicting the future, just because they got one niggling little detail wrong. No fan of hard SF should have been surprised by WikiLeaks: it was obvious that, sooner or later, technology was going to make it impossible to keep secrets. The only question was the nature of the technology used.

Well, T.L. Sherred probably got there first with his classic 1947 short E For Effort, and then there was Isaac Asimov in 1956 with The Dead Past. In both of these stories, people invent a gizmo ("time viewer" or "chronoscope" depending on the version), which allows you to view arbitrary scenes from the past. Of course, the past starts just a microsecond ago, so you can also see the present and spy on everyone. Both Sherred and Asimov see the government as grabbing the invention and using it for their nefarious ends.

Then, in this 1972 novel, Shaw comes up with a new method. The hero accidentally invents a form of glass which slows down light to a crawl. Light going in emerges days, months, or even years later. People quickly think up clever applications. You can have street-lights that don't need any power, just releasing at night the light that came in during the daytime. An industry springs up for slow glass picture windows. You put the sheet of glass in a scenic location, let it soak up several years of pretty views, and then sell it to city folks who are tired of looking at the parking lot.

Eventually, people realise that slow glass is the ultimate camera: no moving parts at all, so it can be microminiaturized and mass-produced at low cost. Yet another nefarious government sprays slow glass dust everywhere, so everyone is under constant surveillance wherever they are. Though, bizarrely, I think this turns out to be a Good Thing because it lets the hero leave his nasty wife and take up instead with his hot secretary. Well, it was the early 70s.

Anyway... for whatever reason, hardly anyone predicted the rise of the personal computer and the Internet, so they missed the obvious solution. No need to bend the laws of physics. Just make computers so cheap and easy to operate that everyone uses them to store all their sensitive information, then link them together in a fast network that allows a disgruntled employee to send a thousand pages worth of dirt around the world in a couple of seconds.

Amazing we didn't think of that. But honestly: does it matter? I think Sherred, Asimov and Shaw essentially figured it out before the rest of us even realised there might be a problem. A for alertness. And how come not one journalist this week has mentioned them?
(less)

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Jul 02, 2010 John rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Bob Shaw's story "Light of Other Days" (1966) is one of the great classics of science fiction. In a mere ten pages or so, it succeeded in introducing a brand-new concept to sf (a rarer even than many of us would like to think) while also generating a genuine and very poignant feeling of empathy for its central character (who is not its narrator). A squabbling couple are driving through the Scottish Highlands when they come across a slow-glass farm. Slow glass is a crystalline structure through w...more Bob Shaw's story "Light of Other Days" (1966) is one of the great classics of science fiction. In a mere ten pages or so, it succeeded in introducing a brand-new concept to sf (a rarer even than many of us would like to think) while also generating a genuine and very poignant feeling of empathy for its central character (who is not its narrator). A squabbling couple are driving through the Scottish Highlands when they come across a slow-glass farm. Slow glass is a crystalline structure through which (to simplify) light passes very slowly; it can thus be used to observe past scenes. The "farmer" is allowing sheets of the stuff to absorb the light from the spectacular local countryside so that purchasers can take them home to watch those scenes over the months and years to come. As the couple haggle with each other, a young woman and an infant watch them from time to time from the farmhouse window. By story's end they discover that these are the farmer's wife and child, killed six years ago by a hit-and-run driver. The slow glass in his window is preserving for him the illusion that they're still alive. But for how much longer?

Shaw published two more slow-glass stories, both good though neither as powerful as the first: "Burden of Proof" (1967; a barbaric judge sentences a convicted murderer to die even though in five years the proof of the man's innocence may emerge on the far side of a pane of slow glass) and "A Dome of Many-Colored Glass" (1972; a sadistic Chinese official torments a prisoner by fixing to his eyes slow-glass modules containing footage of Western atrocities like My Lai). There was also a late and very different addendum to the corpus: "The Edge of Time" (1979), co-authored with Malcolm Harris and published in an anthology edited by yours truly, Aries 1. Here the conceit is that there are not one but two time dimensions, Presence and Change, and that what's really expanding in our expanding universe is the Change dimension. Serflike pilots take investigatory craft to the boundaries of this bubble, and flirt with the skin of the time so as to send back scientific data. One of these pilots, his instruments destroyed by sabotage, uses the onboard slow glass cunningly in order to plot his way home -- or so, at least, he thinks.

Back in those days, if you wrote a successful series of stories, the next thing you did was construct out of them a novel -- or a "fixup", as the Clute/Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction somewhat ungraciously called this mercenary literary form. Shaw's slow-glass fixup, Other Days, Other Eyes, was one of his clumsier efforts. The three primary stories are thrown in as interspersed "sidelights" and have nothing aside from slow glass in common with the rest of the plot, which sees Al Garrod, the inadvertent inventor of slow glass, transform himself into a plutocrat industrialist while developing new techniques to enhance the stuff's versatility and usefulness. In the process he must deal with his bitch wife, solve two pretty implausible murder mysteries (only one of which involves slow glass, finally bring a somewhat gauche and jejune extramarital romance to its consummation, and in general fill enough pages for the publishers to market this as a full-length novel. This framing material does take the opportunity to fix a few technical glitches with the original concept (such as explaining why light passing through the slow glass at an angle doesn't take perceptibly longer to reach the other side), but it almost entirely ducks until the very end the practical and ethical problems generated by the introduction of any widespread means of looking into the past -- the havoc of suddenly creating the ultimate surveillance society, as envisaged by Isaac Asimov in his 1956 novella "The Dead Past" and vastly expanded upon by Arthur C. Clarke and Steve Baxter in their 2000 novel The Light of Other Days. Towards the end of Other Days, Other Eyes there's a nod to this concern via occasional mention of a vigilante-style Privacy League, which runs around throwing bricks through slow-glass windows; but it's only in the final pages, when Garrod discovers the government has been spraying the entire nation with slow-glass dust so that no longer can anything at all be kept secret, that Shaw properly acknowledges the fell purposes to which his "invention" could be put.

There are occasional moments of high silliness. The bitch wife, who stupidly blinds herself by refusing to obey Garrod's instructions to make herself scarce from an experiment that's about to blow, is given a replacement form of sight in the form of (essentially) contact lenses made out of slow glass: this way she can see again, even if everything she sees is a day or two late. (Watching TV involves a ludicrously elaborate palaver in order to record the soundtrack and synchronize it with her watching.) But if that technique can be made to work, I hear you cry, why not simply make the lenses out of ordinary glass, so she could see everything in real time? It's not a question I can answer.

Shaw was rarely if ever a tedious writer, so the pages of Other Days, Other Eyes kept turning rapidly enough, but here he seems to be bored -- as if writing the fixup was not something he actually wanted to do, but undertook merely in order to keep agent, publisher and bank manager happy. I wonder if he had his tongue firmly in his cheek when writing about the slow-glass contact lenses; was he testing to see if his publisher would notice the illogicality? There's a surprisingly smutty sex scene that seems there primarily to keep the writer's interest from flagging, and here's the moment when Garrod has the flash of insight that enables him to solve the first of the two murder mysteries:

His knees felt loose, his heart had lapsed into an unsteady, lumping rhythm, and a chill extended downward from stomach to groin. In his head there was a pressure which rapidly built up to a peak and exploded in a kind of psychic orgasm. (p96)

It never happened to Ellery Queen quite like that, I'm pretty sure.(less)

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Dec 10, 2009 Flying_Monkey rated it 3 of 5 stars

Bob Shaw's short stories about 'slow glass', were carefully crafted, moving and elegant. Unfortunately, this brilliance was somewhat subverted by the conversion of those stories into novel form.

Whereas the themes of the stories are centred around memory and loss, the novel turns this on its head with a recycled plot about the inventor who accidentally destroys the world. In the novel's case, the basic idea is almost entirely ripped off Asimov's 'The Dead Past', in which a technology is unleashed...more Bob Shaw's short stories about 'slow glass', were carefully crafted, moving and elegant. Unfortunately, this brilliance was somewhat subverted by the conversion of those stories into novel form.

Whereas the themes of the stories are centred around memory and loss, the novel turns this on its head with a recycled plot about the inventor who accidentally destroys the world. In the novel's case, the basic idea is almost entirely ripped off Asimov's 'The Dead Past', in which a technology is unleashed on the world which allows everyone to spy on everyone else. In Shaw's novel, Alban Garrod's invention of a new form of glass which slows light, results eventually in the government deploying ubiquitous slow glass dust, turning everything into a potential surveillance device.

The emotional development of the novel is also poor, not to say thunderingly misogynistic (a trait to be found in many of Shaw's novels of this period). Alban Garrod is held back by his nagging wife, Esther, whose father initially provided him with seed capital. He finds freedom with a beautiful, compliant, and vaguely oriental-looking secretary, while Esther is left blinded by an accident at his home laboratory. This blindness means she is able to hold on to Garrod and force him to act as her eyes, by making him wear a pair of slow glass 'lenses' which she can then wear the next day, so he is almost literally forced to live in the past. It is all very heavy-handed and unpleasant, and there are similar strains of misogyny in other Shaw novels, especially 'Orbitsville'. It is odd, because I had never noticed this in his short pieces, and it unfortunately tends to lessen my appreciation of Shaw as a writer.

Despite all this, there is an intriguingly poetic technology at the centre of this novel, and some insightful commentary on the politics of surveillance and privacy, and you still get the excellent original short stories included as 'sidelights' to the main plot. However this remains a 'fix-up' too far...(less)

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Feb 09, 2013 Roddy Williams rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: anthology, science-fiction

Is it an anthology, or a fix-up? Does it matter? Shaw came up with a simple idea which, in the hands of another author, may have resulted in one decent story. Shaw does more than that. He spends time thinking through the implications not for great pyrotechnical sci-fi effect but for ordinary people; the small differences that one thing, one invention can make to a life.

Shaw used to refer to these clever ideas and the development of them as 'the wee thinky bits' and learned to use them to great...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Simon rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What an original idea for the time (published in 1973) - "slow glass" that delays the image or light for varying periods of time. Today this has been totally superseded by video technology but you can still see the value for numerous applications eg. bank of street lights that delay the light by 12 hours, or scenedows that capture years of scenery from national beauty spots and are then fitted to domestic houses to give unbeatable year round views. Apart from this the characterisation and plot l...more

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Jul 17, 2010 Marts (Thinker) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

I recently read this tale as 'Light of Other Days'. It all presents the concept of 'slow glass' capturing memories through real life scenes in, well, glass.
The drama begins with a couple driving through the countryside.......

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Aug 25, 2012 Maria rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the best book which I read. Brilliant SciFi, Good drama and strong challenge to society !

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Dec 31, 2008 Tips rated it 4 of 5 stars

Bob Shaw has discovered one of the best ideas in Science Fiction, but only written an above average book.
The Idea of slow glass and its uses should have made "other days, other eyes" a five star classic of science fiction if only it had been 'discovered' by a better writer. Bob Shaw is a competent writer but not a great writer.
Certainly well worth a read, if only to see what a missed opportunity it was.

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May 19, 2013 Ričardas Skardas rated it 5 of 5 stars

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Apr 25, 2013 Shyue Chou Chuang rated it 4 of 5 stars

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Apr 03, 2013 Miles Curtis rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, fiction

Mar 31, 2013 Huw marked it as to-read

Mar 31, 2013 Seb Spence rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

Mar 24, 2013 Deedee marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, year-1972

Mar 09, 2013 Mike Heyd added it

Mar 08, 2013 Sieow Huah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Feb 28, 2013 Brian Ellison rated it 5 of 5 stars

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Shelves: default

Feb 21, 2013 Robert marked it as to-read

Feb 17, 2013 Riccardo Romei rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Feb 21, 2013 Joan Santacana rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

Feb 17, 2013 SurpassingStar marked it as to-read

Feb 11, 2013 Austin Clark rated it 4 of 5 stars

Feb 11, 2013 HiToRa rated it 4 of 5 stars

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About Bob Shaw

Bob Shaw was born in Northern Ireland. After working in structural engineering, industrial public relations, and journalism he became a full time science fiction writer in 1975.

Shaw was noted for his originality and wit. He was two-time recipient (in 1979 and 1980) of the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. His short story Light of Other Days was a Hugo Award nominee in 1967, as was his novel The Rag...more

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Books by Bob Shaw

The Ragged Astronauts (Land and Overland Series, #1)

The Wooden Spaceships (Land and Overland Series, #2)

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