Flashforward: The book
I waited until after Flashforward the show was over before picking up the novel - I didn’t want to get spoiled for either the novel or the show. And then I waited a bit more, since apparently half of Orange County had the same idea, and getting a library copy into my little hands took a bit more time.
It will probably surprise no one to hear that the book is considerably better than the television show, and in retrospect, I should have just watched the first episode, and turned to the book.
My chief complaint with the television show was that although I loved the concept of everyone - or nearly everyone - getting a glimpse of the future, and how this was handled, the characters were all either boring or unlikeable or both, leaving me unable to care about any of them. This is not a problem with the novel; I still don't much like the Lloyd Simcoe character (although he's considerably more interesting and thoughtful in the book, which helps) but he's considerably more interesting, and pretty much everyone else is either likeable or interesting or at least understandable, which was certainly not something that could be said for the show.
The novel inadvertently pointed out another problem with the television show: both begin with an event that kills millions of people, but in the show, none of the major characters lost a single loved one or best friend (unless we're counting the death of Lloyd Simcoe's ex-wife, and given that she was only casually mentioned a few times, I think we're not). We heard about the destruction, and saw it in the first episode, but didn't feel it. In the novel, one of the major characters, Michiko, has lost her beloved, adorable daughter; we also meet a man having difficulty continuing through life after his wife's tragic Flashforward death. Immediate emotional involvement.
And more importantly, the distance between the Flashforward event and the time of the actual visions allows for a plot that makes considerably more sense. For instance, the show expected us to believe that a supposedly happy married couple would break off their marriage in less than nine months based on future visions of her cheating on him and his drinking, and, well, to be fair, their lies about it, and, in my personal opinion, the problem that they were both unlikeable and I couldn't see why anyone would want to live with either of them, but, moving on. The analogous plot in the novel has the romantic couple realizing that they are apart after 20 years, and, more importantly, realizing that they have serious philosophical and other issues quite apart from visions of a possible cheating future. They - gasp - talk about this, like reasonable adults, and in the process, end up discussing and considering things like destiny and guilt and quantum physics and the point of reaching a novel when the ending is already written and set in stone and it's all more interesting than I've made it sound.
(Which made me realize that perhaps part of the point of writing a novel is that the ending isn't set in stone - and that perhaps part of the problem with the novels I'm working on is that I do more or less know the endings, and that I did set the final sentence of one in stone, but perhaps that is not the way to go, not so much because of the quantum physics stuff that Robert Sawyer is talking about, but because, well, perhaps that is the problem - why go through that much effort when I already know how things are ending? But perhaps this is for another post.)
The greater time gap also allows for more suspense - twenty years is a long time, and I honestly couldn't tell if this couple would make it or not. (On the show, I was correctly going for not, mostly because it was obvious that the show was trying to soap opera as much as possible and making their entire marriage ridiculous and not something anyone would want to stay in anyway.)
And instead of a murderer working on behalf of a clumsy, inexplicable and mostly pointless seemingly all powerful conspiracy group, we have a murderer with (trying not to be overly spoilery) a powerful, immediately understandable if slightly clichéd motive.
Mind you, I had problems with the book - in the first few pages, Sawyer, writing in 1997/1998 (the book was published in 1999) illustrates the difficulties of trying to project ten years into the future: you have to try to make it sound like the future, but if you try too hard, as he does here, you leave readers with the impression that you are writing about an alternative universe. (For instance, Sawyer tells us that in 2009 everyone has given up wearing blue jeans. I find it difficult to believe that anyone in 1999 would believe that the ubiquity of blue jeans has or would ever end for another 100 years.) And - without being too spoilery - unlike Sawyer, I cannot believe that we, humanity, can be the only sentient life forms in a universe this vast. I don't know that we will ever meet, much less recognize, whatever other intelligence might be out there, but however enormous the odds are against the formation for life, we are talking trillions and trillions of galaxies, and the odds must have hit again at some point.
Plus, if the universe needs an observer to exist, why wait so long to develop humanity, which, after all, has only been in an observant mode for a mere flicker of the extraordinary age of the universe?
