Skip to main content

Split Second (SF) - Douglas Richards ****

I had really mixed feelings about this sci-fi techno thriller by Douglas Richards (or, to give him his full name according to the cover NY TIMES BESTSELLER Douglas E. Richards). The SF premise is very clever and caught my attention in an instant - far better than the slew of fluffy time travel books that are currently filling the shelves. What if you could travel back in time - but only for a fraction of a second?

When I started to read and found myself in a sub-Dan Brown action thriller with no real mention of time travel, I was confused. The action is dramatic, certainly, and the central character, biologist (and fiancé of a genius physicist) Jenna Morrison is put into a situation where her entire world is turned upside down, but she can't go to the authorities. But not a lot of time travel (though we guess this is what the physicist's new discovery involves).

Eventually, though, after some distinctly implausible action when Jenna joins up with super soldier turned PI Aaron Blake, the time travel bit kicks in. Like all time travel fiction we need to allow one McGuffin*, but given that, Richards gives us a plausible argument as to how such a short time jump can occur and how it could have sufficient impact to totally change the world: this results in two separate groups of people, neither likeable but one at least more moral than the other, trying to track down the theory behind the tech.

Richards' clear interest in physics means that we get far more correct science than Dan Brown manages in his impressively bad 'facts' (which almost always prove to be wrong). In fact, if anything he's too interested as we get several lectures from various characters that probably provide too much information for anyone who just wants to get on with the action, plus an appendix with more scientific background. I can hardly complain, though, about a science fiction piling on the science.

For me, the action is a little too implausible, and the writing isn't perhaps of the highest level - the four stars are for the ideas rather than the writing - but let's face it, many of the greats of science fiction's golden age were pulp writers. This is good pulp, with a meaty helping of science and a truly innovative look at time travel - so with those provisos I have to recommend it.

* I'm slightly surprised that the genius physicists in the book haven't spotted that the McGuffin** could also make a warp drive possible.

** I do love that autocorrect keeps trying to turn McGuffin into McMuffin. I realise the more common spelling is MacGuffin, but because of this tendency (and because it feels more accurate), I prefer the shorter version.

Although not out on paper until later, already available on Kindle which is where I read it.

Hardback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here.  We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader.  We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard.  This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Einstein's Fridge - Paul Sen ****

In Einstein's Fridge (interesting factoid: this is at least the third popular science book to be named after Einstein's not particularly exciting refrigerator), Paul Sen has taken on a scary challenge. As Jim Al-Khalili made clear in his excellent The World According to Physics , our physical understanding of reality rests on three pillars: relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. But there is no doubt that the third of these, the topic of Sen's book, is a hard sell. While it's true that these are the three pillars of physics, from the point of view of making interesting popular science, the first two might be considered pillars of gold and platinum, while the third is a pillar of salt. Relativity and quantum theory are very much of the twentieth century. They are exciting and sometimes downright weird and wonderful. Thermodynamics, by contrast, has a very Victorian feel and, well, is uninspiring. Luckily, though, thermodynamics is important enough, lying behind ...
Post a Comment
Read more