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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best....and most depressing science fiction novels,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Flying to Valhalla (Paperback)
This is one of the finest science fiction novels out there. And one of the few that actually stands up when it comes to real science.
Ultimately, it is also arguably one of the most depressing books ever written when you take everthing to its logical conclusion. The book (and I doubt I'm giving anything away here) basically concludes that if humans ever find intelligent life in the universe, we will have to either destroy it outright or forcibly keep it from building a technological society because of the dangers of relativistic attack. That is, a mass of just a few thousand tons accelerated to about 90% of the speed of light would be enough to exterminate all life on earth. And there would be no defense whatsoever against such an attack. Furthermore, at the end the authors also conclude that not only will humans be obligated to destroy the sentient life it finds, but that humans will never be able to actually colonize worlds around other stars. Because of the minute chance that one of the colonies will turn into a "Saddam's World" and destroy all life on Earth with a relativistic attack. Very depressing though very well argued.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting hard-science look at plausible intestellar trave,
By A Customer
This review is from: Flying to Valhalla (Paperback)
The thing I liked best about this was the hard-science take at both parallel universe theory, as well as a practical design for a starship that could reach nearl light speed with technology not to far from where we are today. A fine collection of plausible technical points with a decent story built around it, and while I'm not a big fan of parallel universe stories in general, it wasn't oppressive or cliched.
The technical paper at the end of the novel detailing the design of the starship, as well as discussion on abuse of the technology was almost worth the price of purchase. (Reltivisitic bombs, that is an asteroid accelerated to near light speed, make H-Bombs look like wet fire-crackers).
A fun hard-science book, and even more enjoyable scientific technical paper about the starship technology described in the novel at the end make this a good read
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Read!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Flying to Valhalla (Paperback)
This is one incredible Sci-Fi read . It really can't be absorbed in one reading. It does have some really good Hard Sci-Fi and is thankfully bereft of the "Sexy" implausable starships common to the drivel written by the likes of David Weber, and Gene Rodenberry's Star Trek farce. The characters aren't as strong as they could be. Which is a failing i've noticed in all technical speculative fiction, most recently noted in Jeff Cramer's Einstein's Bridge. I highly recommend it, although better characterization and stronger female characters ( Strong female characters don't have to be vindictive shrews ), would have made it a 9 in my book. I also recommend the sequel "The Killing Star".
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