Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Charles Sheffield
Bantam/Spectra
$5.99 Paperback

0-533-57889-8
1997

_Tomorrow and Tomorrow_ is some of the hardest science fiction that has 
been written in this decade, and it is both good and bad because of its 
hardness.  Charles Sheffield expands his novella to take us on quite a ride.

Composer Merlin Drake's wife Anastasia is rapidly dying of cancer.  He 
arranges for them both to be frozen until such time as she can be cured.  
Before his icy near-death, he interviews his peers and writes articles 
about them that imply that he knows more than he is writing down, betting 
that someone some time will be interested enough to ressurect him.

Although he *is* ressurrected by a music scholar a few hundred years later, 
his wife's disease remains incurable.  As he waits for medicine to advance 
he opens his wife's cryowomb to look, Orpheus-like, upon her body to make 
sure she's still there.  Medical advisors inform him that Ana, being opened 
once, has spoiled somewhat and has gone, to paraphrase the "Princess 
Bride," from *mostly dead* to *completely dead*.  Drake decides to sleep 
until the end of the universe where, briefly, all things that have ever 
existed will exist again and he will meet Anastasia again.

As the millions and then billions of years pass, he is ressurected again 
and again when humanity requires him or his opinions.  One of the longer 
resurrections revolves around a situation where star system after star 
system falls off the galactic network, and the peaceful human collective 
mind need someone vicious and independent to battle the encroacher.

Sheffield demonstrates hard SF's legacy of thoughtful speculation well.  
Our hero is clever enough to logic his way through puzzle after puzzle, 
running into fascinating people across time.  Drake sees more of space and 
time than any human alive today could ever expect to.  Sheffield's deft 
wordsmithing and easy confidence in his physics almost makes you want to 
sign up for a bath of liquid helium yourself just so you can live as 
bizarre and varied life as our hero.  At one point, Merlin tries to get scale 
on his sleep of fourteen million years: "But while he slept, fourteen 
thousand Caesars, enough to fill a football field, could have conquered, 
ruled, and been brought down.  Fourteen thousand Gibbons could have 
chronicled their rise and bloody fall."

Unfortunately, all of hard SF's failings appear here, too.  Merlin is a 
cardboard, one-note character who exists solely so there can be someone to 
witness all these neat things the author has dreamed up.  Long tracts of 
text explain things like open and closed universes, dark matter, and 
quantum physics as if I were reading _American Scientist_.  At times, the 
plot lunges awkwardly down interesting but somewhat irrelevant side 
passages, damaging the thematic whole of the story.

So, do I say read it?  Certainly anyone wishing to imagine the end of the 
universe should hop on board with Merlin Drake.  Good hard SF can show us 
the wonder of astrophysics and can travel down time's arrow to explore the 
edges of our understanding of the universe.  Sheffield has that down well.  
I just was hoping for a little more story.