Customer Reviews

In The Ocean Of Night

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In the Ocean of night is the first book in a six book series called the Galactic Center Saga - one of the best known and beloved epic hard science fiction stories out there.

I'm only reviewing two books in the series: In the Ocean of Night and Great Sky River and I've attached a broader review of the series to these two reviews that I hope might be useful to the reader.

In the Ocean of Night presents us a world that is out of balance with humanity crowding earth and having too much of an impact on the world from an ecological standpoint. The book focuses quite a bit on the personal lives of the people in the story and in their development so this book is an unlikely starter for such a fantastic story that is told in the last 4 books of the series but in an interesting way many of the same themes are here. The book In the Ocean of Night was first a novellette published on IF magazine back in 1972 and then it was expanded into a full length book. So interwoven into this whole story of human overpopulation and 1960s style alternative lifestyle parameters (or natural lifestyle parameters depending on your inclination), the author weaves the beginnings of what will be a fantastic story set against the center of the galaxy. In the Ocean of Night though takes place on Earth mostly and you have to plow through the people and ecology and personal life stuff to get to the about 20 or so pages of interesting hard sci fi (for me).

The second book Across the Sea of Suns is truly a fantastic work of science fiction though and a true mystery tale and then there is a hiatus and flashforward 30,000 years to the events of Great Sky River (the first book I read of the series). So to me the first two books were almost prologue material albeit very interesting prologue.

My advice is pick up this book and try to read them in order but if you find yourself bogged down with the personal lives of the scientists, set it aside and pick up Across the Sea of Suns or even better Great Sky River and then come back to In the Ocean of Night after you're hooked and want some precursor material. I ate up In the Ocean of Night back when I first read it but Benford had me nicely hooked (hook like and sinker) with the last 4 books and with Across the Sea of Suns....in the end the series is nicely balanced with the 6 books in terms of theme. I don't know if I'd end the series the way Benford did (I think I had a better ending envisioned) which Dr. Benford did not align with me on. Benford is a great writer that gets you thinking along certain lines and as the books went along from Great Sky River to Tides of Light to Furious Gulf and Sailing Bright Eternity, I kept saying, "I get it! I know where you're going with this! And, wow that's interesting." So he gets you in sync nicely but towards the very end it wasn't that Benford threw a terrible curve ball or anything that yanked the story in another direction, it was more like we fell slightly out of sync (don't get me wrong, his ending is just fine, but it wasn't quite the way I would've put it) -- but hey, I'm just the reader who read this first when he was a kid and he's the author and its a great story.

*** Generic Review of Series ***
Collectively, this series of books written by Gregory Benford are known as the Galactic Center Saga. In order the books are:

1) In the Ocean of Night - Near Future
2) Across the Sea of Suns - Few hundred years from Now Future

--- Big Break in Time

3) Great Sky River - Distant Future
4) Tides of Light - Distant Future
5) Furious Gulf - Distant Future
6) Sailing Bright Eternity - Distant Future

The series is an early monument to epic science fiction on a grand scale across space and time. The prevailing concept of the books is that of how life in all its forms is resilient and how life adapts and evolves in response to different circumstances. The series also tells the story of how sometimes there is intense competition for resources and how sometimes groups seek to protect their resources. And finally, the series talks about how when things go out of balance - like human overexpansion - something happens in nature that brings back balance --- so in a large sense, the series is a cautionary tale although Benford skillfully makes out the Machine empire as the out of balance force that has to be brought back into normality but if you go back to the original book, it is humanity that is out of balance with earth.

Reading the entire series was a voyage of discovery for me. So, I first started reading the series with the third book titled, Great Sky River. The title, as best as I can remember, is a metaphorical label for the arms of the Milky Way galaxy which "flow" to the center of the galaxy. I found Great Sky River to be very entertaining fast paced, hard science fiction telling the story of survival by a few humans set against the backdrop of the wonders of the center of the galaxy in some far distant future. In this far future age, humanity civilization has already peaked and has begun a long decline and the heros struggle to survive in this far future world dominated by a vast machine civilization that dominates the central portion of the galaxy - a machine civilization that considers humans little more than a pest infestation (humans are cockroaches or rats, in this future world)....albeit the machines do consider humans interesting in some respects. So overall, a bit of a bleak world. Mind you, the machines consider interesting for a particular reason that I won't divulge for fear of being a spoiler but overall, the author plays with a whole plethora of concepts in a very intertaining fashion.

