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A review by sjstuart
Across the Sea of Suns by Gregory Benford
4.0
I started this book without realizing it was a sequel to [b:In the Ocean of Night|453960|In the Ocean of Night (Galactic Center, #1)|Gregory Benford|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174917601s/453960.jpg|2226612] (which seems to be a pretty common problem; the edition I read didn't try very hard to label it as the second in a series). I'm sure I didn't fully understand all of the references to off-stage characters from the previous book, and it took me a while to assemble the back story of how the main character, Nigel, had discovered an alien artifact and had his mind altered as a result. There was certainly no lengthy exposition about preceding events. But in general I like books that toss me into the middle of things and challenge me to keep up, so I didn't feel like I was missing much.
Not too many of the characters in this book are likable, including the introspective, grumpy old man protagonist, and it's a fairly slow-paced story, focusing more on shipboard politics and interstellar voyages than on the sporadic action scenes. But it kept my interest, nonetheless. There many interesting speculations about different forms of life, from organic to mechanical and a few hybrid stages in between, and the science is very sound (as always for a [a:Gregory Benford|22645|Gregory Benford|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1224059011p2/22645.jpg] novel).
Part of what kept me intrigued and entertained was the clear literary aspirations of the novel, with an experimental prose style and multiple themes and levels of metaphor. These make it stand out from a more run-of-the-mill space adventure.
Ship or suit radio communications comprise a significant portion of the book; these are written in a very fragmented and informal style, with little punctuation or indication of who is speaking, but plenty of jargon, slang, regional accents and verbal filler like umm, yeah, right. Apparently sometime in the next century, astronauts lose their formal "This is Houston. Over." radio habits and revert to talking over each other on a party line. This takes some effort to read, but is great at setting a mood, and illustrating the loss of information over radio compared to one-on-one dialogue with visual contact.
There are a number of themes and parallels running through the book. I suspect these may strike some as heavy-handed, since subtle metaphors typically sail right over my head. But for the most part they are left for the reader to discover, rather than being explicitly pointed out, and they definitely contributed to my enjoyment of the book. The most thought-provoking example for me was the theme of overzealous response of self-repairing systems, with parallels between Nigel's overactive immune system leading to his increasingly fragile health, and the machine culture's response to living systems. Other examples include the theme of how difficult it is to communicate: between species, between generations, between individuals with different motivations and backgrounds; the theme (or maybe just sound scientific observation) of how it's always more clever to use leverage than brute force to effect a large change, regardless of whether you're trying to wipe out a planet, or steer a group conversation towards your point of view; and parallels between the long voyages, land-based conflicts with hostile forces, and existential difficulties faced experienced by the solitary castaways on both Earth's ocean and the interstellar "sea of suns".
Not too many of the characters in this book are likable, including the introspective, grumpy old man protagonist, and it's a fairly slow-paced story, focusing more on shipboard politics and interstellar voyages than on the sporadic action scenes. But it kept my interest, nonetheless. There many interesting speculations about different forms of life, from organic to mechanical and a few hybrid stages in between, and the science is very sound (as always for a [a:Gregory Benford|22645|Gregory Benford|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1224059011p2/22645.jpg] novel).
Part of what kept me intrigued and entertained was the clear literary aspirations of the novel, with an experimental prose style and multiple themes and levels of metaphor. These make it stand out from a more run-of-the-mill space adventure.
Ship or suit radio communications comprise a significant portion of the book; these are written in a very fragmented and informal style, with little punctuation or indication of who is speaking, but plenty of jargon, slang, regional accents and verbal filler like umm, yeah, right. Apparently sometime in the next century, astronauts lose their formal "This is Houston. Over." radio habits and revert to talking over each other on a party line. This takes some effort to read, but is great at setting a mood, and illustrating the loss of information over radio compared to one-on-one dialogue with visual contact.
There are a number of themes and parallels running through the book. I suspect these may strike some as heavy-handed, since subtle metaphors typically sail right over my head. But for the most part they are left for the reader to discover, rather than being explicitly pointed out, and they definitely contributed to my enjoyment of the book. The most thought-provoking example for me was the theme of overzealous response of self-repairing systems, with parallels between Nigel's overactive immune system leading to his increasingly fragile health, and the machine culture's response to living systems. Other examples include the theme of how difficult it is to communicate: between species, between generations, between individuals with different motivations and backgrounds; the theme (or maybe just sound scientific observation) of how it's always more clever to use leverage than brute force to effect a large change, regardless of whether you're trying to wipe out a planet, or steer a group conversation towards your point of view; and parallels between the long voyages, land-based conflicts with hostile forces, and existential difficulties faced experienced by the solitary castaways on both Earth's ocean and the interstellar "sea of suns".