The next addition to the increasingly abstract and abstruse prequel to the Ringworld saga (Betrayer of Worlds, 2010, etc.).
The backdrop, in general terms, will be familiar to all series fans: To escape an explosion at the core of the galaxy, the cowardly Puppeteers launched a fleet of worlds, comprising all the suns and planets that make up their home empire, even though the wave front wouldn’t reach them for 10,000 years. The Ringworld itself, launched into hyperspace by supergenius Pak Protector Tunesmith, has vanished. Louis Wu, himself transformed into a human Protector, and his Puppeteer companion, Hindmost, also escaped from the Ringworld and now seek to reconnect with the political and military situation surrounding the Puppeteer fleet. Having resorted to some outrageous plot wrenching in the previous book to explain things up to this point, Niven and Lerner occupy more than half this volume recapping and examining, in smothering detail, what’s been going on from the very beginning of the series. Most readers will have been confused and will continue to be, since the authors must resort to yet more literary legerdemain to make it all even remotely feasible. Not the least of these issues is the presence of six or seven individual Puppeteers bearing the title “Hindmost,” the vegetarian species’ term for supreme leader. The payoff, and it’s a modest one, is a swirl of brinkmanship and struggle involving Puppeteers, humans from Earth and New Terra, catlike Kzinti, humanoid Pak, starfish group-intelligent Gw’oth and even toothy, three-eyed Trinocs—these latter apparently just so that fans of this particular species don’t feel slighted, since their presence has no bearing on anything whatsoever.
A book best appreciated by fans who relish the minutest details of the Ringworld universe.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3100-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
Categories: SCIENCE FICTION
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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
55
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Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This future space fantasy might start an underground craze.
It feeds on the shades of Edgar Rice Burroughs (the Martian series), Aeschylus, Christ and J.R. Tolkien. The novel has a closed system of internal cross-references, and features a glossary, maps and appendices dealing with future religions and ecology. Dune itself is a desert planet where a certain spice liquor is mined in the sands; the spice is a supremely addictive narcotic and control of its distribution means control of the universe. This at a future time when the human race has reached a point of intellectual stagnation. What is needed is a Messiah. That's our hero, called variously Paul, then Muad'Dib (the One Who Points the Way), then Kwisatz Haderach (the space-time Messiah). Paul, who is a member of the House of Atreides (!), suddenly blooms in his middle teens with an ability to read the future and the reader too will be fascinated with the outcome of this projection.
With its bug-eyed monsters, one might think Dune was written thirty years ago; it has a fantastically complex schemata and it should interest advanced sci-fi devotees.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1965
ISBN: 0441013597
Page Count: 411
Publisher: Chilton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1965
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION
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