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The Light of Other Days
Big Brothers Are Watching
Legendary science fiction icon Arthur C. Clarke, who in recent years has cowritten The Trigger with Michael Kube-McDowell and several Rama novels with Gentry Lee (Rama II, Garden of Rama, Rama Revealed) collaborates here for the first time with British author Stephen Baxter (Moonseed, Voyage, Titan, and Manifold Time) on a powerful, near-future speculative story of our world on the brink of radical change. The authors envision what the social consciousness and culture shock of life would be like when all privacy is irrevocably gone. Driven by Clarke's vision and fleshed out by Baxter's easygoing narrative, The Light of Other Days is intriguing conjecture supported by deep-seated principles in a time when total indifference has taken root.
In the early 21st century, industrialist Hiram Patterson isn't content with his multimedia conglomerate called OurWorld and dedicates himself to further innovation. While attending an OurWorld event, journalist Kate Manzoni prepares to break a major story on Hiram's latest invention, which is shrouded in secrecy. Her previous cutting-edge bit of news was the disclosure of the Wormwood, a comet which is set on a collision course with Earth and destined to destroy all life on the planet in 500 years. Drug use, suicide, and apathy are at an all-time high across the globe.
Still, that doesn't stop Hiram from doing what he does making money off scientific breakthroughs. His latest invention, as Kate learns, is a "WormCam": a stabilized wormhole of atomic size that is only large enough to send a radio signal through. His next call of order is to enlarge the wormhole until it is big enough to allow for visual images. Hiram's long-abandoned son, David, a top physics scientist and devout Catholic, is called back to OurWorld in order to oversee the WormCam project.
The debonair Bobby Patterson, Hiram's younger son, is soon wooing Kate even while she uses him to get closer to Hiram's secrets. Bobby learns that the brain implant he had embedded as a child was actually designed to make him lack emotion and religious faith, as well as allow him to be easily coerced by his father. When Kate helps him to shut down the implant, Bobby is opened to a whole new world of exquisite love, anger, and pain. Eventually his brother David enlarges the WormCam until visual imagery is capable of traveling back and forth. David also determines that the WormCam is not only capable of bending space, but also time.
As Kate uses the WormCam in an attempt to take down a notorious religious leader who uses a deadly form of virtual reality on his followers despite its ill effects, she begins to make herself powerful enemies, among them Hiram. Bobby and Kate set out on personal missions intended to keep the wormholes out of the wrong hands and put them to use for mankind's benefit. However, that's easier said than done, as government agencies and corporate competitors learn of the invention and a chain reaction is started -- everyone spying on everyone else across the globe and across time.
Stephen Baxter deserves all the praise he's received in recent years for his thought-provoking and evocative novels. As a winner of the John W. Campbell Award, Baxter again proves he has what it takes to hold his own with such a visionary as Arthur C. Clarke. The authors are at ease fusing their ideas and techniques, moving between the hard-science elements and the credible, emotionally dense circumstances propelling the characters forward. The constant tension between Hiram, Kate, and Bobby is put to wonderful use, as Bobby sees life for the first time with an open soul. Possibly the strongest scene comes when Hiram realizes the WormCams can look backward into time. He turns a challenging gaze to the heavens for all the future watchers staring at him to see.
As the world undergoes extreme change and privacy is done away with, our protagonists are forced to take personal stands for their beliefs despite all the conflict taking place around them. This is made even more difficult for them by the ever-present threat of the Wormwood comet that will eventually decimate all life. The theme is a strong How hard will you strive for your ideals when the world is going to end in the not-so-distant future? How strong is your faith? Clarke and Baxter have given us a moving and believable story, bringing together various scientific threads and philosophical ideology. They not only grab the reader's interest but also fire one's imagination on how technology leads to radical social and political change.
The Light of Other Days doesn't sink under the inertia of the secular debates in the Clarke and Baxter's unraveling of the intense subplots of faith and fear is impeccable. It's rare to find authors so cognizant of cultural transformation, who understand the ethica...
320 pages, Hardcover
First published April 16, 2000
328 people are currently reading
7105 people want to read
About the author
Arthur C. Clarke
1,659 books11.7k followersStories, works of noted British writer, scientist, and underwater explorer Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, include
2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968).
This most important and influential figure in 20th century fiction spent the first half of his life in England and served in World War II as a radar operator before migrating to Ceylon in 1956. He co-created his best known novel and movie with the assistance of Stanley Kubrick.
Clarke, a graduate of King's College, London, obtained first class honours in physics and mathematics. He served as past chairman of the interplanetary society and as a member of the academy of astronautics, the royal astronomical society, and many other organizations.
He authored more than fifty books and won his numerous awards: the Kalinga prize of 1961, the American association for the advancement Westinghouse prize, the Bradford Washburn award, and the John W. Campbell award for his novel Rendezvous with Rama. Clarke also won the nebula award of the fiction of America in 1972, 1974 and 1979, the Hugo award of the world fiction convention in 1974 and 1980. In 1986, he stood as grand master of the fiction of America. The queen knighted him as the commander of the British Empire in 1989.
This most important and influential figure in 20th century fiction spent the first half of his life in England and served in World War II as a radar operator before migrating to Ceylon in 1956. He co-created his best known novel and movie with the assistance of Stanley Kubrick.
Clarke, a graduate of King's College, London, obtained first class honours in physics and mathematics. He served as past chairman of the interplanetary society and as a member of the academy of astronautics, the royal astronomical society, and many other organizations.
He authored more than fifty books and won his numerous awards: the Kalinga prize of 1961, the American association for the advancement Westinghouse prize, the Bradford Washburn award, and the John W. Campbell award for his novel Rendezvous with Rama. Clarke also won the nebula award of the fiction of America in 1972, 1974 and 1979, the Hugo award of the world fiction convention in 1974 and 1980. In 1986, he stood as grand master of the fiction of America. The queen knighted him as the commander of the British Empire in 1989.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 444 reviews
August 9, 2020
Absolutely love this fantastic story! 10 of 10 stars!
Relistened 20 years later and it's remarkable the prescient visionary Sir Arthur Clarke was throughout his entire life.
Relistened 20 years later and it's remarkable the prescient visionary Sir Arthur Clarke was throughout his entire life.
December 4, 2018
“I grew up with enough bad pop-science shows. A wormhole is a shortcut through a fourth dimension. You have to cut a chunk out of our three-dimensional space and join it onto another such chunk.”
You don’t normally get this kind of “pop-science” from Clarke or Baxter. It makes a nice change. This bit of expository dialogue is also of “pop-science” level:
“A wormhole mouth is a sphere, floating freely in space. A three-dimensional excision. If we succeed with the expansion, for the first time we’ll be able to see our wormhole mouth—with a hand lens”
The Light of Other Days is hard sci-fi done right, very accessible, yet interesting, intelligent and mind blowing. The basic conceit is the invention the “WormCam”, a camera that can see through wormhole mouths which can be placed anywhere in the world, or even out of it, all it needs is the geographical coordinates of what you want to see. Initially, the WormCam is only used by the corporation that funds its research, then government agencies get wind of it and it is used to track criminals with great success. Soon details of this invention are leaked to the general public and this eventually leads to mass production and public dissemination. The WormCam becomes a world-changing product of internet proportions. Once everybody has one, the idea of privacy becomes obsolete. The novel charts the impact on culture and social mores in fascinating details; for example, public nudity becomes commonplace as everybody can be seen at any time. Many politicians resign as secrecy also becomes practically obsolete as a concept.
This idea of constant, worldwide surveillance without limits and the socio-political ramifications are epic. However, it soon transpires that the surveillance aspect of the WormCam is just scratching the surface of what the technology is capable of. The inventor of the WormCam soon finds a way to connect wormholes into the past! Past misdeeds are no longer safe from scrutiny but, more interestingly, users can view any event in the past, going back as far as they like. People use it to look up their remote ancestors then they look into the lives of historical figures including Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ.
The Light of Other Days took me by surprise, it starts off as a story about super surveillance then morphs into an almost time traveling story. Fortunately, the scientist cannot find a way to affect the past in any way, only passive observation is possible. This saves the book from becoming just another time traveling tale. In addition to the main plotline about the WormCam the novel is also set in the near future when most species of animals are extinct, food is becoming scarce and nations go to war over water supplies. Worse still a giant asteroid is heading for Earth and is projected to arrive in 500 years, the impact is expected to be a mass extinction event. The main characters are also going through personal crises of their own but I won’t go into that.
There are so many ideas in this book, so many that some of them fall by the wayside, not sufficiently explored; the development of hive minds, virtual reality, cloning, uploading personalities etc. Even the asteroid’s threat to all life on Earth is a mere subplot. Besides the technological speculations, Clarke & Baxter also raise several philosophical and moral issues, the pros and cons of surveillance, transparency, social taboos, embellishment of historical figures etc. These two authors are not known for nuanced characterization, but they (probably mainly Baxter) did a pretty good job with Kate, the journalist who is an interesting and multifaceted individual during the first half of the book but loses much of the agency in the second half. Hiram the corporation CEO is larger than life but is a one-note character.
