skybridge

babewiththepower.bsky.social · @babewiththepower.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated The Light of Other Days 10/10

There's a string of superlatives I could use when referring to Arthur C. Clarke. He is one of my all-time favorite authors. I've also read a couple of books by Stephen Baxter many years ago and enjoyed them, so this book was very likely going to be quite enjoyable and it was. I blew right through it in a few days. However, I'm not sure if I was remembering incorrectly or it was actually a different book I read years ago, but when I picked it out of my TBR stacks I thought I'd read it before. And while the main bit of technology, a time viewer, is the same general concept I remembered, the plot and conclusion rang very few bells. I tried to do some internet searching for what other book it might've been instead, but the idea of inventing tech to peer into the past has been used often in speculative fiction in the last century and I wasn't going to figure it out quickly from my scraps of half-remembered scenes.<br/><br/>Regardless, the plot exactly hits several of my wheelhouses that fire up my excitement. The use of wormhole technology harnessed and eventually miniaturized for the average consumer brings up all sorts of possible applications, changes in culture, and repeatedly asks that classic of scifi questions: what if..? It questions the use of surveillance, people's ideas of privacy, and who if anyone should have access to any of the above. And that's just the people currently alive who know of its existence. It also is imaginative in "answering" questions of historical people and events not only in the somewhat recent past, but going back to medieval times, or (as the story's technology progressed) deeper and deeper into the distant past. My once-upon interest in history, anthropology, and archaeology really loved that aspect of the stories spun.<br/><br/>About the only thing I thought the author, editor, and/or publisher chickened out on for a western audience was using the WormCam to find out if Jesus really existed and if so how much of his life and the entire religion was true. Unlike determining that both Robin Hood and Moses were amalgamations of local stories and just outright created myths who never existed, there were few deviations from accepted stories of Jesus other than who his very human biological father actually was and that he did in fact once visit Britain. The handwaving that there were way too many wormholes distoring reality around his death such that it made it impossible to see what happened really felt like a cop out. Interesting considering at the very least Clarke was a well-known atheist and there's a good chance Baxter is too since he also co-wrote with Terry Pratchett, another well-known atheist.<br/><br/>An extenuating circumstance which was a big motivator in the use of the wormhole tech was the dystopian fact that everyone at this time is living on a finite clock as they've learned that a giant asteroid is due to strike Earth in a few hundred years and there's no known way to avoid it. What do societies/people do if they know there is a definite, set end time? Do you work furiously to try and advance to the point of survival with the time remaining? Or do you throw up your hands and give in to everything because what's the point anyway? I'm not even going to go into what people born post-privacy thought of the utter barbarity, cruelty, and completely heartless callousness of past generations towards their fellow humanity throughout history. I won't spoil the ending, but combining the fascination of peering into the past, the singular use of the wormhole technology by future generations unimagined by those who invented it, and the final scene are exactly how I like my scifi endings.<br/><br/>One final note is with regards to Clarke who was known as a highly accurate "futurist." I constantly found it fascinating how a book published over 20 years ago predicted so well the entire concept of privacy and where surveillance was heading. He passed away in early 2008 just as the smartphone revolution took off and I found a lot of parallels between how the people in this book used WormCams compared to today's usage of smartphones, things like livestreaming with them, and the entire ubiquity of the internet connecting so much and so many. I'd love to have known what he would've thought of smartphone usage and where he would've thought it and current advances like quantum computing and A.I. would lead us in another 20 years.

#book

Published 2026-08-18 17:59 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere