Although most science fiction writers do have some training in the sciences or engineering (one or more degrees or an extensive reading background), relatively few are actually working scientists. Others, like Isaac Asimov, did advanced work in science in the past, but then gave it up when they became full-time writers.

Benford is a working scientist, a physicist who sees writing fiction as a sideline, and one of his goals in Timescape is to demonstrate to the general reading public how real science gets done. An interesting discussion of Timescape might well center on this attempt at realism. The scientists whom Benford describes live very different lives from those found in most science fiction novels. Unlike the generally clear-sighted, single-minded scientistheroes of Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov, Benford's characters often seem to be wandering about in the dark, their primary attention fixed not...