Timescape (Bantam Spectra Book)
Suspense builds in this novel about scientists, physics, time  travel, and saving the Earth. It's 1998, and a physicist in Cambridge,  England, attempts to send a message backward in time. Earth is falling  apart, and a government faction supports the project in hopes of  diverting or avoiding the environmental disasters beginning to tear at  the edges of civilization. It's 1962, and a physicist in California  struggles with his new life on the West Coast, office politics, and the  irregularities of data that plague his experiments. The story's perspective toggles  between time lines, physicists, and their communities.Timescapepresents the subculture and world of scientists in  microcosm: the lab, the loves, the grappling for grants, the pressures  from university and government, the rewards and trials of relationships  with spouses, the pressures of the scientific race, and the thrill of  discovery.Timescapemerits the tag "hard science fiction"; it tells the  story of scientists, and readers can't help but learn something about  tachyons and physics while reading it. Yet much of the story is about  humanity: the men John Renfrew and Gordon Bernstein and their  relationships--between husband and wife, lover and lover, English  working class and upper class, professor and student, and academician  and colleagues.Winner of theNebula Awardin 1980 and the John W. Clark Award in 1981,Timescapeoffers readers a great yarn, in terms of both humanity and science.