Sailing Bright Eternity [Paperback]

Gregory Benford (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1996

In the epic conclusion to the Galactic Center series, the hope of human survival comes down to one man, an ancient scientist from the distant past who leads a struggle against a gigantic race called the Old Ones. Reprint. K.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fifteen years ago, Benford's Timescape set the tone for the subgenre of "hard" science fiction that deals with quantum effects and particle physics, the discoveries and theories of which often make their fictional expressions seem more akin to fantasy than to traditional SF. Now, with this sixth and concluding volume of his Galactic Center series, Benford, a physicist himself, takes the form to either its apotheosis or its death knell. Though replete with fascinating ideas and exhilarating events that are, for the most part, elucidated with skill, the novel contains several chapters that may confound even readers who have followed the adventures of Nigel Walmsley since his initial appearance in 1977. Walmsley begins by relating his escapades to Toby Bishop, whose family is proceeding toward its destiny in the long-standing battle between organic and mechanical life-forms. The Bishop family and Walmsley are aided or impeded by several other life-forms whose roles and goals in the quest for ultimate survival are central to the story. While a reader's tenacity?which is what sets humans apart from others in Benford's conception of the universe?is occasionally tested, this novel stands as a worthy conclusion to what now should be acknowledged as the most important and involving hard SF series yet written.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

In the sixth novel of his Galactic Center epic, Benford brings the series to a dramatic close with a peek into humanity's future 37,000 years hence. Nigel Walmsley, twentieth-century Earth's first starship traveler, who figured in the saga's first installment, In the Ocean of Night (1977), returns to recount recent adventures inside the Esty, an anomalous shelter of space-time existing outside a black hole near the galaxy's true center. Walmsley's listener is Toby Bishop, the adolescent protagonist of Furious Gulf , whose family and fellow humans have been decimated by an insidious, machine-based life-form known as the mechs. Together, Walmsley, Toby, and the remnants of Toby's family must find the means to outwit the mechs before they penetrate the Esty and destroy all trace of humanity. Benford makes up for his somewhat pedantic prose with a wealth of fascinating scientific speculation in a dazzling finish to one of the best hard-sf sagas ever written. Carl Hays --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Spectra (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553573322
• ISBN-13: 978-0553573329
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #139,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Tedious finale to a work that could have been great., May 4, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: SAILING BRIGHT ETERNITY (Bantam Spectra Book) (Hardcover)

Mr. Gregory Benford is a talented author. His novel Timescape is evidence enough. In fact, this particular series began well, with the story of Killeen Bishop and his embattled tribe, fighting a desperate, bleeding war against the interesting "mechs." The next three volumes (or is it four? five?) however show the plot to be on a montonically decreasing curve, increasingly stuffed with the latest physics mumbo-jumbo, and wow gee science in the best tradition of popular mechanics, at the cost of character development and story line. This last volume is indeed the worst. I found myself caring little about Mr. Bishop and his son, the accompanying cyber-a(u)nt that keeps slipping in and out of esty's, whatever the hell they are. And Nigel Walmsley. Of course there has to be such a character in all such stories spanning a godzillion years. He is the guy who remembers what the word "coffee" meant, or that people travelled in "subways", and other nuggets to keep the cosmic brouhaha in perspective. It seems to me that Mr.Benford wrote two different sets of stories, and then couldn't resist the fatal impulse to merge unlikely situations and characters into one huge, ugly heap. Consider: the mechs attack the humans in the early 21st century, and humans not only survive but even capture a scouting ship, and drive it to the center of the galaxy. Huh uh. Mr. Benford takes tired old themes from Dawkin's memes argument, Cairns-Smith's "we came from clay" theory, Turing's "no virus checker is possible" result, and the result is a Maalox moment. 30,000 years into the future and we discover that the 20th century biolgists and physicists were right after all. Huh uh. Perhaps most curious of all is how thoroughly "mechanical" Mr Benford's picture of the world is. Even culture, to which the mechs finally succumb, is reduced to vague little memes. From clay to the old ones. From carbon to human. From silcon to mechs. And memes to bind them all. And a final peevish point: BEWARE of a book that uses different FONTS to mark the intelligence levels of its characters. It suggests that the author doesn't have enough confidence in the content of his character's statements and relies instead on type weight to give their utterances the necessary importance. Please Mr Benford, do make your higher beings talk in Roman 12 point next time. It really is an awful strain.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Terrible, but Weakest of the Series, September 9, 2005

