FlashForward

After a generally disappointing run of sci-fi novels (Jumper, the Foundation series, the Ender series... after Ender's Game, Snow Crash, Neuromancer, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, The War of the Worlds, ) that had me avoiding sci-fi (save for Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy) for over 1 year, I decided to give FlashForward by Robert Sawyer a chance, based on the recommendation of a twitter/blogger friend (@theshums, for those of you on Twitter)... yeah, I was desperate to read a book.

A scientific experiment with the Large Hadron Collider goes horribly wrong, as instead of producing the Higgs boson they were after, they cause mass destruction when, for 2+ minutes, everyone's mind (meaning everyone on Earth) gets shifted ahead 20-ish years and they see what they will be doing that far ahead in the future. Upon waking, everything goes wrong. Crashes galore. People are dead/dying. And at CERN, the 2 people that were in charge of the experiment know it's their fault. One of them saw a flash ahead... and also learns that his fiance's daughter has died. The other... he didn't see a flash. And with some quick questioning/contact from strangers, he learns that he'll be dead then... at age 48. It is quickly proven that it's not all true... a couple guys who saw flashes ahead die/commit suicide, but nothing can be taken for granted because no one knows who else saw the future and who made it up. The question though becomes... will they take blame for it, knowing the death/destruction they've caused? And can Theo find out who wants to kill him and save his life... 21 years in the future?

It's an interesting novel... starts out fairly quickly, but then slows down and goes from out-and-out sci-fi to more of a "what if" type of mystery novel. It turns into a morality-issue type of book... though a fairly good one at that.

It's not going to make my top-5 'sci-fi' book list (Douglas Adams & Michael Crichton have that covered), but it's definitely not as disappointing as some of the other ones I've read in the past 2 years. An alright read.

By the way... how they're going to make this into a TV show, I have no idea. There isn't enough to make it last multiple seasons though, it doesn't seem. Though they are streaming for the novel quite a bit, it seems... just like they did with the Jumper movie.