#168 Quantum uncertainty: Timescape (1980) by Gregory Benford

Time travel is, if scientists are to be believed, impossible. That has never stopped science fiction writers, who have made it one of their most frequently used and popular concepts. But if time travel is impossible, can it at least be made plausible?

With his novel Timescape (1980), Gregory Benford sought to do just that. This believable SF epic draws on Benford's own professional experience as a scientist, and is rooted in the prevailing theories in theoretical physics of that time. This a time travel novel with a difference, and one which matches mind-bending science with vivid portraits of scientists at work.

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Transcript

A landmark in the science fiction of the early 1980s, Gregory Benford’s book Timescape (1980) became his “popular and critical breakthrough”, winning multiple major awards, including the Nebula Award for Best Novel. It was widely celebrated for its fusion of thought-provoking science with believable and flawed characters, told across two distinct time periods. While Benford (1942 - ) is an astrophysicist, the novel instead draws largely on quantum physics, and especially the implications should tachyons - a theorised faster-than-light particle - be found to actually exist.

Timescape is a lengthy, dense, and hugely ambitious novel which may test a reader’s patience on its way to a powerful climax. While it has at its heart the fanciful notion of tachyonic communication, the book is a fascinating look at fears of runaway environmental degradation, the scientific method, and what significance individual human lives have in the unknowable flow of time and cosmic forces. Intensely human even as it deals with mind-bending possibilities in quantum physics, Timescape is a unique example of ‘80s SF.

Phantom thread

Timescape is largely set in two distinct time periods and locations, one taking place 18 years prior to the book’s publication, and one taking place 18 years later than that date.

In 1998, it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid the fact that an environmental catastrophe is underway. “Diatom blooms” caused by man-made pollutants are altering the ocean biosphere in a way which may be irreversible, and could collapse the Earth’s ecosystem. In the UK, the population muddles along amid shortages and power cuts, unable to fully perceive or process the crisis. The one source of hope is at Cambridge University, where scientist Renfrew has devised a means to communicate with colleagues in the past using a beam of tachyons. Supported by the cynical, womanising operative Peterson, he hopes to prevent the development of the lethal chemical cocktail threatening life on Earth.

In 1962, it is a very different time - rock and roll is king, John F. Kennedy is President, and tachyons have yet to be theorised, let alone discovered. Gordon Bernstein is a scientist working with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and samples of indium antimonide at the University of California. The experiment picks up mysterious interference, which Bernstein eventually realises is actually a series of messages transmitted in Morse code. These messages are difficult to understand, and appear to originate from the distant constellation Hercules, a location which will be occupied by the Earth in 36 years’ time…

Tachyonic communication could upset much of what people understand about time, free will, and causality. Renfrew hopes that the people of the past will change his present, but how will he know if he has succeeded? Bernstein could be on the brink of a world-changing discovery, but fears the consequences should he be connected to a wild hypothesis that could be unfounded. Possible futures and the fate of humankind hang by a slender thread, woven from invisible particles moving faster than light.

Hard science, real people

Many hard SF novels take science seriously, but one thing which sets Timescape apart is how thoroughly it explores the process of science and the lives of scientists. The SFE goes as far as to call it “one of the best-ever fictional descriptions of scientists at work.” Stephen E. Andrews and Nick Rennison agreed, calling it “one of the finest depictions of academic life in fiction.” The academic environments of Cambridge and California are contrasted, with their distinct cultures, approaches, and hierarchies. Benford explores concrete examples of fairly mundane scientific activities, such as when Bernstein decides whether to publish in Science or in Physical Review Letters. 

At times, the science detail is overwhelming, as Benford’s characters have intense discussions of causality, astronomy, nuclear physics, and biochemistry. Andrews and Rennison wrote that “no in-depth knowledge of physics is necessary” [...] but it is a marvellous book to pick up after putting your Stephen Hawking paperback down”. In some of these areas, Benford follows earlier works of SF. In particular, the runaway environmental disaster recalls The Drought (1964) by J.G. Ballard and The Sheep Look Up (1972) by John Brunner. These novels all deal with ecological catastrophe as a result of industrial pollution, rather than the now more dominant theme of climate breakdown. Also in 1980, James P. Hogan published Thrice Upon a Time, which similarly deals with efforts to send messages into the past.

Benford clearly put a great deal of effort into his well-realised, multi-dimensional characters. Much of Timescape deals not with the science of the crisis, but with the personal lives of the scientists. Benford stated that his British sister-in-law, Hilary Foister, “contributed significantly to the manuscript”, specifically in the UK-set segments. The book follows the fractious relationship between Bernstein and his girlfriend Penny, as well as the efforts of Renfrew’s wife Marjorie to cope in a slowly but definitely collapsing society. While vividly realised, not all of this character work advances the story, such as Peterson’s cold, meticulous pursuit of sexual encounters - including with a disappointingly portrayed Japanese woman described as “insatiable” and a “nymphomaniac”.

Lifetimes and lightyears

Timescape is at its best when Benford and his characters are contemplating the relative significance of big issues and the more practical tangles of everyday life. At one point, Bernstein is confronted with harrowing tales from Vietnam, told by a veteran who is an old flame of Penny’s. “Experimental physics seemed a toy”, Bernstein muses, “no better than a crossword puzzle, beside these things.” Little does this triad of characters realise that the Vietnam War has barely begun and will soon become far, far worse - at least in our timeline. 

Later, in 1998, Renfrew contemplates the awesome implications of the powers he is toying with:

“Tachyons of size 10-23 centimetres were flashing across whole universes, across 1028 centimetres of cooling matter, in less time than Renfrew’s eye took to absorb a photon in the pale laboratory light. All distances and times were wound in upon each other, singularities sucking up the stuff of creation. Event horizons rippled and worlds coiled into worlds.”

One impression Timescape creates, one fact it recalls, is the incredible contingency of everything. Life is a kind of miracle, every lifetime a procession of uniquely formative moments, critical junctions and decisions on a vast highway. Life on Earth is the product of an immensely unlikely set of circumstances, a fragile set of conditions that humans have the terrible power to change. What binds people together, binds life to its frail existence, is our will to understand and communicate - whether across a room or across timelines and universes. 

At times, Timescape becomes caught up in minutiae of the scientific process or tangled in the messy web of everyday life - but when it weaves these elements together, as it does in its best moments, it has a rare power.