Status
Available
Call number
Library's review
Indeholder "Prologue", "One. The Goldfish Bowl", " 1. The Casimir Engine", " 2. The Mind's Eye", " 3. The Wormworks", " 4. Wormwood", " 5. Virtual Heaven", " 6. The Billion-Dollar Pearl", " 7. The Wormcam", " 8. Scoops", " 9. The Agent", " 10. The Guardians", " 11. The Brain Stud", " 12.
???
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Spacetime", "Two. The Eyes of God", " 13. Walls of Glass", " 14. Light Years", " 15. Confabulation", " 16. The Water War", " 17. The Debunk Machine", " 18. Hindsight", " 19. Time", " 20. Crisis of Faith", " 21. Behold the Man", " 22. The Verdict", "Three. The Light of Other Days", " 23. The Floodlit Stage", " 24. Watching Bobby", " 25. Refugees", " 26. The Grandmothers", " 27. Family History", " 28. The Ages of Sisyphus", "Epilogue", "Afterword".???
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Publication
New York : TOR, 2000.
Description
The Light of Other Days tells the tale of what happens when a brilliant, driven industrialist harnesses the cutting edge of quantum physics to enable people everywhere, at trivial cost, to see one another at all times: around every corner, through every wall, into everyone's most private, hidden, and even intimate moments. It amounts to the sudden and complete abolition of human privacy - forever.Then, as society reels, the same technology proves able to look backwards in time as well. Nothing can prepare us for what this means. It is a fundamental change in the terms of the human condition.
User reviews
LibraryThing member ChrisRiesbeck
Clarke's second last book. In the Afterword the authors mention that there's a long history of time-viewer stories. They mention a couple, including Bob Shaw's, from which they took their title. Oddly they do not mention Asimov's The Dead Past which is the most closely related thematically to the
As would be expected from these authors, this is hard-core what-if SF. What are all the applications and ramifications of a technology that allows seeing (but not hearing) anything that is or has happened, no matter where or how far back. The book slows down frequently for pages of description about this, told outside the story arcs of the main characters. The pace of development of the technology, from a proof of concept requiring a roomful of a equipment to portable in-the-skull devices makes the evolution of computers appear positively glacial.
The book is a reasonable cap to themes Clarke explored in Childhood's End, and an interesting precursor to the Stapledonian themes Baxter would (over-)expand in the Manifold trilogy and the Long Earth pentalogy. ("Stapledonians" are introduced as a concept late in the book.)
Recommended if you like either author, a bit more so if you like both.
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events and concerns of over half of this novel. As would be expected from these authors, this is hard-core what-if SF. What are all the applications and ramifications of a technology that allows seeing (but not hearing) anything that is or has happened, no matter where or how far back. The book slows down frequently for pages of description about this, told outside the story arcs of the main characters. The pace of development of the technology, from a proof of concept requiring a roomful of a equipment to portable in-the-skull devices makes the evolution of computers appear positively glacial.
The book is a reasonable cap to themes Clarke explored in Childhood's End, and an interesting precursor to the Stapledonian themes Baxter would (over-)expand in the Manifold trilogy and the Long Earth pentalogy. ("Stapledonians" are introduced as a concept late in the book.)
Recommended if you like either author, a bit more so if you like both.
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LibraryThing member JohnGrant1
This was a curious experience. The text reads like an Arthur C. Clarke novel (with all the failings and virtues this implies) as written by Steve Baxter (with all the failings and virtues that this implies). Since that's presumably exactly what it is, I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised by
The underlying premise is that wormholes can be stabilized sufficiently that enough information can be transmitted through them to convey pictures of distant events. Society is revolutionized as, thanks to invisible, omnipresent Wormcams, privacy becomes a thing of the past -- and even more so when the next logical step is taken: the opening up of the entirety of earth's past to the Wormcam, which enables a sort of VR time travel. History is rewritten, crime plummets as clearup rates approach 100%, politicians resign or suicide in droves, millions become hi-tech peeping toms . . . There is a sort of soap-opera plot involving the communications entrepreneur behind these technological breakthroughs, his sons and other family members. All this is played out against a backdrop of humankind's fatalistic knowledge that in just a few hundred years a cometary object called the Wormwood (confusingly, bearing in mind the novel's about Wormcams) will smite our planet, sterilizing it to a depth of many miles. As you might expect given the authorship, there's a long visionary chapter at the end during which our evolutionary ancestry is traced back by Wormcam "travelers" all the way back to the first algal cell -- and even beyond.
