"Light of Other Days" is also a science fiction short story by Bob Shaw

Bob Shaw

Bob Shaw, born Robert Shaw, was a science fiction author and fan from Northern Ireland. He was noted for his originality and wit. He won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 1979 and 1980...

.

The Light of Other Days is a 2000 science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel written by Stephen Baxter

Stephen Baxter

Stephen Baxter is a prolific British hard science fiction author. He has degrees in mathematics and engineering.- Writing style :...

 based on a synopsis by Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...

, which explores the development of wormhole

Wormhole

In physics, a wormhole is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that would be, fundamentally, a "shortcut" through spacetime. For a simple visual explanation of a wormhole, consider spacetime visualized as a two-dimensional surface. If this surface is folded along a third dimension, it...

 technology to the point where information can be passed instantaneously between points in the space-time continuum.

Characters

• Hiram Patterson is the father of Bobby Patterson and David Curzon, and the founder and CEO of the fictional company OurWorld. His first name in Hebrew means "high-bred" which denotes his high status. The success of the WormCam and the SmartShroud (which makes objects invisible, thus undetectable by the WormCam) is only the tip of the iceberg for him; he plans to use wormholes to extract energy from the Earth and the stars themselves in order to monopolize the energy industry. As the main antagonist, Hiram seems to be the personification of a misanthropic view of humanity — greedy, Machiavellian, and entirely self-serving. He manipulates the main characters starting in the first chapter: Bobby is given a brain implant at an early age so that he can be controlled; David receives a superb education so that he may be useful in the future; and, in an effort to further assert his control over Bobby, Kate is framed for allegedly stealing information from a competing company. His professed love for Bobby is in fact just a ploy to mold him into the perfect heir.

• Kate Manzoni is a journalist who is credited with breaking the story of the "Wormwood Discovery". First detected by a group of amateur astronomers, the Wormwood is a supermassive asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth, projected to arrive in approximately five hundred years with potentially cataclysmic consequences. News of the Wormwood has profound impacts on the world's political and social climate, coinciding with those brought on by advances in WormCam technology. Kate falls in love with Hiram's son Bobby and assists him in breaking free of his father's manipulation, while inadvertently allowing herself to be manipulated by Hiram.

• David Curzon is Hiram's son from his first marriage and Bobby's half-brother. His first name is derived from the Biblical character, David, who was once the king of Israel. David's research leads to the development of the WormCam and many of its subsequent advances.

• Bobby Patterson is Hiram's cloned son and heir apparent, and the half-brother of David.

Plot summary

The wormhole technology is first used to send digital information via gamma rays, then developed further to transmit light waves. The media corporation who develops this advance can spy on anyone anywhere it chooses. A logical development from the laws of space-time allows light waves to be detected from the past. This enhances the wormhole technology into a "time viewer" where anyone opening a wormhole can view people and events from any point throughout time and space.

When the technology is released to the general public, it effectively destroys all secrecy and privacy

Privacy

Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...

. The novel examines the philosophical issues that arise from the world's population (increasingly suffering from ecological and political disturbances) being aware that they could be under constant observation by anyone, or that they could observe anyone without their knowledge. Anyone is able to observe the true past events of their families and their heroes. An underground forms which attempts to escape this observation; corruption and crime are drastically reduced; nations discover the true causes and outcomes of international conflicts; and religions worldwide are forced to reevaluate their divine histories. As the underground movement grows, it utilizes a direct neural interface

Brain-computer interface

A brain–computer interface , sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain–machine interface , is a direct communication pathway between the brain and an external device...

 coupled with the unlimited communication provided by the wormhole technology to develop a group mind

Group mind (science fiction)

A group mind, hive mind or group ego in science fiction is a single consciousness occupying many bodies. Its use in literature goes back at least as far as Olaf Stapledon's science fiction novel Last and First Men ....

.

One of the central themes of the novel is that history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 is biased towards viewpoints of the person who wrote it. Hence many great "historical" events often did not occur as they now are collectively remembered. For example, during the book's progression the time viewer technology shows that Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

 was the illegitimate son of a Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 centurion

Centurion

A centurion was a professional officer of the Roman army .Centurion may also refer to:-Military:* Centurion tank, British battle tank* HMS Centurion, name of several ships and a shore base of the British Royal Navy...

 (although the apocryphal story of his visiting

And did those feet in ancient time

"And did those feet in ancient time" is a short poem by William Blake from the preface to his epic Milton a Poem, one of a collection of writings known as the Prophetic Books. The date on the title page of 1804 for Milton is probably when the plates were begun, but the poem was printed c. 1808...

 Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 was proven to be true), and that Moses

Moses

Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...

 was based on a collection of stories rather than the actions of a real person.

In a climactic time-viewing experiment at the end of the novel, a time hole is opened to the beginning of life on Earth and it is discovered that all existing life is descended from a biological sample placed by intelligent beings (labeled Sisyphans) who inhabited the Earth over three billion years ago, trying to preserve genetic samples when geological and climatic changes and a large Bolide threatened an extinction level event.

Trivia

• A time viewer
  Time viewer
  The Time viewer is a fictional device occasionally used in science fiction. It is usually a device which functions along the same lines as a television, except that the picture depicts events in another time, either the past or the future...
  
   is also used in Clarke's Childhood's End
  Childhood's End
  Childhood's End is a 1953 science fiction novel by the British author Arthur C. Clarke. The story follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious Overlords, whose arrival ends all war, helps form a world government, and turns the planet into a near-utopia...
  
  , although it plays a minor role in the plot. Clarke discusses this device and its use in other science fiction in the afterword to the novel.

• The 1956 Isaac Asimov
  Isaac Asimov
  Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
  
   short story "The Dead Past
  The Dead Past
  "The Dead Past" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov, first published in the April 1956 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It was later collected in Earth Is Room Enough and The Best of Isaac Asimov , and adapted into an episode of the science-fiction television series Out of the...
  
  " also deals with the construction of a time viewer. The revelation of its impact on privacy comprises part of its twist ending.

• O.B.I.T. is an episode of the original Outer Limits TV show (aired 4 November 1963) which included a device that allowed viewing of recent past events.

Release details

• 2000, USA, Voyager (ISBN 0-00-224704-6), Pub date 18 September 2000, hardback (First edition)