Discussion: Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer (spoilers)
 

What was your vision?

BOb

Looks like I might be the first, as the only other one up at 6 AM on Saturday, hehehe.

I really liked this book. I was pretty sad when they killed off Michiko's daughter and Theo's brother. I'm not a reader of romance stuff, but I was kind of hoping Michiko & Lloyd would end up together anyway.

The thing I liked most about this book was that it really got my imagination going. What would I see? (as Bob mentioned) Would it happen anyway, or would I avoid it?

I thought it was an ok read. There were some interesting concepts; but I didn't find the characters particularly engaging, and there were some plot points that I couldn't resolve (maybe I missed some things).
One was why only humans were affected, and not other species. There were a few mystical references to 'human consciousness', but I wasn't convinced.
Another issue I had was the 'failure' of various machines to record what happened during the 'flashforward' event. As I understood it, this was because recording devices captured the superposition of all possible outcomes - and the results appeared to be noise. If this was the case, then you could stick a video recorder in a Schrodinger's Cat-type experiment and see if it recorded all outcomes - proving Schrodinger right (or not as the case may be); but you can't actually do that.
Overall, 6/10.

You're a tough customer, Sparrow! I noticed some of these things, thought about them for a second, then said: "Oh well." and continued on. I guess I'd give it about an 8.

I enjoyed this book. But, the end left me feeling incomplete. So the whole body withered away, except the head/brain? What kind of life would that be?

Maybe I am being a tad harsh :) - but I do feel good SF has to make sense, and hang together, in the same way a good whodunnit does.

Hey, ya snuck this in on me! I wasn't expecting it til tomorrow. :)
I'm gonna have to think about it a bit...

I'll start by saying that this guy was successful in bringing to life a story idea that I've wanted to write/express for a long time. The concept of altering/affecting all of reality by a scientific experiment.

I'm with you there on the consciousness thing vs the machines, but I think that was the ol' "If a tree falls in the forest" thing. I didn't totally buy it either.

I also didn't feel there was a clear enough "explanation" of why it happened in the first place vs the second place. Yeah, Yeah, I know the distant star collapse etc. but still I didn't fully buy in to that.

There was one typo that really threw me at one point "glock" was typoed to be "dock" I think....being a Glock owner :) I noticed.

I also didn't buy in to the back and forth and all that in the tunnel at the end -- I felt it was very contrived.

I see dead people.

:rofl:

All in all it was a fun read. I enjoyed the characters, the setting, the science and the whole idea. It's okay to "kill off" some of the characters, makes the book a bit more realistic, not too "pie in the skie".

But what I really didn't like was the esoteric ending. In fact, once we reach the year 2030 the whole story just somehow fades away. It's being told a lot faster and with a lot less detail than the "now" part - one could think, the author just wanted to wrap things up. The action scene is pretty much the only thing that keeps the story going, the rest is just ... "now where to I put 'the end'?".

I give it a 7, mainly for the first 2/3rds of the book as well as the original idea.

Another problem I have is: I forget things quite quickly. I can remember dialogue and repeat it word for word at times, then sometimes I go into the kitchen to fetch something and once I get there I forgot what it was.
So I can't actually say, what I thought of the writing style. But I remember feeling something - could it be that it was "bumpy" from time to time?

Of course, if you put a camera in the box then you are observing the cat, hence voiding the experiment.

BOb

So, I liked this book. It started out well.

Some of the best parts were the reactions to the visions. For example, China's ruling party was happy because their visions showed them still in power. Québec separatists gave up. Etc.

I did think the description of the book store was interesting. (Was that in this book?) Where basically it was a place to browse ebooks and then they were printed on demand. I think the book was set in 2009 but written in 1999. I think he over estimated the level of tech that would be around in 2009.

I thought the story was strong, part 2 was the best. Part 3 I thing was an anti-climax. It didn't really work for me. Although the idea that we would dismantle the earth and moon to build a Dyson sphere was interesting, the rest was a bit far fetched. At least to me.

BOb

Personally, I think the cat is an observer anyway - so I don't see how Schrodinger's Cat experiment could actually work with a conscious feline in the box.

But a Schrodinger's Cat-type experiment, with a video recorder (rather than real-time transmitter) would replicate the scenario in the novel - with recording devices displaying 'noise' for the duration of the event.
If that's what happens for the event, then it would also happen for the Schrodinger experiment - only it wouldn't.

Yes, I agree completely with this. Up until about halfway I was thinking this was one of the better books I've read, but it really fell apart after that, it felt like a ton of "filler" just to stretch it to novel length.

I definitely didn't feel the ending lived up to the beginning.

I really like the ideas, but found the characters to be so-so.


More later..

