From rec.arts.sf.written Wed Dec 2 11:35:46 1992 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!chnews!hfglobe!ichips!pdx820!markg From: markg@pdx820 (Mark Gonzales) Subject: A Million Open Doors, John Barnes Message-ID: <1992Dec1.231200.16145@ichips.intel.com> Sender: markg@ichips.intel.com Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon References: <9212012149.AA25940@eunice.ssc.wisc.edu> <1fgob8INNm2a@agate.berkeley.edu> Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1992 23:12:00 GMT Lines: 26 Just read the the new John Barnes book, "A Million Open Doors". It is good enough for an award nomination or two, and actually based on an idea that I haven't seen used before. The background is that Earth sent out lots of colonies using sub-light technology. Each colony used a custom designed _culture_ to set up its society, producing a civilisation called the 'Thousand Cultures'. When the book opens, a FTL matter transmitter has just been invented, so Earth is busy recontacting all the formerly isolated cultures. Girault, the hero of the book lives in a culture based on the late medieval and early Renaissence notions of Troubadours and Courtly love, where young men wander around having a lot of fun duelling with electronic epees (no real blood) and courting Damsels. He ends up being invited on a mission to recontact Caledony, which is a culture based on a strange hybrid of fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Capitalism. Initially Girault hates every thing about Caledony, but as he befriends its inhabitants, he learns to see both the good points about Caledony, and the unpleasant side of his own Culture. This is another book in a recent welcome trend in SF writing where _cultures_ are characterized as well as, and in almost the same level of detail as the characters themselves. If you are a social scientist, it counts as "Diamond Hard SF". Mark From /tmp/sf.17355 Fri Jun 4 00:09:27 1993 Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!pipex!uunet!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!darwin.sura.net!ra!cs.umd.edu!skates.gsfc.nasa.gov!nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov!kayser From: kayser@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov (Susan E. Kayser NSSDC/STX (301)513-1673) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Review of Barnes' _A Million Open Doors_ Date: 29 May 1993 23:19 EDT Organization: NASA - Goddard Space Flight Center Lines: 46 Distribution: world Message-ID: <29MAY199323193505@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov> NNTP-Posting-Host: nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41 A Million Open Doors by John Barnes reviewed by Susan Kayser When a member of a highly sophisticated culture (at least, in his opinion) finds himself in a very different society, the treatment of his reaction can be political, satirical, or philosophical. The situation has something for everyone, and "A Million Open Doors" works on all three levels. The "million open doors" are those between planets, settled by an enormous variety of cultures, when the "springer" (instantaneous transportation) comes to them. What happens to a planet that suddenly finds everyone can visit, bearing gifts, entertainment, trade, ideas, money? What happened to Japan in the last century, or Russia right now? The protagonist of this book, Giraut, who grew up in a society based on the medieval troubadors--stratified, sexist, amoral, with artistic creativity as the highest good--finds himself on the planet Caledony, which has just gotten the springer. Caledony is repressed by any measure, having taken Calvinism about as far as it can go, but it is not stratified, not sexist, too moral, and "art" is not part of the local vocabulary. The reaction of Giraut and his friends to Caledony, and of the Caledonians to him and the rest of the universe, is what the book is about. Barnes does a better job showing Giraud's development, naturally, since it's easier to figure out how an individual responds than an entire society. His writing is smooth, with a delightful style in describing troubador conduct and speech, and lots of humor. He also makes some very good points about the balance of social vs. economic forces, and about the value of the individual in his society. Women's libbers should be pleased also, with the way in which Giraut is forced to open his eyes to how badly his own society treats women. This is one of the better books I have read recently, and would expect it to appeal to anyone who hates intolerance. %A John Barnes %T A Million Open Doors %I A Tor Book (St. Martin's Press) %C New York $D 1992 %G ISBN #0-312-85210-X %O Hardcover, $19.95 %P 320 pp. Susan Kayser NCF::KAYSER or kayser@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov Hughes/STX at NASA/GSFC/NSSDC Greenbelt, MD From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 02:10:32 1994 Xref: liuida rec.arts.sf.reviews:620 rec.arts.sf.written:68961 Path: liuida!sunic!trane.uninett.no!eunet.no!nuug!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: dani@telerama.lm.com (Dani Zweig) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written Subject: John Barnes: Mother of Storms Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 11 Jul 1994 19:48:50 GMT Organization: Telerama Public Access Internet, Pittsburgh, PA USA Lines: 59 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <2vpj5c$anf@terrazzo.lm.