Gordon Bernstein

Character Analysis

Gordon Bernstein is a professor at the University of California at La Jolla, and along with graduate student Albert Cooper, he stumbles across Renfrew's tachyon transmission. What follows is a perfect case study into why dramatic irony and science do not mix.

We know that the transmissions are coming from the future and that they are a warning about the upcoming ecological apocalypse. But in the 1960s, Gordon and his colleagues have no idea what a tachyon is and don't know that backward time transmissions are even a thing.

As such, Gordon's story shows that it isn't what you know—or what the reader knows—that matters. Instead, ideally anyway, it is what data can infer that really holds sway in science. Less ideally, though, sometimes money, politics, and popularity have their say, too. Not that they know what they're talking about.

The Science Guy

Gordon is our premiere science character. Despite all the pressures surrounding him to give up or compromise, he stays the course and sticks to the scientific method. Like his scientist counterparts Renfrew and Markham, Gordon views science as a type of puzzle—one he won't give up on, no matter what. When thinking about how he came to love science, Gordon reminds himself:

He liked solving problems, simply because they were there. Most scientists did; they were early chess players and problem solvers. (12.67)

Science, then, is just part of who Gordon is. But just because he wants to solve the puzzle doesn't mean he'll break the rules to get there. It would be the same as if he cheated to win a game of chess—it can't be counted as an actual win.

For Gordon, this means not rushing to conclusions but waiting for enough data to accurately infer what an experiment is telling him about the world. This puts him in opposition to Lakin and Saul Shriffer. Lakin wants to rush the "spontaneous resonance" (8.25) effect to publication before they have enough data to truly understand it, and Saul claims the transmissions might have come from a "distant civilization" (14.162), despite nothing in the data proving as much.

Comparatively, Gordon is unwilling to jump to any conclusions—but he also isn't willing to take any possibilities off the table. He won't willingly go along with Lakin's proposal because he feels they don't have enough data to support a publication. But on the other hand, he won't openly disregard Saul's theory because the data doesn't outright say he is wrong—super unlikely though it may be.

For Gordon, science should focus on Occam's Razor, a principle which states that "Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity, [meaning] that the simplest theory which explained the data was the best." Instead of bending to the will of politics and popularity and reach conclusions prematurely, then, "Gordon decide[s] to keep trying and let the data sort themselves out" (39.11). For Gordon, it is "getting the results that made science worth doing" (39.30), and everything else is a secondary concern. He's one patient and dedicated dude.

A Hassle for the Moment

Unfortunately for Gordon, one can't simply ignore politics and reputation and go about their work in a laboratory bubble. Bummer.

When Lakin first proposes to publish the "spontaneous resonance" (8.25) effect, he does so to strengthen their renewal of an NSF grant. Gordon argues that they don't know what is happening and publishing so early would be premature, but Lakin counters:

"And if your experiment continues to yield nothing, I am afraid I will, regretfully, not have very much evidence to present in support of [your promotion]." (8.50)

Gordon sees clearly here that Lakin is more than willing to play the political game to keep his position, even if it means taking short cuts in proper science. He's all about the Benjamins, while Gordon's all about the data.

Later in the story, Saul Shriffer's E.T. ideas become attached to Gordon's experiment. In the popularity contest of the scientific community, this leads many of Gordon's colleagues to openly ridicule his research. Not willing to be on the wrong side of popularity—which is never good for politics in any system—Lakin openly condemns Gordon's research. He states:

"I invented the idea of spontaneous resonance to explain unusual data. I did so completely honestly. But this message thing […] [i]t is nonsense. I now disclaim any association with it. I do not want my name linked with such, such claims." (18.20)

Even then, Gordon never falls into playing such political game. He doesn't even throw Saul under the bus by openly disclaiming his theories—and that guy, arguably, deserves it.

With that said, the ridicule emotionally burdens Gordon. He begins obsessing over his research, and his home life with Penny suffers as he spends more and more hours in the laboratory. But Gordon keeps thinking: "The hell with the press of the times. Politics is for the moment, Einstein said once. An equation is for eternity. If he had to choose sides, [he] was on the side of the equations" (28.118). This becomes Gordon's mantra, and he stays the course, doing science the way science is meant to be done.

Moment of Zen

Ultimately, Gordon is vindicated for sticking to his scientific guns. Michael Ramsey's experiments prove the message's biological information is accurate and also potentially deadly, while Claudia Zinnes's recreation of Gordon's experiment confirms the existence of the signal and the message. After doing some research and putting the pieces together, Gordon realizes that the messages are coming from the future and he has the data to prove it. Boo ya.

In 1974, Gordon receives the Enrico Fermi Award for his efforts in physics. As he rises to receive his award and present his speech, Gordon looks over the crowd and sees:

It was the landscape itself which changed, Gordon saw at last, refracted by laws of its own. Time and space were themselves players, vast lands engulfing the figures, a weave of future and past. There was no riverrun of years. The abiding loops of causality ran both forward and back. The timescape rippled with waves, rolled and flexed, a great beast in the dark sea. (46.93)

The scene shows that Gordon's exploration of the universe through his scientific experiment and studies has caused him to peer deeper into the mysteries of the universe. In this moment, he doesn't view time the way the rest of us perceive it (i.e. the past, present, and future all moving in a single direction). Instead, he can see the timescape where the future and past exist together.

However, the timescape remains a "great beast in a dark sea." The dark sea shows that, for all Gordon has learned, there remain many mysteries yet for science to probe—he has not completely comprehended the timescape or what might lie beyond it in the dark. Which we're thinking is a good thing, considering just how much Gordon loves to work.