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Title: The Mind Pool by Charles Sheffield ISBN: 0-671-72165-8 Publisher: Baen Pub. Date: 01 April, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.43 (14 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Uncertain voice
Comment: This book seemed to be a reprise of Golden age science fiction, in a world where technology is the saviour of all, people are ethical, honest, hard working, updated with a dash of cyberpunk mentality, with hard edges, drugs, lies and the accompanying details.
Unfortunately, the visions did not meld well, leaving the story as a mishmash of ideas, with various sub-plots spawning off in various directions, and seemingly never wrapping up properly. In addition, I don't feel that sufficient detail is given to the elements of the story to make them believable. There are too many glossed over details to draw the reader in properly.
The main plot (at least it seems the main plot) itself represents an interesting idea - the mind pool - but it is lost in the noise.
Nevertheless, it is a somewhat interesting story, and a unique vision. It's just very hard to read.
Rating: 4
Summary: Flawed, often hard to get into, but a must-read
Comment: Charles Sheffield's The Mind Pool is a rework of an older novel, The Nimrod Hunt. Centered around the hunt for a renegade artificial life-form, the novel paints a mixed picture of the future, with humans living in harmony with alien species, genetic engineering rampant and uncontrolled, a divided, violent, and irrelevant Earth, and a militaristic outer system.
This is a difficult book to get into. Initial chapters are tedious and there are a lot of key characters who inter-develop as the the book continues which devolves quickly into a confusing mess. Sheffield's humour barely holds the story together as empathy with the main, distant and too many, characters seems close to impossible, and the reader is expected to take in a little too much, from different technologies to the behaviors of three wildly different species. The book, initially, also seems to live up to its back-cover synopsis, which in science fiction can be a bad thing, especially if the synopsis seems to be written to appeal to John W Campbell.
The novel is saved by a number of factors: Sheffield's humour, naturally, helps. Certain characters become fleshed out and sympathetic. Some time about half way through the novel the pace and understandability of what is going on becomes quicker and easier. And then there's an absolutely beautiful twist concerning the very subject of the novel - and I say beautiful not just to describe the twist itself but the subject matter and the novel at that point, which just turned my opinion of the book on its head.
This is a flawed novel. You should read it anyway.
Rating: 3
Summary: Something Missing
Comment: The Mind Pool tells the story of a future in which humans have encountered only three other intelligent species in the explored universe. The explored universe is essentially an ever exapanding sphere that radiates out as probes continue to move out through space and everything within this sphere is easilt reachable using "Mattin Links."
What I find intiguing about this story is the description of three very different alien species and how they are thrown together with humans, the only "aggressive" species, to form a team. However, I felt that this particular plot point wasn't dealt with in an engrossing manner. The whole novel felt somewhat pieced together and was shorter than it should have been. The catalyst for the story, the Morgan Construct that poses a threat to the universe and the teams are sent to find, felt almost forgotten and I was unclear what role it served in the story except as a launching point.
I enjoyed the story, but there were so many aspects to this universe that I would have liked to learn about and I felt like none of them were really explored in any depth. There was a subplot that was apparently left out of the original version of this story, called The Nimrod Hunt, that I felt was a hinderance to the story rather than adding anything and the author added back in merely because he was fond of it. The ending was somewhat confused and just seemed to stop and I wasn't really satisfied. I think I will pick up another of his books that isn't a rewrite of an earlier story and see how I like it.
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Title: The Spheres of Heaven by Charles Sheffield ISBN: 067131856X Publisher: Baen Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Cold As Ice by Charles Sheffield ISBN: 0812511638 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1993 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Dark as Day (Cold As Ice) by Charles Sheffield ISBN: 0812580311 Publisher: Tor Science Fiction Pub. Date: 14 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Convergent Series by Charles Sheffield ISBN: 0671877917 Publisher: Baen Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: PROTEUS COMBINED by Charles Sheffield ISBN: 0671876031 Publisher: Baen Pub. Date: 01 April, 1994 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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