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu I did not care for John Barnes's "Mother of Storms". Oh, enough skill went into it that I kept turning pages until the end, but it left a bad taste. It's a generic disaster novel awkwardly welded to a number of half-digested science-fictional devices. First and foremost, it's a disaster novel. An ill-considered bombing sets off a super-hurricane -- one big enough and well-enough-fed to keep moving and building strength long past the point where normal hurricanes die. We get to watch as entire countries are scoured clean of life. As is almost required in such novels, we get to follow about a dozen characters as they weave in and out of the story, to end up dying or redeeming themselves (or both). We get lots of exposition about how hurricanes work (and how this one is different); we get violence; we get sex; we get over a billion corpses. On the science fiction side, we get world-building, in vast and often boring quantities. Oh, the ideas are interesting, and often thoughtfully worked out -- a world that's had an additional third of a century for communication technology and the accompanying social changes to mature, a technology for recording and broadcasting thoughts and emotions and perceptions, some interesting von Neumann technologies and a space-flight mechanism into which the author has obviously put a lot of time (and into which the reader is going to put a lot of time, willy nilly), among things. The world-building and the exposition, however, spend as much time getting in the way of the story as they do being the story. Barnes pays attention to social impacts, but it's still too close to the bad old days of gimmick science fiction. The book also ends with a breakthrough analogous to Vinge's 'singularity' ('Singularity', by what is unlikely to be a coincidence, is also the title of the last section of the book), except that Barnes tries to explain to us (at length, naturally) what it's like, and except that there seems to be an implicit assumption that only a couple of people will experience it, and the rest of the human race will go on with business as usual. Lots and lots of corpses, lots and lots of exposition, and a framework upon which to hang it: Save your money. There are some clever ideas here, and a moderately extensive look at the impacts of advanced communications, and many readers may feel that they are worth the price of admission, but they make for poor storytelling. %A Barnes, John %T Mother of Storms %I Tor %C New York %D July 1994 %G ISBN 0-312-85560-5 %P 432 pp %O hardcover, US$22.95 ----- Dani Zweig dani@netcom.com dani@telerama.lm.com Watership Down: You've read the book. You've seen the movie. Now eat the stew! From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 02:10:36 1994 Xref: liuida rec.arts.sf.reviews:618 rec.arts.sf.written:68959 Path: liuida!sunic!trane.uninett.no!eunet.no!nuug!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: schulman@michael.nmr.upmc.edu (Christina Schulman) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written Subject: _Mother of Storms_ by John Barnes Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 11 Jul 1994 19:48:20 GMT Organization: St. Dismas Infirmary for the Incurably Informed Lines: 97 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <2vi20g$num@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu _Mother of Storms_ by John Barnes Just in time for hurricane season, John Barnes brings us science fiction for meteorologists. _Mother of Storms_ will probably be labelled as "a chilling ecological thriller!" but it's much more than that. A military-- excuse me, peacekeeping--strike by the UN causes sudden, rapid global warming, which results in the birth of a superhurricane of unprecedented size, strength, and longevity. This storm spawns a number of daughter storms, which proceed to rampage around the planet, doing a pretty good job of bringing civilization to its knees. This book has flood, pestilence, and war; there's famine too, but it's mostly offstage. There's death and destruction of incomprehensible magnitude. Nations and coastlines crumble. Despite all this, a certain cheerful cynicism that pervades the book keeps it entertaining and amusing. That cheerful cynicism is also what makes Barnes' near-future society of 2028 so plausible. The world is quite different politically; the UN is the dominant political and military power, and the President of the United States is waging a constant battle to regain some measure of the States' former sovereignty. TV and newspapers have been largely supplanted by XV, which lets the public experience the full range of sensory experience being transmitted by a character. (Needless to say, this has revolutionized the porn industry.) The net still exists, but in a greatly expanded state (has to be; XV consumes an enormous amount of bandwidth). Cars drive themselves. There's a wonderful digression about a group of self-replicating robots on the moon who start to model some of the more unpleasant behaviors of