Concept was really interesting but I agree with the other comments that (i) the characters could have been more engagingly developed, and (ii) the ending totally threw me off and didn't feel true to the rest of the story. Without the very end I would have given much higher marks but the end seemed a bit like a sellout dream sequence. My absolute favourite part was when Lloyd mailed the souvenir to the naysayer.

I have the series pvr'd but haven't started it yet. The concept is slightly different so it will be interesting to see how it works differently.

Mel

Mel

I'm with you there. It might have been better just to end the book when the second Flashforward occurred and leave it to our imaginations.



It is interesting that he predicted the name on the Pope correctly. Benedict XVI became Pope in '05, but this book came out in 1999.

I tried watching the episode from last week and after about 10 mins deleted it. Watched even less of this weeks. :eek:

Maybe it's an updated version?

You guys reminded me about how I felt about the end. Everything was going well until he decided he had to show us the future thousands of years from now. I don't mind that he did it. Just that the rest of the book was going at a good pace, then all of a sudden he went through thousands of years in 20 pages.

Great idea - but the execution were lacking. I'll give it 3 out of 5, and the third point mainly for idea and effort. I'm glad I took some notes, because I read it three weeks ago and don't remember much now.

The prose was lacklustre, I found the characters rather flat and unconvincing, especially their relationships. They were more vehicles for ideas than fully realized persons.

I was fine with the scientific explanations, but in general he was 'over-explaining' and giving too many fact at some points, and it broke the flow.

I had to look up when it was first written, as it struck me in the description of right after the first flashforward, that they hardly used the Internet as a news channel, but relied on official sources on TV.

It was very western-world oriented. This is supposed to be a world-wide event, but it stayed fairly firmly in a "western world" of Western Europe, USA and Japan, and it didn't really convince me. The few times countries/continents outside were mentioned, it was a bit like an afterthought.

I didn't remember the ending until you started talking about it here. It was odd, and I'm not sure what the point was, but I had also mostly lost interest by then.

All this said, it could have been worse :) It's a neat idea, but I think the short story format would have fitted better.

I liked the idea, and the author seemed reasonably well-grounded in the scientific explanations. The visions were generally interesting - but perhaps a tad optimistic with regards to technology. However, it's difficult to augur, especially about the future ;) The reactions to the event were well-described - espcially the scene at CERN right after the flashforward, where no-one really knows what has happened.

For such a good idea, it was a bit lite in it's execution.

My 2 eurocents
 

Of all the topoi in SF, time travel is one of the most used (and abused). From the eponymous Time Machine to a modified DeLorean DMC-12, to a quantum foam which makes me roam between universes, we have seen a wide spectrum of means of transportation along the time axis.
In this novel, Sawyer provides us with someting new: the consciousness did travel, while the body stayed home. Good idea, indeed.
Generally speaking, the theme of time travel, even in this particular form, always brings questions, to which the writer is supposed to give answers. Is the future fixed/predetermined? Do we really have free will? Can the past be changed? And, of course there is always place for paradoxes: if a future discovery is patented now, who's the creator? Where the idea come from?
Of course none of these is a must have element in a time-travel story, but IMHO these questions have to be dealt with in a way or another - even if the focus of the story is not in the time travel itself, and it's rather in the action of escaping from a T-800 Terminator; otherwise it always give the feel of a lack of solid grounds.
RJ Sawyer covers the topic in the dialogs between scientists, where he gives the reader a couple of good cues ("if I was aware of the Flash Forward in the future, I'd been reading stock market outcomes"...). The answers are given vehemently, brought by death: Dim's suicide in praise of free will; LLoyd's choice of mortality (another topos itself, fallen from german skies...); the guy trying to destroy the LHC while attempting to create a Pauli principle for consciousness effect...
The one way travel in the future albeit temporary, exempt the author from dealing with most paradoxes: you see just one of the possible future, and in that future you don't have knowledge of present leap - meaning, of course, that it can't be your actual future...
The world-wide time travel, another good idea itself, brings up a lot of new themes, ranging from social issues to religions, and here is where the novel lacks, giving the impression that the author does not dare to delve into such sensible subjects, and he just skims over them giving the reader the bare minimum (and possibily something less).
About the two-dimensionality of the characters, I just quote what have been told here, and, like others, I'm also a bit disappointed by the ending.
I can't evaluate the style of writing on an informed basis: I'm not skilled enough in English. But I did read the book easily, and I resorted to the dictionary only a couple of times, having a seamless reading experience, which I enjoyed.

Bottom line: some very good ideas, with a weak story to carry them on.

Liar!
:)
Thanks for your post, very enlightening!

I did enjoy this book but I am a big fan of Stephen Baxter and it just didn't grab me like his books do. I find the science and characters written by Baxter much more convincing.

So I agree with most of you, good idea but could have been done better.

This is the second RJS book I've read, and found both to be pretty frustrating (the first was 'The Terminal Experiment') - as others have noted, great ideas, poor execution.

