Stop me if you've heard this before. A man wakes up only to find he's been asleep for a much longer time than he expected and the world around him has changed in unanticipated (and sometimes terrifying) ways. If you've read the story of Rip Van Winkle, you're already familiar with this plot. Or if you watched the 1970s TV version of Buck Rogers, it will sound familiar. Or if you've read ... well, take your pick. Author Chris Roberson take this hoary literary concept and gives it a make-over in Further: Beyond the Threshold, the start of a new sci-fi series.
The plot may be old, but Roberson makes the tale of Capt. R.J. Stone who leads a 22nd century interstellar expedition seem fresh. Instead of waking up after a few months, Stone wakes up 12,000 years later. Needless to say, it's a brand new world out there. Humanity has spread itself among the stars and their various worlds are linked by wormhole "thresholds" allowing travelers to just step through a door to find themselves on distant planets.
Travel isn't the only thing that's changed in the 120 centuries since Stone departed earth and ended up in the Human Entelechy. The definition of "human" has expanded, too, to incorporate various forms of digital life, downloaded personalities, designed lifeforms that appear to be strange human-animal hybrids, and a number of uplifted species. Stone spends of large chunk of the book being brought up-to-date on all these developments and new additions to humanity.
All this exposition proves to be both a blessing and a curse in Further. The blessing comes when Roberson's writing and imagination is hitting all the right notes as when he struggles to understand an economy based on power, a government by consensus and even the perils to learning the proper terminology for non-gendered digital members of the Human Entelechy. But for every note that Roberson gets right in this sci-fi symphony, there's often an accompanying sour note such as the character of Maruti, an uplifted chimpanzee who comes across like an extra of Planet of the Apes. (He even tells stories of his uncle Cornelius.)
I was never quite sure how to respond to characters like Maruti. Was he meant to be an insider's tongue-in-cheek reference? Was he supposed to be comedy relief? Were we to take him seriously? I was never sure. Likewise, I wasn't sure whether Roberson intended Further as a "space opera," a thoughful examination on the nature of humaness, a satire ... clearly, there is evidence of all three (and even more) interpretations, but I kept reaching points where I wasn't sure just exactly how Roberson expected me to interpret the characters and situations.
Further is an interesting story, but it suffers from the fate of many first-book-in-a-series novels: too much exposition. By the time Stone is placed in charge of a new faster-than-light ship, three-quarters of the novel has passed, leaving the novel's climax as the crew of the Further battle an offshoot of human that was cut off from the Human Entelechy centuries ago to feel more than a bit hurried.
Despite some gripes about the first novel, I'm anxious to read what Roberson somes up with next. There are some fascinating threads that were mentioned in Further and I want to see how he weaves them into future novels in the series. Roberson shows much promise as a writer and, now that he's given us the exposition-heavy first book, I want to see how he handles the series when he's not tied down to an "origins" type of story.
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- Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2012
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Top reviews from other countries
- Richard N BakerReviewed in the United Kingdom on June 16, 2012
A thoroughly enjoyable piece of science fiction
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G. RemrowReviewed in Germany on May 17, 2012
Schön zu lesen, spannend, aber nicht prickelnd
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Jassu79Reviewed in Germany on June 14, 2012
Extrem kurzweilige Lektüre mit Augenzwinkern
- Yvonne NReviewed in the United Kingdom on October 20, 2012
Something a bit different