But this indicates what for me is a problem with the book. Yes, I can buy it that for a lot of people the big initial appeal of the Wormcam might be that you could watch the neighbours screwing, just as the novel indicates; but one of the uses to which you can put the technology is to "visit" distant parts of the universe, including the planets of other stars, and then of course the time-travel aspect of the device allows you to explore anywhere in history that interests you. Surely, after the novelty of Reality Porn had worn off, at least a sizable chunk of the population would be visiting the original Jurassic park or the rings of Saturn, or discovering what it was like to be bathed in the light of Andromedan suns? By the time our heroes are undertaking their journey back to the origin of life on earth, wouldn't millions of other people have already had the idea to take this same excursion? Likewise, there's a public project described earlier in the book to follow the life of Christ; but wouldn't all kinds of people, atheist and Xtian alike even if with differing motives, have thought of this almost immediately after the introduction of the technology? Why would there be the need for a project? (The chapter on this is called "Behold the Man", a perhaps unwise reminder of Mike Moorcock's significantly more ambitious time-travel treatment of the Passion.)
I raced through the first eighty or so pages of The Light of Other Days, finding in it a refreshing energy of ideas -- the kind of lure that used to make pulp sf so entrancing. Then, though, the other aspects of pulp sf began to get to me, in particular the pulpish plot and characterization (the tyrannical entrepreneur is like something out of a Batman comic), and thereafter I found myself labouring, rather. I still did like the gee-whiz ideas, and new ones kept appearing, so it wasn't an unrewarded slog; and I found the novel's resolution satisfying, however predictable it had by then become. Especially good was the introduction of the paranoia-inducing concept that, if anyone in our future ever invents the Wormcam or its equivalent, there's a reasonable chance that one of them is watching you right now -- or even lots of them.
All in all, then, the book's a curate's egg.
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the effect, but somehow I'd expected something more of a stylistic amalgamation.The underlying premise is that wormholes can be stabilized sufficiently that enough information can be transmitted through them to convey pictures of distant events. Society is revolutionized as, thanks to invisible, omnipresent Wormcams, privacy becomes a thing of the past -- and even more so when the next logical step is taken: the opening up of the entirety of earth's past to the Wormcam, which enables a sort of VR time travel. History is rewritten, crime plummets as clearup rates approach 100%, politicians resign or suicide in droves, millions become hi-tech peeping toms . . . There is a sort of soap-opera plot involving the communications entrepreneur behind these technological breakthroughs, his sons and other family members. All this is played out against a backdrop of humankind's fatalistic knowledge that in just a few hundred years a cometary object called the Wormwood (confusingly, bearing in mind the novel's about Wormcams) will smite our planet, sterilizing it to a depth of many miles. As you might expect given the authorship, there's a long visionary chapter at the end during which our evolutionary ancestry is traced back by Wormcam "travelers" all the way back to the first algal cell -- and even beyond.
But this indicates what for me is a problem with the book. Yes, I can buy it that for a lot of people the big initial appeal of the Wormcam might be that you could watch the neighbours screwing, just as the novel indicates; but one of the uses to which you can put the technology is to "visit" distant parts of the universe, including the planets of other stars, and then of course the time-travel aspect of the device allows you to explore anywhere in history that interests you. Surely, after the novelty of Reality Porn had worn off, at least a sizable chunk of the population would be visiting the original Jurassic park or the rings of Saturn, or discovering what it was like to be bathed in the light of Andromedan suns? By the time our heroes are undertaking their journey back to the origin of life on earth, wouldn't millions of other people have already had the idea to take this same excursion? Likewise, there's a public project described earlier in the book to follow the life of Christ; but wouldn't all kinds of people, atheist and Xtian alike even if with differing motives, have thought of this almost immediately after the introduction of the technology? Why would there be the need for a project? (The chapter on this is called "Behold the Man", a perhaps unwise reminder of Mike Moorcock's significantly more ambitious time-travel treatment of the Passion.)
I raced through the first eighty or so pages of The Light of Other Days, finding in it a refreshing energy of ideas -- the kind of lure that used to make pulp sf so entrancing. Then, though, the other aspects of pulp sf began to get to me, in particular the pulpish plot and characterization (the tyrannical entrepreneur is like something out of a Batman comic), and thereafter I found myself labouring, rather. I still did like the gee-whiz ideas, and new ones kept appearing, so it wasn't an unrewarded slog; and I found the novel's resolution satisfying, however predictable it had by then become. Especially good was the introduction of the paranoia-inducing concept that, if anyone in our future ever invents the Wormcam or its equivalent, there's a reasonable chance that one of them is watching you right now -- or even lots of them.
All in all, then, the book's a curate's egg.
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LibraryThing member ejp1082
It's been a while since I've read this - I haven't since it was first released in 2000.
Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter are two of the preeminent hard sf authors in the sf genre. And when they put their heads together, they do certainly come up with interesting ideas.
The Light of Other Days is
I don't remember many of the details of the characters or plot; but the idea of the transparent society which they created still sticks with me, that's why it gets the high rating from me.
Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter are two of the preeminent hard sf authors in the sf genre. And when they put their heads together, they do certainly come up with interesting ideas.
The Light of Other Days is
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based on the idea that tiny wormholes can be used to see anything, anyone, at any time - and the social consequences of that kind of information. It's the complete end of privacy and a lot of our beliefs about history. Eventually it's developed to the point that we can network our minds together, and even achieve a kind of immortality.I don't remember many of the details of the characters or plot; but the idea of the transparent society which they created still sticks with me, that's why it gets the high rating from me.
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LibraryThing member SatansParakeet
This book starts out in an interesting and effective manner. The marks of good storytelling leave you expecting that this is more than Clarke just slapping his name, once again, on another man's work. Unfortunately, the story quickly spins out of control, trying to combine too many plots, ideas,
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and styles without ever leading to a believable or satisfying conclusion. As an interesting look at the death of privacy, it does pretty well. As an interesting story, in and of itself, it does much more poorly. Show Less
LibraryThing member fpagan
Novel about the consequences of the invention of the "wormcam," an invisibly small quantum device that allows one to see and hear any event anywhere, now or at any time in the past. Now, if you think the *Internet* is a threat to privacy, ...
LibraryThing member krypto
A rather bizarre (and not all that important) plot built around the effect upon the world of the invention of 'wormcams' - tiny wormholes that allow viewing of the past (or present). Privacy ends, religions are thrown into turmoil, history merges with psychology, crimes long since forgotten are
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re-opened...I find this concept particularly fascinating, and it's stuck with me since I read the book some years ago. The idea of a completely open society, where privacy is simply impossible, is thought-provoking - would the first generation born into it actually care? Would I? Show Less
LibraryThing member BillHall
Unlike other reviewers who seem less than enthused about this recently reissued collaboration between Arthur Clarke and Stephen Baxter, I found the Light of Other Days to be a good story and a fascinating play on the development of some almost believable new technology. The technology in question
The scenario extends from the first development of the technology through its perfection as a commodity tool for spying on anyone anywhere and available to anyone, and the associated total loss of personal privacy. The characters involve a lady investigative journalist, the media mogul who funded the technology and its commercialization, his two sons and a few other characters.
Of all the Clarke/Baxter collaborations I have read, this probably has the best human characterizations and plot development. Very definitely a good read for anyone who likes technology-based sci-fi.
