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frithnanth's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
buchhaima's review
adventurous
challenging
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
wouter_pieterse's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.75
Not really that good.
morganswoboda's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
timinbc's review against another edition
3.0
Well, you can't say the story lacks for scope.
And there is some good work providing some solid hard SF for parts of it. I suspect Mr. Reynolds gets credit for that, while Baxter provides the handwaving.
There's a lot of plod, plod here, followed by the occasional mighty leap, sometimes to a new plot and on one notable occasion when we are on Mercury and in the span of one sentence. One sentence!
The leaps through time reminded me VERY strongly of Baxter's work in the Long Earth series. They save so much explanation. What has Falcon been doing for the 80-100 years between appearances?
For that matter, why has human society not changed much? And, as in Long Earth etc., why do a couple of families conveniently dominate the history of the entire solar system?
As others have noted, the Machines are mostly jerks, with the occasional touch of thoughtfulness.
Hope is essentially Pepper Potts from "Iron Man".
The human bad guys at the end are laughable, especially the one who gets so mad she drools when she sees that they are going to be "Curses, foiled again!"
And as we head to the end, everything goes off the rails a bit. For the sake of a grand, sweeping story we leave credibility far behind, almost like the end of Kubrick's "2001", and entities that can do anything are overwhelmed by entities that are, well, playing in a different league. One wonders if the authors struggled with an ending, got drunk, started to get silly, then had a couple more drinks and moved into, "No, wait, what if we (silly idea) HAHAHAHA! No, really, HAHAHA burp, inside the sun!!! C'mon, letsh TRY it!"
Also, at the end, a character and carries out something that could just as well have been done by an ordinary person/group. Pfui. That plot thread was fine as it had apparently been left.
Nevertheless, looking back after finishing the book, there IS an interesting story there, perhaps one that is best read quickly and without too much judgement. And a reasonable extension of Clarke's story.
And I for one didn't have a problem with the flashback sequences. I think I see what they were doing with it, and while it didn't thrill me I can respect it.
And there is some good work providing some solid hard SF for parts of it. I suspect Mr. Reynolds gets credit for that, while Baxter provides the handwaving.
There's a lot of plod, plod here, followed by the occasional mighty leap, sometimes to a new plot and on one notable occasion when we are on Mercury and in the span of one sentence
Spoiler
the Machines have turned the planet into a Dyson sphereThe leaps through time reminded me VERY strongly of Baxter's work in the Long Earth series. They save so much explanation. What has Falcon been doing for the 80-100 years between appearances?
For that matter, why has human society not changed much? And, as in Long Earth etc., why do a couple of families conveniently dominate the history of the entire solar system?
As others have noted, the Machines are mostly jerks, with the occasional touch of thoughtfulness.
Hope is essentially Pepper Potts from "Iron Man".
The human bad guys at the end are laughable, especially the one who gets so mad she drools when she sees that they are going to be "Curses, foiled again!"
And as we head to the end, everything goes off the rails a bit. For the sake of a grand, sweeping story we leave credibility far behind, almost like the end of Kubrick's "2001", and entities that can do anything are overwhelmed by entities that are, well, playing in a different league. One wonders if the authors struggled with an ending, got drunk, started to get silly, then had a couple more drinks and moved into, "No, wait, what if we (silly idea) HAHAHAHA! No, really, HAHAHA burp, inside the sun!!! C'mon, letsh TRY it!"
Also, at the end, a character
Spoiler
reappears after a long absence, hundreds of years old with no explanation of how,Nevertheless, looking back after finishing the book, there IS an interesting story there, perhaps one that is best read quickly and without too much judgement. And a reasonable extension of Clarke's story.
And I for one didn't have a problem with the flashback sequences. I think I see what they were doing with it, and while it didn't thrill me I can respect it.
blodeuedd's review against another edition
3.0
I have never read Alistair Reynolds so I can't say a lot about him, but I have tried a Stephen Baxter book and I must say it felt very Baxter like.
