Tor, 2000, 320pp, $24.95

reviewed in Vector 211, May-June 2000

Despite the title (and the dedication to Bob Shaw), this is in no way a continuation, expansion or development from Shaw's classic 'slow glass' story. This will come as a relief to many of us who would not want to see a near-perfect story tampered with, but it is also a pity since slow glass was such a wonderful and original idea and no-one since Shaw has found any way of using the notion. What Clarke and Baxter have come up with is a distant-viewing device that feels rather conventional in comparison, using wormholes in space and what they call 'wormcams' (if I was to give this review a title it would be: 'A Can of Worms' since Clarke and Baxter go overboard with wormthis and wormthat, there's a 'wormworks' and even the asteroid that threatens Earth is called 'wormwood').

At the centre of the web is Hiram Patterson, a bullying Rupert Murdoch-type businessman who originally sees the wormcam as a way of boosting his cable news network: getting news quicker with fewer staff. One person at one central location can open an unseen eye on any part of the globe at that precise instant. Of course, once the technology is available, its use cannot be restrained like that. The wormcam, even in this limited form, changes the way we live: we are given glimpses of it unmasking criminals, spying on governments, prying on individuals and displaying celebrities in the nude. The effect upon our most fundamental conceptions of privacy and morality is devastating. Clarke and Baxter show some of this: we learn of corrupt politicians forced out of office and a necessary new openness in any negotiations; we also learn that some people turn their toilets into completely lightless rooms while others go to the other extreme adopting public nudity. But though the authors are very good at showing the wide array of consequences, sometimes surprising, neither has Bob Shaw's ability to make such consequences the heart of a humane and emotionally wrenching story, rather they are touched upon without ever touching us. The moment the story threatens to get too close to our humanity, some new technological innovation is added to the mix. For a start, there is a planetoid heading straight for Earth. Larger than the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and completely inescapable, it promises the end of humanity not in our lifetime, but near enough in the foreseeable future to affect behaviour, bringing a sense of hopeless purposelessness. While a new development in wormcam technology which allows us to observe any moment in the past means there is now no way of hiding. Not only that, but cherished traditions and beliefs can be examined, history becomes an exact science: the minute-by-minute examination of Christ's life undertaken by the Vatican is notable for how many oddball ideas Clarke and Baxter toss into the mix without ever doing anything that will really outrage conventional religious opinion.

The writing styles of the two authors blend together well. They share a fascination with the way things work over and above their effects; they share a delight in the wonders of technology rather than conventional literary interests in character and setting (much of the book is set in Seattle where I was when I was reading it, but I couldn't recognise the place from the novel); and above all they share a taste for the grand gesture and the big set piece (the two finest moments in the book come when wormcam technology is used to sweep back through history, first of all following one human face back through the generations to a neanderthal ancestor, then going back further through all the generations of life on Earth to the earliest slimemold and then beyond). But one key element stops me identifying Baxter as Clarke's natural successor: Baxter's trademark desire to destroy the planet (which crops up not once but twice in this book) sits uneasily with Clarke's dream of transcendence. That these views of humanity's history and future contradict each other can be fudged through most of the novel, but they can't help making the ending feel like an unsatisfactory compromise.

Nevertheless, this is a bravura performance, the best thing to come from Clarke in many years and a clear demonstration of Baxter's continuing improvement as a writer. It's a novel packed with enough ideas to fill the entire output of many another science fiction writer, and there are moments of sheer unadorned wonder. It raises many issues that are left unsatisfactorily unresolved, touches on others that deserve closer attention, and in places feels as if the two authors aren't in as close harmony as they might be, yet it still thrills and amuses and delights, it still plays with stirring ideas and carries us along with the pleasures of good storytelling.