Timescape

Timescape

By Gregory Benford

2/7 stars

As some of you know, I am attempting to read all the Nebula Award winning books in order. Timescape was written in 1980 and won the award the same year. 

How much leeway do you give an author? This is the question I’ve been pondering for the last week. I tend to give authors a lot of grace. But here’s the thing: that grace leaves when the author shows that he knows his characters are reprehensible and he seems to be fine with it.

For a tiny bit of social context, Timescape was published near the end of the second wave feminist movement and near the beginning of worries about climate change. Both are dealt with a bit in this book, one of them very very badly.

I hate starting with the criticism though, so here are the good and interesting points. Timescape is a hard sci-fi novel dealing with tachyons and sending messages to the past. As far as I can tell, all of the science is accurate assuming that tachyons actually exist. The people in 1998 are dealing with massive climate change and extinction events and try to send a message back to 1963 with information about how to prevent it. There’s a fairly realistic plot about the pushback a scientist would get if he suddenly started claiming to see messages in nuclear resonances. The overarching story is interesting and well thought out. 

So why the two stars? Because Benford wrote a character who preys on women and gets neither censured nor comeuppance.

Peterson hits on every woman he meets (more than once while across the room from her significant other). While on a date, he distracts his date so that he can pour more wine in her glass without her noticing. She had already said she’d had enough but “he felt sure she did not see him refill her glass”. 

Over the course of the book his internal monologue reveals that he doesn’t like women to talk too much or have opinions. He’s bored by their company and feels it’s a necessary evil to get them into bed. Oh, did I mention he’s married? He’s not enthusiastic about his wife because she has a successful business without his input. 

Peterson does get rejected one time. One. The reason? She prefers women. Obviously there is no other reason a woman would refuse to sleep with any guy who flirts with her. 

That brings me to the women in the book. All the women who get more than a page written about them don’t understand science. They nag. They have outlandish ideas not based in logic. They are alcoholics. They make up conflict. And they do not say no.

It feels like the author wants women kept in their place. The subtext that I got was “you see what happens when you give women equal standing?”

Ok, but what about that grace to authors I was talking about? I have given other books a pass for similar offences. I would to this book, except for one reason. Remember the woman who rejected him? She calls out that Peterson hates women and uses them for his own purposes. She also tells other people about it. The result? She is taken off the research project and nothing happens to Peterson. She is punished and he gets off scot free. The author clearly knows that the character he created is a bad man and decides to ignore it utterly. This attitude toward women soured me on the entire book. 

If you want an interesting time travel book, I will give you several suggestions. Timescape will not be one of them.