Book Review: The World at the End of Time

 

© 1990 by Frederick Pohl

 

A little while ago the urge to cleanse my reading palate hit me hard. Said palate had gorged itself on religion and war tracts, interspersed with the fantasy novel here and the horror tale there. So what better emetic than some good ol’ roll up yer sleeves and split the atom hard sci fi? After all, do I not claim hard sci fi the sugar-and-phosphate ladder of my literary DNA? I do. And, pondering these things late one night, I could not recall the last hard SF novel I read. Would 1950s Asimov count? How about psychedelic Silverberg? Jules Verne?

So I ran my fingers up and down the towers of paperbacks behind my desk and selected a medium-sized work purchased on 9-25-09, as my jeweler’s script on the inside cover reminded me. Frederik Pohl’s 1990 epic, The World at the End of Time. Perfect!

The 407-page paperback includes some really, really neat SF concepts. Right there in the title we have the end of the Universe, and what might happen if one had a front-row seat to it. Also included, at no extra charge, are a new type of alien entities made of plasma who live in the centers of stars, cryosleep, the nuts and bolts of colonizing new worlds light years away, semi-sentient machines to forage for food and raw materials, the evolution of political and religious ideas across the centuries, Einsteinian relativity in theory and practice, genetic manipulation to designer specs. Heck, a pandemic even makes a cameo. All in all, a nice refreshing departure from my usual literary fare.

The story follows two individuals over the course of either four thousand years or forty billion years – depending upon, of course, your relativistic frame of reference. There’s young Viktor Sorricaine, twelve at novel’s start and freshly thawed from a cryo tube en route to his new home world. His dad’s an astrophysicist, and they’ve detected some stars doing some weird things. Then there’s Wan-To, a creature of plasma living in the star Viktor’s dad is observing, a being able to manipulate matter, tachyons, and Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky particles (paired particles such that the behavior of one influences instantaneously the behavior of the other even though they be separated by the length of the entire Universe). Wan-To uses neutrinos to communicate thoughts in his vast, vastly spaced body the same our minds use neurons. And as Viktor has no idea of Wan-To’s existence, neither does the star creature ours.

Then we hold on as crises follows crises as the rag-tag band of human colonists fight for survival, just as Wan-To fights for his among his people. Each subtly influences the other, especially in a way which gives the gist of the novel if revealed. Oh, okay, Wan-To pulls the colonists solar system out of local time and space and preserves it while the rest of the Universe ages to its icy death forty billion years later. Oops, spoilers.

It was a decent read, fast, and a page turner once I got myself oriented in the novel about 50 pages in. Pohl is one of the masters of SF – was – and I’ve highly reviewed his works Man Plus and Merchants of Venus here in these electronic pages. Also remember reading his award-winning Gateway novel way back as a young lad in the 80s or 90s, and that’s due for a re-read. He’s got a raw, smart-ass edge to him, enjoyably so, and he’s paid attention in science class. I need to read more of his books.

Overall, recommended.

Grade: A-minus.

I'm Back ...

 

Well, after a five-month hiatus from the blog, I’ve decided to return.

What’s happened to Hopper since the ides of July?

Actually, if you set aside the toxic environment our culture’s been bathing in, marinated in that whole Covid thing, I’ve made some pretty good progress. Progress toward what, exactly? you might be asking. And my answer would be: certitude.

As a Hopper, I tend to bounce from one thing to the next, always searching, always seeking, always on the make for something to seize my attention and declare itself the Be All and End All Unto Me. Sometimes it happens, most times it don’t. When it do happen, it never sustains itself. If you know anything at all about that Myers-Briggs thing, me telling you that your host is an INFP should explain it all to you.

But after nearly half a year’s musing, ruminating, and thought-experimenting, I’ve come upon certitude.

I will reveal it bit by bit in my writings here.

*** Thus ends the deep part of today’s message. ***

From a more mundane viewpoint, I’ve still accomplished much in the past five months. Two examples:

Physically, I’ve never been better. A good thing in these pale horse times. I’ve ridden the keto diet since June 15 and lost 21 pounds in two months. Then I slipped back to something like 80 percent adherence and gained back 5 of those. So, all in all, I’m around a net minus 16 since the earth sat on the other side of the sun. My doctor is quite pleased. I’ve also curled a lot of weights and trod a lot of miles, though the cold and rain has slowed me down significantly of late (I lift in my unheated garage). Still off the booze, mostly for cardiac reasons, though I have to say abstaining from my faithful (too faithful?) evening Foster’s oil can has kept my spirits upbeat in these downright downbeat times.

I’ve taken a deep – and I mean deeeep, that’s right, five e’s – dive into World War II literature. Originally bitten by the bug summer 2012 during a breather from my fascination with the Civil War, then put away a book a year on the topic. But since July 26th I’ve worked through seven World War II books – just over 3,000 pages – and have taken extensive notes. I’ve listened to nearly 30 hours of lectures during my summer and fall walks. I’ve taped and watched all the WW2 documentaries on the History channels. I even researched my grandfather’s service in the Philippines.

Why? Well, faithful readers may recall my interest in historical fiction at the beginning of the year. Then, mid-March, all hell broke loose. My topic of interest back then is not too politically correct right now, far, far from it, so after completing an outline and having just cracked my knuckles in preparation of typing the first paragraph into the old word processor, I got cold feet and shelved it. Then, after completing my fourth World War II book, early in October, I was seized mercilessly with a nice, neat, novel twist that I could not shake. Ergo, I now have fourteen pages of notes, character names, plot graphs, first chapter lines, and a whole miscellany of ideas ready to go. I think January 1 would be a wonderful day to start that work.

Well, that’s about it for today. On deck, I have two book reviews, plus I’ll get into how the whole Hopper family is handling the Covid event to greater or lesser success.

Much Thinking, Some Progress

Some selective, discretionary updates to follow …