Timescape - Gregory Benford, Hilary Benford

“A towering success … [Benford] manages the extremely difficult feat of conveying not only the meaning of his specualtions in physics and cosmology, but the excitement as well.… Benford gives us a cast of well-developed strong characters.… [Timescape] puts Benford among the field’s very best. It is not only splendid science fiction, it is a thoroughly splendid novel.”

—The Washington Post Book World

“Timescape is the best novel I’ve read in years, and … it is extraordinarily ambitious.”

—The San Diego Union

“A brilliant performance … I believed totally while I was reading.”

—Anthony Burgess

“Benford … invokes his experience as a physicist at California–Irvine to produce a persuasive account of the subatomic physics and the academic dispute that ensues. The result is a splendid novel of time paradox.”

—Chicago Tribune Book World

“Gives the phrase ‘science fiction’ new meaning.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“A pasionate and very human novel … very likely the best science fiction novel about science yet.”

—Norman Spinrad

“A brilliant evocation of science and scientists at work … If I had to pick the best SF novel of the year right now, this would be it.”

—Locus

“A rare event!… His characters live … a very entertaining work of fiction.”

—Walter M. Miller, Jr.

“Benford, a physicist himself, has produced a brilliant novel—contemporary SF at its best, demonstrating equal strength in its meticulously worked out scientific premise and its strong characterization, with the bonus of a rare authentic picture of scientists at work. This is a gripping and intellectually exciting book, a genuine achievement.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Moving … powerful … poignant … The best novel I’ve read about science.”

—Suzy McKee Charnas

“A thoroughly engrossing novel about interesting and real-seeming people … There is really no precedent for Timescape in science fiction.”

—Science Fiction Review

PRAISE FOR GREORY BENFORD

“Mr. Benford is a rarity: a scientist who writes with verve and insight not only about black holes and cosmic strings but about human desires and fears.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“Benford is one of the top writers in the genre.”

—Chicago Tribune

“Benford’s writing flows like electrons along copper wire, and his concepts and images are clear and insightful.”

—The Tampa Tribune-Times

“What’s most notable about Benford … is that behind the brilliant speculative frameworks that he constructs, behind all his ability to send the imagination soaring, behind the gripping adventure stories that he tells, his chief interest is the nature of humanity.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Gregory Benford is a distinguished physicist, astronomer and professor, but first and foremost he is a superb storyteller. His work, always impeccably grounded in scientific fact, falls within the ‘hard science’ subgenre of SF, but his soaring imagination and deft feel for plot and characterization make his writing eminently user-friendly to readers of all literary persuasions.”

—The Houston Post

“Science fiction author Gregory Benford writes some of the very best of the so-called ‘hard’ stuff.”

—Los Angeles Times Book Review

This edition contains the complete text

of the original hardcover edition.

NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

TIMESCAPE

A Bantam Spectra Book / published by arrangement with Simon &Schuster

PRINTING HISTORY

Simon & Schuster edition published 1980

Bantam edition / September 1992

SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved.

© 1980 by Gregory Benford and Hilary Benford.

Afterword © 1992 by Susan Stone Blackburn.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 79-27298.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Simon & Schuster, Simon & Schuster Building, Rockefeller Center, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

e: 978-0-307-57407-7

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-three

Chapter Forty-four

Chapter Forty-five

Chapter Forty-six

Dedication

Special Acknowledgment

Acknowledgments

Other Books by This Author

About the Author

Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external.

—NEWTON

How is it possible to account for the difference between past and future when an examination of the laws of physics reveals only the symmetry of time?… present-day physics makes no provision whatever for a flowing time, or for a moving

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