Customer Reviews

A King of Infinite Space: A Novel

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

 

 

First, I thought it was neat how part of the novel was located in the Saint Louis area, I know some of the places in the book as I grew up there, and I am also a fan of cryonics, so this book and I have a lot in common. I enjoyed the description of how a cryonic suspension works, it seems realistic for the most part.

Some other reviewers gave this book poor ratings, I read a lot of science fiction and I consider this novel to be excellent, the ratings from those other reviewers are questionable to me. For me this novel was a page turner, in fact I devoured it. Steele is very adept with including human interst in the story, with technology in the background as it should be. Character development and plot are first rate, and I will have to disagree with some of the other reviewers again as I thought the ending was very much acceptable. This would make a great science fiction action movie with a bit of cerebral stimulation thrown in! This is good stuff. Steele has the main character, Alec, suspended via cryonics after a fatal accident, and he is re-animated at some point in the future, no more details here so I won't be a spoiler, but if you read it I think you will agree with me that this is a fascinating account of what may someday actually take place, with Steele's no-holds-barred style, my kind of writer indeed, and with the recent Ted Williams cryonic suspension in the news this novel takes on new immediacy.

I was so enchanted with this book that I set it down after the third page, albeit with difficulty, and typed the text from pages 1 through 3 and sent it out as an email to my friends. Steele's writing is _that_ good.

This "Near Space" future of Steele's is a complex and exciting place, but the good pacing and delightful writing feeds it to us a piece at a time in a very believable fashion; I felt that I missed nothing from not having read the earlier works in this universe, although I plan to correct that misfortune soon. :)

William Alec Tucker, III's recovery from a mindlessness brought on by his resurrection through learning the intricacies of late 21st century living is more than just a device to introduce that world to the reader. It is also the vehicle for a character development that is especially exceptional for this genré. While Steele's "Near Space" is reminiscent of Niven's "Known Space" in its breadth, consistency, and believability, the journey of self-discovery that William Tucker goes through reminded me more of Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."

The technical correctness, strong coherency, and brilliant character development are joined by Steele's good command, and use, of the English language. Although not up to the lofty linguistic levels of, say, Mark Helprin's "Winter's Tale", (one of my all-time favorite examples of good writing,) the vocabulary is nonetheless rich and full of facile description. I look forward to reading something where Allen Steele is not restricted to a first-person narrative.

This is writing of rare quality, and I heartily encourage any serious science fiction reader to savor "A King of Infinite Space."

A King of Infinite Space is the culminating work in Allen Steele's Near Space series, which began with Orbital Decay in the late 80's and concluded with this novel roughly ten years later. Although the name of Steele's universe is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Larry Niven's Known Space series, I personally find Steele's work to be much more compelling than Niven's. Whereas Niven's characters will traverse hundreds of light years with the flip of a single switch, Steele's Near Space series is perhaps the most satisfying attempt by a contemporary sci-fi author to envision a realistic history of humanity's expansion throughout the solar system over the next few decades. Steele never forgets that people, no matter where they are and what level of technology they have at their disposal, will always be people. A King of Infinite Space is basically an overview of this universe from the perspective of a Gen Xer revived on the cusp of the twenty-second century after his death in 1995. As such it's probably a good place to start for anyone new to Allen Steele. The beginning of the novel, which depicts Alec's death and subsequent rebirth on the asteroid colony of Mr. Chicago, is particularly well-written and engaging. I would go ahead and agree with other reviewers by saying the ending is a little too pat, but it hardly destroys the overall story. Highly recommended.

A King of Infinite Space is a strong book. It is well written and grabs you from the very first page. And, while they say every story has been told, this one managed to put some unique twists on the "what if science could allow is to live again" story.

WARNING: This paragraphy gives clues about the ending! The ending was a bit too tidy. Alec's world had been getting worse and worse and then, in one fell swoop, he entire life comes together (anyone have a magic wand?). But, that didn't really bother me. The reality is that by that point in the book, I wanted things to go right for Alec. I liked Alec and I wanted things to work out for him. And, really, so what if the ending is a little forced. I read this book for fun and it was fun. I have no problem at all with everyone living happily ever after in a light scifi novel!

This book was a fun story that I enjoyed immensely. As long as you don't read this book looking for something deeply intellectual (and you enjoy science fiction) you'll enjoy it too.

This book started as a fun look into the world of entitle-brats who wind up in the future. I thought the author's grasp of youth in the 90's was funny and insightful. Once everyone wakes up, this novel takes a definite turn for the dull and diluted. It never felt like there was much of a point to Alec's cause since he was as nasty and unlikable as everyone else around him. I kept reading because I thought there might be something to the story only to find out that no, there really wasn't, except that if you're going to make it in this particular universe you have to have extremely long toes.

