Someone's watching you ! (The Light of Other Days - Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Baxter)

Member Name: emmdee

Product:	The Light of Other Days - Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Baxter
Date:	09/10/01 (42 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great read

Disadvantages: Couldn't put it down

I picked this book up purely by chance, read the summary and decided I would give it ago. Having tried to read Arthur C Clarkes Titanic, I thought I was in for yet another heavy and deep sci-fi. But I was pleasantly surprised and enthralled by the plot, and his excellent writing style. The author manages to take complicated scientific theories, and turn tem into comprehensive explanations that fit in well with the flow of the book as a whole.

The story begins along way in the future, when a new technology is developed which enables light to be transmitted through worm holes at a sub-atomic level (the physics behind this is as interesting as the fiction, in theory this sort of thing could be possible).

This new technology has been developed by a media tycoon, who uses it for his own purpose. Effectively he has the power to see anything in the world from any angle. As the worm hole technology is developed it becomes apparent that it can be used to see into the past.

From the beginning the book looks at the lives of the people who are directly involved with the media tycoon and continues to expand as more and more people are effected. The technology is eventually made available to everyone on the planet through the Internet. This means that anyone can see anything that anyone has done throughout his or her entire lives, eradicating crime and privacy, religious myths etc.

The plot continues to expand throughout the book in very interesting ways. The vision of Arthur C Clarke is fantastic, and really gets your imagination going.

I would rate this book as one of my favorites of all time (get the pun!), and would certainly recommend it to anyone, sci-fi fan or not.

Summary: