Subject: REVIEW: "Rogue Star", Michael Flynn

From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" <[email-masked]>
Date: 25 Feb 1999 13:36:13 -0500

Rogue Star by Michael Flynn
	Review Copyright 1999 Robert M. Slade

While "Rogue Star" is enjoyable enough as a run of the mill science
fiction story, it doesn't have anything of the spark that "Firestar"
started out with.  "Rogue Star" plods along with the pedestrian soap opera
plotting that characterized the last part of the first book in the series.

Oh, and there will be a series, or at least a trilogy.  The ending is even
clearer on that point than was "Firestar."  And there are way more loose
ends.

As with "Firestar," great care has been taken with orbital dynamics.
Environmental issues, and even the complexity of social activism, are
handled quite well.  A troubleshooting session on a computerized system is
also done quite nicely, although the progress is quite excessively
optimistic.  It has to be; a *real* troubleshooting session would have all
the dramatic impact of drying paint.

Although our unrealistic lone wolf "hacker" is still in evidence and,
indeed provides material central to the plot, his exploits are in the
background, and so the fantastic aspects are not quite as intrusive.

Computers, and particularly communications, are still a weak point,
however.  There is no apparent understanding of bandwidth issues: if you
can send data at all, you can send real time video.  I would not want to
live in the sea of microwaves that would be necessary to support a
wireless communications system capable of handling full video feeds from
what seems like every second person.  There are other oddities, such as
the capability to detect that you are being filmed, and the ability to
erase everything on a camera's hard disk.  (Hey, how about that!
Videotape has some advantages after all.)  We have upped the ante on laser
power transmission very seriously here, and now begin to have some serious
problems of physics, as well.

%A   Michael Flynn
%C   175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY  10010
%D   1998
%G   0-312-86136-2
%I   Tor Books/Tom Doherty Assoc.
%O   U$25.95/C$35.95 [email-masked] www.tor.com
%P   446 p.
%T   "Rogue Star"

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