The Light of Other Days is an excellent read, the science, the philosophy, social impact etc. provide plenty of food for thought. My only complaint, as mentioned earlier, is that some of the ideas are left unexplored; this is only a minor issue, however, better too many ideas than too few. Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter work together very well, and I hope to read more of their collaborations.
Notes:
• Considering the authors are atheists the depiction of the historical Jesus is surprisingly sympathetic and positive. The WormCam study of his life finds that he was merely human but a great man, and an inspirational figure; probably the most inspirational figure ever. This portrayal is based on Jesus by A. N. Wilson.
• The book is inspired by a short story by underrated sci-fi author, Bob Shaw, and is even dedicated to him. This short story was expanded to by Shaw in to the excellent novel Other Days, Other Eyes.
Quotes:
‘Empty’ space is actually full, full of fluctuating energy fields. And these fields manifest themselves as particles: photons, electron-positron pairs, quarks…They flash into a brief existence, bankrolled by borrowed mass-energy, then disappear as the law of conservation of energy reasserts itself. We humans see space and energy and matter from far above, like an astronaut flying over an ocean. We are too high to see the waves, the flecks of foam they carry. But they are there.
“They call it Wheeler instability. Wormholes aren’t naturally stable. A wormhole mouth’s gravity pulls in photons, accelerates them to high energy, and that energized radiation bombards the throat and causes it to pinch off. It’s the effect you have to counter with Casimir-effect negative energy, to keep open even the smallest wormholes.”
Instant-access WormCam technology or not, it was going to take a long time before the news-watching public was weaned off the interpretative presence of a reporter interposing herself before some breaking news story.
But Britain was declining. As part of unified Europe—deprived of tools of macroeconomic policy like control of exchange and interest rates, and yet unsheltered by the imperfectly integrated greater economy—the British government was unable to arrest a sharp economic collapse. At last, in 2010, social unrest and climate collapse forced Britain out of the European Union, and the United Kingdom fell apart, Scotland going its own separate way.
You don’t normally get this kind of “pop-science” from Clarke or Baxter. It makes a nice change. This bit of expository dialogue is also of “pop-science” level:
“A wormhole mouth is a sphere, floating freely in space. A three-dimensional excision. If we succeed with the expansion, for the first time we’ll be able to see our wormhole mouth—with a hand lens”
The Light of Other Days is hard sci-fi done right, very accessible, yet interesting, intelligent and mind blowing. The basic conceit is the invention the “WormCam”, a camera that can see through wormhole mouths which can be placed anywhere in the world, or even out of it, all it needs is the geographical coordinates of what you want to see. Initially, the WormCam is only used by the corporation that funds its research, then government agencies get wind of it and it is used to track criminals with great success. Soon details of this invention are leaked to the general public and this eventually leads to mass production and public dissemination. The WormCam becomes a world-changing product of internet proportions. Once everybody has one, the idea of privacy becomes obsolete. The novel charts the impact on culture and social mores in fascinating details; for example, public nudity becomes commonplace as everybody can be seen at any time. Many politicians resign as secrecy also becomes practically obsolete as a concept.
This idea of constant, worldwide surveillance without limits and the socio-political ramifications are epic. However, it soon transpires that the surveillance aspect of the WormCam is just scratching the surface of what the technology is capable of. The inventor of the WormCam soon finds a way to connect wormholes into the past! Past misdeeds are no longer safe from scrutiny but, more interestingly, users can view any event in the past, going back as far as they like. People use it to look up their remote ancestors then they look into the lives of historical figures including Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ.
The Light of Other Days took me by surprise, it starts off as a story about super surveillance then morphs into an almost time traveling story. Fortunately, the scientist cannot find a way to affect the past in any way, only passive observation is possible. This saves the book from becoming just another time traveling tale. In addition to the main plotline about the WormCam the novel is also set in the near future when most species of animals are extinct, food is becoming scarce and nations go to war over water supplies. Worse still a giant asteroid is heading for Earth and is projected to arrive in 500 years, the impact is expected to be a mass extinction event. The main characters are also going through personal crises of their own but I won’t go into that.
There are so many ideas in this book, so many that some of them fall by the wayside, not sufficiently explored; the development of hive minds, virtual reality, cloning, uploading personalities etc. Even the asteroid’s threat to all life on Earth is a mere subplot. Besides the technological speculations, Clarke & Baxter also raise several philosophical and moral issues, the pros and cons of surveillance, transparency, social taboos, embellishment of historical figures etc. These two authors are not known for nuanced characterization, but they (probably mainly Baxter) did a pretty good job with Kate, the journalist who is an interesting and multifaceted individual during the first half of the book but loses much of the agency in the second half. Hiram the corporation CEO is larger than life but is a one-note character.
The Light of Other Days is an excellent read, the science, the philosophy, social impact etc. provide plenty of food for thought. My only complaint, as mentioned earlier, is that some of the ideas are left unexplored; this is only a minor issue, however, better too many ideas than too few. Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter work together very well, and I hope to read more of their collaborations.
Notes:
• Considering the authors are atheists the depiction of the historical Jesus is surprisingly sympathetic and positive. The WormCam study of his life finds that he was merely human but a great man, and an inspirational figure; probably the most inspirational figure ever. This portrayal is based on Jesus by A. N. Wilson.
• The book is inspired by a short story by underrated sci-fi author, Bob Shaw, and is even dedicated to him. This short story was expanded to by Shaw in to the excellent novel Other Days, Other Eyes.
Quotes:
‘Empty’ space is actually full, full of fluctuating energy fields. And these fields manifest themselves as particles: photons, electron-positron pairs, quarks…They flash into a brief existence, bankrolled by borrowed mass-energy, then disappear as the law of conservation of energy reasserts itself. We humans see space and energy and matter from far above, like an astronaut flying over an ocean. We are too high to see the waves, the flecks of foam they carry. But they are there.
“They call it Wheeler instability. Wormholes aren’t naturally stable. A wormhole mouth’s gravity pulls in photons, accelerates them to high energy, and that energized radiation bombards the throat and causes it to pinch off. It’s the effect you have to counter with Casimir-effect negative energy, to keep open even the smallest wormholes.”
Instant-access WormCam technology or not, it was going to take a long time before the news-watching public was weaned off the interpretative presence of a reporter interposing herself before some breaking news story.
But Britain was declining. As part of unified Europe—deprived of tools of macroeconomic policy like control of exchange and interest rates, and yet unsheltered by the imperfectly integrated greater economy—the British government was unable to arrest a sharp economic collapse. At last, in 2010, social unrest and climate collapse forced Britain out of the European Union, and the United Kingdom fell apart, Scotland going its own separate way.
July 3, 2011
This is what sci-fi is all about. Highly recommend it.
When the world discovers how and when it will end, the decline of humanity begins immediately. Most people become nothing more than animals seeking hedonistic pleasures, as if they believed they were going to die that day. But one fellow keeps his wits about him and continues to invent. His greatest invention, the worm cam, alters the trajectory of humanity as much as the impending natural disaster.
One can't help but link the worm cam and it's impact to current events. I'll leave it to the reader to make the connection, but it's so obvious once you start this story, that the reader can't help but think about the state of our world today.
I loved the Jesus scene and the explanation of why the day darkened-- it's classic. Also, the search for answers that leads our hero to the extreme past (while most people become voyeurs) gives us the hope that even though history has and will repeat itself, life goes on, even if it's not how we might expect.
Is that a bad thing? I still wonder that.
This book engaged me as much as any sci-fi book ever has. It is so timely and relevant that I am reminded of it constantly-- at work, at home, when watching tv or reading or (of course) surfing the internet.
This book is a must read.
When the world discovers how and when it will end, the decline of humanity begins immediately. Most people become nothing more than animals seeking hedonistic pleasures, as if they believed they were going to die that day. But one fellow keeps his wits about him and continues to invent. His greatest invention, the worm cam, alters the trajectory of humanity as much as the impending natural disaster.
One can't help but link the worm cam and it's impact to current events. I'll leave it to the reader to make the connection, but it's so obvious once you start this story, that the reader can't help but think about the state of our world today.
I loved the Jesus scene and the explanation of why the day darkened-- it's classic. Also, the search for answers that leads our hero to the extreme past (while most people become voyeurs) gives us the hope that even though history has and will repeat itself, life goes on, even if it's not how we might expect.
Is that a bad thing? I still wonder that.
This book engaged me as much as any sci-fi book ever has. It is so timely and relevant that I am reminded of it constantly-- at work, at home, when watching tv or reading or (of course) surfing the internet.
This book is a must read.