The last 3 books continue with the setting of Great Sky River (the center of the galaxy) and characters from Great Sky River. The books explore the human condition, the grandness of our universe, life, and a whole slew of other things. The last three books, particularly the last two, begin to tie in the first two books from the series and gives you the sense of the vastness of the galactic saga with the final book buttoning up everything in a rather interesting fashion.

After reading the last four series of the books and wanting more, I read that there were two precursor books. I read Across the Sea of Suns next which I found tremendously enjoyable. Across the Sea of Suns is the book which starts to set things in motion from a galactic center saga standpoint with an explanation of some core tenets for the following final four books in the series. Across the Sea of Suns is a mystery story first and foremost - which is kindof fun to read although a bit depressing because it is here that you first come to see the invisible machine empire and how powerless humanity is to do anything against them. Imagine, if some unseen alien force started sending meteors to pommel earth or send diseases our way etc - what could we do? Think of the movie Cloverfield, we would be virtually defenseless as a race against an attack like that.

Back to the first two books. In my mind, In the Ocean of Night, has a near future setting and gives me the impression of humanity being all alone in the Universe and entirely engrossed in our own petty little lives and there is talk of how we are ravaging our environment and how we are out of balance. The book plays out against the backdrop of the 1960s alternative lifestyles all embued with some of the behavior that has helped us survive as a species. I don't want to give away the story in the review so just bear in mind that this first installment of the series is very focused on the peoples, the cultures, and the society of the planet, including the interpersonal relationships of many characters. Intertwined into the book, you get the science fiction backdrop that we are not alone and you get some glimpses of a broader world.

So the prevaling theme is that of balance, the persistence of life, competition - all set against the backdrop of hard science fiction that becomes harder as you delve deeper into the series. Never as hard as Stephen Baxter who I think is phenomenal but hard science fiction nontheless.

If you don't like slow social science fiction, you might want to skip In the Ocean of Night and go straight to Across the Sea of Suns. If you want the precursor material to Great Sky River without the interhuman drama, you can read the short story on the 1972 issue of "IF" magazine - if you can find it. If you just want the fun and excitement of a fast paced hard sci fi series, start with Great Sky River and take it from there.

Overall, In the Ocean of Night is required reading but just bear in mind that its richer from a character development standpoint and not true hard sci fi like most of the rest of the series.

Hope this helps you navigate the Galactic Center Saga - I really enjoyed the entire series when I was growing up.

Entombed in this 420 page novel is a decent hard sf short story about Earth's first contact with robotic aliens. Unfortunately, Benford takes on the ambitious task of marrying his traditional space alien story with a literary story about human relationships and the meaning of life, a worthy project he is not equipped to bring to a successful conclusion. So, the interesting alien encounter plot is buried under hundreds of pages of tedious domestic drama (the main character, a British-born astronaut, has a menage a trois marriage, and one of the women is terminally ill) and political infighting (the astronaut is a Bob Dylan- and John Lennon-loving rebel who refuses to play the dishonest games of the warmongering bureaucrats and religious fanatics in the U.S. government.) Benford gets an "A" for effort as he unleashes literary allusions, unconventional prose techniques, and scads of metaphors and similies, and piles on chapter after chapter about the sex lives, religious beliefs, cocktail parties, drug use, day trips to the beach and vacations of the astronaut and his circle, but the characters are uninteresting and the only parts of the book that really work are those two or three dozen pages in which a character is in the cockpit of a space ship or Lunar craft. Too bad.

I found this first volume of a six volume story to be the most interesting. It immediately hooks you and leaves you wondering just where you're headed. Walmsley is a character you soon root for and have confidence in. This volume becomes integral and significant to the final one, which is a grand and awe-inspiring finish to a dark, fascinating and addicting series. You may have trouble locating names of all six novels in the order they were released, as follows: In the ocean of night, Across the sea of suns, Great sky river, Tides of light, Furious gulf, and Sailing bright eternity.

