Customer Reviews

AGAINST INFINITY.

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Very convincing, descriptive environment and entertaining story. A young boy grows up among a group of men assigned to terraform Ganymede's surface. Myths and stories abide concerning the mysterious alien artifact that roams the planet, with no apparent purpose. The object is completely neutral towards men when encountered, not acknowledging their presence in any way. Nothing is known of the object's nature, origin or purpose. A young boy and his father figure set off in pursuit of the elusive artifact, hoping to understand it. Once uncovered, its purpose is surprising and refreshing.

This certainly isn't Gregory Benford's best book, nor is it one which I can recommend, at least not without qualification.

The concept is good, and the basic setting is interesting. The combination of a coming-of-age plot in a science-fictional setting is interesting and workable. The issues brought forth here are befitting both genres, those having to do with feeling and respect towards life, even life as remote from our experience as Aleph is shown. And Aleph alone is a worthy concept, the idea of life that exists for no apparant reason than to survive, that has no interest in anything that doesn't sustain that life and being.

And of course, there is Benford's familiar theme, that of man attempting to bend all he encounters to his purposes.

There's some real meat here, but somehow, it just isn't clothed in a sustainedly entertaining mode.

It's a good layover book, and a decent attempt to transcend sci-fi by addressing crusty themes with new raw material. The aleph is a Macguffin on par with the spice worms, but there's nothing epic about this coming of age novel.

If you read it, try to spot the scene 'borrowed' from Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast."

Interesting political commentary and explanation of capitalism; that is, if you feel socialism is the ultimate human state of equilibrium.

Ganymede is a frozen wasteland, covered completely in solid ammonia and hiding a handful of strange alien artifacts. Mankind sets up small domes with buildings underneath to fight off the cold, while using genetically-engineered critters to do some terraforming. The main character's father organizes expeditions to kill off 'muties' - mutated versions of the critters that are hindering the terraforming project. The story is a coming-of-age tale about the boy Manuel, his relationship with his father, society, and mentor Old Matt, and it's got a moral about man's place in Nature.

The most imposing artifact of all is of course the gigantic Aleph. It's a huge 'creature' made of stone that tunnels through the ice and plows through mountains with no regard for anything in its path - including the human settlements. The men occasionally attempt to hunt it but find their weapons largely ineffective and the pursuit is both dangerous and difficult. Manuel eventually sets off to kill the thing, so the story follows his exploits.

Unfortunately, I found the book very flat and boring. Basically, Benford is trying to write a frontiersman story in space. He hasn't made it believable, though. For example, these men are basically living in a world of hyper-advanced medical technology (that can resurrect people who had frozen to death or replace body parts with robotic equivalents), but everything else is antiquated (radios that hardly work despite overhead satellites, a severe lack of seismic monitoring equipment, few computers, etc).

So Benford has placed men on Ganymede and given them weapons and targets and written half a book about hunting. The other half is completely different and Benford gets a chance to expand on his political views through really contrived situations. It's so transparent it's almost laughable. Finally the boy is forced to have a confrontation with his past, which is very badly done and ties up very little. Who were all those extra characters at the end? Why is Manuel so one-dimensional?

The Aleph itself is the only thing that kept me hooked. Towards the end I kept waiting for the explanation (which of course was certain to come, as Manuel kept hitting conveniently-placed-coincidence after conveniently-placed-coincidence pushing him onward). And the idea behind the Aleph itself was really cool, but it's presented in a really uninspiring way by an extraneous character - who showed up out of nowhere way late in the book. It left too many questions unanswered about the Aleph and what kind of influence Man was or was not able to effect on it. What in the hell is it doing on Ganymede, anyway?

In short I found the first half much more interesting than the last, and that's not saying much. I didn't particularly care for the characters or the repeated descriptions of how Manuel had no idea what was going on, Old Matt knew way too much, and Eagle yet again showed his independence. The ending was weak, the moral poorly presented, and unless you're a big fan of sentences like "The men whooped as they pursued their quarry across the frozen wasteland" stay far away.

I took this book along with me on vacation because it was short and had an interesting premise. Unfortunately, this book left me wanting in many areas.

Pros:
- The Aleph is fascinating and kept me intrigued
- I really did like the inferred moral in the story, which you will find in the ending. It was a satisfying close to the story and left me thinking afterward.

Cons:
- For the most part, this is a boring story in a SciFi setting. For a long time, I kept waiting for something interesting to happen - some big event or unveiling of a great plot twist, but it never came.

- Benford missed the opportunity to add wonder and excitement to the Aleph. He describes it physically when it is encountered, but he doesn't broach deeper issues until near the very end. He briefly mentions potentially interesting plot areas but never explores or develops them.

- Benford's writing leaves much to be desired. He glosses over or even outright skips over descriptions of people and scenes, giving more of a "meat & potatoes" approach to the story. "Just the facts, ma'am." A more engaging and illustrative writing style would make him a *much* better author.

- The "punchline" at the ending wasn't enough to justify the time spent reading the book. Maybe a second edition of this book would be much better, but it seems better suited for a short story.

I believed this was originally serialized in Aazing Sories magazine. Anyway the majestic otherwordly backdrop added something to this coming of age story. If you don't like science fiction you can just think of it as being like an Alaskan setting instead of a gas giant's moon. (In fact I almost thought it was Alaska except for the weird animals & mammoth alien machine.) Oh there's also bits about terraforming & advanced alien objects if you do like science fiction.

A is for alien to be hunted.


The writing in this book is a bit of a different style, a little more old fashioned feeling compared to a lot of his other work. On a tough, hard to survive on icy moon an alien force lies buried. When the locals realise something is stirring again, a boy and his father take on the task of doing something about it, if life wasn't rough enough for them to start with. This leads to some revelations for those involved.

The book explores man's tendency to do evil, but also his ability to resist it while resigning himself to its permanence; in this way it reaches to the level of a great tragedy. But it's also science fiction, of course, and the book explores Ganymede, where settlers contend with various hardships and hunt overly populous animals genetically engineered and brought along to drink liquid ammonia on the moon, and where they must always try to avoid the constantly churning aleph, an age-old and impossible to describe device left by aliens to wander Ganymede forever. The reader finds himself contemplating the settlement of our solar system, the symbolism of the aleph (ruthless, brutal nature?), and the array of moral characters in the book.

"Against Infinity," indeed. The book shows what we are up against: infinite, brutal nature and permanent evil. In the book's central character, it shows a way to respond to these forces that is worth taking.

I find that this book is the most terrible book anybody could buy. It is long and boring and doesn't catch the readers attention. Don't buy or read this book!