Flashforward

Robert J Sawyer
Completed 4/21/2025, Reviewed 4/21/2025
4 stars

I haven’t read any Sawyer in a few years, but I’ve read three of his books previously.  I enjoyed all three, Hominids, Calculating God, and The Terminal Experiment, giving them three or four stars, so my hopes were high for this book as well.  I wasn’t disappointed.  This 2000 Aurora Award winner (the Canadian SF book award) was a fast-paced, very readable contemplation on the effects of knowing the future and what we do with it.  It was couched in a hard science fiction story concerning an experiment at CERN gone wrong.  I enjoyed this book so much, I read it in one night.  Well technically, I read the last 30 pages early the next morning because I couldn’t keep my eyes open at 1:30 a.m.

The book follows three physics researchers:  Lloyd, Michiko, and Theo.  When their experiment goes awry, everyone in the world passes out for just under two minutes.  During that time, everyone sees themselves as they are thirty years in the future, just enough time to figure out their surroundings.  When they wake up, they find disasters all over the world from planes and cars crashing and people falling to their deaths.  The three, as well as the other researchers in the lab, try to figure out what happened and if they are really liable.  Lloyd and Michiko are engaged, but they see themselves not together in the future.  Theo sees nothing, which indicates he must be dead though he is only twenty-seven-years-old in the present.  Theo goes hunting for the reason for his death.  Lloyd and Michiko inter existential crises over their relationship.  And the ultimate question is, can the future be changed or is it fixed.  

I thought the premise was well developed.  Written in third person, mostly from Lloyd and Theo’s perspectives, the narrative jumped between them just often enough to keep the plot going quickly.  I was in awe of how much philosophy, physics, and relationship drama could be drawn out to convey the premise without getting soapy.  Now, some may argue that it is soapy, but I thought it was decent human drama.  The climax was exciting, with a terrific ending, although I could have done without the last chapter.  It’s the only part that I didn’t like where it went.  

The three main characters were believable, especially Lloyd and Michiko.  Lloyd tries to convince the world that there is no free will, that the future is static.  He must believe this to absolve himself of the guilt over the deaths of so many people because of his experiment.  Michiko believes it is changeable. Always the warm, intense, and hopeful person, she doesn’t believe in predestination and is convinced Lloyd is wrong.  Theo, upon finding out that he was murdered, believes he must try to change the future and pursues all information he can gather about his demise in hopes of avoiding it.  He’s young and brash and quite the arrogant wunderkind.  Still he is likeable despite not thinking through most of his decisions.

This book, like  the others of Sawyer's I read, all have the same style of writing.  Not much prose and a lot of action.  But this book also has long stretches of the philosophy of time and physics and cosmology in layman’s terms.  It was easy to follow, even for someone like me who flunked out of his physics major in college.  I give this book four stars out of five.  It grabs you quickly and keeps you reading throughout the book.  I found myself reading close to forty pages an hour because I was so engrossed in it.  It was a stark contrast to the ten pages an hour I was reading for the last book, with a quick dozing off at about that one hour mark.  

 

Asunder

Kerstin Hall
Completed 4/19/2025 Reviewed 4/19/2025
3 Stars

This is a beautifully written book that just didn’t do it for me.  I liked the premise; Hall has a terrific imagination.  The prose is beautiful.  But I never bonded with main character Karys.  I think I’m getting tired of the hero with the massive chip on their shoulder.  Karys never lightens up.  Some of the secondary characters did, which was a relief.  Never bonding with her made for a tough time staying with the plot and keeping up with the world building.  This book is a nominee for the Nebula Award.  If I were voting, this would be low on my list. 

Karys is a deathspeaker.  She can speak with the recently dead, finding out about the circumstances of their death.  The book begins with her searching a sacred cave shrine for a missing party.  She only finds one survivor: the rest being consumed by a monster.  The survivor is encased in a time bubble, hiding from the monster by being three days in the past.  Karys escapes the mysterious monster and Ferain, the survivor, through the strange magical relic that created the bubble, becomes bonded with Karys, existing in her shadow.  Ferain turns out to be the son of an ambassador.  He promises her that if she can return him to his father, he will give her a large reward.  The rest of the book contains their journey to separate them and get him home.  

There’s another dimension to Karys’ occupation.  She made a compact with a demon-type being that will claim her once time is up.  The time draws nigh and Karys and Ferain race to separate them before she is claimed.  Along the way, they are joined by a past friend of Karys and an academic who dabbles in bonding magic.  They find out through the academic that bonding people together is dangerous magic, one sucking the life force out of the other.  So there’s an additional reason to find a solution for their situation.