societies. Unlike Barnes' previous books, _Mother of Storms_ has a fairly large cast of viewpoint characters. This usually irritates me, but I didn't mind it here, and their interactions are well-handled and informative, although occasionally in moving them about the author's manipulations are a bit blatant. (Especially when one character's ex-girlfriend, who has just undergone a sudden and not entirely credible change in personality, is swept up by a Plot Device in Shining Armor and transported directly across most of Mexico and a good bit of the States to where she happens to bump into another viewpoint character.) They're not all necessarily good guys, either, although with the hurricanes wreaking wholesale destruction upon the world's coastal areas, ethical categories tend to become irrelevant. But even the Evil American Corporate Magnate is a pretty likable guy. There's an undercurrent of thoughtfulness in the theme of the role of the media. In the world of 2028 there has ceased to be any distinction between news and entertainment; for instance, the romance/porn network sends its characters to world hot spots, where they observe momentous events, think carefully scripted thoughts, and have mad, passionate sex as often as possible. But when subscribers all over the world are plugged into "reporters" who are shot, or drowning, or just angry and scared, those sensations are echoed by the "viewing public," which can cause global riots with a death toll approaching that of one of the superhurricanes. Conversely, the government can calm the rioters and encourage docility by having the nets broadcast feelings of peace and brotherhood. Does this constitute censorship or mind control? Who's at fault when people refuse to unplug, even to evacuate areas endangered by the storms? I realize I'm in the minority here, but I would have enjoyed this book more had it been a little less, um, graphic. I have this vision of an editor reading the first draft and saying, "Great book, John, but it really needs more sex and violence!" There's a subplot concerning full-sensory "snuff films" that contributes very little to the book, except to kick off a spate of assassinations that I could also have done without. (There was already plenty of senseless tragedy to go around by this point.) I was also rather disturbed by some of the graphic descriptions of violent death, such as a woman's head being squashed like a pumpkin, or, well, quite a bit of it can't be described on a family newsgroup. I realize the point of these tragic little vignettes was to illustrate on a personal, graspable level what was occurring on a global basis, but I still found some of the descriptions a bit offputting. I also think that the ending would have been improved if the last 50 or so pages had been compressed into about 20 pages; the end drags out to a bit of an anticlimax, although it's still full of nifty science, continuing slaughter, and messages of hope. Incidentally, _Mother of Storms_ is written in the present, rather than past, tense. This isn't nearly as distracting as you might expect, and it gives a certain sense of immediacy to the story. I have yet to read a John Barnes book that I don't like, and _Mother of Storms_ didn't disappoint me. I'll be very surprised if it isn't nominated for a Nebula. It's a very ambitious book, but Barnes manages to handle the large cast of characters, the proverbially dull subject of the weather, and the nigh-destruction of civilization as we know it with humor and flair. Find this book, but read it somewhere inland. %A Barnes, John %T Mother of Storms %I Tor %C New York %D July 1994 %G ISBN 0-312-85560-5 %P 432 pp %O hardback, US$22.95 -- Christina Schulman Pittsburgh NMR Institute schulman@michael.nmr.upmc.edu From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Dec 12 10:52:47 1994 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: terman@rossi.astro.nwu.edu (James Terman) Subject: Review of Mother of Storms by John Barnes Message-ID: <3c3evl$nfv@news.acns.nwu.edu> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA Date: Wed, 7 Dec 1994 22:19:14 GMT Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Lines: 124 Review of MOTHER OF STORMS by John Barnes John Barnes is one of my favorite writers of what I like to call, for want of a better word, "soft" science fiction. In contrast to hard science fiction, which tends to emphasize a universe run by cold physical laws uncaring of human concerns, people are always the focus of soft science fiction. This does not mean that hard SF cannot have three dimensional characters, or that soft SF has to have technobabble science; it is merely a statement about what drives the story. In soft SF, the science is not so important except in how it creates a background that the characters must react against. Frequently, a whole society has to react the changes that technology has made. I realize that by making this divide, I may hide more than I reveal. Similar problems come from trying to divide stories into the categories of fantasy and "regular" SF. It is easy to point out the extremes, but there are plenty of stories on the boundary that could go either way. Stories that lie on the boundary between categories can often be very bad or very