Lower Decks

With the final season of ‘Lost’ in full swing, ‘Entertainment Weekly’ wrote about the failure of subsequent attempts to replicate that experience on TV (including ‘Day Break,’ which I would wager was a wild if short-lived success, and the origin of the “Decision. Consequence.” theme recently referenced in one of my ‘Fringe‘ reviews). Steph Mineart wrote in to the magazine explaining that it’s because all of them, contrary to the ‘Lost’ model, go out of their way to say, “‘Hey, look at this mystery!’” While I have an ongoing argument to make for ‘Fringe’ (and ‘Heroes,’ assuming it returns in the fall), I feel I should also stand up for ‘FlashForward,’ because while its mystery certainly is pretty, well, straightforward, the fact that it’s based on a book hasn’t really dimmed the suspense possible in its premise. I know, because I just finished reading the book.

When the show first launched in the fall, I wasn’t all that aware of the book, both because I don’t read a lot of sci-fi and because, let’s face it, until the show, the book was pretty obscure. ABC didn’t set out to adapt a beloved classic. But I was curious, and figured I could string along reading the book pretty much throughout the first season of the show, to see how similar or diverging the experiences would be. I quickly learned that the cast of characters and the basic narrative scenario were different indeed, though most of the elements were necessarily the same, from the blackout and visions to a central character learning that he was destined to die.

Where the series has increasingly relied on an extensive cast and an unfolding mystery, the book quickly set about explaining how those responsible for the event had to resolve its consequences for themselves. Set at the labs of CERN (seen in the movie ‘Angels and Demons,’ for those better versed in pop culture than science), we follow the exploits and guilt of Lloyd Simcoe and Theo Procopides as they attempt to confirm their responsibility for the blackouts, and then the decision to replicate the experiment that made it possible. The book follows and tracks the consequences of the original catastrophe a lot more directly than the TV show, which seems more interested in the human impact (hence the increased emphasis on things like the Mosaic Project, which exists in both versions, and the larger cast) and seeing just how mysterious the mystery can be (which is not to concede Mineart’s point, but rather to assist in my greater argument).

Eventually, since most of the book consists of a few days immediately following the blackouts as everyone scrambles to figure things out, the science is confirmed and causality begins to be explored a little more fully. Lloyd has a marriage he commits to after everyone begins suspecting the future they saw is mutable, thanks to such developments as Theo’s brother killing himself rather than continue with a life he wasn’t pleased to see a glimpse of (another ripple between book and TV versions, which was a key development for the show that made me a fan, but in the book, reads a little too deliberately). Like the title and like what ABC must have been thinking, thanks to ‘Lost’ (where “flashforward” became a hot term a few seasons ago, conveniently enough, but in vastly different context), the book takes a leap into the twenty year in the future (rather than a few months as presented in the show) and sees how some things have fallen exactly as “predicted,” such as the end of Lloyd’s marriage, and even Theo’s murder, except that much is avoided after still more complicated science is explained. Let’s just say Sheldon Cooper from ‘The Big Bang Theory’ would either really love all this theoretical physics, or hate it. Probably love it.

Sawyer writes like a proper descendent of Arthur C. Clarke, whose ‘Space Odyssey’ books were among the last real sci-fi that I read, about six years ago. He focuses more on science than he does characters, about the possibilities and scenarios. Though he spends a lot of time on Lloyd and Theo, they never really leave reaction mode. It all feels fairly static, which is no real surprise when he moves into ‘2012’ territory (the movie, not the predictions we’re all going to laugh about in a little under two years), very briefly and in cursory fashion, when he allows us a glimpse into the future as only a textbook can describe it, as only fans of “hard sci-fi” would appreciate it, the same people who look at global warming and see it as an unavoidable catastrophe, who fail to see the variables in the experiment where constants are important, but not everything, not what we’re all investigating, the thing called life.

None of this is an actual failing on Sawyer’s part. It’s an easily readable book, and certainly relevant to those watching the show that it inspired, which has taken any number of detours from the original plot. Like ‘Lost,’ the point isn’t just to explore a mystery, but to explore its impact on people. ‘FlashForward’ as a show was intended to capitalize on the craze ‘Lost’ inspired, but it was also a reaction, a “mystery” show with serialized content that wants to give the audience a chance to keep pace while at the same time leading them along. ‘Heroes’ was an attempt to do that, and at first quite successful at it. ‘FlashForward’ as a TV show, with the knowledge that it has also been a book, is a little more transparent, at once declaring itself as a mystery, but also representing a fair amount of known content, no matter what diversions take place.

Having made the decision to finish the book well in advance of the season finale, I know what a second and third replication mean, what’s learned in one version and where the story goes with the overall narrative, to fairly expansive speculation that isn’t seen all that often, either in books (so far as I know, or care) or, certainly, television, ‘FlashForward’ is a big idea, no matter the version, in much the same sense ‘Lost’ has been. The show isn’t just an attempt to cash in on a trend, because it was a book first, and it’s this strange, almost unprecedented nature that helps to set it apart.

At the end of the book is an eventuality that readers could easily have seen coming, which is almost a disappointment, but it is never represented as a direct consequence of the titular event. It is, whatever else it is, a nice surprise for two of its central characters, one of whom has survived any number of convoluted circumstances to reach it. It is a happy ending, and one that has nothing to do with a sci-fi gimmick. In that sense, it reflects exactly on what the series made of the story.