Wow! in a very bad sense. What was heralded as Benford's flagship series turned out to be a slow boat to nowhere. Only about 10 pages are actually worth reading and are interesting: an alien intelligence flies near earth and wants information about the civilization, but scampers off when humans throw a nuke at it (go figure!).
The rest of the book is filled with inane thoughts which just run page after page and provides nothing the the characters or plot. The plot never picks up, it just drags on and on until the end when the "bombshell" idea of Benford's turns out to be the most ridiculous plot-twist or terrible joke gone terribly wrong. It's so bad, my jaw went slack and thought to myself, "Oh my god, he can't seriously be going in this direction."

Tiemscape, another book by Benford, was well accepted. I didn't like that book either because it was also full of banal thoughts and dinner parties. I don't wanna read about wine when the earth is on the verge of collapse.

I hate the term "page-turner" but this book was just that. Even though I was never particularly impressed with the book, I found that I constantly needed to know what was going to happen next.

The future painted in this world, is suprisingly beleivable considering the year the book was written. However, the world is not painted as clearly as in a Gibson book, so a lot of it is left to your imagination. Usually I HATE when authors write foggy, unrealised future speculations, but for some reason it didn't bother me in this book. You can tell that the state of earth in the future is only a secondary aspect of this book.

The prose are pretty good throughout the book. At times it seems like Benford is unnaturally pushing himself to be poetic, but in the end it winds up being a lot better than 90% of the sci-fi writing out there.

The plot, while incredibly gripping, had some serious pacing issues. It almost seems like the events in this book could have filled three equally long novels. Now that I've finished the book though, I've come to realise that this entire book is like the back story for the next ones to come. It kind of stands on its own, but i feel like i would be jipped if I didn't read the next ones in the series.

Despite my criticisms, and I realise I am a very picky sci-fi reader, this book was thoroughly entertaining and worth the read. It didn't change my life or anything, but I have a feeling that it is all going to pay off in the next books in the series.

Though this book turns out to the be the opening shot in a six-novel series, it stands remarkably well by itself as a peak in Benford's writing style, and a monumental achievement in the Sci Fi genre. The series spans a significant period of Benford's career, and major changes in his writing style are quite noticable over its timeframe.

Walmsley, the main character, is an aging astronaut with an interesting homelife. (He shares a flat with two women - this could fill a book all by itself!) The interactions with alien intelligence, the primary focus of the story, seems almost secondary to the personal changes that Walmsley goes through. And when an alien computer "re-arranges" his mind, one of the more interesting ideas comes to the fore: what happens to our interpretations of reality simply by modifying our carefully build sets of observations? Reality isn't as clear-cut as it appears to be.

If you are prepared for Benford's subtle style, you will love this book. (And if you can find it, of course.)

THis inaugurates an extremely ambitious series of scifi novels, which reached six in all. There are many mysterious references that are explained in later volumes, which serve to whet the appetite. Benford maintains a sense of mystery and wonder quite masterfully. In later volumes, it gets deeper and much better.

The plot is that a space pilot, Nigel Walmsley, an iconoclastic Brit. He discovers a remnant of an extremely ancient space vessel, which he disobeys orders to explore. What ensues is a wonderfully enigmatic encounter with an alien intelligence, whose intentions are not clear, though at times it seems menacing. The novel leaves many questions unanswered, in such incidents as a beam of energy that affects the way the Nigel can think, somehow changing the organization of his brain; there is also a signal of a change in the human genome.

The characters are what makes this writing exceptional, even if their sexual predilections (2 f's and one m) are a bit much after a while. Benford is a very good writer, one of the best at hard sci fi, but you do feel at times that he is straining to think up what happens next.

I original wrote my review as a comment on another review, so forgive me if you run across it twice.

I've been slogging my way through this novel, hoping against hope that it actually gets interesting, but after 300 pages, I'm about to set it aside out of sheer boredom. The author strays from the science fiction portions of the novel with uninteresting side-trips and distractions that subtract from the momentum of the story.