It is the story of Howard Falcon, through out centuries as he just lives on, watches and plays a part. After a crash he is not human, not machine. Trusted and mistrusted by other humans as they spread out and settle on planets.
It's not one of those stories where you are told this and that happened. Nope, we get to see him visit a planet. 200 years later we get to see him doing something else. There are big jumps in time and while seeing that we also see the rise and fall of others. Shimps. The machines. Humans...
It is hard to explain this book. Each story can stand on its own, even though they are tales from his life and they should of course be read like that since it is a book, but you get the idea. And they are interesting. He is a good character to follow, there is a sadness to him, he is one of a kind, there was never anyone like him. Or would ever be.
A fascinating story. I like that how far we make it, we are still humans, and that is not always a good thing.
On another note, I should read more Baxter, and try Reynolds
It is the story of Howard Falcon, through out centuries as he just lives on, watches and plays a part. After a crash he is not human, not machine. Trusted and mistrusted by other humans as they spread out and settle on planets.
It's not one of those stories where you are told this and that happened. Nope, we get to see him visit a planet. 200 years later we get to see him doing something else. There are big jumps in time and while seeing that we also see the rise and fall of others. Shimps. The machines. Humans...
It is hard to explain this book. Each story can stand on its own, even though they are tales from his life and they should of course be read like that since it is a book, but you get the idea. And they are interesting. He is a good character to follow, there is a sadness to him, he is one of a kind, there was never anyone like him. Or would ever be.
A fascinating story. I like that how far we make it, we are still humans, and that is not always a good thing.
On another note, I should read more Baxter, and try Reynolds
pilebythebed's review against another edition
3.0
The last novella written by Arthur C Clarke, one of the greatest writers of the classic science fiction age, ended with almost an open invitation. Its protagonist, Howard Falcon, half man, half machine was to be an ambassador between humanity and a machine culture, which was not the focus of that story, “in the troubled centuries that lay ahead”. Two of the biggest names in the British sci-fi scene have taken up the challenge of chronicling those troubled centuries. Baxter, off the back of his Long Earth series written jointly with the late Sir Terry Pratchett, and Reynolds revisiting some of the themes from his recent space opera trilogy - Poseidon’s Children.
The first thing to say about The Medusa Chronicles is that, without being slavish, Baxter and Reynolds have tried to capture the feel of 1960s science fiction. Although it dips heavily into some ideas from modern physics, the book has a ’60s feel. This is both to their credit and, ultimately to the book’s detriment. The whole narrative exists in an altered imagined future in which a joint space effort in the late ’60s to avoid global disaster kickstarted a much more vigorous space exploration program, landing a man on Mars in the 1980s. The Global Government that follows is very much in the utopian Star Trek mode of the time, although Baxter and Reynolds are then keen to pick that hegemony apart.
Howard Falcon, constantly upgraded over the centuries to be the conduit between the human and machine cultures is an interesting character but not a particularly engaging one. Again, he feels like the kind of plot-device character that populated (and still populates) big idea sci fi. Falcon almost exists to be a mouthpiece for the rational third way between the inscrutable plans of the machines and the violent reaction of humanity under threat.
The book suffers from being over ambitious. By trying to cast its eye over a six hundred year time span it necessarily has to skip quickly through the intervening centuries. With the exception of the long lived Falcon himself, characters come and go quickly, connected through a tenuous, and fairly unbelievable family line. Falcon uses this time to do Baxter and Reynolds version of the solar system grand tour touching down on Jupiter and its moons, Mars, Mercury, the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt. As a result, this feels like a series of open ended short stories. Possibly the best comparison (again for both good and bad reasons) is the Foundation trilogy, but even Asimov moved away from this time-skipping short story structure in his later years.
The book is a perfect storm of Baxter’s big science ideas and Reynold’s capacity to create massive mysterious space objects. At one point the machine culture builds a massive structure above Mercury to harness the power of the sun. In another, they turn the whole of the surface of Jupiter into a giant weapon. But characters are always keen to point out that even while creating inertialess drives that can move moons they are obeying the limitations of Newtonian physics.
