The Final Now by Gregory Benford

The Final Now by Gregory Benford
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Paranormal
Length: Short Story (17 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Once upon a moment, the One spoke to He and She, and learned that infinity and eternity are slippery concepts. At best.
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Imagine being able to see the end of the universe in person!

One of my favorite parts of this book was the philosophical discussion between the characters about the meaning of life and what happens after someone dies. While the blurb did give away hints about where the narrators were going with all of this, I wasn’t expecting to see so much of the plot devoted to explaining why the universe is set up the way it is. There was a reason for everything that occurred from the moment it was created until the moment it stopped existing. I was fascinated by how this process worked and why the average human’s understanding of it today might not match how it will actually be.

All three of the characters in this tale had almost identical speaking patterns. While I understood why gods like He and She would talk the same way, the origins of One were so wildly different from the individuals who called this being into existence once again that I was surprised by how few differences I could find between the way they spoke. It would have been helpful to have a more detailed explanation of why this was so, especially none of them seemed all that interested in being described by personalized names or their physical appearances. Telling them all apart was difficult at times due to this.

When I wasn’t having these issues remembering who was who, the dialogue made me think a lot about what it means to be an individual and how the line between an individual and the group they belong to can be blurred over a long period of time. The line between where He began and She ended was never clear-cut. They shared their thoughts and feelings so seamlessly between one another that I almost thought of them as two halves of the same character. Similar things began to happen with One as well once I figured out who that individual was and how they were connected to He and She.

I’d recommend The Final Now to anyone who enjoys hard science fiction.