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    Dreams Before the Start of Time
    Dreams Before the Start of Time
    Dreams Before the Start of Time
    Audiobook6 hours

    Dreams Before the Start of Time

    Written by Anne Charnock

    Narrated by Susan Duerden and Derek Perkins

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

    In a near-future London, Millie Dack places her hand on her belly to feel her baby kick, resolute in her decision to be a single parent. Across town, her closest friend—a hungover Toni Munroe—steps into the shower and places her hand on a medic console. The diagnosis is devastating.

    In this stunning, bittersweet family saga, Millie and Toni experience the aftershocks of human progress as their children and grandchildren embrace new ways of making babies. When infertility is a thing of the past, a man can create a child without a woman, a woman can create a child without a man, and artificial wombs eliminate the struggles of pregnancy. But what does it mean to be a parent? A child? A family?

    Through a series of interconnected vignettes that spans five generations and three continents, this emotionally taut story explores the anxieties that arise when the science of fertility claims to deliver all the answers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateApr 18, 2017
    ISBN9781511374408
    Dreams Before the Start of Time
    Author

    Anne Charnock

    Anne Charnock is the author of Dreams Before the Start of Time, winner of the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Her debut novel, A Calculated Life, was a finalist for the 2013 Philip K. Dick Award and the 2013 Kitschies Golden Tentacle award. The Guardian featured Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind in “Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2015.” Anne’s novella, The Enclave, won the 2017 British Science Fiction Association Award for Short Fiction. Her writing career began in journalism, and her articles appeared in the Guardian, New Scientist, International Herald Tribune, and Geographical. Learn more at www.annecharnock.com.

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    Reviews for Dreams Before the Start of Time

    3.5/5

    27 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      An odd book--not a novel, but not short stories either; rather, a collection of vignettes moving forward 100 years into the future, loosely interconnected by character and the theme of pregnancy. The stories begin with the pregnancies of two friends, Millie and Toni, and returns to touch on their lives and their families, while also taking detours into the lives of other people connected to them. The technology of pregnancy and childbirth evolves throughout, as does attitudes toward having children, and I suppose that is the main theme of the book, but what I enjoyed was the quiet, subtle writing that was more character study than anything else. There wasn't much plot to speak of, and many stories were left unresolved, just a moment in time and then the book moves on. While I found the technology fairly believable--not just pregnancy-related but also everyday technology--I would imagine that tech would be much less recognizable 100 years a now, especially when thinking back on what the world was like 100 years ago. And I found the complete omission of climate change--even just a side note about how it had been mitigated--took away from the believability. Overall, though, I think this was well-written if lacking some imagination.
    • 3/5
      As someone who has never had children and never particularly wanted children the central thesis of this book is really only of academic interest. What is that central thesis you ask? The author posits how human procreation will change in the coming years. I do have friends who desperately wanted to have children and so I could see how some of the forecast technologies would make life simpler. There seems to me to be one hole in these interconnected stories though—will the world survive the ecological catastrophes that humankind seems to be bent on bringing to the planet? It was hard for me to envision a world in which a person’s chief concern could be whether to carry a child or have it grown to term in an artificial womb. What about whether the ocean levels will inundate many of the large cities of the world (I imagine London which is the location of many of these stories, being on the tidal Thames, might be in for some flooding)? What about whether there will be enough food production to fill the bellies of those children? Sure the author suggests that many people ride bicycles and use mass transit but she also has people flying off to China and India and Australia and air travel is a pretty major energy suck.Maybe I’m asking too much of a series of short fiction. It just seems to me that another author might reference these matters in a succinct but cohesive manner. This author seems to envision a future that is pretty much what we have right now in 2018 but with new ways to make babies. I enjoyed the stories and the way successive generations dealt with procreation and child-rearing but it was just not a well-rounded story.
    • 4/5
      I forget who originally recommended Charnock, but I read her Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind (see here), and was impressed enough to want to read more. Which I now have done. Although it has taken me pretty much exactly twelve months. But it was worth the wait. Dreams Before the Start of Time is… an ensemble piece. There are a group of people, related by blood or marriage or just friends, and they’re living their lives in London and Shanghai over the next few decades, beginning several years from now. The story opens with a young woman deciding to become a single mother, but using a sperm donor. Her friend, on the other hand, has a one-night stand, and decides to keep the consequences. As the years unfold, attitudes to the means of conception, gestation and child-rearing change as technology progresses and sensibilities reflect new social mores. A sf novel like this in direct opposition to the Atwood above – the world has not ended, there are no sexual assaults, no mega-violence, no violence, in fact. There needs to be more science fiction like this. Of course, it helps that the writing is really good – good enough for me to pick the novel as one of my top five books of the year – see here. I was given Charnock’s A Calculated Life, her debut novel, for Christmas. I’m looking forward to reading it.