Permafrost
Ratings37
Average rating3.8
A 2019 Locus Award finalist A USA Today Bestseller Fix the past. Save the present. Stop the future. Master of science fiction Alastair Reynolds unfolds a time-traveling climate fiction adventure in Permafrost. 2080: at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future on one last-ditch experiment. Their goal: to make a tiny alteration to the past, averting a global catastrophe while at the same time leaving recorded history intact. To make the experiment work, they just need one last recruit: an ageing schoolteacher whose late mother was the foremost expert on the mathematics of paradox. 2028: a young woman goes into surgery for routine brain surgery. In the days following her operation, she begins to hear another voice in her head... an unwanted presence which seems to have a will, and a purpose, all of its own – one that will disrupt her life entirely. The only choice left to her is a simple one. Does she resist ... or become a collaborator? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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I am a big fan of Mr Reynolds, House of Suns will forever be a book I look back fondly at. Sadly Permafrost was the exact opposite of that experience.
Gives tantalizing glimpses of an interesting future, but there's very little meat to it. I liked the new view on what time may be and how it would adjust to changes, but at the end of the day this was very standard exploration of time travel + paradoxes with a stereotypical “closed loop” ending where the entire journey was invalidated in the last few pages. It was well executed and clearly the intention all along (and not an “oh crap, I can't figure out how to end this”) copout - but I found it extremely unfulfilling.
Characters are cardboard cutouts and undergo precisely 0 character development from start to finish. This is always a risk in hard sci-fi, but usually the “big idea” pay-off makes up for it, which this book cannot claim.
As an additional note, while I do not rate books on length or cost, but rather quality of execution and how long the ideas stay with me, potential buyers should be aware this is extremely short - novella length at best. Looking at my emails from Amazon/Goodreads I can derive that finished it in about 81 minutes, and this is one of the few times in my life I look back on the time I spent reading a book and wish I had that time back - which, if you think about how little time that actually represents is very telling.
Slightly different take on time travel that for this reader refreshes what can be a tired trope. Like the main protagonist even though given how short this novella is, we barely get to know her.
