Customer Reviews

Lightpaths

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I want to start by saying that I really enjoyed this book. That is, once I realized what it is. Or rather, what it isn't. This book is pushed as science fiction with names like Heinlein and Gibson mentioned on the cover and it is science fiction in the sense that it's fiction set in the future in a set-up generated by scientific advances-- but it isn't science fiction in terms of adhering to classic genre rules or plot. Several points:

1) This is a novel musing on the possibility of Utopia in a future where our 'greed and growth' (as the book puts it) have grown to dangerous proportions.

2) Not a whole lot happens to anything except on an internal and a narrowly interpersonal level. Don't look for action.

3) Occasionally very dense passages heavily laced with current and historic utopian thinkers. I've read 'em, so it meant something to me. I shudder to think what it would have been like if I hadn't.

4) Charactization gets lost, sometimes, in all the philosophizing. Roger, in particular, feels a little bit stock.

5) The ending has some definite lameness. It's as though he suddenly woke up and decided he had to put some action in, quick. So he did.

If you go into the book while knowing all of the above, you may well enjoy it quite a bit. If you go in expecting escapist genre fiction, it's really going to suck.

Don't let the quote about being a cross between Heinlein and Gibson fool you: Lightpaths is tragically nothing like either.

To begin with, the book is probably preachier than most religious texts ever written, but with less meat to it. The concept: If we all just try a little bit harder to get eutopia right, we can do it. (That alone should prove it's not anything like Gibson.) But even people who can stomach this ridiculous premise will have trouble with the way that the book is crafted.

The plot... isn't there. I read the entire book, and I assure you there is absolutely no plot. There are hints of a plot from time to time, inklings at the end of a chapter that something might be starting to happen, but ultimately these fizzle out and most go either unexplained or else aren't exhumed until the end. The book takes place over about a month, during which huge crisis situations are largely ignored by the characters in the best position to do anything. (Apparently this is okay, because everything sorts itself out in the end without anyone having to do anything except stand around and explain it to the reader. Yay.)

The characters are somewhat worse than the plot. Almost every single one is obsessed with the idea of eutopia, above and beyond what could be explained away by the selection process used to determine the Orbital Park's population. Large segments of the book are spent following Marissa's astoundingly tedious researches into eutopia under the guidance of Roger's equally tedious mother, or Jhana's aimless wandering around the station when she's supposed to be doing something--but doesn't. Roger, the only skeptic in the bunch, loses his value as a character when he goes insane (for reasons that were somehow never explained), basically showing that the only sane people are the starry-eyed weirdos who aren't doing anything. There are of course other characters who can deal with the vital systems threatened by the seemingly unimportant crisis, but their effort is spent mostly on preparing for a new concert. Somehow I think that hostile computer code infesting the life-support system and churning out mysterious satellites that provoke military reactions is a little more serious an issue, but then I guess it's okay to put that on hold for three or four days before talking to the right people or checking out the hardware. After all, entertainment is more important than breathing.

But there's more to say about the preachiness. The characters--all except Roger--are preachy. The climax of the book is preachy. As the non-plot develops it gets even preachier. And every single character nods along with this like a mob of zombies, with no real sense of fear about the important things going on around them. By the end I couldn't stop rolling my eyes.

The moral of the story is: When magic mushrooms are your main character, who needs a plot?

I *always* finish a book once I start it... but not this one. I got about a third of the way through it and gave up after realizing that I didn't know or care what I had just read over the last couple of pages. Nothing ever happened, it was just people talking (or reading) about their personal philosophies of life and 'utopia'. Don't bother.

LIGHTPATHS by Howard V. Hendrix is a science fiction blend of some of my favorite things: ecology, mystery, philosophy, psychology, science, sociology, technology, believable characters and those incredible descriptive passages that put the reader right into the story!

