Red Tide
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
Loosely based on Larry Niven's 1973 novella "Flash Crowd," Red Tide continues to examine the social consequences of the impact of having instantaneous teleportation, where humans can instantly travel long distances in milliseconds.
This is a theme that has fascinated the author throughout his career and appeared in his seminal work Ringworld, where the central character celebrates his birthday by instantly teleporting himself to different time zones, extending his birthday. The author also discussed the impact of such instantaneous transportation in his essay, "Exercise in Speculation: The Theory and Practice of Teleportation."
Larry Niven is joined by two younger writers, Brad R. Torgersen and Matthew J. Harrington, as they take on this challenging idea and further develop the theories and concepts that Niven originally presented in "Flash Crowd."
This is the seventh book in the Stellar Guild line.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This collaborative creation two chapters by longtime SF author Niven, followed by one each from relative newcomers Torgersen and Harrington depicts a future where the ease of instant travel leads to significant social problems. The writers trace the evolution of the JumpShift teleportation technology alongside the story of 24-year-old aspiring newstaper Barry Jerome Jansen, aka Jerryberry. He collaborates with brilliant physicist Robin Whyte, the last surviving developer of JumpShift, to solve the problem of "flash riots," which cost JerryBerry his job. Their relationship provides a narrative peg for the ever-wilder adventures that occur as a teen's travels go off-kilter due to a bent jumpcard and a misdirected dog thrusts Whyte into the hands of kidnapping hackers. This distant future also offers fractured English, time travel, and hyperintelligent cats. The discordant split between the Jerryberry-Whyte story and the history of teleportation suggests that the writers focused less on the macrocosmic effects of the transformational technology than on the almost offhand ways in which it changed society, destroying some industries and developing others. The lighthearted tone provides diversion, but fails to unify the independently written sections.
