Eros at Nadir

Mike Resnick's "Tales of the Velvet Comet" books are some of the best science-fiction out there. The whole series is full of satire, love, sex, mystery and action.So why is the final book so devoid of much of what made the series good? In Resnick's own tongue-in-cheek manner, he bids the whorehouse in space a fond farewell by imbuing the Comet's computer, the ironically-named Cupid, with the first inklings of an intelligence greater than its usual 1s and 0s. With the appearance of Nate Page, holomusical writer extraordinaire, commissioned to write a holo about the "life" of the Velvet Comet, the story is a look back at the Comet's history, a philosophical discussion of what life is -- and what it may become -- and the overarching framework of Page creating the Comet's final, and most shocking, story. Resnick's written some excellent books since then, but nothing I would consider as great as the Velvet Comet series.