Timescape

By: Gregory Benford

Narrated by: Simon Prebble, Pete Bradbury

In a future wracked by environmental catastrophe and social instability, physicist John Renfrew devises a longshot plan to use tachyons - strange, time-traveling particles - to send a warning to the past. In 1962, Gordon Bernstein, a California researcher, gets Renfrew's message as a strange pattern of interference in an experiment he's conducting. As the two men struggle to overcome both the limitations of scientific knowledge and the politics of scientific research, a larger question looms: can a new future arise from the paradox of a forewarned past?

Winner of both the Nebula Award and the John W. Campbell Award for best science-fiction novel, Timescape is an enduring classic that examines the ways that science interacts with everyday life to create the many strange worlds in which we live.

©1980 Gregory Benford and Hilary Benford (P)2001 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

• Nebula Award, Best Novel, 1980

An enjoyable book with problems

Despite some reservations about the book, I did enjoy Timescape. I always treat time travel stories with a grain of salt because I have some very stringent ideas about what makes a good one and it is very hard to meet them.

My first problem with the story is that it was too long. There are quite few subplots that don't really affect the main story and in the end they were more of a distraction than anything else. (I could have done without the stereotype Jewish mother and the womanizing Peterson.)

The most interesting thing about the story was the reactions of the scientists when they encounter something that doesn't fit their current scientific theory. The way that they work through it and investigated the situation was really well presented.

The author's thought processes about the messages from the future and the temporal paradoxes that the might cause really could have used more work. When a character receives confirmation of receipt a message from the past before the message requesting confirmation was sent, I just rolled my eyes. Also when a theorist speculates that a message to the past might cause the whole world around them to change and only the senders would know that it had, I thought "I don't think so".

I thought that two narrators, one for the past and one for the future was a good idea. And both of the narrators could produce a variety of voices, but the British narrator (the future narrator) kept saying to "casual loops" instead of "causal loops".

Still, it was an interesting listen, just don't expect to be enlightened on temporal paradoxes.

A truly great sci-fi novel by an undisputed master of the genre

Is it possible to communicate with people from the past? Is that a possible way to change the future? The world faces a possible extinction level event, and a small group of men think that a really far out theory may hold the solution to saving humanity's future on Earth. Two of those men nearly sacrifice everything that matters to them in their desperate attempt to find a solution!

The story is well narrated.

Let's hope this scenario doesn't turn out to be prophetic in nature!

BTW, this is my 3 rd. or 4th. time to read this book, and I dare say it won't be my last! It's that good! Especially if you like hard sci-fi!

Better than I expected

This proved a very entertaining and interesting novel. It is cleverly set in two time periods (now both in the past, but at the time of writing one was in the future - this adds an unintended dimension to the plot)with the later time period trying to contact the earlier one in order to try to head off a global catastrophe. Paradoxes of interfering with the past are cleverly dealt with and some of the science was really ingeniously woven into the plot. If you are interested in this kind of technical science fiction, go for it.

Keeps perfect focus on the science in the fiction

SPOILER.If tachyons did exist. If it Was imperative to deliver a message to the past this certainly would be a credible story how the science in Science fiction would contribute to the effort. I loved the sense of realism and the loving tongue in cheek description of the world of nature scientist. Like the author I too found that I love the science more than I did realize.

Good SF and even better science

The potential time paradoxes are acknowledged and explained. Using separate narrators for each time period added to the listening pleasure.

The book leaves none of the science to chance and explains it better than any science book for non-scientist.

You'll get a good coherent communication across time book nicely read, and great science explanations (okay, tachyons don't really exist, but if they did!). Overall a very fun listen.