| Title | : | The World at the End of Time |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0586212752 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780586212752 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 400 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1990 |
Viktor Sorricaine was determined to discover what force had suddenly sent his world hurtling toward the ends of the universe. And the answer was something beyond the scope of his imagination -- even if he lived for 4000 years...
The World at the End of Time Reviews
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A brief aside, brought to you by the Small Complaints Department:
-- Audible has changed delivery methods, breaking up books into several, unseamless, downloads. Bah.
-- This book ends with an optimistic minor cliffhanger. Was there a planned sequel? Was Mr. Pohl up against a deadline with no extensions? In a book with themes on the meaning of things, why am I made to wonder about the meaning of the ending?
-- Sex. Don't get me wrong, I like sex. Even occasionally in books. But, in proportion to action and thought, I'd like the proportion to somewhat normal. Here, way to much bang for the buck, wink wink, nudge nudge.
-- Despite the seemingly over-achieving title, it _is_ true.
We now return control to the normal review.
My "n-minus-one twin",
Denis, captures my thoughts here:
Denis's review.
Monopoly Space Opera move. -
It is obvious that Frederik Pohl loved math and science, and often wrote stories laced with detailed facts of specific subject matter in those fields. "The World at the End of Time" is especially recommended for those who are interested in the life and death of stars and the mechanics of the universe. There are two parallel stories here. One is of Wan-To, an intelligent plasma-being that lives inside stars. The other is centred around Viktor Sorricaine who lives throughout an extremely long time span due to several occasions of being held in cryogenic suspension.
The novel is large in scope though is an easy read, as it is written with clear and simple language; the human interactions, though set in the future and eventually the far future, seem natural and believable – we humans really don't change that much over time – very reminiscent of Asimov's style of writing fiction.
An enjoyable ride through time and space. -
This is one of Pohl's longest novels, and may be his best straight hard-sf novel outside of Gateway. It's a parallel story of a man who's life is extended via cryogenic suspension, and a truly alien, very powerful and convincing being who lives inside a star. The ending is a little ambiguous, and I wonder if Pohl planned to write a sequel someday or if he deliberately left it up to his readers to determine their own preferred resolution. It's a very thought-provoking and challenging work.
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Aunque empieza un poco lenta, va ganando interés a medida que avanza. Y sentido de la maravilla, a raudales
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An incredible pure-science-fiction book!The breathtaking quest of a man and a plasm-organism through time and space is presented in parallel together with their experiences and problems and everything is described scientifically in huge details which doesn't disturb the fast track of a tiny galaxy through the universe while it collapses together with all the stars.So what shall that part of mankind which survived on the newly colonated Newmanshome do without a sun or any other source of energy?And what does the plasm-organism Wan-to who/which hasn't even heard of material beings have in common with this catastrophe?
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-Con personajes individuales en medio de escenarios científicos realistas de escala masiva.-
Género. Ciencia ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. Wan-To es una entidad de plasma inteligente que vive en el corazón de una estrella G-3 de tamaño mediano que, a diferencia de otros como él (o ello), no cree que la materia sólida pueda crear inteligencia. Victor Sorricaine es un joven pasajero de una de las tres naves humanas interestelares con la misión de poblar nuevos mundos y extender la especie en la galaxia; la mayoría de los pasajeros, por cuestión de ahorro de recursos, duermen en criosueño y tienen una edad real mayor de la que aparentan tener.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com.... -
Interesting treatment of the effects of living through relativistic time dilation, characters are reasonably well drawn, and technology is well represented. The main issue I had with it was that the billion-year-old intelligences behaved and thought like precocious toddlers and teens. Despite the antics of the plasma intelligence Wan-To, the book was enjoyable, and the bleakness of a sky without stars was effective.
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This book was great. Not the best when it comes to character development, but the story and scientific ideas were fascinating. Great classic hard sci-fi at its best. If you just want a plain fun interesting story that plays with scientific what-ifs check this one out. Highly entertaining and a book that makes you think.
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I love Pohl's mind and the concepts he comes up with, but this book wasn't very well written. And I didn't care about the characters. Nothing sucked me in sadly.
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Sci-fi relatada tal como lo recordaba por parte del escritor (tras leer la saga Heechee) mezclando, como marca el estilo, buenas dosis de ciencia con una ficción interesante. Bueno. Dos ficciones realmente -un protagonista humano y otro ente plasmático (o lo que sea)-, particularmente relacionadas, que se intercalan y reparten los capítulos.
