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brashtech's review
3.0
A very solid space adventure, with characters who are three-dimensional and have interesting relationships.
I only really have two complaints about the book. One is its breezy treatment of a post-Singularity world, including AIs, nanotech, transhumanism, a human society with no privacy to speak of, and any number of ideas which on their own could generate an entire novel, but whose ramifications are sorely underdeveloped in Geodesica. It reminds me of a complaint one of my professors had about science fiction, which is that scifi written in the 50's is about 50's people with gadgets, scifi written in the 60's is about 60's people, with gadgets, etc.
The second irritation is that this book apparently just the first half of a two-volume series, which always honks me off. I feel like editors should have to label their books "WARNING: This book does not contain a complete story. Don't pick it up unless you're willing to read X more books." Which probably would have stopped me from buying the paperback from ShopKo for $2.50, so I suppose it's obvious why they don't.
So, anyway, now I have to hunt down Geodesica: Descent, or else convince myself that Geodesica: Ascent wasn't actually good enough to warrant the additional effort.
I only really have two complaints about the book. One is its breezy treatment of a post-Singularity world, including AIs, nanotech, transhumanism, a human society with no privacy to speak of, and any number of ideas which on their own could generate an entire novel, but whose ramifications are sorely underdeveloped in Geodesica. It reminds me of a complaint one of my professors had about science fiction, which is that scifi written in the 50's is about 50's people with gadgets, scifi written in the 60's is about 60's people, with gadgets, etc.
The second irritation is that this book apparently just the first half of a two-volume series, which always honks me off. I feel like editors should have to label their books "WARNING: This book does not contain a complete story. Don't pick it up unless you're willing to read X more books." Which probably would have stopped me from buying the paperback from ShopKo for $2.50, so I suppose it's obvious why they don't.
So, anyway, now I have to hunt down Geodesica: Descent, or else convince myself that Geodesica: Ascent wasn't actually good enough to warrant the additional effort.
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