July 15, 2013
An interesting concept that quickly descends into dreck. I expected better from a couple of genre masters. The writing style wanders, a common thing when more than one author is involved. Rather than a coherent science fiction story, this book lurches between sections of story, science, and case studies that with work, could have been turned into a novel.
The authors use wormholes as a device that enables universal surveillance, including reaching into the past. This could have been terribly interesting; instead, the choices the authors made varied between boring, pandering, and predictable. Religion is trashed, but in the end, all the authors can think up is to have the great god science engineer resurrection for everyone.
The authors use wormholes as a device that enables universal surveillance, including reaching into the past. This could have been terribly interesting; instead, the choices the authors made varied between boring, pandering, and predictable. Religion is trashed, but in the end, all the authors can think up is to have the great god science engineer resurrection for everyone.
July 15, 2022
Not my cup of tea.
The historical parts were interesting, except for that part about Christ. Characters were awfully made. The idea scared the hell out of me. Vibes like "The Absolute at Large".
The historical parts were interesting, except for that part about Christ. Characters were awfully made. The idea scared the hell out of me. Vibes like "The Absolute at Large".
January 17, 2016
I first read this book in summer 2008, and probably not a month has gone by since then that this book hasn't popped into my mind, for one reason or another. The technology and social issues discussed here (particularly regarding the ever-evolving definition of privacy in a society where technology allows everyone to observe everyone at all times) were was a good 25+ years ahead of their time, and are still enormously relevant today.
Yes, the characters are pretty flat, but as with most science-fiction books of its time, the emphasis is really on the ideas -- and while there are many books since which have discussed privacy in the context of cybersecurity/technological advancement, I've never seen another examine this from a long-term, whole-society point of view... and to me, that alone is worth the price of admission.
I can't say enough good things about this book. I'm not sure that I would qualify it as life-changing in my case, but very few others have had more impact.
Yes, the characters are pretty flat, but as with most science-fiction books of its time, the emphasis is really on the ideas -- and while there are many books since which have discussed privacy in the context of cybersecurity/technological advancement, I've never seen another examine this from a long-term, whole-society point of view... and to me, that alone is worth the price of admission.
I can't say enough good things about this book. I'm not sure that I would qualify it as life-changing in my case, but very few others have had more impact.
January 22, 2015
This might be the worst novel I read this year, I certainly hope I don't read anything worse without being paid for it. First of this book is billed as a hard SF golden age, or as I like to say, bronze age, book and it lives up to its billing. First, it has the paper thin characters that characterized early SF. Even within these, there are horrible inconsistencies, why does Hiram, a paranoid control freak, hire Kate, a known enemy, to run a super-sensitive project? Why does Kate even go along with it? Because her character has no backbone? Why does Bobby fall in love with Kate? Can a thirty five year marriage based one night of great sex work? Because nothing else in the text furthers this romance.
Next, plot, such as it is, jumps around in a random fashion with highly improbable activities, we have a widget than can track anybody, anywhere, any time, but we must of forgot how it works because Kate is kidnapped by Hiram for weeks. Hiram even brags about, they know Hiram has her! After being found by the magic widget she is rescued by the boyfriend, followed up by the FBI. It is standard police policy after all to let civilians lead hostage rescue missions.
As for the hard science, while it may be theoretically possible for it to work, it's hard to believe that random teenagers are making better, much smaller, watch-sized WormCams in less than a year after the big giant room filling versions are created. Also the later WormCam attachments become too much like magical plot devices, invented when need to drive what little plot there is. Last but not least there are some Electric Chicken Plucker err.. WormCam science explanations that are just plain lame, John Campbell warned against these in the late 30's, shades of Hugo Gernsbeck!
Finally there are the bizarre, historical digressions that occur in the story that don't support the plot and barely touch most of the characters in any form. In addition there is a long homage to Olaf Stapledon's "First and Last Man" which when I read it over forty years ago was fairly dated, which once again has no bearing on plot, the invention, or characters.
Collaborations between authors are tough, I can only think of Niven and Pournelle along with Nordhoff and Hall that wrote better books together rather than individually. I'm not sure how much of this book's flaws can be chalked up to this. However I'm not planning on reading any of the other collaborations that they did together.
I was expecting much more from this book, I've read better fanzine stuff.
Next, plot, such as it is, jumps around in a random fashion with highly improbable activities, we have a widget than can track anybody, anywhere, any time, but we must of forgot how it works because Kate is kidnapped by Hiram for weeks. Hiram even brags about, they know Hiram has her! After being found by the magic widget she is rescued by the boyfriend, followed up by the FBI. It is standard police policy after all to let civilians lead hostage rescue missions.
As for the hard science, while it may be theoretically possible for it to work, it's hard to believe that random teenagers are making better, much smaller, watch-sized WormCams in less than a year after the big giant room filling versions are created. Also the later WormCam attachments become too much like magical plot devices, invented when need to drive what little plot there is. Last but not least there are some Electric Chicken Plucker err.. WormCam science explanations that are just plain lame, John Campbell warned against these in the late 30's, shades of Hugo Gernsbeck!
Finally there are the bizarre, historical digressions that occur in the story that don't support the plot and barely touch most of the characters in any form. In addition there is a long homage to Olaf Stapledon's "First and Last Man" which when I read it over forty years ago was fairly dated, which once again has no bearing on plot, the invention, or characters.
Collaborations between authors are tough, I can only think of Niven and Pournelle along with Nordhoff and Hall that wrote better books together rather than individually. I'm not sure how much of this book's flaws can be chalked up to this. However I'm not planning on reading any of the other collaborations that they did together.
I was expecting much more from this book, I've read better fanzine stuff.
June 17, 2010
Well, it was an interesting idea for a book: quantum physics allow instantaneous transmissions of data across space - cool enough. Then, because of distance-time equivalence in a quantum universe, scientists are able to start beaming transmissions from anywhere in time as well as space. The technology turns almost everyone in the world into a paparazzo of everyone else, and many people also retreat into historical voyeurism. A few people cope with the total loss of privacy by seeking newer, better ways to hide from the eyes of the rest of the world, while others use the new technology to link minds to create the Joined, a hypercollective of men and women who submerge their personalities into a greater pool of knowledge and experiences.
Sounds cool, right? Well, sort of. I certainly think it could have been cool. I wanted to read more about the collapse of world religions, the battle against the profound loss of civil liberties, the beginnings and development of the Joined. Instead (except for an in-depth sojourn into the life of Jesus) these issues are merely glanced at in favor of the honestly pretty dull personal lives of the main characters: Kate Manzoni, the tough-as-nails Girl Reporter with a heart, and Bobby Patterson, the emotionally stunted and child-like son of the business genius whose company developed all this tech in the first place. Bobby has a couple of dark secret that even he doesn't know about himself (both of which I figured out within approximately eight seconds). Kate and Bobby could have gone and died in a fire for as much as I care about their part in the story. I would have vastly preferred the events to revolve more around Mary, Bobby's half-sister (sort of) and his half-brother (sort of) David, both of whom I felt were under-utilized except as plot devices. The ending also felt super-tacked-on, but that could have been avoided with more development of the Joined during the latter half of the novel.
I was also surprised by how amateurish the writing sounded sometimes, because, hello, Arthur C. Clarke? But maybe I'll blame that on Stephen Baxter instead.
Sounds cool, right? Well, sort of. I certainly think it could have been cool. I wanted to read more about the collapse of world religions, the battle against the profound loss of civil liberties, the beginnings and development of the Joined. Instead (except for an in-depth sojourn into the life of Jesus) these issues are merely glanced at in favor of the honestly pretty dull personal lives of the main characters: Kate Manzoni, the tough-as-nails Girl Reporter with a heart, and Bobby Patterson, the emotionally stunted and child-like son of the business genius whose company developed all this tech in the first place. Bobby has a couple of dark secret that even he doesn't know about himself (both of which I figured out within approximately eight seconds). Kate and Bobby could have gone and died in a fire for as much as I care about their part in the story. I would have vastly preferred the events to revolve more around Mary, Bobby's half-sister (sort of) and his half-brother (sort of) David, both of whom I felt were under-utilized except as plot devices. The ending also felt super-tacked-on, but that could have been avoided with more development of the Joined during the latter half of the novel.
I was also surprised by how amateurish the writing sounded sometimes, because, hello, Arthur C. Clarke? But maybe I'll blame that on Stephen Baxter instead.
March 9, 2015
This was an interesting idea that was horribly executed. The characters are very flat. The story is not compelling. The story"telling" is the worst. Major plot points are basically skimmed over.
I also think the authors tried to address too many issues in one story. Not only are there WormCams, which allow anyone to view any point in spacetime, there's an asteroid on course to destroy the world in 500 years. Oh yeah, and people adapt the WormCam technology to link their minds and create some sort of superconsciousness. Later, babies are born with wormholes already in their heads. Whatever.
One big hurdle that I would think WormCam technology would need to overcome is that of a moving universe. To find a point in spacetime to view, you would have to account for the rotation of the Earth, the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, the trajectory of our galaxy, and the expansion of the universe. Not to mention getting a continuous stable view of the subject while all of those things are in motion. It bugs me that this was never addressed.
There are huge plot holes that don't make any sense. For example, a character is falsely charged with a crime and they can't prove she didn't do it. Even though they have this all-seeing WormCam technology that can even look into the past. They talk about looking over her shoulder when she supposedly committed the crime, but somehow they can't get close enough to see what she was actually doing? It doesn't make any sense. Years later, she is cleared of the charge because they've developed technology to read hard drives through the WormCam. That's rather complex. What's so hard about reading a computer screen?
About 5% of the end of the book is spent describing what some characters see as they rewind through time 4 billion years. Not only is it mostly inconsequential and not told in an interesting or believable manner, but it happens 40 years after they have the technology to do so. As if it never occurred to anyone to look that far back in time before.
There's so much more that bugs me about this book, but I've already wasted enough time on it.
I also think the authors tried to address too many issues in one story. Not only are there WormCams, which allow anyone to view any point in spacetime, there's an asteroid on course to destroy the world in 500 years. Oh yeah, and people adapt the WormCam technology to link their minds and create some sort of superconsciousness. Later, babies are born with wormholes already in their heads. Whatever.
One big hurdle that I would think WormCam technology would need to overcome is that of a moving universe. To find a point in spacetime to view, you would have to account for the rotation of the Earth, the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, the trajectory of our galaxy, and the expansion of the universe. Not to mention getting a continuous stable view of the subject while all of those things are in motion. It bugs me that this was never addressed.
There are huge plot holes that don't make any sense. For example, a character is falsely charged with a crime and they can't prove she didn't do it. Even though they have this all-seeing WormCam technology that can even look into the past. They talk about looking over her shoulder when she supposedly committed the crime, but somehow they can't get close enough to see what she was actually doing? It doesn't make any sense. Years later, she is cleared of the charge because they've developed technology to read hard drives through the WormCam. That's rather complex. What's so hard about reading a computer screen?
About 5% of the end of the book is spent describing what some characters see as they rewind through time 4 billion years. Not only is it mostly inconsequential and not told in an interesting or believable manner, but it happens 40 years after they have the technology to do so. As if it never occurred to anyone to look that far back in time before.
There's so much more that bugs me about this book, but I've already wasted enough time on it.
May 8, 2011
First the bad: It felt at times like a bizarre collision of cyberpunk and classic golden-age sci fi. The characters sucked big time. The pacing and focus sometimes drifted too much. I am maybe too squeamish about sex scenes, but this felt over the top. The backdrop and "near future" was nearly too far-fetched, before even reaching the heart of the story.
Yet this is a book that lives and dies by its central idea, and it's a damn good one - so good that after slogging through the first 80ish pages to reach the meat, it became nearly impossible to put down. This is one of those novels with an idea so absorbing, so potentially pervasive, that it is this which will leave you thinking for days later about the future and all its possibilities. It's been a while since I read this kind of sci-fi novel: one that says at its core simply "Here is a technology. Here are its societal effects". This is a welcome treat, and almost eerily more relevant than when it was published as the world has since developed the PATRIOT act, FaceBook, and the rise of mobile computing. At times unflinchingly frightening, while at other points reassuring and nearly inspiring. Highly recommended.
Yet this is a book that lives and dies by its central idea, and it's a damn good one - so good that after slogging through the first 80ish pages to reach the meat, it became nearly impossible to put down. This is one of those novels with an idea so absorbing, so potentially pervasive, that it is this which will leave you thinking for days later about the future and all its possibilities. It's been a while since I read this kind of sci-fi novel: one that says at its core simply "Here is a technology. Here are its societal effects". This is a welcome treat, and almost eerily more relevant than when it was published as the world has since developed the PATRIOT act, FaceBook, and the rise of mobile computing. At times unflinchingly frightening, while at other points reassuring and nearly inspiring. Highly recommended.
July 2, 2010
This was a curious experience. The text reads like an Arthur C. Clarke novel (with all the failings and virtues this implies) as written by Steve Baxter (with all the failings and virtues that this implies). Since that's presumably exactly what it is, I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised by the effect, but somehow I'd expected something more of a stylistic amalgamation.
The underlying premise is that wormholes can be stabilized sufficiently that enough information can be transmitted through them to convey pictures of distant events. Society is revolutionized as, thanks to invisible, omnipresent Wormcams, privacy becomes a thing of the past -- and even more so when the next logical step is taken: the opening up of the entirety of earth's past to the Wormcam, which enables a sort of VR time travel. History is rewritten, crime plummets as clearup rates approach 100%, politicians resign or suicide in droves, millions become hi-tech peeping toms . . . There is a sort of soap-opera plot involving the communications entrepreneur behind these technological breakthroughs, his sons and other family members. All this is played out against a backdrop of humankind's fatalistic knowledge that in just a few hundred years a cometary object called the Wormwood (confusingly, bearing in mind the novel's about Wormcams) will smite our planet, sterilizing it to a depth of many miles. As you might expect given the authorship, there's a long visionary chapter at the end during which our evolutionary ancestry is traced back by Wormcam "travelers" all the way back to the first algal cell -- and even beyond.
But this indicates what for me is a problem with the book. Yes, I can buy it that for a lot of people the big initial appeal of the Wormcam might be that you could watch the neighbours screwing, just as the novel indicates; but one of the uses to which you can put the technology is to "visit" distant parts of the universe, including the planets of other stars, and then of course the time-travel aspect of the device allows you to explore anywhere in history that interests you. Surely, after the novelty of Reality Porn had worn off, at least a sizable chunk of the population would be visiting the original Jurassic park or the rings of Saturn, or discovering what it was like to be bathed in the light of Andromedan suns? By the time our heroes are undertaking their journey back to the origin of life on earth, wouldn't millions of other people have already had the idea to take this same excursion? Likewise, there's a public project described earlier in the book to follow the life of Christ; but wouldn't all kinds of people, atheist and Xtian alike even if with differing motives, have thought of this almost immediately after the introduction of the technology? Why would there be the need for a project? (The chapter on this is called "Behold the Man", a perhaps unwise reminder of Mike Moorcock's significantly more ambitious time-travel treatment of the Passion.)
I raced through the first eighty or so pages of The Light of Other Days, finding in it a refreshing energy of ideas -- the kind of lure that used to make pulp sf so entrancing. Then, though, the other aspects of pulp sf began to get to me, in particular the pulpish plot and characterization (the tyrannical entrepreneur is like something out of a Batman comic), and thereafter I found myself labouring, rather. I still did like the gee-whiz ideas, and new ones kept appearing, so it wasn't an unrewarded slog; and I found the novel's resolution satisfying, however predictable it had by then become. Especially good was the introduction of the paranoia-inducing concept that, if anyone in our future ever invents the Wormcam or its equivalent, there's a reasonable chance that one of them is watching you right now -- or even lots of them.
All in all, then, the book's a curate's egg.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 16, 2017
در یک کلام عالی. آرتور سی. کلارک یک بار دیگه، یک درس بزرگ به مدّعیان نویسندگی داستانهای علمی-تخیلی داد داد.
ترجمهٔ داستان خیلی خوب بود، ولی به شدّت نیاز به یک ویراستار علمی و یک ویراستار نگارشی حس میشد. این که در کل داستان، به کرمچاله و سیاهچاله بگی ورمهول و سوراخ تاریک، نشون میده که مترجم، گرچه به زبان انگلیسی مسلّط بوده، ولی ایدهای به مباحث علمی مطرح شده در کتاب نداشته یا لااقل زبان فارسی رو در این حوزه دنبال نکرده.
ترجمهٔ داستان خیلی خوب بود، ولی به شدّت نیاز به یک ویراستار علمی و یک ویراستار نگارشی حس میشد. این که در کل داستان، به کرمچاله و سیاهچاله بگی ورمهول و سوراخ تاریک، نشون میده که مترجم، گرچه به زبان انگلیسی مسلّط بوده، ولی ایدهای به مباحث علمی مطرح شده در کتاب نداشته یا لااقل زبان فارسی رو در این حوزه دنبال نکرده.