Al principio me resultó más atrayente y atractiva la historia del primero, con retazos de los mejores libros de sci-fi colonizadora y terraformista, desarrollada por personajes interesantes. Pero según pasa el tiempo en el relato (muuuuuuucho tiempo) el interés torna hacia el ente, siendo esto de tal manera que la historia humana se va diluyendo progresivamente según se acerca el final (el cual por cierto me pareció forzado, predecible y simplón), esperando con más ansia el desenlace de los avatares del ente que los de mis semejantes.
Igualmente, lectura recomendable para todo aficionado al género, principalmente para aquel que disfrute con las estrellas y los viajes espaciales relativistas. -
Novela de 3. Muy interesante reflexión de la evolución de la humanidad pero no tiene una historia que enganche especialmente. No empatizas con el protagonista y lo lees en plan "veamos como acaba esto" más que deborarlo.
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I guess I'm getting old. This 1990 book contains all sorts of hard-SF stuff that I would have thought more recent. As I recall, Pohl has always been good at writing "you, see, Billy, it all started with ..." in a way that's actually palatable. Here he's particularly good at explaining astrophysics as if he's speaking to an intelligent listener.
The plot is meh, but it serves as a framework for the science, and that's good enough for me.
Worthwhile, even 28 years later. -
Pohl offers in this work an extremely imaginative plot (though I don't know how original it is). But the story built around the plot is disappointing.
The plot entangles the fate, over a period of 10^40 years, of humans and a small family of sentient plasma-based entities. The latter, represented chiefly by one named Wan-To, possess not only high intelligence and power over physical matter and energy, but also very human traits such as jealousy, anxiety, paranoia, loneliness, and boredom. Wan-To's fear of aggression from clones he's created himself leads, inadvertently, to the acceleration to almost light speed of a small group of stars and a small human colony on a planet around one of the stars. As a result of the extreme relativistic time dilation - extremely slow aging - a small remnant of the human colony is able to survive 10^40 years, as experienced by the rest of the universe, including Wan-To.
At that very late era the "heat death" of the universe is almost complete, with all stars and even almost all protons having disintegrated. The residual human community has experienced a time lapse of only about 4000 years. And despite severe hardships along the way, they are enjoying somewhat of a renaissance, oblivious in their own private solar system to the near total demise of the universe around them. Wan-To, on the other hand, is apparently unable to tolerate existence in a pure void and is driven to consider seeking refuge in a surviving black hole (though even those are gradually evaporating).
This sort of scenario could plausibly be extrapolated into one in which the universe is able to sustain individuals and colonies of sentient inhabitants almost ad infinitum in spite of finite life spans. This would amount to circumventing the apparently inexorable progress of entropy. Unfortunately, Pohl didn't attempt (as far as we know) this extrapolation either in this book or possible sequels.
The plot, certainly, is imaginative and complex. It's also, except for the plasma creatures, based on reasonably good science (as known circa 1990). (Readers who find the science interesting shouldn't rely entirely on the accuracy of all details in the book.) There's a goodly amount of suspense. There are also surprises, although the ultimate final "surprise" was fairly predictable. Oddly, the main (human) character, Viktor Sorricaine, is clever and resourceful, yet he never seems to expect the final surprise until it happens.
The story's narrative leaves quite a bit to be desired. Of the various characters, only Victor is fleshed out to a decent extent - enough that the reader is able to feel somewhat sympathetic to his hardships and can feel a measure of elation with how well things turn out for him in the end. The other human characters are pretty much just stage props. There's little to admire in the plasma creatures, Wan-To and his clones. Apart from how they drive the plot, perhaps their best role is to provide a little comic relief.
Most of the narrative relates exhaustive details of the early triumphs and later tribulations of the human colonists on their adopted planet. Little of that detail is essential for the plot. It's just a fictional version of much of the devolution that's so typical of most real human societies into anarchy and cruelty. A later stage portrays a vestigial society dominated by several comical religious sects, whose divergent, risible belief systems aren't all that different from actual contemporary human religions.
The early ascendant stage of the human colony is notable for the prevalence of a "free love" ethic in which procreation is strongly encouraged for the sake of rapid population growth. While monogamous marriage exists, it's only one alternative. Unfortunately, the details recounted aren't salacious enough to be very interesting. Curiously, though the novel was first published in 1990, all the procreative activity is referred to antiquatedly as "making love", instead of simply "having sex".