good. The danger of writing a story that lies on the boundary between genres (no matter how arbitrarily that genre line is drawn) is that the author has to get the story elements of two genres working instead of just one. A genre can be a limiting to a good writer, but it has its compensations. SF writers in theory have to invent the worlds their stories are set in from scratch. In reality, most writers use the traditional plot elements of SF that have been built up over the decades such as "hyperspace", "robots", "talking computers", "Galactic Empire", etc. This is not bad, if authors use this to focus and expand on the elements of their story that are unique. However, a story that is on the boundary of two genres has more things it must get right, and therefore more things that might go wrong. These types of stories are a challenge to a good writer and often the Waterloo of beginning writers. Fortunately, John Barnes is very much up to the challenge, and in MOTHER OF STORMS he creates a story that deftly weaves the indifferent destructiveness of an environmental disaster with the very human reactions of the people that have to live through it. From his earlier books, such as the critically praised ORBITAL RESONANCE, A MILLION OPEN DOORS, SIN OF ORIGIN, and THE MAN WHO PULLED DOWN THE SKY, John Barnes soft science fiction credentials are certainly in order. Yet, on a hard SF level, MOTHER OF STORMS works quite well (although I would quibble with his rather casual use of anti-matter as a power source). This novel truly works on both the levels of hard and soft science fiction, and I certainly hope this novel is considered come award time. MOTHER OF STORMS refers to a hurricane that is created in the wake of a super- greenhouse effect sparked by a sudden release of methane from the ocean bed. This hurricane quickly grows to unprecedented proportions and starts wiping out pacific islands one by one. What is worse, the tittle of the book not only refers to the hurricane's size, but also its tendency to spawn other hurricanes as it weaves its destructive path across the globe. As fantastic as this seems, I was very impressed with Barnes ability to make this seem plausible with his extremely well done explanations of how a hurricane works. A less scientifically literate person than I might find these passages tedious, but I thought they were very well done. Most of these passages are put in the mouths of the characters with only a few narrative injections. As a working scientist, I was fairly impressed with the way science and scientist were treated in this novel. At no time does the book ever descend into the polemetical on either side of the debate about how we must respond to the man-made changes in the environmental. I would certainly recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed David Brin's EARTH. To those who did not enjoy EARTH, I would still urge them to give this book a try. To give a human face to the destruction wrought by the hurricane and her progeny, Barnes uses three or four threads, that often intersect and divide, spread over the globe to give us an intimate but widespread picture of the environmental changes that occur. The future society was not unconvincing, but somehow I found it a bit shallow. Of course, that may have been on purpose, for Barnes describe a world in which everyone can be wired to the network to such an extent that their own real lives can pale into comparison to what they can experience vicariously on the net. Dennis Miller once joked that when Joe Six-Pack will be able to have sex with any supermodel he wants through virtual reality, "it's going to make crack look like aspirin." To be honest, I found the multiple sub-plots annoying in the beginning. He jumped in and out of them quite a bit, and it made hard going to keep track of the characters. This is a common fault of many novels today which can often force you to read a 500 page book in one weekend if you do not want to get hopelessly confused (either that or take down notes). However, I must admit that once the novel gets going, he uses these threads to very good effect, and even manages to weave them together very well. Niven and Pournelle often put a dramatis persone in the big novels, and I do not think it would be a bad thing if this became a standard practice. Aside from the too fast switching between threads in the book, my major complaint with MOTHER OF STORMS is the ending. I do not think it goes as far to ruin the whole story, MOTHER OF STORMS has too many good points for that, but I was disappointed. Aside from being, almost literally, deus ex machina, the ending reminded a little too much of the way EARTH ended. While the endings are not really the same, and Barnes ending is well motivated by the story, it was a bit jarring to come up against such an ending in a novel that was so original otherwise. Still, the above is really a minor complaint in what is a very enjoyable read. SF books with an environmental theme to them are all the rage nowadays. This is hardly a surprise as SF often reflects the concerns of the times it is written in. With the end of the Cold war, environmental disaster seems to have replaced nuclear warfare as our top concern (hey, how could you enjoy