The Light of Other Days - Softcover

Clarke, Arthur C.; Baxter, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0002247534 ISBN 13: 9780002247535

Publisher: Voyager, 2001

Synopsis

From Arthur C. Clarke, the brilliant mind that brought us 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Stephen Baxter, one of the most cogent SF writers of his generation, comes a novel of a day, not so far in the future, when the barriers of time and distance have suddenly turned to glass.

When a brilliant, driven industrialist harnesses cutting-edge physics to enable people everywhere, at trivial cost, to see one another at all times―around every corner, through every wall―the result is the sudden and complete abolition of human privacy, forever. Then the same technology proves able to look backward in time as well. The Light of Other Days is a story that will change your view of what it is to be human.

About this title

Review:

The crowning achievement of any professional writer is to get paid twice for the same material: write a piece for one publisher and then tweak it just enough that you can turn around and sell it to someone else. While it's specious to accuse Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke of this, fans of both authors will definitely notice some striking similarities between Light of Other Days and other recent works by the two, specifically Baxter's Manifold: Time and Clarke's The Trigger.

The Light of Other Days follows a soulless tech billionaire (sort of an older, more crotchety Bill Gates), a soulful muckraking journalist, and the billionaire's two (separated since birth) sons. It's 2035, and all four hold ringside seats at the birth of a new paradigm-destroying technology, a system of "WormCams," harnessing the power of wormholes to see absolutely anyone or anything, anywhere, at any distance (even light years away). As if that weren't enough, the sons eventually figure out how to exploit a time-dilation effect, allowing them to use the holes to peer back in time.

For Baxter's part, the Light of Other Days develops another aspect of Manifold's notion that humanity might have to master the flow of time itself to avert a comparatively mundane disaster (yet another yawn-inducing big rock threatening to hit the earth); Clarke, just as he did with Trigger's anti-gun ray, speculates on how a revolutionary technology can change the world forever. --Paul Hughes

About the Author:

ARTHUR C. CLARKE was the most celebrated science fiction author of the twentieth century, the author of more than sixty books, and the winner of all the field's highest honors. He coanchored the Apollo 11, 12, and 15 missions with Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra for CBS. He died in 2008.

STEPHEN BAXTER is the author of many major SF novels. He has won the Philip K. Dick Award, the John W. Campbell Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Lasswitz Award (in Germany), and the Seiun Award (in Japan).

About this edition

• Publisher: Voyager
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0002247534
• ISBN 13: 9780002247535
• Binding: Paperback