- Mass Market Paperback: 319 pages
- Publisher: Tor Books; 1st Mass Market Ed edition (Oct 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0812580346
- ISBN-13: 978-0812580341
- Product Dimensions: 17.4 x 10.6 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 329,511 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
FlashForward
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"This first-rate, philosophical journey, a terrific example of idea-driven SF, should have wide appeal."--"Publishers Weekly" (starred review)
"Sawyer is a writer of boundless confidence and bold scientific extrapolation."--"The New York Times Book Review"
"Sawyer is a writer of boundless confidence and bold scientific extrapolation."--"The New York Times Book Review"
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A book of two halves,
This review is from: FlashForward (Paperback)
Robert Sawyer always finds great stories to write about. His ideas always draw me in and I think I'm in for a fantastic tale. Then I reach the end and I feel like it could have been more.
Flashforward had a great pull - See your own life 20 years into the future for 2 minutes and try to work out how to get there. It was a brilliant start and a real page turner. I loved reading about everyone's flashforward, I was rivited by all the connotations that flashforward threw up. Even the loss and devestation caused by the flashforward made for interesting reading...The first half is about the here and now. It's great. When we reach the second half, it's all about edging towards the 20 year future that had been predicted. Getting there takes a lot of technical info that frankly I could have done without. The why's and how's don't really interest me. Also the two leads at this stage become a bit whiney. Lloyd simcoe wants to be with his girl, then he's got doubts, then he's sure again, then he has doubts again....and Theo is so wrapped up in himself that he gets tedious really fast. It's all me, me, me with Theo. THEN we get to the future and it's all wraped up in a paragrah or 3. It was a bit of a let down. The ending left me with a bit of a 'whaaat??' moment and I imagine for the hard-core sci-fi fans it was the best bit, but I just wasn't feeling it. The conclusion was over in a flash. .....And it's nothing like the tv show...... just sayin'
30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Characters always come alive for Robert Sawyer.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Flashforward (Hardcover)
This book is not just about the human consciousness leaping 21 years into the future. It's about the people to whom this happened. How do people who have been given a taste of their own future react to that knowledge? Humanity just had the "Fruit of Knowledge" thrust down its throat. Can we be the same after we gain that knowledge? Did that knowledge come at too high a price? Does freewill exist or is it just an illusion humanity concocted? Is the future immutable or can we make our own future? Sawyer deals with not only complex ideas, like these, but also complex emotions. He breathes life into his characters, then lets them take flight. Once I picked this book up, I could not put it down.
31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The excellent source material for the tv series,
By
This review is from: FlashForward (Paperback)
This inevitable release to tie in with the new tv series is sure to have people rushing to read it in the hope of finding answers to the numerous conundrums and Lost-style red herrings that have already been provided. So a word of caution: this book was written ten years ago and the series is only based on the book's central idea. There are already massive changes of direction and focus from the book, and it's likely the direction may go further apart, especially if the series runs for a while. That's not a bad thing though as the central idea is one of Sawyer's best and can be explored in many ways.
What would you do if you knew what the future had in store for you? This is the intriguing question that some scientific technobabble involving quantum mechanics throws up. Free will versus apparent predestination is a fascinating concept. The predicament of the characters, some of whom learn how they'll die and when, and some of whom learn how their lives will turn out for better or worse, is an idea that grabs the attention. Some people give up and accept the inevitable, some people just give up and kill themselves, some people try to change the future, and some people even try to ensure the future they saw does happen. These attitudes build up a picture of the various views of fate we probably all have and as such it represents the very best that science fiction can provide. Sf always works best when it takes a single idea and asks how the world will change because of it. What I found less successful was the science aspects. I've enjoyed a few Sawyer novels and for me they usually get bogged down with trying too hard to make the science believable, when it rarely is. Sawyer's writing style is also prone to being pedestrian, but on the other hand it's well within the norm for the modern bestseller style. Some minor reservations aside, this is a fascinating novel of ideas and how we might react to knowing our fates. Whether or not the tv series takes the same direction, both are well worth exploring.
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