Customer Reviews

Gryphon

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am not a sci-fi fan, so it takes something really interesting to grab me. This one did and held me with excellent description and "show, not tell" narrative. Sucks even "non sci-fi" reader in, so you forget you're reading and find yourself "experiencing." The plot doesn't even matter because the writing just sweeps you along like a piece of debris in outer space. Sort of like a Star War thing. Good literary adventure to go on.

Back in print is this fine book. In the fairly distant future, a peaceful Solar System is invaded by the Gryphons, who have developed a (much) faster than light drive, hitherto thought impossible. This is a well written adventure, and a compulsive page-turner. It has several remarkable features:
1. Very well written. Not as much of that around as there should be.
2. The sort of adventure Heinlein would have loved: a small group of individuals take on a monolithic power in the name of freedom. But, to my mind, more sophisticated than most Heinlein, without the juvenile philosophy and the chest beating. Sorry, but you know what I mean.
3. This was one of the first books to really imagine a future dominated by nanotechnology, just about the same time as "Blood Music". It is early enough that nanotechnology is called "molmechs", the nomenclature still being up in the air. Unlike "Blood Music", its pathbreaking role is often overlooked. This is sad because in this book, nanotechnology is the foundation of daily life.
4. This book, at least in its beginning, is just about the only true Libertarian Utopia I have come across in SciFi. Technology allows each individual to live as autonomous power, doing whatever they want, making love or war on the neighbors as they see fit.