Book Review: The River of Time, By David Brin

Being an Issac Asimov junkie, I did not at first recognize the name 'David Brin' and thought it might end up a "ho hum" book. In fact, I had a long and thoughly enjoyable read right to the end of the book, where I discovered a familiar gem - the short story "The River Of Time" was one of the earliest science fiction stories I read, when I was still in school, and asks a simple question - "What if time is like a river, and we are only flowing along in 1 tributary stream right now?

This is a collection of short stories grouped around four themes: Destiny, Recollection, Speculation, and Propagation. It was not immediately apparent to me how these themes were developed, but thinking about it, they were. And that's the problem, in a sense. You need to think to get the full impact of these stories.

Don't read this book if you like your Science Fiction to be just mindless (ok, near-mindless) shoot-em-up entertainment (star wars?), or worse, pseudo-scientific mysticism (Galactica seems to have gone down that road, an the Matrix, to a degree, even though I like the 'Matrix' series). Here is science fiction that challenges your ideas of reality, while remaining rooted in rationality. David Brin's work is simultaneously encouraging, disturbing and thought provoking. Something like Star Trek the original series must have been to people in the 1960's and 70's.

Go to davidbrin.com and at the bottom of the page you can see the issue I bought. You can also get it from Amazon and from fantasticfiction.co.uk David Brin's website might be the best place to go, as he lets you read samples of his work.