September 11, 2024
Cixin Liu’s short story Mirror, from his 2020 collection To Hold Up The Sky, is about a scientist who programs a big bang simulation SO accurate that the full history of the human race is now basically contained on a single
gaming laptop, so every world government and modern organized religion is now fighting over the only proof of who REALLY killed JFK, if Jesus was real, etc etc. Stephen Baxter’s The Light of Other Days is effectively about the same technology, except what if people used it for some really stupid stuff first and worked ourselves all the way back around to puritanical "god is always watching" christianity? (thinking face emoji)
For a book published in 2000, this book nails SO much of the post-9/11 culture trajectory: mass surveillance intel-gathering, devaluation of the arts in the internet age of social media, copyright battles surrounding AI, reality television, smart phones/watches, google maps street view! Unfortunately I don’t think Baxter’s interpersonal characterization was very interesting, and at a certain point the scope of the story becomes SO grandiose that it feels kind of tedious to circle back to such a narrow range of POVs. Surely THESE relationships aren’t the foundation for your great big The Beast that Shouted “Ai” at the End of the World moment??
Also honestly all the really smart visionary future stuff might have just come directly from the original Arthur C. Clarke synopsis. Maybe Stephen Baxter is only responsible for the half-hearted Beatles worship and being bad at writing women. And sure, Arthur C. Clarke wasn’t great at that either, but at least he mostly kept it to himself!! Anyway go read Childhood’s End
gaming laptop, so every world government and modern organized religion is now fighting over the only proof of who REALLY killed JFK, if Jesus was real, etc etc. Stephen Baxter’s The Light of Other Days is effectively about the same technology, except what if people used it for some really stupid stuff first and worked ourselves all the way back around to puritanical "god is always watching" christianity? (thinking face emoji)
For a book published in 2000, this book nails SO much of the post-9/11 culture trajectory: mass surveillance intel-gathering, devaluation of the arts in the internet age of social media, copyright battles surrounding AI, reality television, smart phones/watches, google maps street view! Unfortunately I don’t think Baxter’s interpersonal characterization was very interesting, and at a certain point the scope of the story becomes SO grandiose that it feels kind of tedious to circle back to such a narrow range of POVs. Surely THESE relationships aren’t the foundation for your great big The Beast that Shouted “Ai” at the End of the World moment??
Also honestly all the really smart visionary future stuff might have just come directly from the original Arthur C. Clarke synopsis. Maybe Stephen Baxter is only responsible for the half-hearted Beatles worship and being bad at writing women. And sure, Arthur C. Clarke wasn’t great at that either, but at least he mostly kept it to himself!! Anyway go read Childhood’s End
March 11, 2017
This was a really good read!I got into reading Stephen Baxter's other two books, "Flood" & "Ark" recently and loved them. When I saw that he wrote a book with Arthur C. Clarke, and the subject, I knew I would be in for a fun ride. They did not disappoint. What made this even more fun to read, was knowing that the book was written back in 2000. A lot of the ideas and technologies they wrote about are happening today, just with a different technology...the internet, web cams, streaming video etc...The various things that occur to society when all privacy is stripped away is fascinating to say the very least. It reminded me of another book I read years ago called "The Truth Machine" by James L. Halperin. In his book, a truth machine is invented, making it hard for anyone to lie, without being found out. The technological break through in "The light of other days" brings about a similar type of situation. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.
April 15, 2022
The Light of Other Days is right up my alley because I'm the type of person who enjoys exploration of ideas far more than character drama or even story itself, specifically when it comes to SF. Which makes it interesting how the entire setup is structured with characters gradually losing out to technology and implication of its implementation. I'm getting ahead of myself, though.
Meet Hiram Patterson, an industrialist who has for the longest time been working on developing technology to end all technologies and bring absolute dominance to his OurWorld corporation - ability to peer anywhere from any place via spacetime wormholes. He dubs this technology WormCam and once it's out of the bag the world as we know it is forever changed. With further developments this technology is open to everyone and eventually, with adherence to light travel speed, enables people to even look back in time on events recent or distant. However, this is merely the beginning as cosmic danger approaches Earth...
Above is a very brief synopsis because gripping story isn't really the primary draw of The Light of Other Days. Yeah, there's absolutely scummy Hiram himself and his son Bobby who are navigating treacherous waters of technological advancement and politics, pragmatic journalist Kate who falls in love almost despite herself, etc but I'd argue these characters are more akin to view points for current events rather than fully-realized entities in their own right. They gradually fade into the background as more of the novel becomes dedicated to explaining technology itself or very specific scenarios humanity can finally dissect. Ever wondered what Jesus was all about or if he was even real? You can bet that's one of the big projects researchers use WormCam for. If there was one relationship I genuinely enjoyed it was how Bobby and his half-brother David become closer over time as each goes through his own existential crisis. And then there's the entire post-WormCam society I won't really go into because A) novel covers decades following its introduction so it gets time to breathe and B) I really want you, the reader, to read about it on your own.
My recommendation? Novel absolutely gets it, but keep in mind there are pages upon pages of multiple characters detailing how this new technology works that might be somewhat dry to power through if high action is something you yearn for. Also, that ending got my eyebrows up and deflated absolutely masterful penultimate chapter where characters embark on the deepest time dive possible. Blink and you'll miss the greatest reveal of the story.
Meet Hiram Patterson, an industrialist who has for the longest time been working on developing technology to end all technologies and bring absolute dominance to his OurWorld corporation - ability to peer anywhere from any place via spacetime wormholes. He dubs this technology WormCam and once it's out of the bag the world as we know it is forever changed. With further developments this technology is open to everyone and eventually, with adherence to light travel speed, enables people to even look back in time on events recent or distant. However, this is merely the beginning as cosmic danger approaches Earth...
Above is a very brief synopsis because gripping story isn't really the primary draw of The Light of Other Days. Yeah, there's absolutely scummy Hiram himself and his son Bobby who are navigating treacherous waters of technological advancement and politics, pragmatic journalist Kate who falls in love almost despite herself, etc but I'd argue these characters are more akin to view points for current events rather than fully-realized entities in their own right. They gradually fade into the background as more of the novel becomes dedicated to explaining technology itself or very specific scenarios humanity can finally dissect. Ever wondered what Jesus was all about or if he was even real? You can bet that's one of the big projects researchers use WormCam for. If there was one relationship I genuinely enjoyed it was how Bobby and his half-brother David become closer over time as each goes through his own existential crisis. And then there's the entire post-WormCam society I won't really go into because A) novel covers decades following its introduction so it gets time to breathe and B) I really want you, the reader, to read about it on your own.
My recommendation? Novel absolutely gets it, but keep in mind there are pages upon pages of multiple characters detailing how this new technology works that might be somewhat dry to power through if high action is something you yearn for. Also, that ending got my eyebrows up and deflated absolutely masterful penultimate chapter where characters embark on the deepest time dive possible. Blink and you'll miss the greatest reveal of the story.
April 8, 2017
Tegemist siis Clarke idee põhjal Baxteri poolt kirjapandud teos. Seega mitte kahe võrdväärse autori ühisteos, vaid pigem ikkagi puhtalt Baxteri kirjutatud asi. Baxterlikku stiili on tunda küll. Kuigi olen temalt lugenud varemalt vaid ühe raamatu („Ajalaevad”), on "Kaugete päevade valgus" samaoodi väga mastaapne ja suurejooneline. Baxter mängib väga suurte ideedega, ta sukeldub ajalukku, uurib Jeesuse elu, vaatleb esimeste elusolendite tekkmist läbi miljardite aastate ning analüüsib paralleelselt tehnoloogia mõju inimkonnale. Täpsemalt siis teeb üks firma avastuse, mis võimaldab neil luua väikesi ussiauke igasse aegruumi nurka ja läbi selle jälgida abosluutselt kõike, ajalugu, teisi planeete ja eriti muidugi teiste inimeste intiimelu.
Paljuski ongi see raamat tegelikult üks vägagi mahukas essee või mõtisklus. Baxter arutleb siin mõnuga ja kümnete lehekülgede viisi küll ussiurgete tehniliste detailide ja küll ajaloolise tõe üle. Raamatu tegelased jäävad selle kõrval üsna üheplaanilisteks ja ilmuvad pigem episoodiliselt. Ja kui nüüd päris aus olla, siis ega see ühe multibiljonäride melodramaatiline pere-elu nii põnev pole ka. Kisa ja pisaraid on ohtralt nagu mõnes Mehhiko seebis, aga ühtegi sellist karakterit nagu polnudki, kes oleks siiralt köitnud. Mind huvitas näiteks palju rohkem Baxteri nägemus Jeesusest kui peategelaste askeldamine.
Ilmselt kõlab senise kirjelduse alusel päris masendava teosena? Ehk palju autoripoolset monoloogi ja kõhnavõitu karakterid? Tegelikult mitte sinnapoolegi! ”Kaugete päevade valgus” on üks paremaid SF romaane, mida ma sel aastal lugenud olen. Ideed on tõesti haaravad ja huvitavad ja need annavad inspiratsiooni ning mõtisklusteks kütust veel päris pikalt peale lugemise lõpetamist. Vähemalt minule Baxteri visioonid ja mõtted istusid, oleksin tahtnud sel maailmas kauemgi olla ja rohkem asjadest teada saada. Seega lõpp oli mulle natuke liiga kiire, alles jõuti transhumanismi reele hüpata ja üks väga sellealane põnev idee välja käia, kui juba oligi läbi.
