Flashforward

Book Cover: God, this book cover. Most of the time I avoid tie-in covers like a nasty plague. It doesn’t even matter if it turns out the movie (or in this case, TV show) was good or not (it wasn’t), I’m not interested in getting a book that’s essentially just a shill for what’s probably an inferior movie (or TV show). On the other hand, I am interested in getting a paperback for twenty-five cents. So my library will forever be reminded that this book became a series on ABC. I think “hit” may be pushing it.

Author: Robert J. Sawyer

Category: Canadian Literature, Contemporary Literature, Science Fiction, Aurora Award Winner, adapted: film

Why I Read It: Because I am on the internet a good deal of the time, I found out about ABC attempting to create the TV show Flashforward about a year before it premiered in ’09. Of course, there wasn’t much information on it then, just basically that it was based off this book by Robert J. Sawyer, and it was fairly obvious they were trying to recreate their success with Lost. And I can’t really hold that against them, because only an idiot wouldn’t. Despite an ending that is still finding new ways to piss me off, for most of its run Lost was still an amazing show that defied current storytelling convention and raked in viewers like it was its job.


But I’m straying. I heard about Flashforward, heard it was based off a book, and went searching for any information I could find, which at that point consisted of the Wikipedia entry. But it was enough to intrigue me. The concepts the article said the book dealt with were the kind of physics I enjoy hearing about in their extremely simplified versions on the Science channel, and it looked like it would make for some intriguing discussion.

Of course, this was during my first semester of my senior year in college, when I was currently enrolled in two literature courses, a writing course, and two sociology courses, followed by spring semester, where it was three literature courses and two sociology courses. My reading lists for that year were pretty well set in stone, and none of the courses included a science fiction book list (Although my American Authors class did include Silent Spring, so I guess I did have some science fact in there). And then I graduated.

I was like a teenage girl who’s been given daddy’s plastic and permission to destroy his credit rating before being dropped off at the Mall at Millenia. After four long years of only having time for my school reading lists, I could read whatever I wanted. And no one was going to expect a ten page paper on it, either. I wasted no time creating insanely long wish lists on Barnes and Noble and burning through books like I was in a Bradbury novel.

I can mention here that it was in college that I started to buy only used books. I used to think I wanted only new ones. I could have this book that no one else has touched and it would be mine, right from the start. And then I was staring down the barrel of a book list twenty to thirty items long every five months and suddenly used books started to look real promising. After four years of that I realized that used books sometimes had a lot more character, sometimes could hold little pieces of the past in the form of notes from the last reader, and sometimes were brand new anyway, just overstocked or shipped wrong or something. I don’t think I’ll ever buy a book new again (and this could lead into a discussion on why I buy instead of going to the library, or perhaps hard copies versus eBooks, but this section is already long enough).

So, while Flashforward has been on my list for close to two years now, I just haven’t gotten around to it. And then back in April I was making my thrift shop rounds in Cheyenne and found a copy in Meals on Wheels for twenty-five cents (a perfect example of buying books used, too. This copy is marked at eight dollars on the back, is barely a year old, and while I don’t like the cover, the book itself is still in perfect condition. That’s a 97% markdown, y’all). And, finally, it came up on next on my list.

Reading Time Period: July 20, 2010-July 21, 2010


Book Printing and Condition: Copyright 1999, Second Mass Market Edition printed September 2009, a little late for upfronts but just in time for the big season premiere! And yes, as I stated, this book is basically new. I’m not sure anyone read it before it ended up at MoW.

Where I bought it: Meals on Wheels in Cheyenne, Wyoming for twenty-five cents. It had been marked down from fifty cents.

Thoughts: I find it a lot funny that on two separate occasions Sawyer brings up H.G. Wells, because even before I got to the first mention that’s exactly who he reminded me of. This is not a good thing.


I read The Time Machine and The Invisible Man back to back, and then I read Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and holy crap did I get some whiplash over that sudden change of direction. If there’s one thing any person alive today can say about Oscar Wilde, currently unwilling to give any interviews, it’s that he loved the medium he was using for his art. He loved language. He could fire off these instantly classic quips like he was a damned Gatling gun and his detail and description in scenery have a poetic quality. In Dorian Gray there are entire chapters where it seems Wilde completely forgot he had a plot of any sort to work with and reveled in the ability to use language to describe the things he personally found beautiful in life. The writing in Dorian Gray is a joy, and a welcome relief, for me anyhow, after the double dose of Wells.

Wells was not fond of the language. He did not love it. He used it. All writing was to him was a means to an end. Several of my college professors are probably getting angry right now and they have no idea why, and I know I’ve been taught from several directions that you can’t write about why an author wrote something the way he did when he’s been dead for around a century. But this isn’t going into a peer edited journal, and, I mean, come on. What Wells did in both The Time Machine and The Invisible Man was not storytelling. It was the relation of facts and ideas that happened to come in a story-shaped package. There was no love for the language present, no soul in the words. It’s either that he didn’t care how he got his message across as long as it got there, or he wasn’t a very good writer.

I feel the same about Robert J. Sawyer. The presentation here is dry, crisp, and to the point, points he makes with about as much subtlety as a Michael Bay movie. It’s not that the plot or the characters are lacking, I think. Everything is well rounded and there are grounds for actions taken. It’s just that Sawyer never tries to let the reader figure it out for herself, he just tells her. Why? Because he doesn’t want the reader mired in attempting to figure out characterization or subtle plot points on her own, dammit. She has more important things to chew on, like the Higgs boson, or Schrodinger’s cat!

I will give him this, the arguments and theories he presents in the book are fascinating, and it lends itself to a wonderful discussion, but you still couldn’t really bring Flashfoward to a book club unless it’s, like, the Boeing employee book club, or UCF engineering. Book clubs usually decipher clues and motifs and overtones and undertones and characterization, not gaps in the spacetime continuum and robotic immortality, unless of course that robotic immortality means something on another level, which if it did here I didn’t pick up on.

So maybe it’s not a book club book. I read plenty that wouldn’t get a spot on the discussion table. But was it enjoyable? Not nearly as much as it could be. I really am intrigued by the kind of theories presented here, and as much as I really, really don’t understand it all, I enjoy watching physics programs on the Science channel (back when I had cable). But it all just seemed like a waste of potential at the same time, because I could be enjoying these theories encased in a better written book. And I wasn’t. What I was stuck with was sparse. And blatant. And sometimes incredibly un-fun. Given that the best descriptor I could come up with for the show was ‘boring’ I guess the two mediums of the story tied. At least the show at John Cho.