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is the development of "wormcams", based on navigable worm holes that can eventually be used to view scenes anywhere in space or time past. I like the science, because it is based on a concept of time I can accept - the past is an immutable block universe left behind as it is generated by the quantum foam of the possibilities of the progression of present instants, on the growing surface. In this the future doesn't exist until activity occurs in the present. The authors don't spend a lot of time presenting this concept, but it provides a believable matrix for developments.The scenario extends from the first development of the technology through its perfection as a commodity tool for spying on anyone anywhere and available to anyone, and the associated total loss of personal privacy. The characters involve a lady investigative journalist, the media mogul who funded the technology and its commercialization, his two sons and a few other characters.
Of all the Clarke/Baxter collaborations I have read, this probably has the best human characterizations and plot development. Very definitely a good read for anyone who likes technology-based sci-fi.
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LibraryThing member adulau
The French-translation is pretty good and give a nice touch to the book. I'm pretty sure that the role of the translator often become an additional author of the book. On the story itself, the idea is clever. The rhythm is pretty good (beside being a large book) and the idea of the "quantum" viewer
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is really great. The only drawback is the soap-like story with the protagonists in the story. A really good work and an easy catch for sci-fi fans. Show Less
LibraryThing member RandyStafford
My reactions to reading this novel in 2000. Spoilers follow
The title of this novel (and the dedication and the afterword) explicitly allude to Bob Shaw’s famous story of the same. It mentions it as the “best-known-and best” “time viewer” story. Oddly enough, given what I assume to be the
I found this book annoying and interesting for the first two thirds.
It was interesting because the premise was interesting. Clarke and Baxter introduce the notion and, while they don’t dwell on it long, they briefly show how a corrupt future US administration uses the WormCam for its own ends. They also introduce a thoroughly 90s' sf touch – the WormCam is linked to virtual rigs to relive history.
It was annoying for a variety of reasons. The authors insist on having all the significant events spring from the Patterson clan and its offshoots. Hiram Patterson, founder of the dynasty he is determined to make into the new Kennedys, puts together the team that first develops WormCams as an instanteous means of transmitting news without satellites. (He gets lots of particle physicists who were supposed to work with the cancelled Superconducting Super Collider.) Son David, a mathematician, develops the WormCam as a remote viewer. Son Bobby suggests the notion of using it as a time viewer. Bobby’s half-sister Mary seems an oh-so convenient genius who develops a miniature WormCam that makes the technology available to millions. (Bobby is technically a clone and genetically unrelated to Mary who has no Patterson genes.) The trouble with this is that this extended clan seems conveniently brainy and conveniently stupid. David and Mary extend WormCam abilities yet Hiram doesn’t see that a remote viewer will make him hated and cause massive social, cultural, and political upheaval – to him it’s just a gimmick to scoop his competitors in the news business. David, despite being a physicist, doesn’t see that the WormCam can be turned on the past until, in one of those clichéd eureka moments inspired by a naïve question, Bobby says something. Also, despite being an sf reader, David doesn’t see the upheaval inherent in time viewing.
I also thought Clarke and Baxter violated the hard sf tone I expected from them – and got – with the explanation of the theoretical underpinnings of the WormCam. I was willing to grant them software that could read lips – though human lipreaders don’t extract that much information. (Of course, Clarke used this notion in 2001: A Space Odyssey.) However, I thought the rest of the technological developments came too easily, too quickly to maintain complete suspension of disbelief. The WormCam suddenly took up a lot less energy so it could become miniaturized and widely available. While I was able to buy that you could hear through a WormCam, the absence of infrared transmission was not explained. The tracking of DNA through time has lots of problems of plausibility and technology. How is the DNA configuration determined and how much does it have to change before it is unrecognized? (According to the story’s events, the answer is never.) I also didn’t buy the air of global apathy and fatalism that clung to the world because of Wormwood’s massive impact 500 years in the future. That’s far enough in the future that I don’t think most people would give it much thought and many of those who did would think that long enough to develop some way of saving earth no matter how massive Wormwood is. (Where was the spirit of Clarke’s “Rescue Party” where humanity saves itself from the sun’s nova?)