Frederik Pohl was certainly one of the leading science fiction writers of the 20th century. His award-winning novels, especially the Heechee series, are much better examples of his best work than The World at the End of Time. -
Throughout the novel's roughly four thousand year span, two main themes were eternally present, albeit in different forms - survival and perspective. The premise of the story is a human civilization that has mastered space travel and cryogenic freezing technology and with the rigor expected of a hard science fiction novel, this story too explores several interesting scientific and technological phenomena. This novel follows the life of the main character, Viktor Sorricaine, throughout three main periods of his life: (1) the journey in space to the new colony planet of Newmanhome and the subsequent colonization of it, (2) his revival after being frozen for 400 years to find a society characterized by hardship, authoritarianism, and religious fervor, and (3) his revival after being frozen again for 4000 years to find a high tech society dedicated to pleasure and creative pursuits. In each period, Viktor yearns to understand and investigate the strange phenomena affecting the local cluster of stars, but there are differing societal conflicts that make this difficult to do (sometimes resulting in him getting frozen). What Viktor and the other colonists do not know, however, is that there is another race of hyper intelligent plasma based life in the universe. The actions of these beings are conducted on a galactic scale and destroying star systems is routine. This novel explores the interesting parallel interplay between humanity and these plasma creatures, conducted over a span of 4000 years (or several billion, depending on how you account of relativistic time dilation), and how different civilizations respond to and cope with the unknown galactic developments that result from beings that they do not know exist.
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Fascinující hard scifi, která se chvílemi čte jako deníček nadšeného astronoma.
Hlavní hrdina tu putuje díky teorii relativity skrz čas a to dává čtenáři náhled na vývoj lidstva i vesmíru samotného z větší perspektivy. Nepamatuju si žádnou jinou knihu, po jejímž do��tení bych měla tak silný pocit nepatrnosti vlastního jsoucna v gigantickém časoprostoru.
Co četbu téhle výjimečné knihy kazilo byly postavy - z nějakého důvodu tu prakticky schází kdokoli aspoň trochu sympatický, a to včetně hlavního hrdiny. V původní třetině mi byli všichni hrdinové tak nesympatičtí, že jsem dokonce uvažovala o tom, že knihu odložím. Jsem ráda, že jsem to neudělala a pokud se do ní pustíte, určitě zvláštní odtažitý rozjezd překonejte, stojí to za to :-) -
Jedna z mych nejoblibenejsich scifi knizek. Je to hodne subjektivni, ale na me zapusobila fakt hodne. Poprve jsem ji cetl jako male decko, a zpusob jakym podava neskutecnou velikost/cas vesmiru, relativisticke efekty atd je proste uzasny. Pribeh je taky dobry, misty trochu pritazeny za vlasy, ale celkove se me to proste hafo libilo. Knizku jsem cetl asi 4x a urcite dam nekdy znovu :)
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Now I remember why I love Sci-fi so much. This was a great science fiction story. I loved how the two main characters' stories (Wan To - the godlike plasma being and Viktor the human being originally from Earth)were told simultaneously but separately. Very thought provoking!!
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A cool story. It isn't particularly well written in terms of storytelling, but the novel creatures and the historic length of the storyline makes it a good read. It cannot be far from the truth to say that the time span covered in this story is the longest in SF history.
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Příběhy v knize se dají rozdělit do dvou částí. Jedna z nich je vztahové a sexuální skoro infantilní blábolení - kdo po kom touží, s kým spí nebo by spát chtěl a po kom se mu stýská. Díky těmto částem jsem uvažoval o nižším hodnocení. Druhá část má ale velice originální myšlenku a příběh je popsán čtivě.
V blíže neurčené budoucnosti se lidé ze Země vypraví kolonizovat planetu v blízké hvězdy. Vyšlou postupně 3 lodě, ve kterých většina posádky čeká v hybernaci, až přečkají několik set let dlouhou cestu. První loď už je na místě a příběh sledujeme z pohledu postav na druhé lodi, která už se blíží k cíli. Je neplánovaně probuzeno několik astrofyziků a navigátorů, protože několik blízkých hvěz nečekaně explodovalo a tím se změnila intenzita záření - a lodě jsou poháněny hlavně solární plachtou. Po přepočítání kurzu ale loď i tak bezpečně dorazí a společně s první začnou budovat kolonii. Po několika letech ale dojde k další anomálii - na jedné neobyvatelné planetě v jejich soustavě jsou zaznamenány neobvyklé emise záření. Později se celý jejich solární systém začne urychlovat a mířit pryč z galaxie. To je pohroma pro třetí loď, která nikdy nedorazí, protože se nakonec pohybuje pomaleji, než se jí cíl vzdaluje. Kolonisté vyšlou jednu z mezihvězdných lodí na průzkum podivného jevu na druhé planetě, jsou ale po přiblížení rozstříleni a přistávací tým zajat. Lidé na planetě postupně všichni zemřou a na orbitě se někteří zachrání zmrazením a probuzeni jsou až za stovky let.
