Timescape - Gregory Benford

Written by Gregory Benford
Read by Pete Bradbury & Simon Prebble
Format: MP3

The world in 1998 seems caught in a spiral of deterioration. Food is in short supply and power must be rationed. Dwindling
resources are concentrated on preventing the worst disasters. People carry on, but the horizon is dark.

Cambridge physicist John Renfrew is convinced he can do something about it. In theory, tachyons — particles that move
faster than light — produce a wave that moves through time in both directions. Renfrew’s hope is to use focused tachyon
bursts to tell scientists in 1962 how to prevent the ills the world suffers in 1998.

Renfrew’s plan interests Ian Peterson, a high-ranking bureaucrat, and Greg Markham, a far-sighted American colleague, but
chronic shortages hamper progress. Renfrew grows cross, spending too much time at the lab while his wife sits home alone,
angry and afraid.

Meanwhile, in 1962, the tachyons are causing problems for Gordon Bernstein, a rising star at the University of California
at La Jolla. While examining noise in his resonance measurements of indium antimonide, Bernstein is startled to recognize
Morse code. The deciphered results, however — partially garbled phrases about man-made chemicals — make little sense to
him. Worse still, sensational publicity brought on by an indiscreet colleague damages his reputation. Bernstein obsesses
on the experiment, estranging his free-spirited girlfriend and endangering his career.

In 1998 things are getting worse. A mysterious and poisonous red bloom in the South Atlantic is spreading exponentially.
Peterson learns the bloom is generating deadly yellow clouds that will devastate the Earth. Soon thereafter he falls ill
from a new plague. In 1963 unexpected confirmation of Bernstein’s readings from an old mentor doesn’t solve his central
worry: What do the messages mean?

As the toxic clouds spread, Renfrew desperately sends warnings into the past, wondering for the first time whether there
is any hope of saving his world from its fatal, self-inflicted wounds.