Frameshift

By: Robert J. Sawyer

Narrated by: Scott Aiello

This is the story of Pierre Tradivel, a scientist, and his complex battle against deadly illness, and ex-Nazi war criminal still hiding in the U.S., a crooked insurance company, and a plot to make Pierre and his wife the victims of a bizarre genetic experiment. Frameshift is hard science fiction at its best, full of complications and neat surprises.

©1998 Robert J. Sawyer (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Not my favorite Sawyer~

Frameshift seems to diverge from Robert Sawyers other novels. It is a good book, but my least favorite of his novels. Parts of it were exceptional but it seemed to skip around a lot and took too long to tie the story lines together. I almost gave up about 2 1/2 hrs into it...but because it was Sawyer I stuck with it. The the last 3rd is pretty good and deals with similar subject matter as many of his other novels. Probably will not listen more than once. Good but not Great!

Great story, but very emotionally taxing

I love pretty much all of Robert J. Sawyer's books. I like this optimistic take on the future of humanity, and the way his books usually have a lot of fascinating ideas combined with characters that I really care about. I've read most of his books at least three or four times.

This book was also really good, but I don't think I've ever re-read it after one physical book read and one listen to this audiobook version. It's just too draining to read. The suffering the main character (Pierre Tardivel) goes through is very gripping. It's like what the main character suffers in FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON, but even worse in several ways -- Pierre has a wife and child, his affliction is something that real people go through, he will eventually die from his disorder, etc, I just can't deal with it. Eventually, though, I hope to be able to read this one again, not least because I now do bioinformatics and so a lot of the subject matter will probably be even more interesting to me now.

And I'm glad that I read it through in the first place, too. I highly recommend it to everybody interested in genetics, telepathy, insurance conspiracies, Neanderthals, Nazi hunting, and science fiction in general.

Storyshift

The great thing about Sawyer is that he never writes a bad book. This is my 11th and some are better then others, but none are boring and none of them do not fail to engage your brain. This book published in 1979, one year after Terminal Experiment, seems a little on the amateurish side when it comes to writing style. The beginning of the book, after the murder attempt, starts out in a Nazi concentration camp. It is interesting stuff and Sawyer does tie it into the rest of the story, but it does seem to be written for sensationalism. It gives the story kind of a jerky motion. There are some moments that seem a little beyond believe in the eyes of the listener. There is one big moment that is crucial to the rest of the story, where my inner voice said, "That's stupid, they would not do that." the reason given is money. It is a poor excuse and the plot lies heavily on it.

The story has lots of genetics, Nazi's and opinions. The kind of stuff that Sawyer always has in his books and the kind of stuff I love. Sawyer is never afraid to let his opinion known and often takes lots of grief over it. In this book he gets pretty preachy. I like an author who takes a stand, even when I don't agree and sometimes he takes the less politically correct stand, which has probably hurt his book sales.

My favorite Sawyer is Illegal Alien, followed by The Terminal Experiment and then by Flash Forward. You may want to skip Red Planet Blues and W.W.W. Wake.

Engaging and Thought Provoking

A fascinating, if highly coincidental, look into theoretical genetics from both the past and the future.

Montreal NOT Paris

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

Please. Please ! PLEASE redo the narrative with a Quebec French accent instead of the Parisian French accent !The narrator's portrayal of Montrealer, Pierre Tardivel, with a European French accent was distracting to the point of irritation.

Any additional comments?

Otherwise, the story and its telling were both reasonably well done.
This punch at hard sci-fi probably won't ring anyone's bell, but it feels like R.J. Sawyer is at least trying to go beyond the comfort zone he established with the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy.