Rating: 
Summary: Great science but tedious characters
Review: I really liked this book for the way it made me think about the science. My husband and I are both chemists, and we've debated the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and I really liked his description of the classical observer being part of a greater system--if for no other reason than to show my husband someone else agreed with me. (I wondered how others who weren't tortured with years of graduate work deriving equations in quantum and stat mech would like it. After reading the other reviews, I'm not surprised.) I also really appreciated the realistic depiction of a science department at a university--bull's-eye with the egomaniacal professors so obsessed with their own significance and unfairly burdened by the triviality of teaching and advising graduate students. Unfortunately, this book had all the promise of a great adventure, or at least a great mystery, only to be mired in unnecessary characters and irrelevant conflicts. Get it if you like reading about scientists at work, but be prepared to skim some slow sections.
Rating: 
Summary: Addictive
Review: I have read this book three times, and will read it again in the future. The problems of time-travel are usually skimmed over in science fiction. Like, what if you go in the past and change a circumstance, then that will change the present too, and your present situation. So what then? I loved this book. I liked the character development, the scientific explanations, the paradoxes involved with changing the past.
Rating: 
Summary: Can I go back in time ??
Review: Can I go back in time, maybe just before I bought this book? The book starts great and I was looking forward to enjoy a well written story. Alas, after about fifty pages, Mr Benford stopped developing the time travel concept. He filled the remaining 420 pages with the details of the uninteresting lives of annoying characters I couldn't bring myself to care about. As for the science, here are the concepts you'll find in this book: Einstein = equations, pesticide = bad, people = bad, California = beaches, Gaia hurt, ET phone home.
Rating: 
Summary: Lame poorly developed love story
Review: Timescape won a Nebula award in 1980 or so and also won some other literature award. It was supposed to be a cross between literature and science fiction. Sadly, the "literature" part of the novel is a lame poorly developed love story about people you will grow to hate because they are so annoying. There is a modicum of decent science here, but that is all. The most annoying part is that it is some so damn depressing. Maybe if Benford hadn't set it in 1998 and have the world ending in a ridiculous environmental catastrophe, I would have liked it a bit better.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fine, Well-Written Tale of Time Travel
Review: This early novel of Gregory Benford's deserves all the honors and accolades it earned, most notably the Nebula Award. Yet it is not as well written as any of the works by the likes of Samuel Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin or William Gibson, though occasionally it comes close. This is the most realistic premise I have read regarding time travel; one told appropriately enough by a physicist who is also an able writer. Of much interest to me was reading some of the scientific intrigue that occurs both in the California of 1962 and the England of the 1990's. Yet I agree that the story could have been more appealing if Benford spent less time with character development and more on advancing the plot. Still, it is far better science fiction than virtually any I have come across in the "Star Trek" or "Star Wars" series.
Rating:
Summary: I cant believe that this managed to win the Nebula award
Review: The basic plot of this book is not that bad and could have been developed into something intereseting. But unfortunately Benford only devotes no more than 40 of the 400 pages to this. The rest of the space is filled up with garbage about the personal love/ sex lives of his characters. If he was trying to make them 'interesting', he failed miserably. Benford would have done much better sticking to the plot, without getting too much into the personalities. Over all it is a waste of time. The only reason I am giving two stars, is because I feel bad about giving one.
Rating:
Summary: Not the best SF writer now writing
Review: Benford should be congratulated on making the mundane excruitatingly tedious. The prose is crass, the characters badly drawn and the plot almost non-existent. It gives SF a bad name, should not be on any Masterworks list and certainly should not have received a Nebula award. At best it can be forgiven as the work of an inexperienced writer.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointment
Review: I read the back of this book and was very attracted to the premise. However I felt that Benford fell short of my expectations on many counts. He spent a great deal of the book furnishing us with irrelevant aspects of the characters lives whilst neglecting to fully explain some of the more important aspects of the book, for example the 1998 ecological situation. His characters appeared very clichéd and I felt upon reading this novel that Benford is a complete misogynist under the impression that women will succumb to any man without a second thought. It seems he has a very over-inflated ego regarding his sexual prowess. This book was one I had to plough through and although I enjoyed the end I felt he did not fully develop or explain events and that this story would be better served as a short story eliminating a lot of the unnecessary rambling prose. The style of writing indicated someone trying desperately to impress with vocabulary however this only succeeded in excluding the reader.
Rating:
Summary: Junk a waste of paper
Review: I read this book for an English class about Science ficton. The premise of the book should have been good. Time Traveling, paralal Universe etc yet the author does not devlop the people in the story nor does he make it intresting. A buch of gobaly guke. Every single person in my class which ranged aroung 25 to 30 people said the book was a waste of paper and to never use it.
Rating:
Summary: Slightly Out-Dated
Review: Benford's Timescape, considering its age, is still one of the better science fiction novels. Sense of desperation created by the conflict of the story is as real as can be. Supported by believable casts, the plot progresses along smoothly for most parts. At certain lengths of the book, one might become frustrated with Benford's tendency to beat arond the bush. The ending becomes painfully obvious half way through the book and loses its momentum. While the science behind Timescape is tremendously interesting, some readers may find it a chore to finish reading.
|