Druhý děj sleduje úvahy mimozemské téměř božské inteligence, která žije ve hvězdách a cítí se osamocená, takže tvoří své kopie v jiných hvězdách. Po miliardách let se mezi nimi ale vyvine podezřívavost a nepřátelství. Bojují spolu tak, že ničí hvězdy, které by mohl soupeř obývat. Tak je zničeno i Slunce a jediné přežívající lidé jsou kolonisté. Ti jsou ale také ovlivněni touto hvězdbou válkou - anomálie na jejich druhé planetě je zapříčiněna přítomností jedné hmotné kopie hvězdné bytosti, která má za úkol urychlit několik sousedních hvězdných systémů na rychlost světla, aby si její nepřátelé mysleli, že se tak snaží opustit galaxii a zaútočili na ni. Aby nedošlo k ohrožení tohoto úkolu, tak lidské průzkumníky zničí, ikdyž na jiných místech se o ně nazajímá. Urychlení má za následek relativistickou dilataci času oproti okolnímu vesmíru. A také pokles zářivého výkonu jejich slunce a nástup doby ledové na kolonizované planetě. Většina lidí zemře a zbytek se zachrání životem pod zemí. Do tohoto zmrzlého světa jsou probuzeny postavy, které přežily průzkumnou misi. Pracují tam jako otroci na podzemní houbové farmě a poté jsou opět zmrazeni za porušení přísných nařízení po zničení druhé kolonizační lodě.
Potřetí jsou probuzeny asi za dalších 2000 let. Lidé nyní žijí ve vesmírných habitatech kolem blízkého hnědého trpaslíka a daří se jim dobře. Žijí v pohodlné utopii a o okolní vesmír se už nezajímají. Ten totiž přestal existovat - v průběhu letu relativistickou rychlostí v okolí neuběhlo 2500 let ale biliony let. Všude je tma a mrtvo, hvězdy vyhořely. Jejich slunce už svítí opět plnou silou a jejich soustava zastavila. Doba ledová skončila, ale planeta je pustá a nikdo nemá chuť ji opět kolonizovat. Lidé si zvykli na život ve vesmíru. Kopie bytosti na druhé planetě splnila svůj úkol a vypla se. Před tím ale vyslala zprávu pro svého tvůrce, že úkol splnila s hvězdy stále existují mladé.
Probuzení lidé z minulosti obnolí touhu lidstva po průzkumu a kolonizování. Vrátí se zpět na planetu a vyšlou sondy k okolním existujícím hvězdám.
Poslední existující hvězdná inteligence daleko v prázdném kosmu ale zachytí zprávu své primitivní kopie a natěšeně se vypraví ke stále mladým hvězdám. Jak dopadne její střet s budoucím lidstvem se dá jen hádat, protože zde kniha končí. -
This was one of the first “adult” sci-fi books I ever read, more than 25 years ago. At the time, I found it revolutionary and through-provoking. Now as an adult, I find that it mostly holds up, but it has some issues of storytelling and pacing, and a few uncomfortable moments where its age shows through.
The central story follows one human and an alien plasma being. While they never meet, their stories intersect continually in very satisfying ways. Our human protagonist travels into the ever-farther future of humanity, getting frozen in one era and thawed out in another. He is our eyewitness to human history, even as his alien counterpart survives through billions of years of the history of the universe.
For the most part, our human protagonist is little more than a vehicle for Pohl to engage in some social engineering, just like the plasma alien exists to teach the reader about astrophysics and stellar evolution. I will say that Pohl does a great job of blending the science lectures into the story, but that science is often more then focus than the characters are.
The most troubling section for me happens toward the end, when the narrator spends a couple pages being homophobic. He appears to deal with those feelings in time, although never explicitly. If nothing else, it’s a jarring note in such a futuristic setting. With all the wonders on display, and the ways that humanity has evolved, do we really need to cast judgment on a healthy same-sex couple and their happy, well-adjusted son?
Regardless, The World at the End of Time was a very enjoyable read for me. I’m glad to have been able to read it again after all this time.