While intensely binging on SciFi books in the last five months, I found myself putting aside Asimov and A.C. Clarke in order to read the too few, still available books Allen Steele has had time to write. Actually, "A king of infinite space" was the first A. Steele novel I have read, which prompted me to immediately purchase "The Jericho Iteration" and "The Tranquility Alternative". From novel to novel, Allen seems to be consistent in his delivery of suspensful and ingeniously crafted science fiction. The relentless pace of events leaves the reader gratefully exhausted but still wanting more. "How soon can you write another novel, Allen?".

I can't recomend this book highly enough. Steele manages to paint a suitable bizarre enough picture of the future that you could see it happening. The strong science and brilliant character development, as well as some truely original and entertaining storytelling all combine to glue this book to your hands. I couldn't put it down. This is easily one of the best sci-fi books I've read!

I started this book (I bought it in the supermarket check-out line) at 6pm and COULD NOT put it down until I was done at 2:30am. I got so into it that I just had to hold my own New Years celebration and broke out the green and black olives, cubed cheese and fruit punch.

Steele is a prose poet. Funny,insightful and able to actually put movement onto the page that the reader can feel with her eyes!!!

Break out the champagne, snuggle up in your feety jammies and prepare yourself for... a truly unique ride.

Allen Steele has built a reputation in the past decade or so as one of the better new "Hard SF" writers. The bulk of his work has been set in a common future history, emphasizing the colonization of the solar system out to the asteroids, mainly, over the next century or so. The "gritty" details of much of his work, the settings, and also the casual, slangy, language Steele uses to tell his stories, have reminded many readers of Robert Heinlein. Steele has won a Hugo Award for his novella "The Death of Captain Future" (which turns out to have a slight link with the novel at hand), part of this future history. A King of Infinite Space is the first novel I've read in that future history, though I've read several stories.

This novel tells of Alec Tucker, a spoiled rich kid from St. Louis who dies and wakes up decades in the future, as a slave on a space station. He has to learn to deal with his own personal issues (i. e. that he's a spoiled brat, and does some bad things), and he has to try to find his girlfriend, who is apparently on another space station, and he has try to figure out what's up with the mysterious crime figure Pasquale Chicago, who seems to be his "owner". All these plot elements are resolved in a fairly rousing and adventurous fashion. However, I had a major problem with the ending, which largely ruined the book for me. In essence, I think the ending is a cheat, in that it renders the main action of the story basically insignificant. In addition, the plot, which up to that time was reasonably believable, given the usual string of brushes with danger which always work out, becomes utterly implausible. It is as if Steele has constructed a tower of toy blocks, which totteringly support each other, and which we can just believe will stay erect. Then he asks us to believe that a whacking great big marble statue can be balanced on top of it (if I may be permitted a flight of metaphorical fancy).

A King of Infinite Space is at the first level an acceptable, breezy, read. But in the final analysis three elements disappointed me. The first, and most important, was the implausible nature of the final structure of the plot. The second was that the characters are not terribly likable. The narrator is portrayed, quite realistically, as a spoiled brat for most of the novel. This makes sense, and is well enough depicted, but it does make it harder to sympathize with him. The rest of the characters are seen at a greater distance, and they are all either quite minor, or jerks of one variety or another as well. Finally, Steele has chosen to tell the story in a combination of present and past tense. This is a device that you might be able to pull off, if there was a good enough reason. But Steele goes so far as to switch tenses in the same sentence, and that's too much for me. And at any rate I couldn't detect a consistent reason for the tense switches.

I've enjoyed plenty of Allen Steele's shorter work. I must say that both novels I've read have been disappointments, though. He does have a nice imagination, and a way with an adventure plot that makes his stuff fun to read. I won't write him off, by any means, but I can't give A King of Infinite Space any more than a lukewarm "passes the time" sort of recommendation.

To quote another reviewer, who gave the book five stars:

"This is not a great piece of literature, and if it were in a different genre, I wouldn't have given it five stars."

Amen. This is not great literature. Call it like it is, regardless of the genre: paper-thin speculative fiction about near-space exploration set about a hundred years from now. The nanites and cryogenic storage are rather standard. The history lessons are uniformly pessimistic, but may match your world view.

On the flip side, I appreciated the homo-superior race and their dialogue. I also found the near-space setting to be intriguing. The story was just engaging enough to keep me turning the pages, although the subject matter was occasionally dry enough to make me skim past certain pieces.

All in all, an OK read, but there are certainly better SF books out there to read.