life unless you believed there was the possibility that everything you have could be taken away from you - carpe diem!). Of course, the granddaddy of all these novels is Frank Herbert's DUNE, published nearly 30 years ago. As is often the case when something is ahead of its time, it often takes a while before it is appreciated (not that DUNE wasn't an instant classic). I believe that DUNE, EARTH, and MOTHER OF STORMS, stand out the best because they confront environmental problems head on without sentiment, but without ignoring human needs and desires, either. They do not argue for ecotopias, nor do they dismiss worrying about the destruction of the environment as "tree-hugging". I am sure this book will continued to be read long after vice-presidents find other topics to write deeply serious books about. %A Barnes, John %T Mother of Storms %I TOR/Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. %C New York %D 1994 %G ISBN 0-312-85560-5 %P 432pp %O hardcover, US$22.95, CA$31.95 -- | James L. Terman | Science may set limits to know- | | terman@holmes.astro.nwu.edu (for email) | ledge, but should not set limits | | terman@ossenu.astro.nwu.edu (for .plan) | to imagination. | | terman@rossi.astro.nwu.edu (for both) | - Bertrand Russell | From rec.arts.sf.written Wed May 17 13:23:36 1995 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.kth.se!nac.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!newsfeed.pitt.edu!uunet!boulder!ucsub.Colorado.EDU!brock From: brock@ucsub.Colorado.EDU (Steve Brock) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.reviews,rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.books.reviews Subject: Review of Kaleidoscope Century by John Barnes (fiction, sf) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 16 May 1995 01:13:12 GMT Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder Lines: 40 Approved: brock@colorado.edu Message-ID: <3p8u78$sl9@CUBoulder.Colorado.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: ucsub.colorado.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.books.reviews:561 rec.arts.books:121380 rec.arts.sf.written:99835 alt.books.reviews:12187 KALEIDOSCOPE CENTURY by John Barnes. Tor Books, 175 Fifth Ave, N.Y., NY 10010, (800) 221-7945, (212) 420-9314 FAX. 349 pp., $21.95 cloth. 0-312-85561-3 Reviewed by Steve Brock I reviewed Barnes's last book, "Mother of Storms," last summer as I traveled down the west coast from Vancouver, Canada, to Tijuana, Mexico. At the time, I noted that Barnes had been quite prescient in writing a passage in which the pilot of the spaceship which will save Earth's civilization contemplates reaching Earth escape velocity on the 59th anniversary of the first lunar landing. I read that passage on the day that the U.S. was celebrating the 25th anniversary of the event (July 20). With the book's release date of the first week in July, I wondered if Barnes had planned for readers to hit that passage on that date. Unfortunately, there is nothing startling in "Kaleidoscope Century," a book in which "Sleeper" meets "Total Recall." "Kaleidoscope Century" takes the reader to Mars in the 22nd century, where Joshua Ali Quare (Quaid from "Total Recall"?) wakes up alone in a room with little else than a "werp," an interactive computer on which he has recorded his past aliases and adventures, many that contradict each other. He's also ten years younger than he was when he contracted the illness that wiped out most of his memories. From the werp, Quare learns that he was a member of the KGB in the late 20th century who was intentionally infected with a virus that enables him to assume a new identity every fifteen years, and "Kaleidoscope Century" alternates between Quare's assisted recollections (working for an organization called "The Organization," and fighting in computer wars with "Sadi," his best friend), and his growing awareness of his present surroundings and situation. There are many surprises awaiting Quare on Mars, the least of which is that Sadi has shown up and is now a female who has taken over "The Organization." Though the future envisioned in "Kaleidoscope Century" isn't a believable one and Barnes's scenario is a step below that of "Mother of Storms," he has created a character perfect for Arnold, who can say "I'll be back" every fifteen years, and never remember saying it. Grade: B. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 15 13:13:23 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.ida.liu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!newsfeed1.swip.net!swipnet!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!newsfeed.cwix.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: tillman@aztec.asu.edu (P.D. TILLMAN) Subject: Review: Finity by John Barnes Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Reply-To: tillman@aztec.asu.edu Organization: none Date: 13 May 2000 00:35:50 -0400 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Lines: 59 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 958192552 10896 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2707 Finity, John Barnes Review Copyright 2000 by Peter D. Tillman 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 -- 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