For one of Sawyer's more well-known titles, I found this Flashforward curiously unsatisfying. I loved the scientific and philosophical points conveyed. But overall, neither the characters or plot grabbed me the way most of his novels do. ( )

I hate to say this.... because I know I'll catch a lot of flak for it, but.... this is one case where the TV series really is better than the book.

This is not to say that the book is bad. It's sorta average, a quick read with a lot of physics made very easily understandable by the layman, which is a feat in and of itself. (Although, I'll admit that I read some of the more interesting bits of physics to my physics-obsessed boyfriend and was rewarded with a rant of epic proportions about how it was all fuzzed. And honestly, a lot of it was.)

The climax itself was the biggest anti-climax I've ever read. Well, maybe not the biggest, but the book just took every bit of suspense available and just flattened it.

So, in summation, if you're curious where the series came from, go ahead and read it. It's fast. Just ...get it from the library or something. ( )

A good first act, but you get the sense that this was a short story or novella that was dragged out a bit. I didn't really care about the murder plot.

Also, the interesting bit with Cheung--I could swear it was an homage to Baxter and Clarke's The Light of Other Days, but Sawyer's novel actually came out a year before that. ( )

Enjoyable science fiction tale of near future. Written in 1999, set in 2009 with an event that took place in 2030. Explores issue of if you know what the future holds can it be changed? ( )

The novel opens in the year 2009 - it was really written ten years earlier - as Lloyd Simcoe, Theo Procopides (Lloyd's partner), and Michiko Komura (Lloyd's fiancee) preparing to engage the Large Hadron Collider. Their intention is to create the Higgs boson - yeah, I was a little lost here, as well - but instead cause a world-wide time displacement, jumping consciousness all over the world twenty-one years into the future.

Lloyd sees himself, as an older man, in bed with a woman who isn't Michiko; Michiko sees herself with young daughter; while, Theo sees nothing, just a time jump to after the incident. Now each of them are sent forward, making attempts to disprove - or, in Lloyd's case, to prove - that the future is not immutable.

I'll admit this: Sawyer lost me several times in his text. The characters are flat, but that's the fatal flaw with science fiction, and the description of places tends to drag more than it should. His explanation of the science behind his novel is exceptional, but many times I found myself reaching over and Googling a few of the words and ideas.

It wasn't poorly written, as I have read it would be. It just wasn't that much of an exciting novel. And the only reason I pursued to finish it was because I paid full price for it (well, Amazon's price rather than used). Sawyer did show his understanding of other things, however. Many times he made allusions - even though they weren't hidden - to other tragic heroes, from Oedipus to Scrooge. And his novel did revive the questions I've had since reading/watching Watchmen and viewing the television version of Flashforward. And there are a couple: Would the futures each character see - or in some cases, didn't see - predetermined even if the flashforward hadn't happened? Or are they all compelled toward them in an attempt to avoid them? If someone - say a god figure - said that in twenty-one years you would be sitting in your car driving across the nation, while listening to and singing along with Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again," would you in fact be doing that because it was supposed to happen, or because you had no other choice?

That's pretty much the tip of the iceberg, I suppose. It's like with all philosophy - it's one question after another. And if that's what Sawyer set off to do in this physics fiction novel, then he's accomplished it. Though, I could've done without the end. Seriously. ( )