At least this one didn't completely abandon its premise in mid-stream like the other book did.

Did the 'explanation' of the Flash Forward make sense to you? Because it didn't to me. So what if neutrinos strike during a LHC experiment? How would that make everyone on Earth hallucinate? Seems to me that a *neurological* explanation would have made more sense. Indeed, our 'hero' (who was more than a bit of a jackass) made an awful lot of illogical leaps, which annoyed me no end.

Can't say that Sawyer has won me over as a reader (although I've had converse with him online and he's a nice enough guy). He has good ideas, but he needs to spend more time on character development.

Did this book really need a chase scene?

What got me was that they were all "oh, hey, I wonder if this is going to be the future in 20 years time" and everyone was stressing about what they saw.

OF COURSE IT WASN'T. They weren't all staring at a piece of paper with important information about the occurrences of the past 20 years written on it, were they? Like "buy stock in ebook readers, because they're sure to take off"? (Or not, y'know.)

It was a POSSIBLE future, and it grated me no end that they were harping on how it was a definite future until Theo's brother suicided, thereby proving it wasn't. Billions of people going about their ordinary lives clearly wasn't enough!

The end bit with Lloyd's spanning of the ages was very strange. Part 3 overall was something of a let-down; possibly this would have been a lot stronger work as a novella, ending about where they found out for certain that it was only a probable future -- or even when they discovered it wasn't only the Hadron Collider, but the particle flare.

I had decided to read this as the series was starting on TV. I held off for a while so as not to spoil the series. I need not have bothered. The idea is really good but the story telling and the characters slow and boring. The TV writers have made a far better job of engaging the viewer. It was interesting to see some of the Authors ideas that have been used almost exactly in the series but I found myself almost scanning the last quarter of the book as the story wandered off into, well I am still not sure where it wandered off to actually.
I can see why the TV writers picked the story up and the series is very good but this book is very disappointing struggles to stand on it's own merit. Were it not for the series, I might not have finished it and that is very rare.

I agree 100% the explanation was dreamed up to fit the plot and lot of smoke and mirrors but it still didn't ring true to me -- particularly the part about it only effecting "conscious beings." And the chase scene was just silly I had totally given up on it at that point, but forged ahead.

Well, I thought this week's was the best yet. A big turning point in Mark and Olivia's relationship and a couple of bombshells.

It's on Hulu, but if you're skipping episodes you're going to be really confused.

I've got two episodes in my Hulu queue to watch. Apparently I already TiVo two other shows in the same time slot that I rate higher.

BOb

I'm surprised. There are threads talking about squirrels, avatars and other crap that span pages and pages and pages and ... and here, where it counts, the replies trickle in, and half of them are not even on topic (this is about the b.o.o.k., not the t.v. ;) )

Maybe I just expected more from a "book club" in a forum with the most literary people I (virtually) know.

:) Perhaps it's just the nature of this book - there isn't quite enough to discuss. As for myself, I read it early and quickly forgot most of it.

Edit: a set of 'book club questions' might have helped the discussion along.

Someone here posted a list of questions somewhere. I was going to use them... but neglected to. Perhaps I can dig them up and add them to this thread.

BOb

Well, it wasn't a very good book. I think it only got chosen because of the TV show.

Maybe next month will be better.

Well, taking up question number 2: "If you were in the same situation as Lloyd and Michiko, knowing that twenty-one years down the road you would no longer be together, would you go ahead with the planned wedding? If you were in the same situation as Theo's brother, Dim, and discovered that your dreams were never going to come true, what would you do?"

What I would do is not jump to conclusions. I'd probably assume that I was with another spouse because my first one had died after a long and happy marriage, and in Dim's case I would assume that I was working in a restaurant because I was doing research for my next best-selling novel.

But I'm an optimist.

But that's what got me about this book: All the characters make these huge illogical conclusions from a *2 minute* glimpse *21* years from now. I wouldn't care *what* I saw, if I knew I was still going to be alive 21 years from now I'd whoop and holler with joy.

But that's just me.

Yes but would you become reckless with your known invunerability? :D

Um, I'm kinda reckless now.

You only live once, better make the best of it.

Weeell - this was not how I experienced it. IMO all these reactions was the strong point of the plot.

Like many others here, I got excited about the first part of this book. The plot/idea was great, and I especially liked how it got ME thinking about different aspects of the "glimps" into possible futures.

The book introduced some very interesting new perspectives:
First - the collective/communal perspective: So many, and wide ranging, effects on the society as a whole that I didn't think of myself.
Second - the individual perspective: As is questioned above - what would MY reaction have been...?

Unfortunately I agree with all you guys who found that the book lacked so much regarding the characters and plot development. So, over all, I found it thought provoking, but still a disappointment...