What a great way to start my recent vacation: A cup of coffee and this book. Suddenly I'm "on my way to the Orbital Complex, the center of controversy with certain groups on Earth, along with a few of the characters all of whom are researchers." But their chatter and thoughts do not prepare me for experiencing the Orbital Complex and events to come through Howard Hendrix's mind!

One human-relevant feature of this science fiction work is the notion of an Orbital Complex or global colony orbiting the earth complete with homes, gardens, water supply, animals, and atmosphere, etc.; not a far-fetched idea these days! Even more relevant to today's world is the pervasive presence of the computer and its components in every aspect of human life (And, just how DO we plan to manage all of the information coming our way at an ever faster pace?)!! In addition, the author delves with gusto into the mind-body problem so dear to psychological researchers' hearts. LIGHTPATHS also reminds us that we need, TODAY, to address important social and environmental issues.

Readers who enjoy Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Frank Herbert (to name a few) will find LIGHTPATHS difficult to put down! I look forward to Hendrix's next work which I understand is due out soon.

I recently moved and when I did found Lightpath, previously unread, as I was unpacking. Since neither my phone nor my cable were hooked up yet so I started reading this book. I was amazed at how poorly the author manages characterization and kept waiting for the real "meat" of the book. I reached the end without finding out what the book was really about except a paycheck for the writer.

The silliness of most of characters emotional and sewual interactions and the Barbie doll descriptions of most of the women -- even the "smart ones" -- makes me wish that this writer was more in touch with the real world and less inclined toward sophomoric philosophy.

I understand this guy writes short stories -- and he probably had 4 or 5 good short story ideas in this book. But he should never have made a novel of this length out of those ideas. To recover from Lightpath I re-read Pride of Chanur the nexy day.

I bought this book because I was in Switzerland and it was in a bargain bin for 1/4 the price of your usual English paperback. I'm not at all sure how I managed to finish it, in that it seemed terrible in every possible way: I found the characters artificial and a lot of their actions and dialogue terribly contrived. For example, what sysadmin would allow an unknown computer to freely interface with her system, which is the main computer controlling all aspects of a space station? At several points the characters seemed to be simply giving speeches of the author's own views. Better novels about utopia and man's interfaction with computers abound.

Against the space station backdrop of HOME (High Orbital Manufacturing Enterprise), several storylines are pursued providing a philosophical commentary on "engineered society" as Utopia, Ecotopia and Dystopia.

This is a fine first novel from a writer well known for his short fiction. Social science, theology, bioengineering and artificial intelligence are mixed in varying proportions that are a bit heavy on philosophy, but without detracting from the scientific extrapolations. There is a Gibsonesque techno-shamanistic feel that prevails, and a political correctness of mixed cultures, but an amazing lack of diversities in relationships in this environment of potential social experimentation and advancement.

The only reason I am giving it 2 stars is because it had a couple cool ideas and I like the book cover design.

Some interesting ideas but the author spent the whole novel explaining things to the reader. As soon as there was some plot twist or mystery the authorhad another charecter call up an explain how they figured out what was going wrong. None of the Charecters seemed very realistic. The main "plot" of the book was only indirectly dealt with by any of the main charecters. And then when some of the main charecters stood face to face with the "problem" at the climax of the book the "problem" basically explained what was going on and then solved itself. And to think I continued reading it to the end.

Perhaps this book was a little heavy on philosophy and light on the story-line. Fairly good character development. I prefer a more engaging writing style. I'd spend my money on Gibson's Idoru first.

If you like to read books where the characters' everyday conversations are composed of 80 percent high-falutin, deep, heady, heavy philosophical conversations, then this book is for you. I really wish I had read some of the reviews here before I plucked down [money] for it, because if I had I wouldn't have bought it. It was just horrid, really. I just couldn't get through it. I've read Plato, Plotinus and some other heavy-duty philosophy, and those all seem like realistic, light reading compared to this. Hendrix should be writing philosophy instead of sci-fi that barely even has much of a plot.