By: Gregory Benford Publisher: Spectra Average Rating: Binding: Mass Market Paperback Label: Spectra Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 512 Publication Date: August 01, 1992 Release Date: August 01, 1992
Product Description: Detecting strange patterns of interference in a lab experiment, Gordon Bernstein, an assistant researcher at a California university, investigates and begins to uncover something that will change his life forever. Reprint. Nebula Award winner.
Amazon.com Review: Suspense builds in this novel about scientists, physics, time travel, and saving the Earth. It's 1998, and a physicist in Cambridge, England, attempts to send a message backward in time. Earth is falling apart, and a government faction supports the project in hopes of diverting or avoiding the environmental disasters beginning to tear at the edges of civilization. It's 1962, and a physicist in California struggles with his new life on the West Coast, office politics, and the irregularities of data that plague his experiments. The story's perspective toggles between time lines, physicists, and their communities. Timescape presents the subculture and world of scientists in microcosm: the lab, the loves, the grappling for grants, the pressures from university and government, the rewards and trials of relationships with spouses, the pressures of the scientific race, and the thrill of discovery.
Timescape merits the tag "hard science fiction"; it tells the story of scientists, and readers can't help but learn something about tachyons and physics while reading it. Yet much of the story is about humanity: the men John Renfrew and Gordon Bernstein and their relationships--between husband and wife, lover and lover, English working class and upper class, professor and student, and academician and colleagues.
Winner of the Nebula Award in 1980 and the John W. Clark Award in 1981, Timescape offers readers a great yarn, in terms of both humanity and science.
Did not understand the title, but still a good read The author lost me in the final page on time as a landscape, but this is still a good read on so many levels: 1. Intriguing theories on time travel 2. Insight into life as a scientist 3. Interesting anecdotes on science and scientists 4. Sad portrait of a dark future ravaged by eco disasters 5. Humors that makes me laugh out aloud
All in all a book well worth the time spent reading it.
Relating the life of the scientist I read this book many years ago and loved it and I have been recommending it to others and buying copies for them in the time since. I had a need to get a replacement copy for myself and came to Amazon for that purpose. I was surprised to see the distribution of ratings of reviewers so spread across the entire range and so I read a few. It is amazing just how many people can fail to grasp the point of a book such as this. Is there any formula which says that a science fiction book has to depict action? This book unveils the process of scientific discovery, showing how a scientist has to have enthusiasm and talent but also dogged persistence, a capacity to ignore criticism and even to remain deviant. Benford describes how an individual unravels a problem like a fictional detective unveils a murder mystery. The book shows also the ambiguous nature of institutional support for scientific investigation, with apparently altruistic characters being quite ruthless and egoistic. This story does indeed develop characters who have flaws, scientists who have lives outside of their scientific endeavours which can detract from their focus. But their lives revolve around solving a problem and how many of us have had the experience of meeting obstacles in thinking, of emotional intrusions, which nevertheless can be removed by the passage of time and by the action of unconscious processes of thought. How many of us are without flaws and have difficulties in our interpersonal relationships? I thought that was something that we were meant to enjoy in fiction. The science is brilliant, the notion of parallel universes seems to solve many of the paradoxes of time travel and the social psychology of scientific discovery is better depicted than it is in the professional treatises on the topic. Alternate history is another genre that can be hard to get a good grasp on and make persuasive and the author does a great job here also. This book is more than science fiction, it borders on science as fact. It deserved its awards and it further deserved reprinting as a classic in the field. Benford is a truly great author in the genre.
Excellent writing One of the best books I read all year, this is well written with a fascinating premise. It's thought-provoking and enjoyable--I highly recommend it.
Accurate protrayal of a physics department I read this book when I was a physics graduate student at Cornell doing thesis work on NMR. A friend told me there was a science fiction novel which involved physics grad students doing NMR experiments, so I had to read it. This book perfectly captures the tense and exciting world inside a physics department, although this aspect of the book is only one of several plot lines. I have read almost all of Benford's books and this was the one I enjoyed the most. It spoke to me.
Not Free SF Reader Global warming message in an isotope, no bottle.
Scientists thirties years in the future from the sixties discover the possibilities for sending limited information back in time through the exotic properties of a particular material. It is pretty important to them because the situation the planet finds itself in is really pretty dire.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
