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Title: Dark As Day by Charles Sheffield ISBN: 0-8125-8031-1 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Buy this book! It's the best of the hard SF
Comment: But don't read it until you've also gotten Cold as Ice, and read it. The two are among the very best hard SF books anyone has written. As a bonus, they both also have a mystery for the main characters to solve.
I already miss Charles Sheffield, just because the prospects of more novels featuring the unique "Bat" are remote. Sheffield wrote the very hardest SF (as appropriate for a Ph.D. in physics), but he usually managed to tell a good story as well - something that most of the other physicists who have written SF haven't managed to do. I wish he could have lived and written for another 20 years.
I wish to defend the instantaneous communication system a previous reviewer has maligned. Sheffield quite explicitly states that it works because of quantum entanglement, a perfectly respectable theory which was discussed in Scientific American's special edition last year on cosmology and cosmogony.
If you want to find some good reading, and are willing to accept his (very) rare failures, pick up some of his older novels, many of which were published in Analog before coming into the bookstores.
Rating: 4
Summary: On of the Year's Finest SF Novels
Comment: In one of his last novels, Charles Sheffield has written one of his best. _Dark as Day_, the sequel to the entertaining _Cold as Ice_ stars everyone's favorite recluse, grossly overweight puzzle master, The Great Bat, in another life or death race across the solar system.
Sheffield weaves together three or four simulatneous plotlines to present a cohesive and thrilling story of the potential end of the universe. Bat, avid Great War history buff, discovers that an evil scientist created an apocalyptic 'sleeper' virus that may be activated soon. This plotline coupled with a possible first contact with aliens creates a compelling novel that should be included among the year's top SF novels.
Also, from a purely asthetic viewpoint, the packaging for _Dark as Day_ is among the finest I've seen recently. From the superb Vincent Di Fate cover to the attractive designs and fonts throughout the novel, this book is a treat to read. It's said not to judge a book by its cover but in this case you won't go wrong.
Summary: Entertaining and vey well-written story. Believable and compelling characters. Highly recommended.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Fine End -- or Entrance -- to This Series
Comment: Those returning to the universe of Sheffield's _Cold As Ice_ and _The Ganymede Club_ will be pleased to find their old friend Bat here. The reclusive, snoopy genius has exiled himself to a moon of Saturn. Unfortunately, his home on Pandora figures in the plans of the ruthless and pushy Ligon family who want to reverse their recent slide from third to tenth in the rankings of richest companies in the solar system.
Reluctantly involved in their plot is Alex Ligon, sort of the black sheep of the family. When not being bullied by his family into running errands -- or auditioning for arranged marriages -- he works for the government rather than Ligon Industries. He's proud of a vast, sophisticated computer model of the entirety of human civilization in the solar system -- until it shows mankind going extinct in less than a century. Bad modelling or a ominous and valid warning?
Meanwhile, young Millie Wu has signed on to work for one half of the Beston brothers -- aka the Bastard and the Ogre, SETI researchers whose obsession about finding alien signals is matched only by their obsession with besting each other. Wu can't quite believe her luck when she seems to have detected a genuine signal.
On Earth, Janeed Jannex and her childhood friend Sebastian Birch decide to emigrate to space, but their recruiters prove to surprisingly be interested in Birch's almost idiot savant fascination with, of all things, clouds.
Those familiar with Sheffield's previous work will expect these plotlines to converge, and, as with _Cold As Ice_, the surprises are less in the sometimes predictable plot twists than the why of events or their scientific explanation. Those who found the ideas of that novel interesting will also appreciate this one. Sheffield gives us a system wide internet, the Seine, that communicates instantaneously via quantum entanglement. There is the mining of methane deposits on the floors of Earth's oceans, and a fairly detailed explanation of how an alien radio signal would be analysed and decoded. Even if Sheffield engages in a bit of handwaving with his explanations of Alex Ligon's computer model, it is still interesting.
Readers new to this series should have no trouble jumping right in with this book, and those who have read the other two novels will find little amplifications of previous plots points -- including Bat's growing collection of weapons from the Great War.
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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: Orphans of Earth by Sean Williams, Shane Dix ISBN: 0441010067 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Echoes of Earth by Sean Williams, Shane Dix ISBN: 0441008925 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: The Spheres of Heaven by Charles Sheffield ISBN: 067131856X Publisher: Baen Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Heirs of Earth by Sean Williams, Shane Dix ISBN: 0441011268 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 30 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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