Flashforward

7 Ratings: 4.0

A book by Robert J. Sawyer

What would you do if you got a glimpse of your own personal future and it looked bleak? Try to change things, or accept that the future is unchangeable and make the best of it? InFlashforward, Nobel-hungry physicists conducting an unimaginably high-energy … see full wiki

Tags: Books, Book, Science Fiction, Particle Physics

Author: Robert J. Sawyer

Genre: Science Fiction & Fantasy

Publisher: Tor Books

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What would a glimpse of the future do to you?

Jul 26, 2007

by Lynn_Harnett
posted in Cafe Libri: Reviewing Books & More

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In 2009 a team of particle physicists pursuing the Higgs Boson, a theoretical subatomic particle, flip the switch at Geneva's huge new particle accelerator. Suddenly Lloyd Simcoe, project leader, finds himself naked in bed with a stranger, an old woman whose body feels like "fruit gone bad".

Horrified, he discovers he too is old, as if 20 years has disappeared. But before he can consummate some repulsive sexual act he is jolted back to his seat at the collider controls. Only to discover the whole world has been thrown into pandemonium - planes fallen from the sky, cars piled up on the highway, trains derailed.

Every human on the planet lost consciousness for two minutes, and most catapulted into a vision of their future.

The facility administrator, whose wife has yet to give birth, finds himself in an ugly confrontation with a surly, hostile son. Theo, Lloyd's young research partner, had no vision at all. He won't be around. His younger brother, an aspiring writer, envisions abject failure.

Lloyd believes these future visions are immutable. Though he loves his fiancée, Michiko (whose daughter was one of the accidental victims of the flash forward), there seems no point in marrying, since he will be married to another in 20 years. Theo, discovering that his death was a murder, becomes obsessed with finding his killer. Theo must believe he can change the future.

Canadian author and Nebula Award-winner Sawyer ("Frameshift," Factoring "Humanity"), is a crisp, incisive writer with a playful and keen imagination. He generates plenty of action from his psychological and paradoxical what-ifing. Excellent sci-fi which proves, whether Sawyer thinks so or not, that a glimpse of the future is a dangerous thing.

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