The Light of Other Days
|
|
The Light of Other Days is a 2000 science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter.
The Light of Other Days concerns the development of wormhole technology developed to the point where information can be passed instantaneously between points in the space-time continuum.
First pure information is sent via gamma rays, then a development allows light waves to travel. 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 events and people from any point throughout time and space.
When the technology is released to the general public, it effectively destroys all secrecy and privacy. The novel looks at 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.
History is rewritten throughout the book's progression. The time viewer technology shows that Jesus was the bastard son of a Roman Centurion and that Moses was based on a collection of stories rather than the actions of a real person.
In a climatic 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 3 billion years ago, trying to preserve genetic samples when geological and climatic changes threatened an extinction level event.
A time viewer device is also used in the Clarke novel Childhood's End, although it plays a minor role in the plot. Clarke discusses this device and uses in other science fiction in the afterword of "The Light of Other Days"
Light of Other Days is also a science fiction short story by Bob Shaw.