Many of the greats get a shout out, a reference or a mention- Asimov’s three laws of robotics, HG Wells, Jules Verne, even Jonathan Swift. But overall this a homage to Clarke and his main themes – artificial intelligence, space exploration and a fixation on Jupiter. The movie version of 2001 gets a mention at one point and the finale has definite 2001 feel to it. This is interesting, retro sci-fi but not quite as good as the best of Baxter, Reynolds or Clarke.
This and other reviews can be found at http://pilebythebed.com
The first thing to say about The Medusa Chronicles is that, without being slavish, Baxter and Reynolds have tried to capture the feel of 1960s science fiction. Although it dips heavily into some ideas from modern physics, the book has a ’60s feel. This is both to their credit and, ultimately to the book’s detriment. The whole narrative exists in an altered imagined future in which a joint space effort in the late ’60s to avoid global disaster kickstarted a much more vigorous space exploration program, landing a man on Mars in the 1980s. The Global Government that follows is very much in the utopian Star Trek mode of the time, although Baxter and Reynolds are then keen to pick that hegemony apart.
Howard Falcon, constantly upgraded over the centuries to be the conduit between the human and machine cultures is an interesting character but not a particularly engaging one. Again, he feels like the kind of plot-device character that populated (and still populates) big idea sci fi. Falcon almost exists to be a mouthpiece for the rational third way between the inscrutable plans of the machines and the violent reaction of humanity under threat.
The book suffers from being over ambitious. By trying to cast its eye over a six hundred year time span it necessarily has to skip quickly through the intervening centuries. With the exception of the long lived Falcon himself, characters come and go quickly, connected through a tenuous, and fairly unbelievable family line. Falcon uses this time to do Baxter and Reynolds version of the solar system grand tour touching down on Jupiter and its moons, Mars, Mercury, the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt. As a result, this feels like a series of open ended short stories. Possibly the best comparison (again for both good and bad reasons) is the Foundation trilogy, but even Asimov moved away from this time-skipping short story structure in his later years.
The book is a perfect storm of Baxter’s big science ideas and Reynold’s capacity to create massive mysterious space objects. At one point the machine culture builds a massive structure above Mercury to harness the power of the sun. In another, they turn the whole of the surface of Jupiter into a giant weapon. But characters are always keen to point out that even while creating inertialess drives that can move moons they are obeying the limitations of Newtonian physics.
Many of the greats get a shout out, a reference or a mention- Asimov’s three laws of robotics, HG Wells, Jules Verne, even Jonathan Swift. But overall this a homage to Clarke and his main themes – artificial intelligence, space exploration and a fixation on Jupiter. The movie version of 2001 gets a mention at one point and the finale has definite 2001 feel to it. This is interesting, retro sci-fi but not quite as good as the best of Baxter, Reynolds or Clarke.
This and other reviews can be found at http://pilebythebed.com
skylar2's review against another edition
4.0
As others have noted, it's painfully obvious which parts Baxter wrote and which parts Reynolds wrote. The Baxter parts range from jarring to just boring, while Reynolds clearly carries the inspiration. On the whole it's worth reading, though be prepared for homages to a number of Clarke stories in addition to Meeting with Medusa - I picked up on 2001 and the Rama trilogy.
mgomes's review against another edition
4.0
Nice reading, fits nicely with the short story its based upon
justaguy's review against another edition
2.0
Not at the best
I’m like my fellow reader mentioned in his review “unappealing and unexciting”. Unfortunately, it is true because of how it was written. Too much time skipping throughout times and wasted time on one from Apollo days. Then with a lack of storyline between 500 years. Or the twist at the ending...even if I did enjoy the idea of evolved machine consciousness. Still, the book was badly on the prep part.
I’m like my fellow reader mentioned in his review “unappealing and unexciting”. Unfortunately, it is true because of how it was written. Too much time skipping throughout times and wasted time on one from Apollo days. Then with a lack of storyline between 500 years. Or the twist at the ending...even if I did enjoy the idea of evolved machine consciousness. Still, the book was badly on the prep part.