But these are quibbles. Overall, the book can be summed up as considerably better than the TV show, and I now think much more highly of Robert Sawyer again. Don't judge him by the dull mess the show made of his concept.
It will probably surprise no one to hear that the book is considerably better than the television show, and in retrospect, I should have just watched the first episode, and turned to the book.
My chief complaint with the television show was that although I loved the concept of everyone - or nearly everyone - getting a glimpse of the future, and how this was handled, the characters were all either boring or unlikeable or both, leaving me unable to care about any of them. This is not a problem with the novel; I still don't much like the Lloyd Simcoe character (although he's considerably more interesting and thoughtful in the book, which helps) but he's considerably more interesting, and pretty much everyone else is either likeable or interesting or at least understandable, which was certainly not something that could be said for the show.
The novel inadvertently pointed out another problem with the television show: both begin with an event that kills millions of people, but in the show, none of the major characters lost a single loved one or best friend (unless we're counting the death of Lloyd Simcoe's ex-wife, and given that she was only casually mentioned a few times, I think we're not). We heard about the destruction, and saw it in the first episode, but didn't feel it. In the novel, one of the major characters, Michiko, has lost her beloved, adorable daughter; we also meet a man having difficulty continuing through life after his wife's tragic Flashforward death. Immediate emotional involvement.
And more importantly, the distance between the Flashforward event and the time of the actual visions allows for a plot that makes considerably more sense. For instance, the show expected us to believe that a supposedly happy married couple would break off their marriage in less than nine months based on future visions of her cheating on him and his drinking, and, well, to be fair, their lies about it, and, in my personal opinion, the problem that they were both unlikeable and I couldn't see why anyone would want to live with either of them, but, moving on. The analogous plot in the novel has the romantic couple realizing that they are apart after 20 years, and, more importantly, realizing that they have serious philosophical and other issues quite apart from visions of a possible cheating future. They - gasp - talk about this, like reasonable adults, and in the process, end up discussing and considering things like destiny and guilt and quantum physics and the point of reaching a novel when the ending is already written and set in stone and it's all more interesting than I've made it sound.
(Which made me realize that perhaps part of the point of writing a novel is that the ending isn't set in stone - and that perhaps part of the problem with the novels I'm working on is that I do more or less know the endings, and that I did set the final sentence of one in stone, but perhaps that is not the way to go, not so much because of the quantum physics stuff that Robert Sawyer is talking about, but because, well, perhaps that is the problem - why go through that much effort when I already know how things are ending? But perhaps this is for another post.)
The greater time gap also allows for more suspense - twenty years is a long time, and I honestly couldn't tell if this couple would make it or not. (On the show, I was correctly going for not, mostly because it was obvious that the show was trying to soap opera as much as possible and making their entire marriage ridiculous and not something anyone would want to stay in anyway.)
And instead of a murderer working on behalf of a clumsy, inexplicable and mostly pointless seemingly all powerful conspiracy group, we have a murderer with (trying not to be overly spoilery) a powerful, immediately understandable if slightly clichéd motive.
Mind you, I had problems with the book - in the first few pages, Sawyer, writing in 1997/1998 (the book was published in 1999) illustrates the difficulties of trying to project ten years into the future: you have to try to make it sound like the future, but if you try too hard, as he does here, you leave readers with the impression that you are writing about an alternative universe. (For instance, Sawyer tells us that in 2009 everyone has given up wearing blue jeans. I find it difficult to believe that anyone in 1999 would believe that the ubiquity of blue jeans has or would ever end for another 100 years.) And - without being too spoilery - unlike Sawyer, I cannot believe that we, humanity, can be the only sentient life forms in a universe this vast. I don't know that we will ever meet, much less recognize, whatever other intelligence might be out there, but however enormous the odds are against the formation for life, we are talking trillions and trillions of galaxies, and the odds must have hit again at some point.
Plus, if the universe needs an observer to exist, why wait so long to develop humanity, which, after all, has only been in an observant mode for a mere flicker of the extraordinary age of the universe?
But these are quibbles. Overall, the book can be summed up as considerably better than the TV show, and I now think much more highly of Robert Sawyer again. Don't judge him by the dull mess the show made of his concept.