Customer Reviews

Flying to Valhalla

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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.

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

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".

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.

Let me start with saying this book badly needs editing. Why keeping so many technical points in the story when a pedantic afterword duplicates them all? I do wonder why the publisher let it out in that condition.

Story begins well but we quickly get swamped into CP's rambling. Either you are a scientist and CP will bore you by echoing the most common ideas around, or you are not and you won't understand anything. Let alone the theories endorsed by CP will surely be proved incomplete and deficient in a century. Besides, the author mixes present scientific theories with soothsaying and divination. And the most serious decisions are made according to soothsaying! Senseless.

Also the plot takes place in 2054. Who can sanely think four decades from now mankind will control anti-matter and be able to fly spaceship to Centaurus at 92%-speedlight? Preposterous. Given the challenges Earth is undergoing, we'll be lucky if we have a simple Moon base.

R-bombs are meaningless too. Their energy has to be supplied. How much is that to pulverize a planet? Also, if an accelerated spaceship can destroy a planet, just think about what an accelerated tennis ball can do to an accelerated spaceship!

Nothing in this book is believable and I wonder why the other reviewers took it so seriously. It may be because of the educated afterword. Well, to me the afterword only shows scientists are as much fantasizing as poets. I do think all science fiction stories sticking to science too much are doomed. Writing science fiction is a difficult art, indeed.

Utter crap. Flying to Valhalla has ZERO redeeming qualities, a feat rarely achieved in my foray of seriously reading science fiction for 3+ years. Besides being pointlessly detailed, repetitive to the point of nausea, scatterbrained and curiously random the novel paints Pellegrino as a one-trick pony.

The cast of Chris and Clarice Wayville are perhaps the lamest duo ever to set foot in a science fiction novel as they have no defining features, little or no background and nothing idiosyncratic. They are just plopped down into a book which Pellegrino has written just to showcase his crackpot theories and historical curiosities. Just because he has written a book about the Titanic doesn't mean he has to pointlessly connect it with this novel (at more than one point)... or even though he has written a book about Hiroshima doesn't mean he has to stretch the chapter's banality to include this bit of information, too. It just all reeks of an egotistical intellect.

It's just so bad; I can't stop shaking my head. There's even a 14-page meeting in which Asimov, Clarke, Sagan and Drake are all attending to discuss the first detailed design of an anti-matter rocket created by a scientist named Powell and Tuna (in reality, Powell and Pellegrino were the ones who provided the first detailed designs of such). Cheeky, isn't it? Substitute Tuna for Pellegrino. When the Chris and Clarice (lame!) land on the distant planet of Alphan Centauri (A-4) they name the first continent Tunaland (insert Pellegrinoland).

It gets worse. The governments on earth are so concerned that the crew of the anti-matter ship will turn around and ram earth at relativistic speeds like a relativistic bomb. They just dwell and dwell upon the somehow purposed 1% likelihood of this happening. On top of that Chris, too, is obsessed about the relativistic bombardment of earth from A-4 as well as the bombardment of A-4 from earth. I have no idea why it's made just a repetitive point other than it's just another one of Pellegrino obsessions. It's not only Chris and the earth governments who have a psychosis; it's also Pellegrino who has a one-track mind which has produced one of the worst science fiction novels I've ever read.

Additional negative points which I can't leave hanging like a wet tissue:
1) The timeline of the plot utterly unfathomable. 2) I bet wet himself in his indulgence of writing 39 pages of Afterword and Acknowledgements. 3) I bet Pellegrino had fun drawing all the nerdish little illustrations. 4) I've never ever seen an author write a FULL one-page `About the Author' autobiography before, which confirms my inkling that Pellegrino has a serious self-inflated ego. 5) I'll NEVER pick up another Pellegrino for the life of me.

The book had everything to be one of the most exciting books I've ever read, but... The plot seemed incomplete. The book just finishes, abruptely... just when I tought there was something more...

Don't get me wrong, I liked it very much but it lacks something, maybe deliberately. Especialy about Chris and his digressions...