Customer Reviews

Star Child

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

 

 

During the first third of this book I was afraid it was going to end with ".. and they called their new planet EARTH!" Fortunately Hogan is much better than that.

I found problems with the necessary suspension of disbelief in a couple of areas which seemed to be unnecessary to the story. It it an intriging idea to have a self-aware machine build a self-aware bio-form (the star-child) out of component molecules based on nothing more than an imperfectly understood DNA record. The part that doesn't sit so well is the resulting person -- with utterly no connection to any human society -- could nonetheless end up with so much culturally in common with people living on a planet.

Hogan also skates over the massive problems that would accrue if you had a person raised in a sterile environment (no bacteria or viruses at all) and plonk them down into a fully functioning Earthlike ecology, even eating the local food. I'm no expert but I think it would be unlikely that such subjects would survive. At least not easily.

And if you would be interested in the star-child's first experiences with sex, you will be disappointed.

The part of the story about the machines were more believable, actually. I like the part where they developed multiple personalities to serve different functions: the Scientist, the Skeptic, the Mystic and so on.

Worth reading, but as I said it has shortcomings.

I could be accused of being biased, since I have been a BIG fan of James P. Hogan ever since I first picked up "Inherit the Stars" over ten years ago, but I would have to say that "Star Child" is one of the best books I have read in some time. It is a collection of four linked stories about Taya and her robot mentor Kort. The first Story, "Silver Shoes for a Princess" was originally published in 1979. In that story, Taya is 9 years old and travelling through space aboard a mysterious spacecraft called Merkon, headed toward a star called Vaxis. I don't want to give away too much of the story, but in the second story, Taya is 19 and they are just landing on the planet they call Azure. In the third story, she is in her 40's, and we learn more about the mystery of Merkon. In the final story, she is an old woman and Kort must face what will happen to him when she dies. Hogan is adept at presenting us with a puzzle, which is gradually unravelled in a logical manner. Even aspects that might otherwise be thought of as spiritual or mystical are examined in a rational way. If you are a Hogan fan, as I am, you should run, not walk, to your favorite bookstore and snap this one up! If you have read a few, or even none, of his previous works, I would urge you to do likewise, then look for his other books. Either way, you are in for a treat.

I believe that most of the criticisms of this book are accurate. I am rating it reasonably well because I came away with some insights that I thought were worthy of investing time in the book and in the book's author, James P. Hogan. It is true that the human characters are somewhat flat, including Taya the central character, while the machine characters are much better drawn. I suspect this was a conscious decision by Hogan because this book is really about the machines more so than the humans. Still, this does not absolve Hogan of a plot that seems incomplete; of a fantastic story that just begs to be fleshed out in much greater detail. However, "Star Child" was developed from a short story published more than a quarter century ago, and that original story, "Silver Shoes for a Princess" (also the first chapter in this book), stands alone as well-written and thought provoking. I found (after some frustration with the pace and exposition of the book) that I began to enjoy the book more if I considered it to be a collection of short stories rather than a fully developed novel. And the ending scenes, although brief, were quite poignant.

I thought that Hogan's exploration of mind was fascinating, with artificial intelligences probing the meaning of their existence. Artificial intelligence is usually portrayed as an omnipotent and often-threatening force prone to total logic, overseeing humanity (or competing with it) like a digital god, evolving through a process of digital compilation and development that spontaneously springs into self awareness with full knowledge of its pre-awareness history. But Hogan's machine minds have no idea where they came from and find themselves asking the very same questions human minds ask: Where did I come from? Why am I here? What happens when I die? The circular existence of the human minds and machine minds in Hogan's plot demonstrates that mind transcends the matrix that houses it, rendering artificial intelligence not as a vaguely disturbing threat in a possible future, but rather, perhaps having more in common with the human mind than is generally considered.

I was wandering in the library and saw this book in the new books shelf. I read the back and said, "Huh, interesting." I've never read any books by Hogan before and I mainly read light Sci-fi and fantasy, most of which have "action". (Quest, mission, guns, swords, etc.) This is a "thinking book", not that I mean it's boring, it just makes you think, think about creators, machines and evolution and all that deep stuff. Usually, that sort of stuff doesn't interest me, but Hogan has created characters that make the whole thing interesting, especially Kort. Kort is cool, he's a machine, but has a enough "humaness" to make him likable. Anyway, read this book, it's good for rainy days.

One of the best books ever written!

When Taya was eight, she discovered that she wasn't like the machines around her. Her robot friend, Kort, no matter how kind, couldn't tell the difference between a pretty shape and a not pretty shape. Kort then showed her the bio-bodies that had been engineered after her. When they are brought to life, they call her "queen".

Ten years later, the robots and their charges land on Azure, a planet similar to our earth. Here, they meet with violence and destruction, foreign behaviors to them. For the most part, the story is about the "Star Children" and their influence on the planet.

This would be a good book to give to a child about 10 years old to get them into science fiction. As an adult work, it falls short. I didn't find anything particularly remarkable about the book, and the characters all seemed very flat to me. I like Hogan's other works, but this one didn't leave me satisfied at all, as I'd guessed the surprise ending about a third of the way through the book. It compares to Heinlein's Podykane of Mars in terms of it's target audience, in my opinion.

I like James Hogan's work, but I don't think this book is one of his better efforts.

The story has a good initial premise, providing the baseline of intelligent machines on a starship creating Taya from old (DNA) codes. Taya is a nine year old girl at the beginning of the story. I think it left out some obligatory developmental filler between the first section of the story when Taya is in self-discovery, and the next sub-story of planetfall with her younger cohorts. The way the mean and nasty king would revert to sugar and spice was too much of a reach for me.

Another large gap in development to the next section which tied up the loose ends of the starship origins and meaning of life (for Taya). Throwing in a little mystical mumbo jumbo at the end along with a post-life meta-space just didn't flow well for me.

This book is a very imaginative piece of work. It gives a detailed account of how computers can function. This very well may be the way of the future. The computers evolved on their own, as have other robot models today, but they begun evolution from human set parameters. This is a very realistic way of this process happening. So, not only is the book creative with a great story line, it is a distinct possibility.

Fantastic book! Hogan uses science fiction as a vehicle to explore many concepts including mind and soul, knowledge and belief, and many others. If you only want to be entertained by the back story, while it is interesting and novel, you may be disappointed. However, if you're interested in the subject matter he addresses you will enjoy the journey of discovery. Highly recommended for anybody who enjoys an intellectually stimulating exploration of concepts that affect our whole lives.

I just now finished the last page, heh heh. I wasn't sure I would like this book, after reading some of the reviews, but I bought it anyway.

Right from the start the story seems to be about Taya as the main character, with Kort playing a supportive role. Hogan leads us on a merry journey of deception, misleading you into thinking that the main plot is about this young girl growing up, about the discoveries made on the planet Azure, the redevelopment of a long lost human culture. I fell into that masterful weaving of misdirection, just as others have. I fully expected the story to conclude in similar fashion to Echoes of an Alien Sky, with confirmation that the ancients had built the ship and machines with the sole purpose of resurrecting the human race, which in fact was true.

BUT, it isn't 'til the last ten pages or so that you realize that the main story wasn't about the continuation of the human race at all. The real story all along is about the awakening of the machines, and Kort in particular, the evolution taking place in his mechanical being. I was totally taken by surprise at the ending...

While the huge time line gaps in the storyline does seem tedious, and the detail is missing in spots, this book by James P. Hogan is a definite must read!

You will be surprised at the real depth of character that surfaces...