Paths to Otherwhere

Rating:
Summary: Promising material, but grindingly dull prose
Review: "Paths to Otherwhere" is an example of a book that I wanted to like. The premise of the Many Worlds theory is fascinating, but the storyline is saddled with tired government/scientist cliches and uncompelling characters.

The story is clearly an excuse to explore cutting-edge concepts. No problem there... science fiction is well-populated with works of the type; Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Crichton come to mind. But Hogan's focus is so slanted towards the science that he forgot the story. He is a good author: The Giants/Ganymede series is a memorable work. Hogan unfortunately stumbles here

...

Rating:
Summary: This is just a bad book.
Review: Hogan starts us off in a nasty world heading toward an apocalyptic race/class war then proceeds to remind us over and over again that it's nasty without ever scratching the surface of what such a world would be like. This would be OK if it was just serving as the background for interesting science or character development.

But the science is silly, which would still be OK if there was a meaningful message here. There isn't. The character development is superficial. The only characters that aren't stereotyped are entirely selfish and self-interested, and they're the good guys oppressed in this bad, bad world. The moral implications of their actions are dismissed with a wave of the author's pen and an idiotic happy ending tossed onto the last page or two.

I've enjoyed some of Hogan's other work but don't waste your time with this.

Rating:
Summary: Another great addition to my library!
Review: I found this one a bit difficult to read compared to Hogan's other novels, but as always the story is great as is the scientific theory behind it.

Rating:
Summary: Mind-blowingly cool SF
Review: I've been reading James P. Hogan's SF since the late 1970s, when I picked up a copy of his second novel, _The Genesis Machine_. I still haven't read the "Giants" novels, but I've read quite a bit of his other stuff.

He's got a nice range, from hard SF like this book to espionage thrillers like _The Infinity Gambit_ to nonfiction essays on various controversial subjects. (You can read a lot of his nonfiction on his website...)

The emphasis in his science fiction is on "science"; he knows his stuff and the physical theories on which he founds his novels are pretty plausible. He's also got a keen eye for the absolutely mind-blowingingly cool detail: some event that seems entirely ordinary but has such profound implications about the nature of reality that you just put the book down for a moment and go "Wow."...

Since he's one of my two favorite living SF writers and the only one of the two who writes "hard" SF (the other is Spider Robinson), I've lately been trying to figure out where to start reviewing his books. I picked this one because it registers so high on the Mind-Blowing Coolness Meter, but I could really have started anywhere.

No spoilers here: all the details I'm about to divulge appear within the first few pages of the book. Here's the underlying premise: the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct; it's possible for quanta to interfere with their own counterparts along other branches of events; it's also possible for _information_ to be passed from one branch to another, and even from the future to the past, with devices that detect such interference.

One of those mind-blowing details occurs during a test of just such a device: a woman deliberately mistypes a word on a computer keyboard, but it appears correctly on the screen -- _because the quantum interference detector is determining the output by averaging all the possible futures_. Similarly, the woman finds it amazingly easy to draw a perfect circle on the computer screen, because the device averages _out_ the random errors introduced by her and all her counterparts along the other branches of the Multiverse.

That's just a taste of what this novel has in store for you, and it's just background; the plot is even cooler, and I won't spoil it for you. Let it suffice to say that you'll get your mind blown at least once every forty or fifty pages; every time you think Hogan has run out of tricks, he manages to pull out another one. His characters are, if not altogether gripping, at least interesting enough to keep the plot moving (Theo Jantowitz, for example, is a charming academic curmudgeon) and his standard theme -- "good science getting screwed up by government and corporate interests" -- is treated with Hogan's usual realism and flair.

In general it's a well-written and hopeful book that explores a fascinating "rational mysticism" that I sort of hope turns out to be true. (And I'm not sure why a couple of the other reviewers are dissatisfied with Hogan's handling of a certain "moral problem"; in fact it's not only addressed repeatedly but very nicely resolved.)

But again, I just picked this book to review because I had to start _somewhere_... He's all-but-unarguably the finest writer of "hard SF" out there today.

Rating:
Summary: Mind boggling!
Review: It was the twenty - first century. The nations of the world headed toward war, and this time it looked as though there was no chance of avoiding a mutually geneocidal cataclysm. However, a small group of scientists had made QUADAR.

QUADAR was a machine. Selected scientists worked quietly on the project, unknown that they were watched by the government. Theory is that anything that COULD happen HAS happened in some universe, some where. There are thousands of universes though. QUADAR sent the selected few to their counter parts in other universes to see what the differences were. Every universe had the same people, but historical events had happened differently. The current world was different. Then there was a world where they never happened at all! Traveling this way was soon called going to otherwheres.

Now the government is ready to steal the whole project for political reasons.

***Mind boggling! A roller coaster of possibilities. Made me stop and think about several "What ifs?"***

Rating:
Summary: This is just a bad book.
Review: James Hogan is probably the best science fiction writer alive. He has a solid understanding of science and usually researches his topic well. He also has a knack for taking a known fact and asking the simple questions whose answers are often more complicated then one would believe. My personal favorite from Mr. Hogan was the "Gentle Giant" series where Mr. Hogan asked why is the farside of the moon so different from the nearside? The answer was a classic series, some great books.

In "Paths to Otherwhere," Mr. Hogan explores quantum physics and other realities. In "Paths to Otherwhere" a group of scientists discovery a way to channel themselves into the bodies of people living on other worlds parallel to our own. These people are "duplicates" of the scientist living here. Unfortunately, as compared to his other books, the science here is very weak. This could be a book on demon possession as easily as a science ficton. Worse, demon possession may actually be more believable.

Additionally, the story is weak. Most of Mr. Hogan's writing has an element of governmental conspiracy. Paths to Otherwhere is no exception. Military conspiracy, here, is the central part of the story as evil military scientists want to abuse this new science. Brave scientists attempt to defy this misuse of their findings, including a wise Buddhist man. I never understood why negative racial stereotypes are forbidden while the positive ones are allowed. Buddhist are no wiser then anyone else, they just pray differently.

Anyway, I was very disappointed with this story. It has all Mr. Hogan's weaknesses and none of his strengths. If you love Mr. Hogan, you may like this book. More likely, however, you will be disappointed. "Paths to Otherewhere" was a weak book, not a very good read.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing.
Review: James Hogan is probably the best science fiction writer alive. He has a solid understanding of science and usually researches his topic well. He also has a knack for taking a known fact and asking the simple questions whose answers are often more complicated then one would believe. My personal favorite from Mr. Hogan was the "Gentle Giant" series where Mr. Hogan asked why is the farside of the moon so different from the nearside? The answer was a classic series, some great books.

In "Paths to Otherwhere," Mr. Hogan explores quantum physics and other realities. In "Paths to Otherwhere" a group of scientists discovery a way to channel themselves into the bodies of people living on other worlds parallel to our own. These people are "duplicates" of the scientist living here. Unfortunately, as compared to his other books, the science here is very weak. This could be a book on demon possession as easily as a science ficton. Worse, demon possession may actually be more believable.

Additionally, the story is weak. Most of Mr. Hogan's writing has an element of governmental conspiracy. Paths to Otherwhere is no exception. Military conspiracy, here, is the central part of the story as evil military scientists want to abuse this new science. Brave scientists attempt to defy this misuse of their findings, including a wise Buddhist man. I never understood why negative racial stereotypes are forbidden while the positive ones are allowed. Buddhist are no wiser then anyone else, they just pray differently.

Anyway, I was very disappointed with this story. It has all Mr. Hogan's weaknesses and none of his strengths. If you love Mr. Hogan, you may like this book. More likely, however, you will be disappointed. "Paths to Otherewhere" was a weak book, not a very good read.

Rating:
Summary: Good stuff
Review: The idea of "parallel universes" is a science-fiction cliche', but Hogan manages to breathe a little fresh air into it with
this novel. He starts with the assumption that the Many Worlds Interpretation is true, and takes it from there. A team of scientists in this war-torn (and dying) world are able to project their consciousness into their counterparts in one of the infinite number of parallel worlds (what Hogan calls "the
Multiverse"). The government, as usual, gets involved, and attempts to screw things up horribly. I believe Hogan to be the
finest science-fiction writer alive today, and this novel amply
demostrates his talent.

Rating:
Summary: Origin and possibilities of the concept.
Review: The Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics is a godsend to s.f. writers looking for a theoretical basis to build an alternative-world story on. I used it myself for The Proteus Operation But it was David Deutsch, a quantum physicist at Oxford University, who persuaded me that the MWI was actually real.

We met for dinner one night in London, introduced by a mutual friend, and the conversation soon got around to Many Worlds. Where the MWI made sense, and all the other interpretations that physicists had been arguing about for the best part of a century didn't, was explaining those paradoxes in all the textbooks, where, for example, a basic particle like a photon or electron appears to achieve the impossible feat of interfering with itself. According to David, what the particle was actually interfering with was not itself, in "the" universe, but its counterpart in one of innumerable adjacent universes. And in similar fashion, all of the comparable "paradoxes" rapidly unraveled.

What this says is that nearby universes interfere with each other at the quantum level. In other words, information can leak between them. It suggested a whole new realm of possibility in the treatment of parallel universes. Instead of somehow transporting somebody into some other reality, we can play with the idea of information percolating through. Perhaps, for example, the abilities that set humans apart as a creative species--such faculties as intuition, anticipation, imagination--stem from a unique ability of the human nervous system to extract and "decode" such signals. (Not so far- fetched, really. If apparatus as crude as bits of glass and metal can make quantum events observable macroscopically, why not a neural quantum-change detector coupled to a cerebral amplifying mechanism capable of delivering intelligible results to consciousness? After all, every nerve ending in the retina detects photons.)

Or suppose, for example, that experimenting with this new physics created situations where the flow of perceptions being experienced by an individual came not from his own body but diverted from a counterpart personality in a nearby but different reality. In that event, as the subject "tuned into" other versions of himself progressively "farther away," he would have the curious experience of finding himself among people who disagreed more and more about what the past was. Eventually, as the process becomes better understood, we achieve the capability of experiencing, through distant other "selves," totally different realities with circumstances unlike anything we imagined, each the result of history following a different course.

Suppose that our own reality were a pretty dismal affair, and we stumbled on one that was a lot more appealing. Would we be able to migrate there permanently somehow? If so, what would happen to the personalities that occupy the versions of ourselves who dwell there naturally? Might we become the "monsters" from some other realm who move in and take people over?

Rating:
Summary: Better than......
Review: This one is better than Thrice Upon a Time. Hogan still tends to get carried away sometimes with lenghthy explanations and suppositions of the science involved, but not to the exclusion of the plot in this one. This was written many years after Thrice Upon a Time, and it shows. I thought it was an entertaining and enjoyable read.