| Date: 23 April 2011, 23:45
|
Twenty years after the discovery of artificial wormholes launches Earth space exploration to unforeseeable heights, Starplex Director Keith Lansing investigates a mysterious vessel that soon threatens the station with intergalactic war.
Editorial Reviews From Library Journal Multiple award-winning Canadian author Sawyer offers an epic hard-science space adventure full of technical descriptions of starships and physics tempered by human concerns. In 2094, scientists on the Starplex study the mysterious artificial wormholes that make space travel routine and convenient. Then the wormholes' creators appear, and the scientists must understand and communicate with them to save the galaxy. Highly recommended for sf collections.
I have nothing but praise for Sawyer and I find him one of the best Science Fiction writers ever! However, this book was a major letdown, lacking the interesting characters and intriguing plots of some of his other books. Also, in other books, Sawyer does a far superior job explaining complex science. In this book he makes the scientific explanations difficult to follow unless you happen to be Stephen Hawking. The plot itself reminds me of a long episode of Star Trek TNG. You have the starship searching the galaxy with both human and alien crewmen united by a planet Commonwealth (did you say Federation?). They ultimately must save the galaxy by the book's end.
Summary: Award-caliber / first-rate / great book Rating: 5
Robert J. Sawyer won the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Novel of the Year for HOMINIDS. That win was well-deserved but I got to wondering how far back in his career he was writing award-caliber books before he snared the "Big One." The answer is: at least THIS far back. STARPLEX was the only 1996 novel to be both a best-novel Hugo Award finalsit and best-novel Nebula Award finalist (and it won Canada's Aurora Award and the Compuserve HOmer Award). Sawyer's aliens are every bit as good as those of James White, Larry Niven, Hal Clement and Robert Forward, and his people are infinitely more complex and believable than any written by those writers. This book tackles just about every problem in astrophysics ... and solves them all. No wonder its on numerous university astronomy reading lists, and endorsed by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. A terrific book well worth tracking down.
Summary: Good mix Rating: 4
|
DISCLAIMER:
This site does not store Starplex on its server. We only index and link to Starplex provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete Starplex if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Comments (0)
All