I bought this book thinking it would be a sci-fi adventure, however, it spends too much time on the philosophical questions that plague the protagonist, and the author seems to enjoy writing as if the characters were experiencing everything in a disconnected dream-sequence like manner... very annoying for the reader. The only interesting parts of the novel are when the characters are interacting with the alien intelligence, or dealing with the harsh environments of space. I will not bother exploring the other books in this series.

There was not much science fiction to the story. Half the book was
consumed with mostly irrelevant musings by the characters. For example
it would consume up to a page on things like the characters pondering
about the patterns of the funnel and the foam when stirring his coffee.

It would jump to a new scene describing what he or she was experiencing,
leaving you disoriented and wondering what and who it is talking about,
then, up to several pages later, finally mention the name of the character
making you realize it was introducing a new character in a completely new
setting, not connecting the character to the storyline until way later.
I kept feeling like I was jumping to the middle of a different book, having
no idea what was going on. It made the storyline fragmented and hard to
track.

A lot of the text, which was apparently musing, daydreaming, or random
thoughts of the characters was mostly gibberish that made little sense. It
made me want to just skip past the garbage and get back to the story, like
a cluster of adds for products you have no interest in during a movie.

The first alien craft they found was embedded in a comet for never explained
reasons and they blew it up so it would not hit the earth.

The second alien craft, they finally sent Nigel, the main character, out to
meet, after a build up for half the book of tracking it and having vague
abstract, communications with it. After all that, it ended up being
a brief disappointing encounter, where the paranoid government overrode
Nigel's controls and shot missiles at it, chasing it away, never to see it
again. What a cop-out by the author. Not much imagination.

Then the story line starts all over again with an accidental discovery of
a third craft which was wrecked on the moon and cloaked. It jumps to
a new character almost getting killed during the discovery of the craft and
it's impenetrable shields while on some unrelated random mission. Then it
jumps ahead where there is a group of people inside the craft studying it,
never really explaining how they got through it's shields. Here's another
chance for the book to turn into a science fiction novel. But, instead of
making cool scientific discoveries, the story focuses on their attempts to
study it being inhibited by lack of funding and sabotaged by operatives of
a fanatic religious group called the New Sons.

Near the end, the main character, Nigel, got disintegrated by some bubble
of energy that came out of the console he was studying. Then it changed
scenes where he is back, now out in the mountains visiting his friend from
earlier in the book, who is having encounters with Big Foot. The only
connection with what happened earlier is that Nigel's personality is
somehow changed in an abstract way, with no explanation what happened to
him or how he got back.

Every single place where the story just starts to get interesting, where
you wanted to know what happens next, the author completely cops out on
writing any science fiction and switches to a completely different scene
and begins a new storyline. I lost interest several times and almost
quit reading the book. The end was so disappointing I wished I had.

The book is 333 pages. If you took out all the babble, it would probably
only be 50 or 75 pages of material that is relevant to the story. The rest
is mostly irrelevant filler to extend the length. Such as the porno
sections about Nigel's sexual encounters with his two girl friends, and all
his relationship problems as one is dying of an incurable sickness. Some
of it had loose connections with the story to build the characters
personality, but was way to drawn out and not science fiction.

The last part of the book started ending paragraphs in the middle of
a sentence, that already was half gibberish and did not flow, and starting
new paragraphs, uncapitalized in the middle of another sentence that had
nothing to do with the previous paragraph.

Example from page 331:

[paragraph 1 ends with]
... for indeed yes the man was free had been free the sum was his

[paragraph 2 begins with]
"--before he came here," made Mr. Ichino turn, in the midst of framing his
thanks, ...

The ending was very anti-climatic. What mystery was created, was never
explained. All it did was create a loose ended unconfirmed link to the
alien crafts and Big Foot. There was little explanation of how the
three different crafts were related.

The English-American astronaut Nigel prevents an asteroid from colliding with Earth, but finds is is a hollow space ship. This leads to a plot about
rampaging AI robots, ancient astronauts and big foot.
The plot has more sex than most adventure science fiction
and talks about evolution in a pretty ignorant manner.
The use of drugs and stream of consciousness techniques add some spice to a nearly limp plot. NASA takes a deserved beating in the plot as being
more political than scientific.