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About the book�

In the 277th century, Earth is dead, but mankind survives in colonies scattered across the galaxy. To these new worlds come the Immortals, beings with strange ties to ancient Earth who seem to live forever. When a small group of humans sets out to defeat them, they become Immortals themselves and discover a new threat to the galaxy itself.

About the author�

Author and scientist Charles Sheffield was born in Hull, England on June 25, 1935. He was the chief scientist of Earth Satellite Corporation and while there, wrote numerous technical papers and two non-fiction books entitled Earth Watch and Man on Earth. He won numerous awards for his science fiction works including the 1992 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Brother to Dragons and the 1993 Nebula award and the 1994 Hugo award for Georgia on My Mind. He wrote numerous series including the Heritage Universe series, Jupiter series, Cold as Ice series, and Proteus series. He died of cancer on November 2, 2002.

Charles Sheffield is a new writer to me, in terms of novels. Judging by his award nominations, I think he is known primarily for hard sf short stories and science articles in Analog and similar publications.

There are two editions of the novel available. As originally published in 1987, the ending of the book was consistent with the big bang-big crunch model of the universe. After this was shown to be incorrect in the 1990s, Sheffield revised the novel, completely replacing the ending, and increasing the length by as much as 25%. I read the 2002 version.

The novel is episodic, set in four time periods of the future. Characters do persist across episodes, but the focus character does shift. There is a near-future projected from the Cold War period in which the book was originally written, with environmental degradation and superpower tensions. Then it jumps to an athletic/survival contest on a human settled world named Pentecost about 25000 years from now. The winners of the contest are drawn into an exploration of human existence of that time. Finally, and this is the section Sheffield re-wrote, there is the far future destiny of humankind.

Pentecost is a world in a system of two suns, and I think it's interesting that as I read this book, I learned about the first discovery of a planet that orbits two stars. (Kepler-16b, which orbits both a red and an orange star in the constellation Cygnus, is 200 light-years from Earth. The planet is most like Saturn in our own solar system � too cold for life as we know it, most likely with a thick, gassy atmosphere.)

There is very strong plot tension in most of the book, and it was difficult to put it down. Unfortunately, that tension withers somewhat in the last quarter of the book. I have to wonder if, even though the original ending was no longer scientifically valid, it it might have been a stronger plot. But it needed to be done, for the hard sf audience of this book, inaccurate science is a no-starter.

Thematically, the novel deals with the human drive towards immortality and the price we pay for that. Sheffield also gives his definition of the meaning of life - to learn the universe and solve big problems. As an engineer, I gotta love that.

My review (click through to ‘like�) �

Between the Strokes of Night deals with the long-term experiences of humanity as a space-faring race. Its central contribution � not a spoiler, since the opens with this exploration � is an intriguing twist on time and space travel, specifically that by adapting the human body to different temperatures, subjective experience can be changed to stretch a human lifespan over many centuries or millennia.

As far as traditional “hard� science fiction goes, Charles Sheffield does a pretty good job of nailing it. That is both good and bad, though. In his introduction, Sheffield makes the point that “if the science in the story is wrong or ridiculous, it’s not science fiction� and while “hard science fiction ought to be hard not because it’s hard to read, but because it’s hard to write,� he still believes that “there’s no reason not to try it the hard way.� The problem here is that Sheffield, like many science fiction traditionalists, don’t grant that endeavor to any sciences but the “hard� sciences (a foolishly misleading term, since the physical sciences are far “easier� in many ways than the others).

The opening of the book provides a painful illustration of why this is a weakness. Even though the story was updated in 2002 (just before the author’s death) to accommodate new developments in cosmology, he left in the hackneyed plot device “nuclear armageddon triggered by nations gone ‘mad�.� Several decades of sociological and psychological research have provided convincing evidence that Mutually-Assured Destruction (MAD, of course) worked � and continues to work � splendidly because of self-interested rationality.

While Sheffield’s characters are much more fleshed out than the cardboard characters of much science fiction, they still show very little psychological depth. Effectively absent are anything but superficially-portrayed anxieties, for example. The social interactions of his characters are very close to idealized androids who mimic human emotions without actually needing to rely on human relationships for stability. Over and over again, he has characters head off to a fate with little concern that they are leaving behind family, friends, or any semblance thereof.

If you enjoy science fiction that focuses tightly on getting physics correct and you can ignore implausibilities in other sciences, then this is an excellent book. Even if you find the latter troubling, it is still enjoyable, since Sheffield’s automatons mimic humanity fairly well � far better than many science fiction pioneers.
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