By 

Arthur P. Smith (Selden, New York USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sailing Bright Eternity (Paperback)

Perhaps Dr. Benford didn't give himself enough time to produce the conclusion this series really deserved. The preceding books, "In the Ocean of Night" (1977), "Across the Sea of Suns" (1984), "Great Sky River" (1987), "Tides of Light" (1989), and "Furious Gulf" (1994) had set up a galaxy of humans, intelligent mechanical entities, vast magnetic beings, myriapodia and other varied aliens, complex astrophysical structures, some artificial, surrounding the galactic center, and the chaotic and uncertain "esty" in the wedge hugging the galactic black hole. Each preceding book had introduced fascinating new entities inhabiting the galaxy and locations for the drama to play out, but this one stayed within the final "esty", chaotic and perhaps infinitely varied to be sure, but somehow full of sameness in its chaos.

The new characters here are god-like higher beings hinted at in the earlier books - and their actions are really not well explained, except that they ally themselves temporarily with the humans against the mechanicals, to turn things around from the death and destruction wrought to this point. The "esty" (space-time or S-T) was specifically designed by these higher beings in the distant past to accommodate organic life and exclude the machines. This last novel journeys, at one point, billions of years into the future; it also finds Toby in adventures that echo Mark Twain's Mississippi river boat escapades, though here he is going uphill on a river of flowing time. The varied human settlements in the "esty" are occasionally fascinating, but as with the environment itself, there's a certain sameness that seems to stretch the novel beyond what is really needed.

We do learn more about Nigel Walmsley here, clarifying some of the connections between the first two books and the remainder of the series. And the mystery of why Killeen, his father, and his son are so important is resolved, though in a somewhat hokey fashion (does the DNA explanation really make any sense?) The conflict and contrast between humans and mechanicals is further elucidated: the robot/mechanical minds lack laughter, and wonder what purpose it serves. They see life very differently: their minds can be eternal, even as their bodies are frequently discarded and replaced with new upgraded models. In contrast, organic life starts anew with each generation; minds are constantly renewed and also constantly faced with their own extinction - is that the root of the difference? And yet the "higher powers" seem to have overcome these differences, though Benford has little description of how that could happen - and what exactly have they done with Walmsley, who is surely not the same as the original after all these years?

The end for the powerful Mantis is another long trek that seems sad and almost purposeless - couldn't we just get it over with? Benford does finally get to a reasonable conclusion; it's not a bad one, there's hope for the future. But compared to the other novels in the series, this one is certainly a disappointment.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars ...And then, a miracle happens., August 18, 2000

By 

Curtis L. Wilbur "zencoyote" (San Diego, California USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sailing Bright Eternity (Paperback)

This final novel in the "Galactic Center" set proves that even on a bad day, Benford can still whip out a fairly decent yarn.

Not up to his usual caliber, this novel seems even more disjointed than the previous few, and so much less lovingly spun than the "Ocean of Night" which started the series off. The changes in font are positively annoying, and the character development - or lack thereof - reduces the believability and likability of the people we're supposed to be rooting for. Particularly implausable is the dangerous, tin-man Mantis, whose mysterious and compelling behavior in the earlier novels is reduced to trying to find a "heart". I was sorely disappointed in this outcome, and I won't even discuss what a pitiful, sex-starved moron that Nigel Walmsley has become. It's just too painful.

Despite these and other disappointments, I have to give Benford credit for leaving this capstone open-ended, and providing the glorious, off-beat energy that makes his works so readable. I've never even written a published novel, and Benford has managed to pull together so much in this series, despite the reduction in degrees of freedom that the previous novels require to hold the story together. I can't help being reminded of Arthur C. Clark's "2010" where they somehow managed to change planets from Saturn to Jupiter. Sequels can be tough to pull off. We backed Benford into a corner, (or maybe he did it himself), and he performed well enough to merit a moderate "thumbs-up". I have definitely read worse