FlashForward by Robert J. Sawyer

A few weeks ago DVDs of the TV series FlashForward started appearing at our home courtesy of Netflix. The Dulcinea had taken it upon herself to watch it. I was mildly intrigued and watched most of the first episode and followed this up by viewing bits and pieces of a few others. At some point I noticed that the show was based upon a novel of the same name. I grew disenchanted with the TV version rather quickly but decided to investigate the novel.

Written by Robert J. Sawyer and published in 1999, the book tells how an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider causes humanity to black out for a couple minutes. The time is 2009 and Lloyd Simcoe is the lead physicist on the project but is ably helped by his fellow researcher Theo Procopides. Simcoe's fiancee Michiko is also on the team. As soon as the switch is thrown for the experiment to begin, everyone at CERN blacks out. Indeed, upon waking they learn that everyone on Earth had done so. For two minutes no recording devices worked and most of humanity had visions. Eventually it is determined that these visions were all of the same time – some 21 years in the future on an October day. Some people saw themselves in the future. For example, Lloyd sees an older version of himself married to a woman who was not Michiko. On the other hand, Theo saw nothing. Just blackness.

He becomes determined to figure out why he didn't have a vision. It is soon discovered that others saw newspaper headlines which carry stories saying that Theo was murdered. The young scientist then goes on a quest to find out the identity of his would-be murderer.

After humanity recovers from the disasters caused by the blackouts, people begin to contemplate whether their visions are fate or merely one potential version of the future. Is everything predestined or do we have freewill? The book delves into the inner lives of the main characters as they struggle with this issue. Lloyd becomes reluctant to marry Michiko which further compounds the immense sadness and problems introduced by the fact that Michiko's daughter by her first husband, Tamiko, was killed by a car which ran out of control when the driver blacked out. In addition to struggling with his own fate, Theo discovers on a trip home that his brother had a less than satisfactory vision of his own and he blames Theo.

When not dealing with their visions, the scientists at CERN apply their intellects at understanding what happened. Did the CERN experiment really cause it or was there another explanation? Eventually it is found that the last gasp of a distant supernova – a burst of neutrinos – passed through the Earth at the time of the experiment and that this caused people's consciousnesses to leap forward in time. While the personal lives of the characters discussed freewill, the scientific end delved into quantum theory. It is proposed that, with humanity unable to be an observer, all of reality became like Schrödinger's cat. Upon waking, the waveform collapsed and reality essentially picked up where it left off.

While FlashForward is what I would consider to be hard sci-fi, I don't think the quantum theorizing will completely befuddle most folks so don't let the spooky action scare you.

For the most part, I enjoyed the book. It had a very interesting premise and I enjoy the procedural aspects of sci-fi such as this. Someone comes up with a hypothesis and it gets batted around until more evidence comes along and you get another hypothesis, etc. Here, this approach allows heavy doses of freewill vs. fate and quantum physics to be injected into the story. But I was very surprised by the characters here.

With most of the sci-fi I enjoy, it's the setting. You've got an enigma or some emergency that provides the impetus for the story and the characters are, if not relegated to the background, then aren't exactly well-rounded believable ones. I mean, no one cares about the people in Rendezvous With Rama, they care about what's inside Rama and what its presence in our solar system means. The characters are disposable in some way or are cardboard cutouts. Often times their inner lives are awkward or irrelevant and a perfunctory love interest is thrown in. Not so much here.

I found Lloyd to be an interesting and rather three dimensional character. His struggles with his relationship with Michiko didn't feel forced or thrown in for the sake of simply having a love interest. They felt genuine. And so did his feeling towards his Tamiko. While he certainly registered the loss, the child's death didn't define him in the same way it did Michiko. Lloyd felt sadness but was arguably more concerned about the blackout and whether or not he's marriage material given his vision. These concerns lend a solipsistic lilt to the character which I appreciated instead of Lloyd being the perfect hero who is only concerned with others.

On the down side, I thought that Michiko did relatively little grieving. Furthermore, I just didn't buy it that she and Lloyd could traverse the aftermath of the blackout so easily to Tamiko's school. Indeed, humanity's recovery seemed artificially accelerated. Theo was also an interesting character but I think he got the short shrift here. His predicament of knowing the day of his death is fascinating enough but his search for answers falls short. I wish there had been more dead ends to bring out more in the character instead of simply elaborating only upon the significant finds. This telegraphed certain things which I found annoying.

Sawyer, as I learned at MadCon a couple weeks ago, is one of those sci-fi authors who loves to employ the infodump but here it works. He's got an interesting enough premise with good characters and that helps the reader plow through the infodumps without losing stride.

Overall FlashForward was a great read and will no doubt appeal to Michael Crichton fans. A bit like The Andromeda Strain but with more interesting character who actually get fleshed out.