Daniel Darabos reviewed The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke
Review of 'The Light of Other Days' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
I am interested in the idea of a total erosion of privacy, and that is the central theme of this book. I think it does a fair job of covering this subject. But I found the book on the whole boring and weakly written.
Many subjects are covered without saying anything new. Self-driving cars, computers in our pockets, VR glasses, private space flight, climate change... I can open any tech journal and read the same stuff as in the novel. I guess it's an inherent difficulty with near-future stories but perhaps putting less focus on the unoriginal stuff would have been possible. [edit: I just realized it was published in 2001. Awesome predictions then!] A lot of pages are also devoted to reciting history, the lives of famous people, and evolution. I felt these pages also said very little that was interesting. A few twists were thrown in, but as …
I am interested in the idea of a total erosion of privacy, and that is the central theme of this book. I think it does a fair job of covering this subject. But I found the book on the whole boring and weakly written.
Many subjects are covered without saying anything new. Self-driving cars, computers in our pockets, VR glasses, private space flight, climate change... I can open any tech journal and read the same stuff as in the novel. I guess it's an inherent difficulty with near-future stories but perhaps putting less focus on the unoriginal stuff would have been possible. [edit: I just realized it was published in 2001. Awesome predictions then!] A lot of pages are also devoted to reciting history, the lives of famous people, and evolution. I felt these pages also said very little that was interesting. A few twists were thrown in, but as they had no impact on the story, it's hard to see what purpose they served.
My main gripe is how much the authors did not try to answer questions that would naturally arise in the reader. The situation is that a giant meteor is coming to kill earth and at the same time a wormhole technology is discovered. Throughout the book they open wormholes to Australia, people's brains, extrasolar planets, Jesus's birth, the Cambrian, etc. Never once do they discuss opening a wormhole to the giant meteor! They discuss the nature of spacetime, and can open wormholes to the past. Never once do they discuss opening a wormhole to the future! I feel like between the two authors there was no real ownership of the book and such holes remained unplugged.
And the physics. There is a nice amount of physical theory, with good explanations. But again I felt like glaring questions were left unanswered. I figure this is more subjective, as different people will have different questions regarding fictional physics. But still. First they invent the wormhole as a means of communication: sending gamma rays back and forth. Then they learn to enlarge them. And from that point on, the wholes are exclusively one-way. You can look through, but not interact in any way. Why not? It's to serve the story about privacy, I suppose, but please at least give a fictional explanation, or acknowledge in some way that the reader may be wondering about this. And how can you look without interacting? Wouldn't those photons that cause us to see something be going amiss on the other side? This is also not acknowledged at all.
The characters and story are okay for a sci-fi, but not something that would work in a stage play. Together with an interesting discussion on the erosion of privacy it makes for an okay book, even if I'm a bit let down by some other aspects.
