Customer Reviews

Picoverse

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This book had a great premise, and I picked it off the shelf ready to read something by someone new. I may not pick up Metzger again.

It started off fine, but quickly began taking twists and turns that I couldn't believe were planned. I felt like the author just started typing to see where it would take him. He got three quarters of the way through the book and figured out he needed to wrap it up, and tried feebly to tie all the pieces together.

Here's an overview: Your main cast of characters have developed a technology that can create smaller universes. Two of them were formerly married and have a child that is autistic. Two others are pretty meaningless tech types. A fifth is a government person, and the final primary character is a being from the universe that created ours. Her mission, originally, was to prevent us from doing the same thing. But then she got it in her head that she wanted to break away from her bosses and encouraged the project.

Well, she, and the team succeeds. And then the book, which was already getting thin, went straight downhill. Those twists and turns I mentioned came fast and furious. I couldn't not finish it, because I'm like that. I will say that one cool and interesting idea comes out of this disaster of a book. It involves the extinction of the dinosaurs, and I won't say what it is in the event that one of you readers wants to take a chance on this book.

The plot was thin, the ending was hasty and yet somehow still dragged on forever, and the characters/dialogue was terrible. I have to give it some star rating, but I'm okay with the one star for the dinosaur bit.

As you will have noted by the bimodal distribution of other reviews, you will either love or hate this book. Personally, I loved it. The pace and scope of the book are exhilarating -- the book starts fast with plenty of hard sci fi, and from there it accelerates and expands with a vengance. I'll offer a simple test: If you enjoyed books like Blood Music or Eon (i.e., books where you think you know where the story is going, only to discover that the story spins wildly beyond what you imagined), then I believe you'll like Picoverse. I am sympathetic to those who have given poor ratings to this book: You must suspend disbelief and be willing to enjoy the ride with a book like this. A lot of key plot developments are simply popped on the reader, without warning, which can be frustrating to those looking for consistent and structured plot development. And the ending relies too heavily on the deux ex machina (although much, much less so than some sci fi, such as Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn series). Having said that, I personally enjoyed this book very much. It was a romp of a read, blending the wild action and plot lines of vintage sci fi serials (in fact, at times, it reminded me of old Flash Gordon reels, with the characters fighting their way through ever wilder and more impossible situations) with the best of modern hard sci fi. If you're looking for a fun, wild book for a long flight or a rainy weekend, pick up this novel and let yourself go with the story.

This was one of those books that kept me going long enough to become vested in reading to the end even though I was desperate to put the book down.

Initially, I was able to overlook some very weak storytelling and characterizations because the premise was intriguing. But as the story went on the main characters seemed to alternate between having God-like powers to being helpless kittens then totally changing into some kind of super Neanderthal...I was unsure who I was really following. And towards the end, as the characters jumped from one incomprehensible locale to another, I got the feeling that the author was simply trying to meet a deadline.

And, as another reviewer stated, some of the "main" characters were incredibly annoying. Katie's "he's just a boy" mantra was enough to make me grind my teeth to powder. Jack's alternating obliviousness to his situation was equally frustrating. And I never figured out how it was that Anthony was somehow so central to everything that was going on.

I was relieved to finish the book and the weak and unsatisfying ending was not in the least surprising.

''The Nun Physics bulding, a six story sprawl of red brick...'' this is how the book begins and, reading these words, I relaxed in my armchair expecting to read a good SF novel based on physics and sound logic. A friend of had recommended this book, and I had found fascinating the idea of smaller and smaller universes (the picoverses), each one generating other picoverses, similar but different from ours. I was disappointed very soon. Without sense of wonder, wihitout the reader being prepared for it, two of the main characters (Alexandra and Quinn) in the first few pages turn out to be immortal aliens endowed with superpowers, created by even more mysterious aliens. In the course of the novel all, I am saying all, the main characters becomes (or are revealed to be) aliens or superhumans with varying degrees of powers. Only poor Horst does not undergo this transformation, and the reader wonders why he was discriminated. Each one of these transformations takes place at critical turns of the novel, when the the Author lead the plot to a dead end and needs something miraculous to get himself out of trouble. It seems that Metzger is unable to tell a good story without a deus ex machina here and there. When no more useful, or when the plot gets really entangled, each one of these supposedly invincible and powerful aliens is disposed of by another even more invincible and powerful caracter. Everything is so gratuitous, so illogical. It wasn't easy to read the book up to the happy end.
What a good idea wasted by poor writing and poor plotting! I'am voting two stars only for the idea.

