Timescape by Gregory Benford

Its 400 hundred pages make it look one of the most interesting books ever written by the Benford,full of suspense and especially subnaturality.
It is. What I think though it's that they are not really well distribuited trhoughout the story. Most of the parts are just irrrelevant, people keep talking and talking without a purpose to the conversation. As an ESL student I think its terminology was way too pushed, especially for teenagers, who want to understand and assimilate 100% of what they've read. It's also really hard , under my opinion, to understand what some character's roles are in the story and really boring during it infinite descriptions of what's around without telling the juice of the event. It would have been much more interesting if the more interesting moments were more well introduced in the story even in less pages.
Conclusion: It could have been a good book if it was better written.

Cult film director Roger Corman once said, "There isn't a film in existence that wouldn't benefit from twenty minutes' worth of cuts". Okay, so we are talking about books and not movies, but this neat aphorism would seem to be remarkably relevant when referencing Greg Benford's technically accomplished yet painfully overwrought Timescape.

A quick synopsis of the story before we proceed:

It's the springtime of 1998 and trouble is afoot. Yes, those damnable scientists have been playing God yet again with their bioengineering tomfoolery, thus conveniently condemning the entire planet to thoroughly depressing ecological oblivion (will these eggheads ever learn?).

Deep within the sleepy halls of Cambridge University, John Renfrew is attempting to send a faster-than-light message, via the use of tachyons, back to 1962, where Californian postgraduate Gordon Bernstein is tinkering around with advanced particle physics.

Renfrew's goal is a simple one: to prevent the ecological catastrophe by telling the people of the past about the plight of the people in their future.

A worthy pursuit to be sure and one that, in my opinion, really shouldn't take much more than two hundred pages to document. Unfortunately for the reader, Mr. Benford is one of these contemporary SF writers who are totally oblivious to the word 'pacing' and the phrase: less is more.

At 400+ pages, this text is far too long; and any genuinely interesting plot developments have the life choked out of them by seemingly endless bouts of mind-numbing characterization.

Not that I have a problem with the creation of three-dimensional protagonists of course, it's just that Benford's attempts appear to go above and beyond the boundaries of overkill, and truth be known, much of it isn't all that good anyway.

To begin with, many of his characters appear to be hopeless stereotypes: Renfrew the typically idiosyncratic, and reserved Englishman; Marjorie his twittering horticulturist wife; Greg Markham the ultra-confident Yank smoothie (no doubt packing some nylons and a couple of Hershey bars); and Peterson, the string-pulling Machiavellian lothario.

The latter deserves special attention for his (preposterous) 007esque ability to take horizontal advantage of any woman who walks within earshot of his predatory charms, irrespective of whether they are happily partnered or not. Wasn't it Nietzche who said that when faced with death, human beings rush to procreate? Well, it seems that the author is in agreement with his assessment.

Quite frankly, Peterson appears to be the compensatory fantasy for every science boffin that ever struggled to get the girl, in fact, the entire book reads as a scientist's compensatory fantasy. Gone are those pesky thick-brained politicians with their deceitful antics and inane 'governments'; no the future (invoking the tropes of 50's pulp SF) will be run by scientific oligarchy, making scientific decisions  messing just about everything up in the most scientific manner possible.

Now, my apologies if it appears as if I am totally dissatisfied with this novel because this is not the case. Indeed there are several positives to be gleaned here, and it would be unfair not to give mention to the book's intriguing insight into the unglamorous realities of scientific discovery and university politics. Not to mention Benford's ability to evoke fairly convincing imagery of humanity's whimpering descent into oblivion.

Peterson's departure from the story is a particularly haunting, and this is arguably the book's strongest and most memorable chapter.

Unfortunately, the 'juicy bits' just don't arrive fast enough, and for much of the book you are left wondering just how these braniacs can spend so much time painfully missing what would be patently obvious to a carpet-hugging toddler.

Final verdict: an interesting premise heavily diluted by languid tedium.