Skip to main content

TimeOne (SF) – Colin Gillespie **(*)

I have always said that there is a real opportunity if anyone can write fiction that manages to entertain but also to educate about science at the same time. It is certainly possible, but fiercely difficult to do well. As we saw with something like Pythagoras’ Revenge, the result almost inevitably is either bad fiction with a slew of science or readable fiction where the science really doesn’t come across well. So I was excited when I saw the publicity for Colin Gillespie’s TimeOne, intriguingly subtitled ‘discover how the universe began.’
The idea of this work of fiction with a strong science content is to explore the nature of the big bang using the unusual concept of having a detective examine the ‘clues’ to see if they can work out how it all began. I’ve given it an extra bracketed star for ingenuity and effort, but I have to say that the outcome did not give me any joy.
There is plenty of reasonable science in here (along with an awful lot of philosophy and waffle), but the problem is that as a story it is nothing short of awful. There are three main characters, the employer, a mysterious woman who keeps popping into the office then flying off to mysterious destinations, the narrator, who is employed as a researcher to dig up the facts and history of the science, and an ex-cop detective who seems mostly there as a foil for the researcher. Three hours into reading all that had happened was that the employer came and went, the researcher VERY gradually dug out bits of information about relativity, quantum theory and the like, and the detective slobbed about. There was no story, no suspense, no real characters, no development, no plot.
Add to this an incredibly slow laying out of the facts, with a huge slab of philosophising and I really could not keep reading. It was extremely hard work with no real reward. I did try skipping forward to see how it would all turn out, but I couldn’t find any deviation from this formula (nor any great revelation about the big bang).
As I said at the start, I admire the intent and the work that has gone into this – I just don’t think that anyone is going to learn much science, or have any enjoyment from it as fiction.

Hardback:  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who Invented the Computer? – Ian Watson

Ian Watson is the author of  The Universal Machine  and featured in a recent  Four Way Interview . Saturday June 23 2012 was the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, the troubled genius who invented the modern computer. Why though do so few people recognize his name and his great achievements? In 1936 English mathematician Alan Turing, published a paper,  On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem . This became the foundation of computing. In it Turing presented a theoretical machine that could solve any problem that could be described by instructions encoded on a paper tape. A Turing Machine could calculate square roots, whilst another might solve Sudoku puzzles. Turing demonstrated you could construct a single  Universal Machine  that could simulate any Turing Machine. One machine solving any problem for which a program could be written – sound familiar? He’d invented the computer. Then,  computers  were peop...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Star Book – Peter Grego ****

This attractive landscape format book combines an excellent introduction to the stars and basic astronomy with a set of star maps, plus in depth looks at some of the stars featured, with a  bonus section on the solar system. Amazon says it’s a hardback, but in fact it’s a paperback with a rather ingenious cover – you can’t tell from the photo, but the words ‘The Star Book’ are punched through as a series of holes that show the white paper of the next page beneath. Like many astronomy/space books, the cover lacks shelf appeal because it is mostly black, but at least there is some original thought here. Unlike many books in this format which tend to concentrate on the pictures, there is a good deal of excellent text by Peter Grego, so there was no feeling that you were only getting the star maps and star ‘biographies’, something these days much more suited to an iPad or smartphone app. Instead, the opening 30 or so pages give a very good introduction that would be valuable to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ignorance: How it drives science – Stuart Firestein *****

This is a delightful little book that really gets you thinking. I stress the ‘little’ part not as a negative, but as a good thing. There is nothing worse than fat, bloated popular science books where the author feels they have to get 120,000 words to be taken seriously. This is the sort of book that can be read in a couple of hours – but you will get so much more out of it than one of those tedious doorstops. The premise underlying the book is in once sense extremely simple, yet is fundamental to an understanding of what science is and what scientists do. And it is an understanding that is totally at odds with the typical way science is portrayed both in university lectures and popular science books. As Stuart Firestein points out, what is important is not the facts, but rather the area of ignorance. The interesting part and the fundamental heart of science is not about what we know, but about what we don’t know and where we want to look next. Take this lovely quote: ‘Working ...
Post a Comment
Read more