Picoverse is one of those multiple universe books that takes the reader from one alternate Earth to another in a fairy entertaining and competent fashion. (notice, I'm not a book seller-see above reviews! So I'm not brown-nosing to sell more books.) Robert Metzger uses some nice plasma physics to support his ideas, although some of the science is pretty sketchy and has some obvious flaws. (If you're interested to know what is messed up, email me.) His characters are development nicely, suffering just a little from histrionics. Now, if he just hadn't head-hopped with his characters' point of view, I would have been able to enjoy the story a lot more. Metzger obviously doesn't realize how confusing it is to be in one character's point of view and then another's without any transition. I have to ask why his editor didn't ask him to fix this. Other than that very annoying problem, I found the story well paced and the plot complete with some nice twists. I think I'll buy his next book, but only after reading a sample chapter to make sure the POV problem isn't repeated.

Jeff

In the not too distant future scientists such as Katie McGuire, her ex-husband Horst, and a few other technicians are working hard at the Sonomak project operational. If it works the world could have cold fusion power at their disposable. When it looks like federal funding will fall through, Horst calls in a block-ops agent to see if the military would be interested in funding the project.

The agent's boss Alexandria Mitchell learns about the project. She is over five million years old, a sentient android serving the Makers, the beings whom created our universe. Her job is to make sure that the people of Earth don't rise above a certain level of technology. Alexandria is tired of answering to her masters and intends to take control of the Sonomak project, forcing the scientists to create a PICOVERSE (an alternate universe of our world only much smaller) so she can rid herself of any controls. She gets her wish but even she is surprised at how quickly she becomes dissatisfied, a condition that forces her to deal with Katie and Horst, their son Anthony and Jack Preston, a new player in the game, in this new and unfamiliar realm.

Although PICOVERSE is filled with scientific theories that are difficult for the layman to understand, this no way detracts from the overall enjoyment of the story. The climax is a shocker but the whole novel is based on situations that take one surprising turn after another. Robert A. Metzger makes the implausible seen all to frightening real.

Harriet Klausner

I think that the overall idea Mr. Metzger is attempting to acheive is fascinating, however the way he opts to implement his story is unyielding and grating. First, there are far too many asides in the novel to explain in one sentence some fundamental law of physics. Being a scientist, I found rather irritating, as the summaries were glib, and intended to have a hand waving effect to make the scene plausible. Second, the character development is remarkably bad. Most of the characters have one of three major personality quirks: Domineering, histrionic, or obsessive-compulsive. There is very little (if any) depth given to any of the characters. Third: The plot.....??? I like my science fiction to be more science than fiction, but that's a personal choice. All in all, not worth the time. At all. It gets a two star rating for having an idea I would like to see used in a much better novel.

I bought and read Picoverse due to receiving a mailing advertising the book. I am a simple man with an average IQ and I usually don't read Hard SF. I prefer Dan Simmons, Paul Wilson, David Brin, etc. But I wanted to let everyone know that I couldn't put the book down. It is hard to put my finger on it, but this book gave me a sense of "wonder". I wanted to find out what would happen next so I kept reading. At no point was I overwhelmed by the science or physics in the book, which is a huge feet of writing in of itself. The last time I felt a sense of wonder this strongly was when I read Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clark or Heart of the Comet by David Brin. This was a great book. I am orderering Quad World from Amazon.com immediately.

It is amazing how polarized the viewpoints are on this book. It seems that some don't like it because it is not what they thought it was going to be. I suppose if you want to know just what you're going to read before you open the book that you shouldn't read this one, because you can never guess what is going to happen next. It starts off with those elements of hard SF - the experiment gone wrong and the scientists trying to figure it out, but from there it moves out in unexpected directions, ranging from a large chunk of alternate history in the 1920-1930s, a future where Jupiter and Saturn have been radically modified, to Neanderthals who are not quite what they seem. And then the ending is great, tying together everything(and even something in the reader's world - don't want to say more and spoil it). And I guess that other people like it too, since I just saw that this book is a finalist on the 2002 Nebula list, along with such books as American Gods and Perdido Street Station. If you want some surprises, give this a read.

This is a good book. It's Metzger's second book and if this is his starting off point, I can't wait to see where things go from here. There are more ideas packed in these pages than many others get into four novels. Ignore the complaints. There are good characters, good ideas, and a lot of fun. The reviewer upset about aliens in the plot -- well, there are and if you can't accept it, then that's your problem. It works in this book. In fact, it's essential. Without them, the story unravels and is pointless.