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fihman's review against another edition
1.0
Such bad writing… none of the characters motivations make sense, the social dynamics get weirder and weirder, plus the “science” is gibberish.
dharaiter's review against another edition
4.0
I wanted to read this book solely to study space habitats, but the plot was surprisingly insightful.
nwhyte's review against another edition
3.0
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3565159.html
I picked this up as one of the few sf novels set in 2021; the other two (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Children of Men) are better, and also only half of this is set in 2021, the rest being in the year 3000. At the end of the first half of the book, the planet earth disintegrates due to some carelessly wielded new technology. I can say with confidence that this is the most pessimistic of all of the future 2021s I looked at. The rest of the book sees the remnants of humanity zipping between star systems on a converted asteroid, occasionally descending to settled planets to bonk some of the primitives and fight some of the others, and eventually achieve transcendence. The book seems to have a lot of fans who feel it had an important Message. Frankly it seemed to me much the same plot as the Cities in Flight series, with perhaps a little jazzed-up tech (but really only a little).
I picked this up as one of the few sf novels set in 2021; the other two (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Children of Men) are better, and also only half of this is set in 2021, the rest being in the year 3000. At the end of the first half of the book, the planet earth disintegrates due to some carelessly wielded new technology. I can say with confidence that this is the most pessimistic of all of the future 2021s I looked at. The rest of the book sees the remnants of humanity zipping between star systems on a converted asteroid, occasionally descending to settled planets to bonk some of the primitives and fight some of the others, and eventually achieve transcendence. The book seems to have a lot of fans who feel it had an important Message. Frankly it seemed to me much the same plot as the Cities in Flight series, with perhaps a little jazzed-up tech (but really only a little).
jimg's review
2.0
Too wildly optimistic for my tastes. Ignoring reality can be fun, but not to the extent that the premises of this novel require to work.
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