Ühesõnaga lugesin mõnust mühisedes. Nii hea filosoofiaga ulmekat pole SH ikka kaua avaldanud. Aga kesse paneb raamatu tagakaanele raamatu AINSA erootilise lõigu? Enamus aega räägitakse teadusest ja erootikat on seal samapalju kui sõiduauto Žiguli varuosade kataloogis, aga sellest hoolimata tutvustatakse teda väikeste rindade ja püksikutega? Miks küll? Ka kaanepilt on minuarust Meelis Krošetskini väärkasutamine – selleks, et joonistada sinine poolkera, pole küll vaja kunstnikku palgata, selle võib igaüks Paintis ära teha.
Kas tegemist on mingi kaval nükkega, et ainult pühendunud ulmefännid leiaksid tee selle tõesti suurepärase ulmeraamatuni? Palun igaljuhul kõiki seda postitust lugevaid ulmefänne, et ärge alluge kirjastus Fantaasia provokatsioonidele, ärge tagakaant lugege ja ostke see raamat endale ära. See on seda väärt :)
Paljuski ongi see raamat tegelikult üks vägagi mahukas essee või mõtisklus. Baxter arutleb siin mõnuga ja kümnete lehekülgede viisi küll ussiurgete tehniliste detailide ja küll ajaloolise tõe üle. Raamatu tegelased jäävad selle kõrval üsna üheplaanilisteks ja ilmuvad pigem episoodiliselt. Ja kui nüüd päris aus olla, siis ega see ühe multibiljonäride melodramaatiline pere-elu nii põnev pole ka. Kisa ja pisaraid on ohtralt nagu mõnes Mehhiko seebis, aga ühtegi sellist karakterit nagu polnudki, kes oleks siiralt köitnud. Mind huvitas näiteks palju rohkem Baxteri nägemus Jeesusest kui peategelaste askeldamine.
Ilmselt kõlab senise kirjelduse alusel päris masendava teosena? Ehk palju autoripoolset monoloogi ja kõhnavõitu karakterid? Tegelikult mitte sinnapoolegi! ”Kaugete päevade valgus” on üks paremaid SF romaane, mida ma sel aastal lugenud olen. Ideed on tõesti haaravad ja huvitavad ja need annavad inspiratsiooni ning mõtisklusteks kütust veel päris pikalt peale lugemise lõpetamist. Vähemalt minule Baxteri visioonid ja mõtted istusid, oleksin tahtnud sel maailmas kauemgi olla ja rohkem asjadest teada saada. Seega lõpp oli mulle natuke liiga kiire, alles jõuti transhumanismi reele hüpata ja üks väga sellealane põnev idee välja käia, kui juba oligi läbi.
Ühesõnaga lugesin mõnust mühisedes. Nii hea filosoofiaga ulmekat pole SH ikka kaua avaldanud. Aga kesse paneb raamatu tagakaanele raamatu AINSA erootilise lõigu? Enamus aega räägitakse teadusest ja erootikat on seal samapalju kui sõiduauto Žiguli varuosade kataloogis, aga sellest hoolimata tutvustatakse teda väikeste rindade ja püksikutega? Miks küll? Ka kaanepilt on minuarust Meelis Krošetskini väärkasutamine – selleks, et joonistada sinine poolkera, pole küll vaja kunstnikku palgata, selle võib igaüks Paintis ära teha.
Kas tegemist on mingi kaval nükkega, et ainult pühendunud ulmefännid leiaksid tee selle tõesti suurepärase ulmeraamatuni? Palun igaljuhul kõiki seda postitust lugevaid ulmefänne, et ärge alluge kirjastus Fantaasia provokatsioonidele, ärge tagakaant lugege ja ostke see raamat endale ära. See on seda väärt :)
January 29, 2020
Типично в техен стил. Сякаш Бакстър е имал повече свобода и е запратил книгата по неговия бичаен начин на милиони години назад във времето. Защо не?
June 4, 2022
Technological drudgery.
In mid 20xx the world is slowly starting to feel the real impact of climate change. Couple this with the discovery of a planet-killer sized asteroid heading for Earth, nicknamed WormWood, and you have the recipe for the literal end of humanity.
Hiram, a brilliant but cruel industrialist running a mega-corporation called OneWorld discovers the WormCam - a device that uses stable wormholes, to do various things. The plot (and I'm using that term loosely here) is completely driven by this various developments of this technology. While the WormCam is interesting, it made everything else in the book secondary. Characters are shallow and so one-note, that I feel like I spent most of the book's 316 pages in a perpetual state of "who cares."
Hiram - brilliant, driven, cruel (and stereotypical) industrialist/CEO. Treats all characters like shit but they all keep working for him.
Bobby - Hiram's second son. Beautiful, social. Programmed by Hiram to be the perfect heir. Gets screwed over time after time but keeps coming back to Hiram. Works for Hiram anyway.
David - Hiram's first son. Was left behind and ignored by age 5 because he and his mom are Catholic and Hiram doesn't like that. Works for Hiram anyway.
Kate - Bobby's lover. Journalist who discovered the WormWood asteroid. Hates Hiram because Hiram hates her and is worried she'll take Bobby from him. Works for Hiram anyway...
There's a few other characters who step in later in the book to be Deus Ex Machina'ed around by the WormCam. The story flow follows advances in the technology as the WormCam goes from a listening device to a device that can see anything, anytime (without, itself, being seen), to one that can literally look back in time and across space. In a most clinical fashion, The Light of Other days deals with the changes that happen to humanity, seen through the eyes of the boring, cardboard main characters, as we enter an age with no expectation of privacy. Anyone can see and hear anything at any time, including throughout history.
The whole book just seemed a lost opportunity as it's just. so. dry. Even (spoiler alert) the last 30 pages are simply a long description of Bobby and David doing a deep, 3 billion year dive through human history following their ancestral DNA back to the cradle of life in singled-celled organisms. At the end of this dive, they discover something amazing which is treated with all the excitement of a day old piece of toast.
Close your eyes. Imagine the most boring teacher you had in high school or college. Now that person is the lead narrator for the most interesting times you've had in your life. See how they make everything worse? You just read this book...
The Light of Other Days was the least interesting way to explore 50 years of fundamental change to humanity.
In mid 20xx the world is slowly starting to feel the real impact of climate change. Couple this with the discovery of a planet-killer sized asteroid heading for Earth, nicknamed WormWood, and you have the recipe for the literal end of humanity.
Hiram, a brilliant but cruel industrialist running a mega-corporation called OneWorld discovers the WormCam - a device that uses stable wormholes, to do various things. The plot (and I'm using that term loosely here) is completely driven by this various developments of this technology. While the WormCam is interesting, it made everything else in the book secondary. Characters are shallow and so one-note, that I feel like I spent most of the book's 316 pages in a perpetual state of "who cares."
Hiram - brilliant, driven, cruel (and stereotypical) industrialist/CEO. Treats all characters like shit but they all keep working for him.
Bobby - Hiram's second son. Beautiful, social. Programmed by Hiram to be the perfect heir. Gets screwed over time after time but keeps coming back to Hiram. Works for Hiram anyway.
David - Hiram's first son. Was left behind and ignored by age 5 because he and his mom are Catholic and Hiram doesn't like that. Works for Hiram anyway.
Kate - Bobby's lover. Journalist who discovered the WormWood asteroid. Hates Hiram because Hiram hates her and is worried she'll take Bobby from him. Works for Hiram anyway...
There's a few other characters who step in later in the book to be Deus Ex Machina'ed around by the WormCam. The story flow follows advances in the technology as the WormCam goes from a listening device to a device that can see anything, anytime (without, itself, being seen), to one that can literally look back in time and across space. In a most clinical fashion, The Light of Other days deals with the changes that happen to humanity, seen through the eyes of the boring, cardboard main characters, as we enter an age with no expectation of privacy. Anyone can see and hear anything at any time, including throughout history.
The whole book just seemed a lost opportunity as it's just. so. dry. Even (spoiler alert) the last 30 pages are simply a long description of Bobby and David doing a deep, 3 billion year dive through human history following their ancestral DNA back to the cradle of life in singled-celled organisms. At the end of this dive, they discover something amazing which is treated with all the excitement of a day old piece of toast.
Close your eyes. Imagine the most boring teacher you had in high school or college. Now that person is the lead narrator for the most interesting times you've had in your life. See how they make everything worse? You just read this book...
The Light of Other Days was the least interesting way to explore 50 years of fundamental change to humanity.
