Customer Reviews

Telempath

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

 

 

Baen Books just has a hard time with cover art, I guess. But this time they've underdone themselves.

Anyway, grab this book while it's back in print. It's the novel-length expansion of Spider Robinson's novella "By Any Other Name," and it's great from start to finish.

I guess I can tell you a little bit of the plot without spoiling anything. Isham Stone lives in a world in which most of civilization has collapsed, and he's going to get the man responsible. Okay, that's all I can say without giving things away.

I _can_ say that the story is told with all of Spider's trademark humaneness and wit, with no punches pulled but also with none of the gloom-and-doom pessimism that marks "noir" SF. Because this book squarely faces a number of interesting and difficult problems, _and works them through to resolution_, it's actually a profoundly hopeful story despite its apocalyptic backdrop.

Spider is one of my favorite two living SF writers (the other being James Hogan), and this is about as close as Spider comes to writing "hard" SF. Get it while it's available; Spider is incapable of writing a dull word.

Generally speaking, I am polar opposite of Spider's political beliefs. I also don't like the generally improbable and often far too fantastic scenarios he sets up. This book stretched my "buy the premise" abilities to their max. This book starts right off in a world where a scientist has unleashed a virus that causes mankind to max out our sense of smell. It suggests that we have the capability to smell even more than wolves and dogs (in spite of the much poorer design of our nose for that sort of thing) and this "ability" to smell so much more overwhelms most of humanity. I didn't buy any of this for a second.

BUT, he writes readable books with characters that are interesting and I generally finish them because I am interested to see what happens. I ended up going with 2 stars on this one because the ending was so weak. Overall, I enjoyed the read enough to finish the book though, so make of that what you will.

I tend to buy Robinson's books used so I don't have as much invested in the ones I am disappointed with - but I do still buy them.

Every day as I walk across Columbia's campus and look at the grounds in front of Butler Library, I have to chuckle. It is here, you recall, that Isham first meets up with the Destroyer of Humanity. All in all, this book is just plain old fun to read, even though it suffers from the author's leftover 60s radicalism. That said, it's still well worth the price of time and money to read.

'Telempath' is really two stories in one. The original Hugo-Award winning novella occupies the first few chapters of the book, and serves as the starting point for the novel that follows. The opening chapters are engaging, thrilling, and Spider Robinson's description of humanity's destruction is terrifyingly vivid. Fans of apocalyptic fiction such as "World War Z" will find a lot to love.

Unfortunately, after a stellar opening, the book rapidly begins to sag. Readers will easily spot the point at which Robinson's novella ended and the expanded story began, because the change in tone and content is jarring. The story plods along dutifully, but never lives up to the promise of the opening chapters. In fact, as it nears the climax it degenerates into a syrupy mess. The final chapters are contrived and include retcons that make no sense. By the time I reached the drug-induced love-fest that Robinson calls his ending, I was thoroughly dissapointed.

This is not to say the book is entirely bad. Robinson is a skillful wordsmith, and he includes some very memorable turns of phrase. The tone of the book changes radically as it progresses, but some readers could interpret that as matching the changes in Isham's character. Isham's wisecracks and snide sense of humor are genuinely entertaining. The story's biggest fault is that Robinson detours into fantasy and endless moralizing rather than sticking to his strengths.

Hippies, vegetarians, and genuine optimists are likely to enjoy this book. The rest of us are better off stopping after the first half.

Telempath,
This book was written 1976 and is steeped in hippie ideology's. (Smoking pot to achieve a state of Zen and the ever famous, 'peace and love will conquer all.') The idea the book is based around intrigued me and is relevant to the problems we face in the world today; terrorism. The problem with the book is that the old hippie ideas don't hold water in the real world.

(ALL VIOLENCE)(CAN BE AVOIDED BY THE TRULY SERENE MIND)
This is straight from the book. Sometimes I felt the author was forcing his views on me as I read.(Not that I disagree with all his views.) I just don't like to be force-fed political view points while reading sci-fi.

The writing style at time's annoyed me. The author had tendencies of introducing characters from nowhere then giving the ever famous (Info dump) to explain who they were. Why not work the characters into the story? What was the rush? The book is short as it is.

What could have been a very good story fell short of the mark. I read the reviews posted before mine and I couldn't disagree more with the high ratings. I'm hard pressed to give this book a 3 star rating, but I will. I like Spiders 'Callahan' stories but I had a very hard time digesting this book.

I know many praise Spider and look upon him as the next Robert Heinlein, and these followers will have a hard time with my review. I just want to say, "I tried to like the book. I really did." I just don't feel it's worthy of a 5 star rating. I gave it 3 stars, but It felt like 2 1/2

I have an original print of this book (I really dislike the new cover they've reprinted it with!), and periodically re-read "Telempath" as it's one of my favorites. One of the chapters is also in collections of short stories - "God is an Iron" - and is worth the price of the book alone. This is a terrific book, folks!!

"Telempath" follows the world's last assassin - Isham Stone - on his quest to avenge the death of 90% of civilization thanks to the creation of a virus that increases people's sense of smell by several thousand orders of magnitude. (Could you stand living in a city when suddenly every odor was a thousand times as strong and hammering at your brain?) Isham's quest leads us to the man who made this virus and to his latest endeavor: communicating with the "Muskies", ethereal beings who went unnoticed by mankind for eons until the creation of the aforementioned virus. What follows are revalations, betrayals, and eventually hope for the survival of mankind.

Spider's first novel is based on his Hugo-award winning story, "By Any Other Name" (available in a recent paperback collection with that very title). The work beyond the original short story/novella contains the early strains of themes that run throughout Spider's work - communication by thought, understanding of human nature, the sanctity of life, etc. But these strains aren't quite the virtuoso melodies one hears in the "Callahan" and "Stardancer" books. The book ends (like most of Spider's books end) with a happy ending... but dammit, it was almost TOO happy for my tastes.

I encourage readers to pick up the collection "By Any Other Name" and read the novella first. If it tickles your fancy, try "Telempath". And if you haven't read "Stardance" yet, then shame on you! Buy it right now!

A good read about a world that has reverted in technology due to our race ahead of ourselves. When man reaches to far and something goes wrong and the innocent are blamed for the failure. The book shows how mankind must revert so as to survive in the future world, and one mans quest to find out the truth and punish the man everyone blames. He ends up finding out that what is told in history depends on who is doing the telling.