Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer's award-winning science fiction has garnered both popular and critical acclaim. The New York Times Book Review called Frameshift "filled to bursting with ideas, characters and incidents". His novels are fixtures on the Hugo and Nebula ballots. Sawyer now brings us Flashforward, the story of a world-shattering discovery. In pursuit of an elusive nuclear particle, an experiment goes incredibly awry, and, for a few moments, the consciousness of the entire human race is thrown ahead by about twenty years. As the implications truly hit home, the pressure to repeat the experiment builds. Everyone wants a glimpse of their future, a chance to flashforward and see their successes ... or learn how to avoid their failures. Winner of the Aurora Award and the basis for the hit ABC television series

This author writes the kind of books I want to read, like Calculating God, but without any literary quality. It feels like a stereotypical scientist, one who seats in a lab all day and has no knowledge of human interactions, decided to learn what that is like from a 50 page book he picked up in a Walmart, and he kind of understood.

The result is a very “square” prose, with lots of telling/not showing. Everything feels very artificial. “... and she lost her child. It felt bad, and she cried, because that's what humans do when they are sad.”

The premise of the book is that an amazingly interesting phenomenon hapended, where the humanity's mind collectively jumped 20 or so years ahead in the future, and then went back after a few minutes.

34% into the book and NOTHING interesting to show for. He tries to describes the humane aspect of the event, how it affected peoples lives. I wanted a mystery and/or a thriller, maybe some time travel fantasy mixed in. There is none. Just a plain day-by-day description of the lives of some of the people affected by the event. Who to blame, a guy who finds out he is going to be murdered, and tries to prevent it, people getting divorced, life insurances bankrupting, etc.

A good first act, but you get the sense that this was a short story or novella that was dragged out a bit. I didn't really care about the murder plot.

Also, the interesting bit with Cheung–I could swear it was an homage to Baxter and Clarke's The Light of Other Days, but Sawyer's novel actually came out a year before that.

I guess ABC didn't need Sawyer to sign off on the television show this book was based on. They're about as similar as a turtle and a banana.

The book was good, if uneven. Incredible premise though.

This book has two things going for it. A great premise and CERn (the protagonist was on D0 + 1 star).

Unfortunately the writing is poor. Far too much time is spent exploring the philosophy and cod physics of the flash forward and not enough exploring the characters and the impact on their lives. As for the ending. Bleachh.