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Objective Worth: Medium
Enjoyability: High
Rereadability: Medium
Recommended: With a few reservations
Warning: Did not age well, in places. -
I want to like this book better than I do. The author is one of the greats of SF. The story started out with a great premise: an incredibly powerful, incredibly ancient, incorporeal being can affect stars and even galaxies, yet is completely aware of planet-bound life forms. His interactions with others of his kind (whom he himself created) impacts whole star systems. Including the Solar System and the planet Newmanhome, which is beginning to be colonized by humans. Stars are destroyed, and clusters of stars are sent careening off to the ends of the universe. How will humans survive? WILL they survive?
And yet . . . by the time I got to the end of the book, I felt like I had been set up for a big finish, and suddenly the projector ran out of film, the screen went blank, the theater lights went on and someone yelled out, "That's all, folks!" There was 400 pages of set-up, but no real payoff. The world literally went to the end of time, without the main character or any other human ever learning anything about what had happened to them or why it had happened. They apparently just went on, rebuilding their planet, building more habitats, exploring one of the few remaining planets in the UNIVERSE, and one which MIGHT have provided some kind of information on what had happened, or even about the being who was behind it all, for ever and ever, the end.
I was disappointed. I expected a better ending from an author of Pohl's stature, especially after having read his "Heechee" series. -
Ending rather abruptly, the whole story builds for hours of listening (I had the audiobook) towards a conflict that never arrives. I don't know if this was simple sequel baiting or an exercise in "what do you think happened?", but I'd have liked an actual conclusion to the two threads that twirled themselves through the book in parallel and seemed to head for some kind of conversion. No cigar.
That being said, the story was interesting - if literally anti-climactic - in the way that chronicles tend to be. And that's what this book was: a chronicle of a sleeper who lives his life in chunks across vast amounts of time. The physics plot, particular as relating to relativistic speeds and the time dilation they come with, are a rarely used plot device and I was happy to explore it.
I also liked the idea and description of Wan To, the god-like creature, which did serve as a fascinating attempt at imagining what immortality and omnipotence just might look like.
But again, in the end, the threads though nearing each other, never met by the end of the story and I am not sure if a sequel would even be the right place to fill in that hole.
Anyway... Happy to have read it, slightly disappointed by the end. -
Tras leer la saga de los Heechees (muy recomendada), busqué otro éxito del autor, para decantarme por esta obra grandilocuente, que cumple con las expectativas y reafirma al autor como gran novelista de ciencia ficción.
El comienzo es un tanto típico y tópico: dos naves humanas se preparan para terraformar y vivir en un nuevo sistema solar, alojado por un planeta que cumple a la perfección. Y a partir de ahí se expande a mucho más allá de lo inimaginable, guiado a través de nuestro protagonista Viktor hasta casi el fin de los tiempos. Por otro lado, tenemos un coprotagonista llamado Wan-To, que es un ente de plasma inteligente, el cual abarca un tamaño inconmensurable y se alimenta de lo núcleos de las estrellas. Ambas especies comparten un objetivo: la supervivencia.
Las dos historias se entrelazan, se desarrollan e incluso llegan a coincidir en cierto momento temporal. De hecho, todas las acciones tomadas por el ente extraterrestre implican de alguna manera el devenir de la humanidad, un punto fresco y original que hace que la obra sea muy resultona.
Personalmente, la conclusión no es el broche de oro que se merecía el relato, incluso con un final abierto a la especulación que deja en manos del lector. No obstante, el viaje cumple a la perfección y se hace muy entretenido. -
I'm still working out what i think of it. I mean it's a really engaging story, really great characters, lots of conflicts, twists and turns and scientific food for thought, as I've found to be expected from Pohl. However, I didn't connect as much as I did in the heechee novels, and the end just left me kinda like, "lol wuut, that's it?" Maybe that's a little insight into how I'm a feel when it's all over or something
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The beginning with the strange story of sun dwelling entities was almost enough to make me stop reading, but then the main story started and I was caught, this was a great epic long story, with a sort of one way time travel aspect. It reminded me of Halderman's, "the accidental time machine". This was a Good Read.
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I wanted to like this more than I actually did, I have enjoyed other nooks by Pohl.
Some BIG ideas, but a long slow stretch in the second half and a sometimes whiny main character pulled me out of it a little bit. -
An interesting idea, with a lot of potential, which I thought did not fulfill. The story got more interesting as it progressed, but for me, the major limiting factor is the writing style. For me, the prose is simply too amateuristic.
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Hey, this is pretty cool.
Not the most unheard of novel ever, but classical style off-planet sci-fi.
Nice speculations about the universe and its fate.
