Customer Reviews

Omnifix

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

 

 

I saw this at the bookstore and it looked interesting. In fact, it was interesting but not exactly what I had in mind. I enjoy books that use Science Fiction as a backdrop for a story about the human condition or romantic relationships, i.e. Fires of God, Hercules Text, Contact. The trouble is that the hero is never authentic nor are the situations that profound. Someone said it best when they noted the whole thing appears to be a draft of a novel.

As always, I note that even 350 years in the future, people still go on job interviews, have physical computers, and that strangely all the current historical sites (Congress, monuments, White House, etc) are still standing and intact. The reason for the alien attack is finally disclosed but I had LOTS of trouble with the boarding and exploration of the vessel. I mean, the descriptions were so esoteric and unclear that I could barely follow them on their journey.

I would have preferred two novels - one with alien contact, the other about the personal/political situation. Combining both in the same story only lessened the intensity of each. One sees the idea of a budding Martian-Earth romance between the scientists but for some reason this is side-tracked and we meet the snippy ex-wife. In fact, there are way too many characters for so short a book. I have railed against authors who introduced a myriad of folks, assign them a small task and forgettable dialogue before they sink into oblivion.

The ending was exactly what you guessed half way into the story. Everyone is healed, peace breaks out, true love conquers all. There is nothing bad with this (I am a romantic, at heart) but when you offer a pat conclusion, the preceding action must be sufficiently invigorating to withstand the mundaneness. In this case it was not.

This writer is a great ideas man, but his delivery does not do justice to those ideas.

Having read Orbis, I had decided that Scott MacKay had great potential and resolved to give him another try. Omnifix is an improvement over Orbis. The plot twists and turns with the reader unable to get a step ahead of the writer. His characterisations are deep enough without sacrificing the fast pace of the novel. Actually, it was that fast pace that kept me reading after I realised that he had written another average novel with once again a great beginning and concept.

This writer's problem lies with the way he handles prose. Reading this book you get the feeling that in a sense it is a draft, a relatively polished one but still a draft. Some parts needed expanding; some other ones editing. For example, why do we spend so much time reading about the martian trek, and yet there is little focus on the way he feels while his limbs disintegrate? Why do we end up knowing the causes behind nanogen 16 but not 17?

I am not trying trash this book. This book has a lot of merit, but there are some missing ingredients: better prose, an ending that matches the grandiosity of the concept instead of an ending that falls slightly off the mark.

Scott MacKay once he fixes a whole bunch of small deficiencies that unfortunately do add up to his detriment will be an author to be remembered as a master of the genre.

450 years from now, Earth is recovering from an Alien invasion that infected large portions of the population with sinister nanogens that eventually prove fatal. Another wave of aliens are on the way, and a maverick scientist has to race for a cure before Earth gets wiped out. Other (human) factions want the alien technology too, so the clock is ticking...

There's more to it than that, of course, including one odd little twist about half way through that temporarily shifts the direction the book was going in. Enough to save it? Nope.

The plot is an inch short of silly, and really requires you to turn your brain off and not ask any embarrassing questions about things. I'd quantify that, but that would give away spoilers (something I don't do in reviews.) Suffice to say, I kept reading in hopes for a bigger "payoff" but things were either left unanswered/ignored, or the answer itself was a tremendous let-down.

Equally frustrating was the writer's prose style. If you like short noun/verb sentences on a "See spot run. Run spot, run!" level, you'll be comfortable here. Alas, a stilted style for narrative and dialogue abound, which leads to a cardinal sin of writing: tedium.

I didn't *hate* this book, but I certainly didn't *like* it. I'm surprised at the high proportion of good reviews for this book, though a couple mentioned that they don't normally read sci-fi, so I take that as an indication that they aren't acclimated to actual "good" books with "good" plots in this genre.

You can safely skip this one.

