Robert J. Sawyer's award-winning science fiction has garnered both
popular and critical acclaim. The New York Times called Factoring
Humanity "filled to bursting with ideas, characters, and
incidents," while The Gainesville Sun said, "Sawyer is a brilliant
stylist who depicts daily life events with a shattered worldview."
Sawyer now brings us Flashforward, the story of a
world-shattering discovery at the CERN research facility in
Switzerland. The research team of Lloyd Simcoe and Theo Procopides
is using the particle accelerator at CERN in pursuit of the elusive
Higgs Boson, a theoretical subatomic particle. But their experiment
goes incredibly awry, and, for a few moments, the consciousness of
the entire human race is thrown ahead by about twenty years.
While humanity must deal immediately with the destructive
aftermath of the experiment -- thousands were injured and killed as
every single person's body was left unconscious in the here-and-now
-- the greater implications take longer to surface. People who had
no vision of the future seek to learn how they will died, while
others seek out future lovers.
Lloyd must deal with the guilt of accidentally causing the
death of his fiancée's child, while Theo gets caught up in the
search for his own murderer. As the implications truly hit home,
the pressure to repeat the experiment builds. Everyone wants a
glimpse of the future, a chance to flashforward to see their
successes . . . or learn how to avoid their failures.