Before I got started on this, I read somewhere that his writings were "hard" science fiction. It was not until I finished the book and read an essay at the end of my edition that it was explained to me that hard sci-fi is based on physics while soft sci-fi is based on the sociological repercussions of scientific achievements. Well, I thought to start my comments on this book with this bit of trivia because this classification may discourage people to read it. And then they'd miss an incredible story that makes you think not only about science but also about the people behind it.
This book tells the story of an Earth with a collapsing ecosystem in which scientists seek to mitigate troubles of the present by sending a message to the past. Hopefully, if someone in that time is able to receive, decode the message, and take action to avoid a disastrous future, the crisis in the present will be averted. But does anyone know what kind of paradoxes this would create ? No, not really. Present science can't say anything about that. Thankfully, the book is fiction and presents extrapolations and hypotheses to explain what 'could' possibly happen.
In addition to the strong scientific background presented in an easy to absorb style, the main strength of the book is that it's by no means dry and technical. Benford writes about cutting edge physics, it's true, but he also writes about human beings with passions, quirks, failures and shortcomings. It smells a lot like life and not so much as a distant, impossible reality. The book got me going strong from the first few pages and it was hard to put down until I was done. It's a highly non-linear story and when you get into it and begin to yearn for some kind of closure, you really can't stop. The last 200 pages go really fast and in the end you come to some very interesting twists that leave you with a sense of having accomplishing something by the mere fact of reading a science-fiction story.
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