In the most exciting SF collaboration ever, Arthur C. Clarke and his universally acknowledged heir Stephen Baxter pool talent, fantastic ideas, unprecedented cosmic insights as well as page-turning plotting skills and breathlessly good writing to produce the most awesome novel of the future since 3001.

'Empty' space is actually full, full of fluctuating energy fields that become at the Planck level a seething probabilistic froth, laced by wormholes. When the Casimir engine, a machine less than a few hundred atomic diameters wide, stabilises these wormholes, the most dramatic communications revolution in history is underway. The Earth itself becomes as transparent as glass - Wormcams enable unlimited realtime remote viewing.

But the technology is developed and owned by OurWorld, Hiram Patterson's broadcasting, news, sport and entertainment empire. Hiram can be counted on to trivialise and exploit the new technology.

Fuming inwardly about decadent technology and excess wealth, journalist Kate Manzoni goes to work for Hiram, investigating crank religions - and dating Hiram's son Bobby.

Then a break-through in physics allows the instrument to view not only current events but to look into the past.