Subject: Review: Finity by John Barnes

From: [email-masked] (P.D. TILLMAN)
Date: 13 May 2000 00:35:50 -0400

Finity, John Barnes
	Review Copyright 2000 by Peter D. Tillman  <[email-masked]>

Rating: "A-/B+" -- fast-paced and fun (but YMMV). Barnes light. 

Lyle Peripart is reasonably content with his quiet life as an expatriate
American academic in New Zealand, a pleasant backwater in a world ruled by
the Twelve Reichs. Until he accepts a plum job offer from billionaire
industrialist Iphwin <rimshot> -- and he's roughed up by the Gestapo in
Surabaya, shot at in Saigon, and comes home to a smoking crater where his
house used to be. Then things get *really* weird...

Experienced SF readers will have little doubt as to what's happening --
the Many Worlds hypothesis has been a fertile SF breeding-ground for years
-- but, as always, the genius is in the details. In Finity we get such
goodies as robot taxicabs with easily-hurt feelings, private suborbital
jump-boats (but no automobiles) for the middle-class Kiwi, and a neat new
quantum-computing rationale for Many Worlds slippage. Not to mention --
finally! -- an explanation for all those 1 or 2-ring phantom phone calls I
get.

What we *don't* get is a particularly consistent or well-thought-out plot
or backstory [note 1]. I didn't have any problems suspending disbelief
while reading Finity -- a matter of 3 or 4 hours -- but if you're a
critical reader, this one may not be for you. But if you're looking for a
light, fast, read-once entertainment -- as I was -- Finity will fill the
bill nicely.

Barnes dedicates Finity to a reader who asked, "Just once, would it kill 
you to write an adventure story, with a reasonably happy ending, and 
only a *little* weird?" 

Other opinions:

Gerald Jonas' review, New York Times (he liked it):
  http://www.nytimes.com/books/specials/sci-fi.html
Dave Langford's (he liked it, too):
  http://www.ansible.demon.co.uk/amazon.html
Steven Silver's review,  SF Site (he didn't):
  http://secure.cyberus.ca/sfsite/03b/fin53.htm

Note 1.) There's a batch of Finity-gripes at Amazon 
< http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0812571452 >
-- it drew a pretty critical set of reader's comments there. I don't 
recommend reading them just before you read the book, as spoilers abound.

Note 2.) If there's a Barnes website, I couldn't find it.

%T Finity
%A John Barnes
%D Dec 1999
%I Tor
%O US$7
%P 304 pp.
%G ISBN: 0812571452

Read more of my reviews:
http://www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman