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    The Light of Other Days
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    The Light of Other Days
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    The Light of Other Days
    Ebook427 pages7 hours

    The Light of Other Days

    By Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    In the most exciting SF collaboration ever, Arthur C. Clarke and his acknowledged heir Stephen Baxter pool talent and unprecedented cosmic insights as well as page-turning plotting skills and breathlessly good writing to produce the most awesome novel of the future since 2001: A Space Odyssey.

    ’Space is what keeps everything from being in the same place. Right?’ With these words Hiram Patterson, head of the giant media corporation OurWorld, launches the greatest communications revolution in history. With OurWorld’s development of wormhole technology, any point in space can be connected to any other, faster than the speed of light. Realtime television coverage is here: earthquakes and wars, murders and disasters can be watched, exactly as they occur, anywhere on the planet.

    Then WormCams are made to work across time as well as space. Humanity encounters itself in the light of other days. We witness the life of Jesus, go to the premiere of Hamlet, solve the enigmas that have baffled generations. Blood spilled centuries ago flows vividly once more – and no personal treachery or shame can be concealed.

    But when the world and everything in it becomes as transparent as glass and there are no more secrets, people find new ways to gain vengeance and commit crime. And Hiram Patterson meanwhile will try to keep his deadly schemes secret – but even he, its creator, cannot anticipate the power of the all-seeing WormCam.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateJul 8, 2010
    ISBN9780007379514
    Author

    Arthur C. Clarke

    Born in Somerset in 1917, Arthur C. Clarke has written over sixty books, among which are the science fiction classics ‘2001, A Space Odyssey’, ‘Childhood’s End’, ‘The City and the Stars’ and ‘Rendezvous With Rama’. He has won all the most prestigious science fiction trophies, and shared an Oscar nomination with Stanley Kubrick for the screenplay of the film of 2001. He was knighted in 1998. He passed away in March 2008.

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    Reviews for The Light of Other Days

    4/5

    7 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 2/5
      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, 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.
    • 4/5
      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 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?
    • 4/5
      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 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.