Customer Reviews

Harvest of Stars

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Poul Anderson has brought lifetime's worth of craftsmanship and pure artistic genius to bear to create this, the crowning acheivement of his science fiction career. The downloaded copy of late Anson Guthrie, with the help of Fireball pilot Kyrie Davis, is fleeing the totalitarian Avantist world order; but the Avantists have secured and brainwashed another copy of Guthrie, so that his most dangerous opposition is himself.

The background is awe-inspiring in its complexity and completeness. Instead of a stale monoculture, or an endless array of postapocolyptic punks, the reader is treated to a tapestry of cultures of the future, including the eerie, elfin Lunarians, perhaps Anderson's most successful and memorable creation.

The main action of the book, however, is just a backdrop for a more chilling and larger threat: the spectre of bioengineering and true artificial intelligence slowly displaces Man from his seat as lord of his own fate, and an increasingly inert and sheeplike humanity becomes merely the clients and wards of a supreme cybernetic system. The only hope for Man to retain his human spirit is a risky and uncertain project to colonize one of the doomed worlds of Alpha Centauri.

HARVEST OF STARS moves from an action thriller seamlessly into profound conflict over the ultimate spiritual destiny of man, whether one of numb security or perilous liberty.

Magnificent on all levels, rich in characterization, vivid in detial, profound in scope and philosophic depth, I cannot imagine how any science fiction reader could help but award this book the highest possible rank. A classic.

As I have noted elsewhere, as he got older Poul Anderson seemed to more or less settle on his vision of man's future. He essentially appears to believe that man is destined to be subordinate to and dominated by entities of artificial intelligence, which will simultaneously raise the general standard of living while diminishing mankind's self-determination. Anderson portrays this as an inevitable and a depressing future. There is no better friend to freedom and liberty than Anderson, yet he seems to lack confidence that mankind in the future will enjoy freedom in a manner consistent with American notions. A plausible and interesting concept, but in his last decade or so Anderson seemed unable to depart from this groove. Surely other human destinies are possible--Anderson has told of many.

Poul Anderson is far and away my favorite SF author. This novel, while interesting and readable, is not his best work. This book is a maddening mix of brilliant speculation, great characterization, and bloated prose. This novel would have been twice as good if it had been half as long.

The novel is the story of a freedom-loving spacefaring "corporation" (really a nation of sorts) struggling against oppressive earth governments. The relevant characters are brilliantly portrayed as people and as idealists, and/or villains. Unfortunately, the book bogs down and could and should have been much more crisply written. Consequently, the story line seems to ramble towards the end. Frankly, I found the ending unsatisfying and implausible.

Poul Anderson's other works are more imaginative and better written. If you like this book (and there is a fair amount to like) try his Nicholas Van Rijn/Polesotechnic League series, and his many collections of short stories. This are among his best work.

In the not-so-far-off future, machines have taken over much of the work that Humans once did. The government of what was the United States of America, dominated by a movement called Avantism, polices its citizens ruthlessly and punishes deviance from this philosophy's ideals. That's undoubtedly why Fireball, a vast private company that owns the entire space travel industry, has its headquarters in Ecuador. Anson Guthrie, Fireball's founder, died in the flesh decades ago. But his "downloaded" personality, and all his knowledge and life experience, lives on as a sentient computer program. As the story opens, Fireball pilot Kyra Davis finds herself on the run with her "jefe" - Download Guthrie - to protect from capture by the American government that wants to use him to gain control of Fireball.

The first half (and more) of this book recounts Guthrie's flight from the Avantist authorities, and Kyra's adventures among the genetically engineered and no longer quite Human "Lunarians" who have built an independent and unique new culture on Terra's natural satellite. The remainder of the novel takes us along with Guthrie, Pilot Davis, and others whom we've come to know as a band of hardy souls sets out to transform an alien planet into their new home. This gives the book an odd structure, with so many of its pages covering a relatively short period of time and the rest leaping through events decades apart. You might say that "change of pace" takes on a whole new meaning.

Anderson's characters engaged me despite lapses into stereotype, and I found his descriptions of the Lunarians' culture and of Demeter's transformation vivid and enthralling. Anson Guthrie's politics are those of the old-line, 1950s science fiction hero: the standard "government's job is to leave people alone" sermon comes out of his mouth repeatedly, reminding me very much of Heinlein's juvenile SF books. Whatever one's politics (Guthrie's are certainly Libertarian!), the questions the characters have to answer are valid ones for Humans today. What will technology make of us? (Not necessarily, "What will we make of technology?") And what is it that makes us Human, anyway? Having Download Guthrie as the book's protagonist (for he occupies that role, in the end, more than does Kyra Davis) lends that last question special poignancy.

Not the best Poul Anderson book I've ever read, but a darn good one nevertheless.

... I have to state that this book (and its sequel, "The Stars Are Also Fire", and less so with the remaining two in the quartet, "Harvest the Fire" and "The Fleet of Stars") is perhaps the most thought-provoking SF work I have read. It ranks, for me, with the very best of Asimov, Heinlein, et. al., in terms of making me think of what the author is trying to convey. Its exposition of artificial intelligence (developed to much greater depth in the successors to this book) is very good, albeit coming late in this volume. The classic conflict between central control of society, and individual freedoms, is well set out, and overall it places one in the position of constantly asking "How would I react to this?" I've gone to the trouble of buying the whole quartet in hardcover, as I know that these are books I will be re-reading until I die. Great work!

Harvest of Stars really is two separate but related stories. The first story is primarily a political commentary, but also involves immortality achieved through cybernetics (it has no connection to Anderson's The Boat of a Million Years). Anderson envisages the consequences of a series of continuous impairments in personal liberties, leading to a totalitarian state. One guesses that some of the negative reviews of this book have to do with the reader not agreeing with the many uncompromising aspects of the story. These comments are unreasonable. Anderson is using a classic aspect of science fiction to its best: set up a possible future, be clear about the boundaries defining that future, and see what happens. This is very good science fiction. The prose is occasionally choppy--better editing would have helped--but it never is problematic. The story reads well and is quite interesting.

