From archive (archive)
Subject: THE NET by Loren J. MacGregor
>From: 		ecl@mtgzy.UUCP (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ
Date: 6 Jul 87 21:15:12 GMT




			THE NET by Loren J. MacGregor
			      Ace, 1987, $2.95.
		      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		       Copyright 1987 Evelyn C. Leeper

     This is the eighth of the new "Ace Science Fiction Specials," and I
hope it isn't the last, because this would be a weak epitaph indeed to Terry
Carr's selection judgement.  The other entries in this series were:
   - THE WILD SHORE by Kim Stanley Robinson
   - GREEN EYES by Lucius Shepard
   - NEUROMANCER by William Gibson
   - PALIMPSESTS by Carter Scholz and Glenn Harcourt
   - THEM BONES by Howard Waldrop
   - IN THE DRIFT by Michael Swanwick
   - THE HERCULES TEXT by Jack McDevitt
and all of them were strong novels, quirky and not to everyone's taste
perhaps, but worthy of being called "special."

     THE NET, on the other hand, is basically a heist novel.  There's some
hi-tech shenanigans used to pull off the heist, and "the Net," people linked
in telepathic contact.  Ships are piloted with a member of the crew for each
sense: a Sight to navigate, a Sound to communicate, a Taste to check the
fuel mixture, and so forth.  Carr describes it in the introduction as space
opera and it is.  There's nothing overwhelmingly wrong with it; it just
seems to crank out the rather mundane story without much flash or style.
Had it been marketed as a straight science fiction novel, it would have
received luke-warm reviews.  As an "Ace Science Fiction Special," it may get
more negative reviews than it should simply because of the raised
expectations people have of that series.  Perhaps I'm being too hard on it
myself.  But it said "special" on the cover--and it wasn't.


					Evelyn C. Leeper
					(201) 957-2070
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