Flying to Valhalla

This is one of the finest science fiction novels out there. And one of the few that actually stands up when it comes to real science. Ultimately, it is also arguably one of the most depressing books ever written when you take everthing to its logical conclusion. The book (and I doubt I'm giving anything away here) basically concludes that if humans ever find intelligent life in the universe, we will have to either destroy it outright or forcibly keep it from building a technological society because of the dangers of relativistic attack. That is, a mass of just a few thousand tons accelerated to about 90% of the speed of light would be enough to exterminate all life on earth. And there would be no defense whatsoever against such an attack. Furthermore, at the end the authors also conclude that not only will humans be obligated to destroy the sentient life it finds, but that humans will never be able to actually colonize worlds around other stars. Because of the minute chance that one of the colonies will turn into a "Saddam's World" and destroy all life on Earth with a relativistic attack. Very depressing though very well argued.

A new spaceship, the Valkerie, is hurtling towards our nearest stelar companion, Alpha-Centauri. Onboard, are two humans and a computer AI who will be responsible for charting the worlds they find, and communicating thier findings back to earth. They find a planet which seems to have no evidence of intelligent life, but upon further investigation they find a species of life which displays incredible mental abilities, and these people are totally unafraid of the aliens landing on thier world.During the voyage to Alpha Centauri, Chris Wayville suffers from nightmares, waking dreams, and visions of lives lived and re-lived, horrid mistakes made, and again and again he begins on his voyage which he feels is destined to cause the destruction of Earth. Several years later, Earth, reciving these demented ravings fears for earth, and begins planning for a strike against whatever may be coming back.As Chris and Clarice get to know the inhabitants, they also learn hard lessons on interfering in the natural set up of an alien world, and how one seemingly meaningless mistake can cause devestation.Flying to Valhalla isn't heavy on charachter development, the science and theory of relativity, alien evoloution, and alien technology and society taking the front stage. Still, a quick and enjoyable read.

This is one incredible Sci-Fi read . It really can't be absorbed in one reading. It does have some really good Hard Sci-Fi and is thankfully bereft of the "Sexy" implausable starships common to the drivel written by the likes of David Weber, and Gene Rodenberry's Star Trek farce. The characters aren't as strong as they could be. Which is a failing i've noticed in all technical speculative fiction, most recently noted in Jeff Cramer's Einstein's Bridge. I highly recommend it, although better characterization and stronger female characters ( Strong female characters don't have to be vindictive shrews ), would have made it a 9 in my book. I also recommend the sequel "The Killing Star".

The thing I liked best about this was the hard-science take at both parallel universe theory, as well as a practical design for a starship that could reach nearl light speed with technology not to far from where we are today. A fine collection of plausible technical points with a decent story built around it, and while I'm not a big fan of parallel universe stories in general, it wasn't oppressive or cliched. The technical paper at the end of the novel detailing the design of the starship, as well as discussion on abuse of the technology was almost worth the price of purchase. (Reltivisitic bombs, that is an asteroid accelerated to near light speed, make H-Bombs look like wet fire-crackers). A fun hard-science book, and even more enjoyable scientific technical paper about the starship technology described in the novel at the end make this a good read