The synopsis on the backside of the book looked interesting and promising and reminded me a bit of Ship of Fools (Richard Russo) in regards to the unknown alien species: "Ten years have passed since an unknown alien species invaded Earth. Hundreds of unmanned alien weapons platforms armed with deadly nanogens were unleashed throughout the solar system...a new weapon platform enters the solar system and is heading towards Earth". When reading the synopsis of this book, someone might expect a story mostly concerned with this new alien weapon platform. My expectation was certainly headed in that direction. However, as it turned out, the weapon platform was just a small piece in the puzzle and the actual story was much broader and went beyond a simple stop-and-destroy-mission. A vicious conspiracy manifested itself and entered the story at unexpected stages, enriched the overall plot and created a good level of suspense. For a moment, I was a bit disappointed when the actual stop-and-destroy-mission suddenly ended and the main character Alex returned to earth. The book lost a bit of its momentum at that stage but quickly got back on track and rewarded the reader with a superb, almost emotional phase, when the protagonist faced problems only known to nanogen 16 and 17 infected people. In general, the characters are amazingly crafted and go far beyond the average sci-fi character development. I wouldn?t say this doesn?t come at any cost, because the scientific part of the story is somewhat not comprehensive and sophisticated enough. For example, at one stage in the story, cloning comes into the picture and is used to move a human being into a new body, including memories, feelings, experience, and even the personality. This whole process is very simplified and only talks about downloading someone?s existence onto a hard drive and uploading it into the new body?s brain. Fundamental questions, such as are we human beings only a combination of our experience/memory, therefore we can create clones of ourselves and therefore we reach immortality? The author uses this concept without looking at least into the hypothetical issues and details of cloning and mentality transfers. He simply ignores the fact that he created the concept of immortal humans with this cloning solution! Do not get a wrong idea about the story; it is definitely not a stupid cloning type of sci-fi plot! The last thing which I found disturbing is the almost prompt ending. Mackay rushes towards the end and tries to cover too many facts in not enough pages. He could have easily expanded the book by another 100 pages without creating any bored second at all. In summary, I loved the story, the rich characters and the fast pace of events happening. It is for sure one of the better sci-fi books I have read over the last couple of years!

Before reading Omnifix, I enjoyed Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton and Broken Angels by Richard Morgan. What a massive letdown Omnifix proved to be after the other books. Hamilton and Morgan know how to deliver interesting characterizations, page-turning plots, and are conversant in the fields of science germane to their respective novels.

Omnifix's characterizations are juvenile, and calling major stretches of prose "stilted" is an understatement. Adding insult to injury, the plot is at best snore-inducing; at worst, outright silly.

This book needed an editor in the worst way.

Placed roughly 400 years in the future, the technology descriptions made it obvious that the author is woefully lacking in the science background necessary to make a hard science fiction story believable. The explanations given for the "nanogens" at the heart of this story are laughable.

My advice: look elsewhere for reading enjoyment.

I do not normally read hard core sci-fi, but I saw the cover and read the back of the book and read Harriett's review and thought I would give it a try. This is a deep book. In the sense that the author delves deep into the nanogens and genetics of the human body - the catch?? He makes it interesting and creates characters that are dimensional and you care about whether or not they are going to get infected with these little itty bitty nanotech creatures. Check it out, I bet you enjoy it.

I can't quite give 'Omnifix' 5 stars; I actually give it a 4.5, and that is due solely to a few sections of dialogue that come across as stilted and repetitive, especially one segment where the protagonist explains what a telomere is, using almost the same wording he used to explain it to another character earlier in the story. And that's really the only flaw I can find in this novel.

It presents a strangely hopeful and familiar dystopia set some 400-odd years in the future, where alien nanogen terror-weapons have wiped out most of Earth's population, leaving the remainder to dwell in massively-fortified city-states scattered here and there, many of which are united in a war against an independent Mars - a hostile nation which is attempting to use a derelict Alien Weapons Platform to wipe out the remaining Earthers. The setting will reach out and grab you; its really something to behold.

The characters are a little under-developed, but not exceedingly so, and their motivations are logical and consistent. Mackay is also not afraid to pull any punches with his character's lives - if inflicting them with a mutating nanogen or even killing them off is necessary to advance the story, he doesn't flinch - the hallmark of a great writer, in my opnion.

I'll be eagerly awaiting more from this writer.

Completely unbelievable characters in an unbelievable world. The whole book reads without any excitement, even during battle scenes. In fact the largest "battle" in the book, the climax, gets about 2 pages. The main character never really seems to be in danger. His relationship to the other characters makes him seem like a robot, which would have been an interesting literary device (considering he practically is one through most of the book) if I actually thought the author intended to do that.
I've never bothered to write a review before, but this book was so bad I felt I had to.

I blame the editor/publisher for this book. It either should be marketed as a 'young adult' book or it should go back for a massive rewrite. I made it to page 200 and I just can't suffer another ulcer so I had to stop (b/c i was screaming at the book). The dialogue looks to me like a talented 15 year old wrote this book. It's repetitive, simplistic, banal, etc... The dialogue is literally like this:
"Don't use that antigen! Give that antigen to me. I can figure out what to do with this antigen."

I want my money back.

This book starts in the future. Omnifix is about a military hero who is infected with a deadly virus in a space capsule orbiting Mars. His body starts to deteriorate until he gets back to Earth. He then becomes a 7-foot tall "robot". At first, no one likes him. People start to respect him at a military ceremony that honors him for his bravery.
It's really cool that he can adjust his eyesight and hearing to extreme levels. I think that books written from the modern viewpoint of the future are cool. We don't know what's going to happen in the future, and that's part of the fun people have when reading most sci-fi books.