Book Review: The Light of Other Days by Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter

The Light of Other Days is an expansive novel literally spanning all of earth's history and beyond. It is also a close up of several characters that involve the reader from the first encounter.

Hiram Patterson is a greedy mogul who will do anything to stay ahead of his competition. His son Bobby is an enigma, brilliant and apathetic, personable and distant. Kate Manzoni is an unrelenting reporter who is driven by her vision of "right." These and others populate an Earth that has given up on survival, resigned the future to certain destruction.

The setting is the last half of the 21st century. Technology has progressed fairly predictably but humanity is dispirited. Advancing oceans have taken low lying areas. Plague has curtailed population growth. And a humongous asteroid has Earth in its sights. The people of Earth are resigned and lethargic, more interested in virtual realities than in the future. Still, it can be a bright and shiny world for the well-off.

Hiram Patterson has built himself an industrial empire exploiting new technologies to entertain a jaded population. Now, he has captured wormhole technology to provide instant communication around the planet, making communication satellites obsolete. The riches and fame this brings aren't enough. He drives his people, his own family, mercilessly to discover and develop more applications for his wormholes. His son, Bobby, is fascinated with immersive virtuality, pushing for more effective submersion. The two have a rather distant relationship despite living and working together. There's much more to the relationship than Bobby knows or Hiram will admit.

Kate Manzoni enjoys a minor celebrity as an investigative reporter when she steps into the Pattersons' world. Despite his aloofness, Bobby and Kate find themselves spending time together and untangling the wicked skeins Hiram has woven. As Hiram's obsession grows they discover his secrets, hidden families, unthinkable plans.

Despite well-developed and compelling characters, this story is about one potential found in quantum physics. Clarke and Baxter delve into the possibilities of fishing wormholes from the quantum foam, an ether-like existence at the unimaginably small scale. While this is all theory now, the authors explore the possible uses of wormholes on the microscale from broadcasting a virtual concert to answering mysteries from the past. As in many of Clarke's other works, these possibilities entail enormous changes in society.

The Light of Other Days is definitely worth reading for fans of Clarke's and anyone who enjoys good science fiction. I found myself daydreaming about the possibilities and how I would react to them.