Bth-World at End/Time

This is a great book and I loved it. It is not easy to get into and I admit, I skipped parts that got too technical. At times I thought I would never make it to the end. And several times when reading about Wan-to and the other beings I thought "so what?". But the end of this book is worth every word. It comes together. After all the sadness it ends with such hope and optimism that I just wanted to cry for joy. Life goes on. Human beings go on. Intelligence and hard work do prevail. Reading this book today it seems as fresh as the day it was written. In describing the colonist squabble over religion Pohl even addresses the differences between the Sunnis and Shiities. In the beginning population growth is welcomed in the colony and women are encouraged to have babies by multiple partners. At another time when the population is forced underground growth is discouraged, even considered a crime. Four thousand years later, genetically perfect babies are created in the laboratory and delivered to their parents. Pohl anticipates gay partners raising hetrosexual children, and computer-delivered school lessons. He describes a shift from science as the preferred field of study to exhaultation of dance and the arts. Viktor (our everyman hero) is frozen and thawed 4 times in 4500 years. Each time a lot has happened to the human race. But through all this, humans survive and retain knowledge and civilization. The book comes full circle. It starts with the colonization of Newmanhome, and it ends with it. I love this book. I consider it one of the best books I ever read. I highly recommed it to anyone who loves science fiction and is worried about the future. Viktor will tell you whether you know what will happen, or understand what has happened, life goes on and it is worth living.

A fairly decent book that is now out of print, this has to have some of the wilder science fiction ideas that I've seen in a novel thus far that are backed with actual science as opposed to pseudo-scientific babble. More ambitious than Ringworld, hey, anyone can make a giant metal doughnut, how about moving an entire solar system around and describing what the relativistic effects are going to do to the inhabitants? All right maybe it isn't especially innovative but it's darn entertaining. Basically there's an omniscient intelligence out there goofing around and basically causing most of the plot catalysts in the book. The actual plot concerns a group of colonists, especially Viktor (who is fairly cool and not all that flat a character, except for his rather disturbing obsession with an older woman, but he does get better by the end) who is there for the entire book and the effects that Wan-To (the intelligence) has on them. The funny part of this book is that the groups never meet each other, not to disappoint anybody who wants to read the book but if you're expecting some kind of long philosophical discussion between Wan-To and Viktor get that thought out of your head because it never happens. If you want something similar go read "Sailing Bright Eternity" by Gregory Benford which has a conversation along those lines. But you really don't miss it, Pohl gives us enough of a meaty plot to sink our teeth into and his extrapolations are fairly interesting. The only other gripe I have is that the book left an angle open for a sequel by being totally open ended but I can't see Mr Pohl resolving the ending in more than fifty pages. Maybe a short story is in the works for one day to tie up the loose ends? Maybe? All in all, highly entertaining thought provoking stuff for the scientist in you.

Of the 286 sci-fi books in my library, this has been the second most read

Frederik Pohl has succeeded and I consider this the finest piece of work I have yet to read of his.One of the previous reviewers states that the characters are flat and impersonal. I don't agree. One of the primary characters is a star and therefore its thought process and motivations are bizarrely non-human but not flat. The other main character I found to be a view point character and filled this requirement perfectly.Truly an awesome book and I recommend it with no reservations. For those of you interested in Frederik Pohl's works find out more at thoughtline.com. Thoughtline is debuting the first ever web page dedicated exclusively to Frederik Pohl in late Summer of 1999.

An intriguing story of the perception of time, and how much of what we take for granted as truth could be no more certain than our geocentric beliefs from a few hundred years ago. This story is for anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to see what humanity could become, and what we might learn, given the passage of thousands of years. In the meantime, we will probably fail at least as much as we will succeed, but there will be lessons in our triumphs and failures. A mere five thousand years ago, we were little more than intelligent primates. In another five thousand who knows what we could become? For anyone interested in exploring this idea, you've found the book.