Of course, taboos of sex and bodily functions fall, but, then, many human societies have existed without them or with greatly modified ones and they are not as vital to our modern world as secrecy is for politics, religions, morals, and business – few societies have existed with the transparency of this world. The authors are a bit too sanguine that, somehow, humans will adopt, that a new order will emerge. The very imperfect metaphor of how we adopt to, nay, seek out, crowded restaurants is evoked. Conversation is inhibited in such places because we can’t absolutely trust our neighbors to hold to the convention of no deliberate eavesdropping. They also can’t view everything that we did before we go to the restaurant.
Clarke and Baxter also don’t give us much real explanation for the Joined who are connected in an “internet of the mind” via wormholes in their heads. Metaphor as explanation is a valid sf technique, but, again, I expected better from Clarke and Baxter) The presence of this probably superior, transcendent, creepy (to the older generation, at least) new generation was reminiscent of Clarke’s Childhood’s End, and Teilhard de Chardin is mentioned in both novels.
Still, I liked this novel over all because, in its final third, it broke new ground. Clarke’s recent novels are often full of a grab bag of ideas; so was this one. There are personality-altering brain implants at birth. The highlight of the book was an exploration of life’s evolution on Earth including thermophiles, an early intelligent race which all traces have been erased of, very early ice ages in the Precambrian. I liked the Refugees, a band of people who disguise their identities so there movements can not be tracked in time. (As Mary notes, the WormCam can not see the future and governments still require many agents to arrest a Refugee even when unmasked since the agents can’t physically be everywhere.)
At it’s heart, this is another Faustian sf novel: do you really want absolute knowledge of the past and the present?
The title of this novel (and the dedication and the afterword) explicitly allude to Bob Shaw’s famous story of the same. It mentions it as the “best-known-and best” “time viewer” story. Oddly enough, given what I assume to be the
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authors’ combined knowledge of sf, there is no mention of the three sf stories which form a model for the premises and consequences of the first two-thirds of this novel: Damon Knight’s “I See You”, T.L. Sherred’s “E for Effort”, and Isaac Asimov’s “The Dead Past”. The novel postulates manipulating wormholes in order to create a “WormCam” which can view any contemporary event and, eventually, any event in the past in a radius at least extending to the galactic center. As in those stories great, catastrophic social upheaval results. Privacy, of course, almost vanishes. Viewing, reliving the past becomes a narcotic). Historical fact proves corrosive to ideologies and religions. I found this book annoying and interesting for the first two thirds.
It was interesting because the premise was interesting. Clarke and Baxter introduce the notion and, while they don’t dwell on it long, they briefly show how a corrupt future US administration uses the WormCam for its own ends. They also introduce a thoroughly 90s' sf touch – the WormCam is linked to virtual rigs to relive history.
It was annoying for a variety of reasons. The authors insist on having all the significant events spring from the Patterson clan and its offshoots. Hiram Patterson, founder of the dynasty he is determined to make into the new Kennedys, puts together the team that first develops WormCams as an instanteous means of transmitting news without satellites. (He gets lots of particle physicists who were supposed to work with the cancelled Superconducting Super Collider.) Son David, a mathematician, develops the WormCam as a remote viewer. Son Bobby suggests the notion of using it as a time viewer. Bobby’s half-sister Mary seems an oh-so convenient genius who develops a miniature WormCam that makes the technology available to millions. (Bobby is technically a clone and genetically unrelated to Mary who has no Patterson genes.) The trouble with this is that this extended clan seems conveniently brainy and conveniently stupid. David and Mary extend WormCam abilities yet Hiram doesn’t see that a remote viewer will make him hated and cause massive social, cultural, and political upheaval – to him it’s just a gimmick to scoop his competitors in the news business. David, despite being a physicist, doesn’t see that the WormCam can be turned on the past until, in one of those clichéd eureka moments inspired by a naïve question, Bobby says something. Also, despite being an sf reader, David doesn’t see the upheaval inherent in time viewing.