Of all the characters, I liked Ferain and the academic, Winola.  They both had a lighter sense of being.  Even Ferain, who was in this life and death situation, had a better disposition.  He tried and failed to lighted Karys up.  Karys did grow some by the end of the book, but she remained jaded and paranoid of letting anyone see who she really was.  Winola was kind of goofy.  I think I generally like the academic personality type, particularly in how it was developed in her character.  And there seemed to be some sexual tension between her and Karys, although this was never explored, just alluded to.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the prose is tremendous.  The amount of detail that Hall wrote in the description of all the characters and locations was mind boggling.  I often marveled at her word choices.  But it was never enough to keep me drawn into the story.  I also had a lot of trouble keeping track of the nationalities and races.  I think it was because it took me so long to read this book that I forgot which were human nationality names and which were being race names.  

I think this book is typical of what the Nebula committee looks for in nominees.  Strong prose and world building.  While I appreciate it as well, I lose it when I don’t bond with the main character.  Lack of empathy leads to a tedious reading experience.  I give this book three stars out of five, honoring the prose and the plot, but taking off for Karys.  

Bury Your Gays

Chuck Tingle
Completed 4/5/2025, Reviewed 4/6/2025
5 stars

I read this book because I was intrigued by the title.  “Bury Your Gays” is the slang term for killing off the LGBTQ+ character in fiction, even when they are the hero because of the old, McCarthy-istic, moralistic bullshit that the film industry had to deal with.  That’s what the main character of this book receives pressure from the studio board of directors to do.  It then devolves into a mix of horror and science fiction that is dark, gory, frustrating, and a little fun.  I haven’t read much horror in a while, and though the science fiction isn’t exactly original, it makes for a thrilling ride through the underside of the Hollywood system.  This book was published just last year, so it hasn’t been nominated for any awards yet, though his previous book was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award.

Misha is the successful screenwriter who has just been nominated for an Oscar for Live Action Short.  He is also the creator and writer of a streaming series featuring two Lesbian agents.  It has never been openly discussed in the series, but the sexual tension is riveting, making it a big hit.  His plan is to end this season with them falling in love.  Misha is a semi-closeted gay man, but writes characters that, if not openly gay, have a gay subtext.  However, the board of directors want him to kill off the characters, “for the algorithm,” and introduce a more conservative agent.  He refuses.  Of course, they threaten him with lawsuits for breaking his contract.  More sinisterly, the evil characters from his early horror films begin to haunt and stalk him.  He accedes, agreeing to kill the Lesbians at the season finale, but he is still pursued by these ghosts, aliens, and monsters.  And they are not just threatening him, but his boyfriend, his best friend, and other people in close proximity to him.

This book had a grip on me pretty much from the beginning.  His confrontation with his boss at the studio over killing off the main characters sets up an immediate conflict.  But then when the first ghost shows up and threatens to kill him by pulling out his bones at the end of five days, as in Misha’s first screenplay, things take a terrifying turn.  That period ends at midnight on the night of the Oscar ceremony.  Next, a seven-foot-tall alien wearing the skin of a woman and gives a vision of the meaninglessness of the universe through a single touch stalks him.  The horrors continue and Misha tries to find a way to end this based on the monsters’ characters in his screenplays. I was riveted and little frightened, but also found it a little fun, like a good horror tale.  

Misha was a great character.  He’s smart and witty, even though he’s afraid of coming out completely.  When he’s invited to his high school reunion, he does not take his boyfriend Zeke, which puts a strain on their relationship.  But Zeke is no passing boyfriend.  He believes in Misha’s stalkers even though the studio execs, and of course the press, blow them off as crazed fans.  In fact, the tabloids eat this story up, as people upload videos of his confrontations with the “stalkers” from their phones.  They even spread a story that he’s a serious drug abuser.  But Misha deals with this in his own way as he fights the monsters and gets to the bottom of what sent them.  

In addition, this story is a great coming out tale.  Many of his friends know he’s gay, but keep it quiet for him since in Hollywood, the news can ruin a career.  Through well placed flashbacks, the psychology of why he has such trouble coming out emerges, making Misha deal with his past demons as well as the present monsters.  When he finally comes to full acceptance and comes out, it’s with a glorious bang.

I give this book five stars out of five.  I might be a little overly generous with this since the last horror novel I read with a gay main character was Clive Barker’s “Sacrament,” I think, for which I don’t have a review.  So this book feels outrageously wonderful.  I felt like I was in Misha’s skin as he navigated the horrors of the past and present.  The AI nanobots that come into play later in the book are a common trope these days, but I thought it was done well and quite imaginative.  And the prose sucked me into Misha’s world instantaneously.  I definitely want to read his previous book, “Camp Damascus,” which has even better reviews.