Customer Reviews

Life Probe

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Although the writing and character development are generally lackluster, what makes Life Probe an intriguing novel is the political angle. Written during the Cold War, Life Probe shows a remarkable ability to think beyond the US-Russia framework and envision a world afterward. Like many authors, McCollum hypothesizes that a nuclear war in the near future leads to the development of a functioning United Nations. In this context, North-South political wrangling in the 21st century underlies much of the book. The book is somewhat right-wing, in that a "Star Wars"-type defense system is depicted as being highly successful in preventing much of the damage from the near-future nuclear war, and the discussion of the North-South conflict is strongly biased against the South. Nevertheless, McCollum does discuss the issues and makes a reasonable case for both sides--which impressed me. Two other aspects of the book are well worth mentioning: (1) the alien spacecraft's view of Earth and its attempts to manipulate Earth politics are well depicted, and (2) the discussion of science hits just the right balance between the technical and the descriptive. The political wrangling never leads to a real moral dilemma for the reader, since you always know who to root for, and the picture of parliamentary maneuvering is naive--but the book is charming, balanced, supported by interesting ideas, and has enough twists and turns to keep a reader happy. I recommend it as a good light read. On balance, I think it's McCollum's best novel.

I read this when it first came out. I am BACK to re-acquire the book. (see my review of Procyons Promise, which is Part II of this 2 book series. I loved it so much that "ProcyonsPromise" is my eBay ID!!!-- bear in mind I have not read these stories for decades!) In Life Probe, Earth is "discovered" by an alien probe, but as it approaches earth a micro-black hole demolishes this priceless artifically intelligent artifact. Upon the Probe's approach to earth it had sampled enough of human communication to determine that it's own communications needs would be best served by creating an quasi-human (or potentially human-capable) artifical intelligence that could learn rapidly and act as an interface for the Greater Alien-AI-proper. The AI creates the interface with minimal info regarding the race of origin, it's history, and technology (basic security approach). It's sole (original) purpose, is to communicate with humans. The new AI is a "baby" living in the microcosm of the Alien-AI's computational world. It is a small instrument on a sub-system of the AI-proper's primary systems. After creation of the simulacrum--- the life probe is suddenly devastated by an unforsee-able accident. Leaving only the minimally sentient (yet very ready to "talk") quasi-human AI consciousness as sole-surviving remnant of the alien technological marvel. Humans interact with it, and learn from IT, as it learns a little bit also about it's own creator (the greater but now DEAD AI), and indirectly deduces from it's fundamental technology/programming clues, some few facts about the Aliens of it's origin. Now the humans have a quasi-human alien technology-based "life form" that also wants to find the aliens of origin. Thus, the greater story unfolds... And a compelling reason for the HUMANS to take up this search. But the primary introductory parts of this novel are simply detailed dramatically to anyone who is a lover of technology. extremely well done. A good read. Yes, I have given details of the story out... TRUST ME, it is SO GOOD, that even tho I KNOW the story...

I want to read it again.
and obviously, I've read it a couple times before.
It's a good story, for lovers of Hard SciFi.

There was enough of a Story to pull it along nicely.
I was captivated by the Romance of a Life Probe / A.I. struggling to "Continue Existing" despite HORRENDOUS damage.

The majority of the Life Probe was damaged.

Part of the probe continued its existence in an A.I. form that was CREATED by the Original Life Probe. This form allowed the Human Community to interact with it Much like a human, and actually we freely adopted its technologies that it was based on, with it's own intelligent assistance. Note, that the ORIGINAL purpose of the Life Probe A.I. was lost with the immense damage that it took. The only part of the "probe" that remained was its experimental "Human Model" that it (the much more intelligent and ALIEN life probe ENTIRE) was going to use to study/communicate with the Humans.

After the probe was damaged, We humans were able to freely investigate it(since it could not defend itself). We could freely speculate on it's origins and use the technology that it was based on to further our OWN development and purposes.

A very interesting fantasy.
A very intelligent & powerful machine that fell prey to circumstance, and became OUR unwitting "benefactor" And a source of new technology in more ways than one.

I'm re-purchasing the book b/c I read it in the 80's and thought it was excellent.

This is the first book I have read by Michael McCollum, and I am happy to see that he has several others out now. I first read LifeProbe about 15 years ago, and have re-read it about 5 times.

Well worth the read.

The concept is good enough, though a little flawed. I mean a super advanced civilization, who have been spacefaring even before the Neanderthals roamed the Earth, thinks itself "doomed" because they have not yet discovered Faster Than Light travel? Their solution: send sublight probes everywhere to search for some other civilization that has FTL. Takes tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years with this approach to "save their civilization". In the story this civilization has already used "slowboats" or generation ships even before they started using sublight interstellar exploratory sentient robot probes. Now they are not REALLY doomed even without FTL. Once their system's resources are all out, or almost all out, they can just put their ENTIRE population on as many slowboats as they need (and believe me, they have the capability to make a lot of ships!) and transplant themselves to some new, uninhabited, full-of-natural-resources brand new star system!

Now about the politics....the author is obviously caucasian, and grew up in the west. He pretends to understand the struggles of those referred to in the novel as "black and brown" people, but he doesn't. He pretends to understand what effects British and Dutch colonization had on them, but doesn't. He pretends to understand their views but doesn't. Instead he portrays them as warmongering greedy people out to start a world war, when (even in his own futuristic story), many of them are still opressed or not treated as equals, even with the re-organized-more-equal (supposedly)-UN ruled world.

My advise to the author. Stick to sci-fi, don't insert politics into your novels. The bad politics just messes up the good sci-fi.

I read this book in middle school and loved it to pieces. I recently reread it as someone with a PhD in political science. The pronounced ethnocentrism and black-helicopter UN-phobia is jarring to me now, but the story is still compelling. In the end, the best character in the book is an inanimate probe. The book sets up nicely for a sequel, but is also a self-contained, intriguing story about a cry for help from a doomed race.

Seventy pages into it and I put it down. I admit, the scenes with the probe and its thoughts were pretty neat. But when it came to the human characters and their efforts to move the story forward it fell flat. The probe shows up as a mysterious glow in space. While the UN launches an investigation, that seems to take a back seat to other subplots that failed to grab my interest.