How long does it take to read The Golden Age?
a romance of the far future
The Golden Age by John C. Wright takes about 5 hours 52 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
Part of The Golden Oecumene
Next: The Golden Transcendence
About 5 hours 52 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2002. 320 pages, about 88,000 words.
12 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 9 hours 47 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 52 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 40 minutes |
The page count is the median across 5 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"The Golden Age takes place 10,000 years in the future in our solar system, an interplanetary utopian society filled with immortal humans. Within the frame of a traditional tale - the one rebel who is unhappy in utopia - Wright spins an elaborate plot web filled with suspense and passion." "Phaethon, of Radamanthus House, is attending a glorious party at his family mansion to celebrate the thousand-year anniversary of the High Transcendence. There he meets first an old man who accuses him of being an impostor and then a being from Neptune who claims to be an old friend. The Neptunian tells him that essential parts of his memory were removed and stored by the very government that Phaethon believes to be wholly honorable. It shakes his faith. He is an exile from himself." And so Phaethon embarks upon a quest across the transformed solar system - Jupiter is now a second sun, Mars and Venus terraformed, humanity immortal - among humans, intelligent machines, and bizarre lifeforms that are partly both, to recover his memory, and to learn what crime he planned that warranted such preemptive punishment. His quest is to regain his true identity.
Subjects: Science Fiction, Space Travel in Fiction, Fiction, romance, fantasy, Fiction, science fiction, general, Amnesia, Fiction