To one degree or another they are all obsessive, cold-blooded and merciless. My main dissatisfaction was that the so-far-beyond-me characters were often not only difficult to relate to, but difficult to like. But he is a skillful enough dealer of narrative tension, with frequent, exciting crisis’s, that the book kept me reading. It is a challenge when a writer’s intelligence and complexity of mind is way beyond that of the average reader, and in this Mr. Still other characters are software simulations, former humans (or aliens) uploaded into various computer strata and capable of acting convincingly sentient.Īll of which makes for a wildly mind-bending novel, both thrilling and confusing. Other strains are differentiated by the degree to which they have cyber implants boosting their biological functions-in other words, the degree to which they have gone cyborg. The star-faring crews (known as Ultras), have life-spans and value systems quite alien to planet- or sun-bound humans. Rather than nationalities or races we have tribal associations or factions (similar to the schema in Bruce Sterling’s landmark and comparably inventive Schismatrix). Humanity too has evolved in interesting ways.
Story time is bent intriguingly due to some characters journeying at relativistic speeds while others are planet-bound. In this future there is interstellar colonization, but not faster-than-light travel. Stunningly imaginative space opera set 5 centuries in the future.Ī truism of hard science fiction is that (baring collapse-of-civilization scenarios) the farther into the future one sets a story, the harder it is to make it convincing.
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