May 8, 2016
See, this is the problem with books written by "visionaries" who try to predict near-future events: When they get stuff wrong, it affects the entire reading experience. When you read a book published in 1950 and set in, say, 2000, it's easy to laugh at what the author thought the future would be (flying cars and regular trips to moon resorts, perhaps) and marvel at the things the author came close to getting right (perhaps a computer set-up very close to the internet or artificial bionic limbs). However, when a book is written in 2000, as The Light of Other Days was, and is set only thirty or so years in the future, it's a lot harder to laugh off the mistakes. TLoOD was written at time when the U.S. was riding high on its superiority: Everyone was rich and happy, the market was good, Dubya hadn't yet depleted all the budget surplus left to us by Clinton, and 9/11 wasn't even a plausible nightmare (except to those who worked in various alphabet-named agencies, who'd read the memos and seen the warning signs). Basically, America was still a great place to be. So of course, in that context, it makes sense that we would annex a faltering and weak United Kingdom and make it just another state in the union. Yet looking at that statement in our current climate of doubt, depression and fear, it's not only implausible, it's laughable. And that's the problem with the entire book: You get so caught up in the wrongness of the many predictions, it's hard to get past them to the actual plot. Then again, even from what little I read, there were other reasons making the book difficult to read. Mainly a lack of likable or compelling characters; everyone seemed to be venal, self-absorbed, irritating or just plain uninteresting. I've never read Clarke--he's one of those authors who I know I need to read, but I haven't yet gotten around to--so I really don't want to judge him based on this experience. I've never read Baxter either, in which case, it's hard to tell which author went wrong with this novel.
March 30, 2015
Just as great as I remember it! Once you get through the first couple of chapters, this book is impossible to put down. The uses of micro wormholes and their effects on society really got me thinking. If time and space were yours to control, what would you do!
spoiler alert!
The only part of the story that ground my gears was the look into the past to find the true history of Jesus. I could care less to hear any more religious nonsense, and then once the actual history of Jesus is discovered, there is a cop out in the final moments as no wormholes can witness the events due to quantum froth or something equally nonsensical. Why even go into depth on the story of Jesus if you are going to leave it hanging?
One thing about this book is the ending, this is the best ending of any book I have ever read.
spoiler alert!
The only part of the story that ground my gears was the look into the past to find the true history of Jesus. I could care less to hear any more religious nonsense, and then once the actual history of Jesus is discovered, there is a cop out in the final moments as no wormholes can witness the events due to quantum froth or something equally nonsensical. Why even go into depth on the story of Jesus if you are going to leave it hanging?
One thing about this book is the ending, this is the best ending of any book I have ever read.
April 20, 2020
2 Stars for a Baxter/Clarke novel ! - what went wrong ?
1. The major part of the plot is "borrowed" from "The dead past by Asimov".
2. The narrative style is confusing, switching between and action story like Nexus (which it reminded me somewhat about) and long textbook like ramblings.
3. Characterization is never Clarke or Baxter's strong side, but here the characters are especially 2 dimensional.
Based on my previous knowledge of the 2 authors i would put this as 10 % Clarke and 90 % Baxter.
Or maybe i just didn't get it as there seem to be a fair share of 5 stars reviews out there.
1. The major part of the plot is "borrowed" from "The dead past by Asimov".
2. The narrative style is confusing, switching between and action story like Nexus (which it reminded me somewhat about) and long textbook like ramblings.
3. Characterization is never Clarke or Baxter's strong side, but here the characters are especially 2 dimensional.
Based on my previous knowledge of the 2 authors i would put this as 10 % Clarke and 90 % Baxter.
Or maybe i just didn't get it as there seem to be a fair share of 5 stars reviews out there.
December 4, 2008
After sixty pages I still felt no need to continue reading. I didn't feel like I knew or cared about the characters, knew or cared about the plot, or knew or cared about the technical jargon that litters so many of this book's pages. I got this book for free and thought that since it was co-authored by Arthur C. Clarke that it had to be at least decent. I mean, if there were a Mount Rushmore of science fiction, his face would be carved up there. But this book just didn't do it for me. I think I'll move on to something else.
March 27, 2011
This novel explores a really fascinating concept. What if technology could be developed that let us see any place in space and time, including past, present and future? Society would be transformed. Lying would be impossible.
But Clarke and Baxter take it much much further than that, and the ending is just plain incredible as, without spoiling it too much, humans can finally seek redeption for the crimes of ages past. Read this book.
http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=134
But Clarke and Baxter take it much much further than that, and the ending is just plain incredible as, without spoiling it too much, humans can finally seek redeption for the crimes of ages past. Read this book.
http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=134
May 5, 2012
Quick read, but the science in the book stands the test of time.
The story is a bit disjointed at points, but I enjoyed the way Clarke used, for example, a speech given to Congress about the technology of Wormcams (the crux of the books narrative) to further the plot.
The story is a bit disjointed at points, but I enjoyed the way Clarke used, for example, a speech given to Congress about the technology of Wormcams (the crux of the books narrative) to further the plot.
June 29, 2025
the ending was weak at best. would not recommend this book to anyone but a true fan of the authors.
July 31, 2022
There's a string of superlatives I could use when referring to Arthur C. Clarke. He is one of my all-time favorite authors. I've also read a couple of books by Stephen Baxter many years ago and enjoyed them, so this book was very likely going to be quite enjoyable and it was. I blew right through it in a few days. However, I'm not sure if I was remembering incorrectly or it was actually a different book I read years ago, but when I picked it out of my TBR stacks I thought I'd read it before. And while the main bit of technology, a time viewer, is the same general concept I remembered, the plot and conclusion rang very few bells. I tried to do some internet searching for what other book it might've been instead, but the idea of inventing tech to peer into the past has been used often in speculative fiction in the last century and I wasn't going to figure it out quickly from my scraps of half-remembered scenes.
Regardless, the plot exactly hits several of my wheelhouses that fire up my excitement. The use of wormhole technology harnessed and eventually miniaturized for the average consumer brings up all sorts of possible applications, changes in culture, and repeatedly asks that classic of scifi questions: what if..? It questions the use of surveillance, people's ideas of privacy, and who if anyone should have access to any of the above. And that's just the people currently alive who know of its existence. It also is imaginative in "answering" questions of historical people and events not only in the somewhat recent past, but going back to medieval times, or (as the story's technology progressed) deeper and deeper into the distant past. My once-upon interest in history, anthropology, and archaeology really loved that aspect of the stories spun.
About the only thing I thought the author, editor, and/or publisher chickened out on for a western audience was using the WormCam to find out if Jesus really existed and if so how much of his life and the entire religion was true. Unlike determining that both Robin Hood and Moses were amalgamations of local stories and just outright created myths who never existed, there were few deviations from accepted stories of Jesus other than who his very human biological father actually was and that he did in fact once visit Britain. The handwaving that there were way too many wormholes distoring reality around his death such that it made it impossible to see what happened really felt like a cop out. Interesting considering at the very least Clarke was a well-known atheist and there's a good chance Baxter is too since he also co-wrote with Terry Pratchett, another well-known atheist.
An extenuating circumstance which was a big motivator in the use of the wormhole tech was the dystopian fact that everyone at this time is living on a finite clock as they've learned that a giant asteroid is due to strike Earth in a few hundred years and there's no known way to avoid it. What do societies/people do if they know there is a definite, set end time? Do you work furiously to try and advance to the point of survival with the time remaining? Or do you throw up your hands and give in to everything because what's the point anyway? I'm not even going to go into what people born post-privacy thought of the utter barbarity, cruelty, and completely heartless callousness of past generations towards their fellow humanity throughout history. I won't spoil the ending, but combining the fascination of peering into the past, the singular use of the wormhole technology by future generations unimagined by those who invented it, and the final scene are exactly how I like my scifi endings.
One final note is with regards to Clarke who was known as a highly accurate "futurist." I constantly found it fascinating how a book published over 20 years ago predicted so well the entire concept of privacy and where surveillance was heading. He passed away in early 2008 just as the smartphone revolution took off and I found a lot of parallels between how the people in this book used WormCams compared to today's usage of smartphones, things like livestreaming with them, and the entire ubiquity of the internet connecting so much and so many. I'd love to have known what he would've thought of smartphone usage and where he would've thought it and current advances like quantum computing and A.I. would lead us in another 20 years.
Regardless, the plot exactly hits several of my wheelhouses that fire up my excitement. The use of wormhole technology harnessed and eventually miniaturized for the average consumer brings up all sorts of possible applications, changes in culture, and repeatedly asks that classic of scifi questions: what if..? It questions the use of surveillance, people's ideas of privacy, and who if anyone should have access to any of the above. And that's just the people currently alive who know of its existence. It also is imaginative in "answering" questions of historical people and events not only in the somewhat recent past, but going back to medieval times, or (as the story's technology progressed) deeper and deeper into the distant past. My once-upon interest in history, anthropology, and archaeology really loved that aspect of the stories spun.