The 2nd story runs naturally from the first, but with a big time separation. The central issues of this story are no longer political, but rather familial and eco-centric. I don't want to give details, as those would detract from the conclusions of the 1st story (e.g., who survives to get to the 2nd story). This 2nd story is really great science fiction. My only wish is that Anderson had expanded it more, making it a longer (it could easily have been a complete novel in itself). In any case, this 2nd story is very cool, with a very good conclusion.

Harvest of Stars is of those books that is satisfying on its own, but also leaves the reader looking forward to the next book in the series.

This book will turn the reader into a believer because of its realistic humanity. Poul Anderson makes you feel like a sidekick on an adventure with the greatest minds in the universe. Harvest of stars is a well-balanced journey with all of the ingridents of a page-turning quest for justice. It will be finished before you want it to be.

In my opinion this book is a great triumph for Anderson. Previous books by this author have been disappointing to me but this is in a whole different league. Beginning as a fast paced adventure and ending in a grand flourish portraying the future of humanity, this story is full of surprises, plot twists and very human characters. Even more signifigant in my mind is science that is actually believable and has defined limitations. This could actually take place in the not so distant future portrayed in this gripping story. The disconcerting, (though not necessarily bad) thing is that this is almost two stories in one. The first two thirds are all adventure and intrigue covering less than a years time. The last is a moving and thought provoking view of the divergent future of the human race spanning hundreds of years in fewer pages. However short this ending is, it still manages to overwhelm the reader with awe and scope not achieved by many other more renowned authors

With North America having embraced a controlling, almost-police state that promises great advances, but delivers only repression and economic regression, the state turns hungry eyes towards the space-going Fireball Corporation. They plan on seizing Fireball's assets, and using its expertise to deliver the utopia that their cherished philosophy never could. However, a group of Fireball loyalists, headed by cyber-entity Anson Guthrie, is on the run, determined to thwart the government's evil plans. And, if in the course of their work they bring the whole rotten structure down, so much the better!

Poul Anderson (1926-2001) is remembered as one of the giants of the sci-fi industry, and this book shows off why. I found the story to be quite gripping, and I really like his view of the not-so-far-off-future. And as for the politics, would the people of North America ever embrace a philosophy that promised a utopian future delivered through government control? Oh yeah.

The one fly in this ointment is the bothersome way that the Lunarians talk - like characters out of a Shakespeare play. But, as for me, I did not find it to be all that distracting. No, I found this to be a very interesting book, one that really held my interest from start to finish - I highly recommend this book!

While it has been quite some time since I read Harvest of Stars, I still remember it very vividly. It is not the kind of book you can forget. The last part of the book is especially memorable. The language is vivid and poetic, the concepts mindboggling, the scale one of epic proportion...

However, when I first started reading the book, I had no idea that it would ever turn out the way it did. Not that that's necessarily always bad (I love being surprised). It's just that this book seems more like two stories rather than a single coherent tale... and the more interesting of the two stories only takes place in the last fourth of the book!

To begin with, the story starts out as a regular sci-fi adventure, with two "downloads" of Fireball Corporation's leader Anson Guthrie working against one another in a pitched battle for control (the "good" Guthrie with Fireball, of course, and the corrupted download being used by the government). There are some action sequences and chases (mostly involving Kyra, the female lead character who's actually one of the better heroines I've come across in hard SF) which take place within a fairly well realized future Earth. There's even a nice sort of space battle that happens, too. But then the conflict resolves itself rather quickly (and, might I add, anticlimactically), and then the book totally, completely, and utterly shifts gears into a wonderful story about man's life among the stars. While this was my favorite part, it felt totally unrelated to the rest of the book, came far too late in the book, and was not given nearly enough pages to realize its potential!

I liked this book, I really did. It was very ambitious, mind-boggling, entertaining, all that good stuff. However, it just didn't work well for me. I'd rather have seen Anderson write an entire novel devoted to the second plot than be misled so. Although I really enjoyed reading this, I felt like Anderson had been really unfair in holding out on us.

I've always been interested in reading the sequels to this novel, to see if he followed up on the ending like I wanted him to. Unfortunately, the books are incredibly hard to find. If it kills you not to be able to follow a saga through, you may not want to read this one, but I still say you should, even if for nothing more than the ending.

My biggest beef with this book is that it is too big. The prose is painstaking in its detail. Conversations among the players are overlong and too smart for their own good. They plan for every foreseeable contingency down to the grittiest detail; meanwhile, the reader is lost because he can't see the forrest through the trees! It's irritating because not only does it slow down the plot but renders much of that reading a waste of time. Then Anderson unleashes a surprise at the end of Part II that completely changes the game. Which brings me to my second beef...

Part III. This part of the book is completely out of step with the rest of the novel. It seems to me that Anderson intended to end the book after Part II, but once he got there he wasn't satisfied, so he wrote 150 pages more. Several hundred years elapse, whereas the events in the first two acts take place over a month or thereabouts. Halfway through this false ending I had completely lost interest. The plot also takes a couple of fantastic turns that stretch science fiction to science farce.

Lastly, the book is a difficult read. The following sentence is indicative of the flowery narration sustained over the hulking 530 pages: "Turbulence eddied from each of the bodies and bodies and bodies that hurried, dodged, dawdled, gestured, swerved, lingered. Colors and faces lost meaning in their swarm. The air was thick with their breath, harsh with their footfalls and voices. Wind drove clouds like smoke across the strips of sky between walls."