I also thought Clarke and Baxter violated the hard sf tone I expected from them – and got – with the explanation of the theoretical underpinnings of the WormCam. I was willing to grant them software that could read lips – though human lipreaders don’t extract that much information. (Of course, Clarke used this notion in 2001: A Space Odyssey.) However, I thought the rest of the technological developments came too easily, too quickly to maintain complete suspension of disbelief. The WormCam suddenly took up a lot less energy so it could become miniaturized and widely available. While I was able to buy that you could hear through a WormCam, the absence of infrared transmission was not explained. The tracking of DNA through time has lots of problems of plausibility and technology. How is the DNA configuration determined and how much does it have to change before it is unrecognized? (According to the story’s events, the answer is never.) I also didn’t buy the air of global apathy and fatalism that clung to the world because of Wormwood’s massive impact 500 years in the future. That’s far enough in the future that I don’t think most people would give it much thought and many of those who did would think that long enough to develop some way of saving earth no matter how massive Wormwood is. (Where was the spirit of Clarke’s “Rescue Party” where humanity saves itself from the sun’s nova?)
Of course, taboos of sex and bodily functions fall, but, then, many human societies have existed without them or with greatly modified ones and they are not as vital to our modern world as secrecy is for politics, religions, morals, and business – few societies have existed with the transparency of this world. The authors are a bit too sanguine that, somehow, humans will adopt, that a new order will emerge. The very imperfect metaphor of how we adopt to, nay, seek out, crowded restaurants is evoked. Conversation is inhibited in such places because we can’t absolutely trust our neighbors to hold to the convention of no deliberate eavesdropping. They also can’t view everything that we did before we go to the restaurant.
Clarke and Baxter also don’t give us much real explanation for the Joined who are connected in an “internet of the mind” via wormholes in their heads. Metaphor as explanation is a valid sf technique, but, again, I expected better from Clarke and Baxter) The presence of this probably superior, transcendent, creepy (to the older generation, at least) new generation was reminiscent of Clarke’s Childhood’s End, and Teilhard de Chardin is mentioned in both novels.
Still, I liked this novel over all because, in its final third, it broke new ground. Clarke’s recent novels are often full of a grab bag of ideas; so was this one. There are personality-altering brain implants at birth. The highlight of the book was an exploration of life’s evolution on Earth including thermophiles, an early intelligent race which all traces have been erased of, very early ice ages in the Precambrian. I liked the Refugees, a band of people who disguise their identities so there movements can not be tracked in time. (As Mary notes, the WormCam can not see the future and governments still require many agents to arrest a Refugee even when unmasked since the agents can’t physically be everywhere.)
At it’s heart, this is another Faustian sf novel: do you really want absolute knowledge of the past and the present?
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LibraryThing member bibliosk8er
Great book.
LibraryThing member Lyndatrue
Clarke has written better books than this one, and I suppose Baxter has too. I just couldn't stick with it, and skipped to the end. Funny, I've read books written earlier, and they haven't felt particularly dated, but this one did. It's okay.
LibraryThing member rondoctor
Interesting and quick read, but not as good as I expected from these two top authors. Development of advanced technology serves as the centerpiece of the book, but it does so at the expense of character and plot development. The last quarter of the book seems to serve as a platform for the authors'
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views about how life developed on Earth. It's interesting, but only marginally relevant to the early story line. Show Less
LibraryThing member Paul_S
Not what I expected, at the end it veers off into something reminiscent of "Last and First Men" by Stapledon. Still, the remote viewing idea is gripping and explored from many angles (maybe dual authorship helps). And where other authors would be vague when writing about the unknowable past with
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such authority I'm glad these two didn't hold back - there's Jesus visiting the UK, princess Diana murdered by the shadowy organisation of misogynistic men who will not allow women to gain prominence, sentient knife wielding trilobites. It's as if the rest of the book had been just an excuse for these two to have some fun with these historical "discoveries". Well, I enjoyed it too. Show Less
LibraryThing member travelgirl-fics
just didn't enjoy... not entirely sure why
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2000
Physical description
316 p.; 23.7 cm
ISBN
0312871996 / 9780312871994
Local notes
Omslag: Lisa Pither
Omslaget viser en klode set fra rummet
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Arthur Charles Clarke
Omslaget viser en klode set fra rummet
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Arthur Charles Clarke
Similar in this library
Pages
316
DDC/MDS
| 823/.914 |