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Title: Sailing Bright Eternity (A Bantam Spectra Book) by Gregory Benford ISBN: 0-553-08655-3 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 September, 1995 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.2 (5 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Thank God it's over!
Comment: After struggling for months, I finally got through the Galactic Center "epic" (and I use the word loosely) by Gregory Benford. To say that the series was a major let-down doesn't half-cover it. I've read a lot of sci-fi novels, and I can't remember being that disappointed before, except with the works of Linda Nagata and Howard Hendricks (both certified 0-starers, IMHO). Let's see...
First of all, the characters are despairingly two-dimensional (make that one, for some). You don't know what they're here for and, frankly, you don't very much care. The story (or lack thereof) is strange to say the least: despite raves such as "no holds-barred adventure", nothing much happens, so that the books are marginally less thrilling than a 2,000-page financial report. (The focus of the story is a giant black hole at the center of the galaxy, and I can't help wondering whether that prompted Mr Benford to write books which are so empty of meaning. And to think that he needed almost twenty years to produce them!)
I won't even speak of the way a 30,000+ war against mechs (yuck!) is resolved in 3 minutes flat. I know it ain't over till the fat lady sings, but still...
Some aliens are interesting, but the story moves along and leaves them behind each time you think you're going to learn something about them! So tell me - why are they here? As filler? Hum. (For example, the best part of the series is, for me, the novella-size sea adventure of Warren in book two. But the aliens he meets are never spoken of again, and Warren himself disappears from the story after that. So, once again, what's the point?)
And the esty - a collection of places/times where/when one of the characters wanders for about 100 pages, meeting all kinds of people who don't have anything to do with the story. The first time is painful enough, but Mr. Benford does it to you *three* times in a row! A piece of advice if I may, Mr Benford: next time you want to write a book, please wait until you've got a real story, and not some disjointed ideas to mix randomly, because the resulting mix can be awful. And the philosophy of it! "The thing about aliens is, they're alien." Wow! OK, but once would be enough, don't you think? Why rehash it every ten pages or so?
If they awarded a price for "best disappointment of the year", this book (indeed, the whole series) would win it hands down...
Rating: 3
Summary: ...And then, a miracle happens.
Comment: This final novel in the "Galactic Center" set proves that even on a bad day, Benford can still whip out a fairly decent yarn.
Not up to his usual caliber, this novel seems even more disjointed than the previous few, and so much less lovingly spun than the "Ocean of Night" which started the series off. The changes in font are positively annoying, and the character development - or lack thereof - reduces the believability and likability of the people we're supposed to be rooting for. Particularly implausable is the dangerous, tin-man Mantis, whose mysterious and compelling behavior in the earlier novels is reduced to trying to find a "heart". I was sorely disappointed in this outcome, and I won't even discuss what a pitiful, sex-starved moron that Nigel Walmsley has become. It's just too painful.
Despite these and other disappointments, I have to give Benford credit for leaving this capstone open-ended, and providing the glorious, off-beat energy that makes his works so readable. I've never even written a published novel, and Benford has managed to pull together so much in this series, despite the reduction in degrees of freedom that the previous novels require to hold the story together. I can't help being reminded of Arthur C. Clark's "2010" where they somehow managed to change planets from Saturn to Jupiter. Sequels can be tough to pull off. We backed Benford into a corner, (or maybe he did it himself), and he performed well enough to merit a moderate "thumbs-up". I have definitely read worse
Rating: 5
Summary: Satisfying conclusion to a grand series!
Comment: I started reading Benford's "Galactic Center" novels when the first one (Into the Ocean of Night) came out. I loved the first three, but the two prior to "Sailing" became slightly tedious, although they were good enough to keep me reading and to buy the next ones as they appeared. "Sailing" has it flaws and excesses (I became very impatient with the "Life on the Missisippi" part), but overall it is a great novel and a fitting end to the impressive series. I loved the re-appearance of good old Nigel, as well as Nikka (although, again, the "Little House on the Prairie/in the ESTY" was a bit hard to take). I am a psychopharmacologist and a biological psychologist, and Benford's observations about human brain function and some of our biological underpinnings were right on the mark, and were woven into the story in a masterful way. I suspect that some of his astrophysics speculation, while apparently based on our current knowledge, may be a bit...weak? chintzy? - but still, this is great hard sci-fi. In the summary or synopsis of the 30,000+ stretch of time covered in the series,(at the very end of the book), it is apparent that there could be many other stories told about this sequence... for instance, some of the things happening on Earth as the mechs made successive attacks and before the humans departed for galactic center. Also, what, if anything was left of old earth 30,000 years later. I suppose the best indicator of how much I like this conclusion of the series is that I dug out my old copy of the first novel in the series, and then found the second (Across the sea of suns) in a used book store, so I coul re-read both of them. "Sailing" has a few flaws, but overall it is grand in scope and a dynamite book. I am Perry Duncan, and I live in Norfolk, Virginia.
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Title: Furious Gulf: A Galactic Center (Galactic Center, No 5) by Gregory Benford ISBN: 0553572547 Publisher: Spectra Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Furious Gulf (A Bantam Spectra Book) by Gregory Benford ISBN: 0553096613 Publisher: Bantam Dell Pub Group Pub. Date: 01 August, 1994 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Across the Sea of Suns (Galactic Center) by Gregory Benford ISBN: 0446611565 Publisher: Aspect Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: In the Ocean of Night by Gregory Benford ISBN: 044661159X Publisher: Aspect Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Beyond Infinity by Gregory Benford ISBN: 044653059X Publisher: Aspect Pub. Date: 18 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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