FLASH FORWARD
Robert J. Sawyer
Tor 1999
PB 319pgs
ISBN# 0-812-58034-6
 

            Imagine what would happen if you, and everyone else on the planet, was unexpectedly and instantaneously transported about twenty years into the future for two minutes. Seeing as a spectator through your own eyes, future technology, perhaps your own as yet unborn children, or one of a million other possible future perspectives. And what happens to your body in the here and now? With no one left conscious in the present, catastrophic car and aircraft accidents occur, not to mention the millions of falls, burns and myriad other mishaps.

This is the scale of the incident presented in Robert J. Sawyer’s “Flash forward”. As the dust settles, humanity recovers and seeks to comprehend what has happened. News comes out of Switzerland that the incident was somehow triggered by the subatomic particle research conducted by Lloyd Simcoe and Theo Procopides. The two pioneering physicists head up research at a massive internationally funded particle accelerator. Lloyd must not only determine what produced the effect and why, but he must come to grips with his own personal vision of a future with someone other than his beloved Michiko. His research partner Theo experiences an even more ominous vision experiencing only blackness! Ultimately he discovers that he was/is murdered just prior to the event, unfortunately despite those people who remembered learning about his murder through the media in their visions, he is still left searching for details. He too grapples with the time paradox, assuming he can figure out who did it, can he change the future and prevent it? Or, is his death preordained. And looming throughout, a growing public rift between those who want them to try and replicate the leap, and those fervently opposed.

            Yes this is yet another time shifting, rift creating, altering the space time continuum type of story, but the difference this time, is that it’s a good one! Robert Sawyer opens the floor to a flood of thought provoking questions about destiny and free will. He also offers up any number of informed speculations on the subject, some of which are worth the price of admission alone. (See his layman’s term explanation of the “Minkowski Cube”). And although I’m relatively clueless, when it comes to physics or quantum theory etc (I thought a particle accelerator was a frat boy who drank too much!), Sawyer does a truly commendable job of presenting plausible “science” to go with the “fiction”. I quite enjoyed this book, particularly the snippets of future news items and present day consequences of the Flash forward. This was a great vehicle for speculation on the future and Sawyer makes the most of it (the author even has some fun at the expense of Microsoft, and you’ve got to love that)