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Timescape

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About this listen

 In a future wracked by environmental catastrophe and social instability, physicist John Renfrew devises a longshot plan to use tachyons - strange, time-traveling particles - to send a warning to the past. In 1962, Gordon Bernstein, a California researcher, gets Renfrew's message as a strange pattern of interference in an experiment he's conducting. As the two men struggle to overcome both the limitations of scientific knowledge and the politics of scientific research, a larger question looms: can a new future arise from the paradox of a forewarned past?

Winner of both the Nebula Award and the John W. Campbell Award for best science-fiction novel, Timescape is an enduring classic that examines the ways that science interacts with everyday life to create the many strange worlds in which we live.

©1980 Gregory Benford and Hilary Benford (P)2001 Recorded Books Science Fiction Fiction Mathematics

Critic reviews

  • Nebula Award, Best Novel, 1980
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I first read this novel when I picked it up at Toronto airport, probably back in 1980ish. It was one of those that I was so engrossed in, every waking minute was dedicated to reading it. I have read many of Gregory Benford's novels and can say I've very much enjoyed them all, but this one has always stuck in my mind.
I very much enjoyed this audiobook. I found the actors very engaging and brought the story back to life for me. I see a number of other reviews very different to this, it is interesting the breadth of opinions on the same material.
My genre of greatest interest is Time Travel and I have read many, many dozens of stories. I found this novel a really interesting take on the usual ideas, with no actual physical travel and using science which, perhaps at the time of writing at least, was very plausible.
I think it is very much worth a listen if you are thinking about it. It won a number of science fiction writing awards in its time and rightly so. I am very glad to have found this and been able to revisit the story again.

For me, this is a classic

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“Causal” often read as “casual” damaging the authority of the narrator and so reducing the listener’s immersion in the story.

Good with one flaw.

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Dated. I went d to like it. It has great ideas but the melodrama padding really slows the pacing down.

Dated

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As other reviews have said, a number of words were pronounced wrong. These were names and scientific words that the narrator was probably unfamiliar with, but it’s unfortunate they didn’t check. It was quite frequent, but not enough to completely disrupt the story.

Good story, annoying mispronunciations

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Hard science style with character development and original story balanced with some drama - good to finish

Hard science style with character development

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