Rating: Summary: Super Book Review: Anyone thats read any of Stephen Baxters other stuff (specifically Time Ships) will find that he is sometimes very captivating, and sometimes not.... Well this is one of those times where the book is top notch. I really enjoyed Time Ships, and without giving away any of the story, liked this read as much as books like Contact by Carl Sagan and PastWatch by Orson Scott Card. If you liked either of those books, then I think you'll enjoy this one too....
Rating: Summary: SCARY AS HELL Review: Think about this, no matter what, everyone can see what are you doing, with who, how...the future is this, there is no privacy. You can't hide, even your sins since they can also watch your past. Thought you get away with a crime? Wrong, you will pay. But the most terrible thing, all the history is change. Political ideas, (as well as religion, philosophy, economic) fall. Morality dies, and the world is a place of complete nihilistic behavior. Is real dark this book, bleak and leave you without peace, that's the Baxter part of the book. His vision of the future, is one that I (and maybe half of those who read the book) don't agree, but if we don't pay attention, it could be a potencial truth for our grandchildren. In a few words, this book may disturb you.
Rating: Summary: Absolutely fascinating depiction... Review: ...of the future! As stated in the Afterword, technology described in this novel is becoming further away from sci-fi and more towards reality every day. If you are a reader that enjoys futurist ideas grounded in facts, you will love this novel. If you are a reader that enjoys great suspense in strange environments with colorful characters, you will love this novel. If you like Arthur C. Clark... 'nuf said!
Rating: Summary: A Page Turner Review: I bought this book with little expectations and found it to be a really fun read but not real in-depth. Kind of like a summer blockbuster movie - enteraining but you won't be thinking about it days later.
Rating: Summary: Tepid Review: Typical Clarke novel -- long on high concept, short on characthers. Most characters are over the top caricatures -- the greedy industrialist (and a foreigner, to boot), the brilliant driven scientist having battles of faith, the innocent (dopey) second son (ok, they made him that way), the woman journalist (who's also good in the sack), the FBI guy, and the .... (don't want to give everything away). Baxter (who apparently did most of the writing) has done better.
Rating: Summary: Great Premise - Not So Great A Story Review: If you read most other reviews for this book, you know by now what it is about: new technology that essentially abolishes privacy (current and past). The story moves by leaps and bounds. However, the characters remain flat. And the technology, while evolving through the story, does not add to the story. This book could have been a great book if the first 100 pages potential was exploited. Instead, each time the technology improved, the story lost its relevancy.
Rating: Summary: Conventional Clarke Review: Clarke and Baxter have done a great job here, I am pleasantly surprised. I thought it was very well written, a page turner. The centerpiece of this novel is the wormcam, a device able to see anywhere in the world and even out into the universe, and also able to peer back into time. Privacy as we know it has been destroyed. The wormcam is used by Clarke and Baxter to illustrate our human condition, sometimes in a not so flattering light. In this novel the wormcam is used at one point to see back into our primate past, and into our toils and triumphs, and see how we are just the latest carriers for the immortal DNA we contain. I found this simply fascinating. Plot and character development are excellent, what you would expect from Clarke and Baxter. I have been a fan of Clarke ever since I was young, but to me he did not foresee the coming advent of nanotechnology, which quite possibly has the potential to transform how we view life and death itself. For a great novel about this read THE FIRST IMMORTAL, by James Halperin. But Clarke and Baxter have a jewell here, well worth reading, and has a surprising and unexpected ending.
Rating: Summary: A thought provoking idea, but . . . Review: The whole concept of being able to look across space or back into time is almost mindboggling. What do you look at first?! The book is a good read, just because of the underlying concept. However, the concept is like a "Pandora's box," once opened so many things come flying out it is hard to address any of the implications in detail, and the authors don't. The characters are flat, and many intriguing ideas are tossed to the reader but then never fully developed. The ending is very sudden and seems out of step with the rest of the book. I had the strange feeling that the authors grew weary of the book, didn't know exactly where it was going and just ended it.
Rating: Summary: Who is watching me write this...and why? Review: I think the best science fiction compels you to contemplate the possibilities. With THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS, Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter have written a book that is terrifying. My humanities-based education does not offer the expertise to determine if the 'hard sci-fi' component of the book is adequate or accurate enough for those who focus on that aspect of the genre. My primary concern is not to have my luggage suspended in the time/space continuum. OTHER DAYS is speculative social commentary in the most classical sense, set not too far in the future. It poses the question of the exigencies relating to the elimination of all privacy, where the only security from your peers' inquisitiveness is non-verbalization of one's thoughts and considerations. It looks at a world where the very basis of everything we believe about religion, morality, government, politics and any other aspect of man's existence past or present, is open to intensive scrutiny, by anyone with the initiative to look. A society where trust is no longer an issue, it is an irrelevancy because truth is the only realistic alternative. Neither the premise nor the story are flawless. The characters are not well developed; the vision is that of Clarke and Baxter and represents but one possibility. Devout Christians may be troubled by some sections. Yet, for me this is a tale of the human spirit, a story that must be considered in the context of existent technological advances that inexorably adjust our values.
Rating: Summary: Light of Other Days Review: A bit shady on the physics. For example, if energy (in the form of light) can only travel in one direction, from the past to the present, as this book asserts, then what happens to that energy and what replaces it in the past and how does this effect the universal equilibrium equation that states that energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed. I would have liked to have seen questions like this answered in this book or at least addressed. Other than that, a good read.
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