About the only thing I thought the author, editor, and/or publisher chickened out on for a western audience was using the WormCam to find out if Jesus really existed and if so how much of his life and the entire religion was true. Unlike determining that both Robin Hood and Moses were amalgamations of local stories and just outright created myths who never existed, there were few deviations from accepted stories of Jesus other than who his very human biological father actually was and that he did in fact once visit Britain. The handwaving that there were way too many wormholes distoring reality around his death such that it made it impossible to see what happened really felt like a cop out. Interesting considering at the very least Clarke was a well-known atheist and there's a good chance Baxter is too since he also co-wrote with Terry Pratchett, another well-known atheist.
An extenuating circumstance which was a big motivator in the use of the wormhole tech was the dystopian fact that everyone at this time is living on a finite clock as they've learned that a giant asteroid is due to strike Earth in a few hundred years and there's no known way to avoid it. What do societies/people do if they know there is a definite, set end time? Do you work furiously to try and advance to the point of survival with the time remaining? Or do you throw up your hands and give in to everything because what's the point anyway? I'm not even going to go into what people born post-privacy thought of the utter barbarity, cruelty, and completely heartless callousness of past generations towards their fellow humanity throughout history. I won't spoil the ending, but combining the fascination of peering into the past, the singular use of the wormhole technology by future generations unimagined by those who invented it, and the final scene are exactly how I like my scifi endings.
One final note is with regards to Clarke who was known as a highly accurate "futurist." I constantly found it fascinating how a book published over 20 years ago predicted so well the entire concept of privacy and where surveillance was heading. He passed away in early 2008 just as the smartphone revolution took off and I found a lot of parallels between how the people in this book used WormCams compared to today's usage of smartphones, things like livestreaming with them, and the entire ubiquity of the internet connecting so much and so many. I'd love to have known what he would've thought of smartphone usage and where he would've thought it and current advances like quantum computing and A.I. would lead us in another 20 years.
January 17, 2018
At the heart of ‘hard SF’ is a deep preoccupation with spirituality and meaning in the universe. ‘The Light Of Other Days’ demonstrates this by starting with what seems to be a story about the technological elimination of privacy, and finishes by contemplating a new version of humanity, and a new conception of human origins and ultimate purpose.
Such territory is nothing new for Arthur C Clarke or Stephen Baxter. They both exemplify the ‘science’ half of science fiction by writing characters that function as walking ‘info-dump’ machines throughout the narrative. Of course there is a lot of information to dump, especially in the early parts of this book - which make it hard going for the first third. Clarke has always been a talented science educator, which means he has always been uncomfortable with ambiguity in his stories. Baxter is more comfortable with murky motivations. In this book it takes them a while to jointly smooth out their ‘tone’ for the characters, however some of that is down to the central conceit of the story - the use of ‘wormholes’ to view everything in both space and time - not really emerging until well into the book.
A notable aspect of ‘Light Of Other Days’ is its relative pessimism about that traditional trope of hard SF - space travel. Throughout the book the Earth is under a looming threat of long term destruction by a huge interstellar object called ‘Wormwood’. In earlier hard SF stories this would be an invitation for humanity to get to work on an ambitious deflection, or interplanetary evacuation plan (particularly as they have five hundred years before the Wormwood collision). However in this story humanity reacts by having an existential crisis. The ‘wormhole’ devices that allow people see anything, about anyone, at anytime, leads people to become chronically self-absorbed. Indeed the theme of the story is people contemplating their own mortality - and trying to transcend it. The conclusion of the book offers a solution of sorts (not available to everyone) by humanity adopting a common, ‘joined’, consciousness in space, and exploring its origins in ‘deep’ time. Indeed the best part of the book is a journey via wormhole to the deep time origins of life itself, by travelling along the DNA of a single family. That section alone makes the book worth reading - but takes a while to get there.
Such territory is nothing new for Arthur C Clarke or Stephen Baxter. They both exemplify the ‘science’ half of science fiction by writing characters that function as walking ‘info-dump’ machines throughout the narrative. Of course there is a lot of information to dump, especially in the early parts of this book - which make it hard going for the first third. Clarke has always been a talented science educator, which means he has always been uncomfortable with ambiguity in his stories. Baxter is more comfortable with murky motivations. In this book it takes them a while to jointly smooth out their ‘tone’ for the characters, however some of that is down to the central conceit of the story - the use of ‘wormholes’ to view everything in both space and time - not really emerging until well into the book.
A notable aspect of ‘Light Of Other Days’ is its relative pessimism about that traditional trope of hard SF - space travel. Throughout the book the Earth is under a looming threat of long term destruction by a huge interstellar object called ‘Wormwood’. In earlier hard SF stories this would be an invitation for humanity to get to work on an ambitious deflection, or interplanetary evacuation plan (particularly as they have five hundred years before the Wormwood collision). However in this story humanity reacts by having an existential crisis. The ‘wormhole’ devices that allow people see anything, about anyone, at anytime, leads people to become chronically self-absorbed. Indeed the theme of the story is people contemplating their own mortality - and trying to transcend it. The conclusion of the book offers a solution of sorts (not available to everyone) by humanity adopting a common, ‘joined’, consciousness in space, and exploring its origins in ‘deep’ time. Indeed the best part of the book is a journey via wormhole to the deep time origins of life itself, by travelling along the DNA of a single family. That section alone makes the book worth reading - but takes a while to get there.
May 10, 2019
Un romanzo veramente molto buono, con un ottimo connubio tra la Hard SF tipica di Clarke e le implicazioni sociali e quasi antropologiche della SF meno tecnica. La storia è molto incentrata sui personaggi, e anche se l'invenzione qui presentata è ai limiti della teoria scientifica, lo sviluppo è decisamente ben fatto.
Al di là di alcune "previsioni" azzardate per l'epoca ma quasi azzeccate, come quella che nel 2010 la Gran Bretagna uscirà dalla UE e la Scozia e l'Irlanda del Nord usciranno dal Regno Unito, oppure quella sugli effetti del riscaldamento globale, il nodo centrale è nella reazione della gente comune alla possibilità di spiare chiunque in qualsiasi luogo, e quindi di essere spiati da chiunque, non solo dalle agenzie governative. Tutta la riflessione sul concetto di privacy e sul suo crollo, nonché sui tentativi di riprendersi la privacy con una clandestinità tremendamente penalizzante è ben fatta.
Come corollario ci sono la possibilità di osservare il passato (i propri antenati, ma anche la crocifissione di Gesù) fino ai più remoti albori della Terra; la possibilità di esplorare lo spazio rimanendo sulla Terra grazie a quest'invenzione; fino alla nascita di una mente globale o addirittura alla possibilità dell'immortalità.
Alcune parti possono sembrare lente o troppo discorsive, ma il romanzo prende bene il lettore, a meno che non sia un lettore superficiale.
Al di là di alcune "previsioni" azzardate per l'epoca ma quasi azzeccate, come quella che nel 2010 la Gran Bretagna uscirà dalla UE e la Scozia e l'Irlanda del Nord usciranno dal Regno Unito, oppure quella sugli effetti del riscaldamento globale, il nodo centrale è nella reazione della gente comune alla possibilità di spiare chiunque in qualsiasi luogo, e quindi di essere spiati da chiunque, non solo dalle agenzie governative. Tutta la riflessione sul concetto di privacy e sul suo crollo, nonché sui tentativi di riprendersi la privacy con una clandestinità tremendamente penalizzante è ben fatta.
Come corollario ci sono la possibilità di osservare il passato (i propri antenati, ma anche la crocifissione di Gesù) fino ai più remoti albori della Terra; la possibilità di esplorare lo spazio rimanendo sulla Terra grazie a quest'invenzione; fino alla nascita di una mente globale o addirittura alla possibilità dell'immortalità.
Alcune parti possono sembrare lente o troppo discorsive, ma il romanzo prende bene il lettore, a meno che non sia un lettore superficiale.
May 31, 2024
An interesting concept, but I feel it could have had so many ways of telling a story, but this story was not the best option. The start of this novel felt like a scientist with their latest research paper, and a mills and boon author had collided in a corridor and their papers had got so mixed up they had decided to submit them as one story. The tone is way to sciency mixed with clichéd beautiful rich people having perfect relationships. This settles down in the middle to a more story telling way, but here the author(s) then try to find every possible scenario for the subject and explain the good and bad of that scenario, but only briefly before heading to the next scenario. The ending then seems to go back to a scientist's lament for the fate of humanity...or maybe I am to stupid for these high brow novels. Either way this was not for me
November 19, 2021
Good sci-fi forces you to think through a single or multiple possible end points for our own reality. This book had me consider the pros/cons of the deterioration of privacy in an entirely new "light" (lol). There were also several other mindbending themes that emerged - including the resilient nature of counter-invention as new innovations helped re-establish privacy to some degree.
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