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  Recently Read

   • s******j@**.com
     03/06/1996 00:00:000 UTC

     _The Stars in Shroud_ By Greg Benford

     So-so interstellar adventure. The narrator is a a sort of priest/morale

     officer/captain of a starship belonging to a future Earth whose culture

     is dominated by Mongols. No barbarians these, but they do value group

     harmony over individualism. A sort of psychic plague, seemingly planted

     by the enigmatic enemy Quarn, strikes the ship, then the entire

     civilization. The victims become reclusive and agoraphobic; the only

     recourse is to seal them in little "slots" and hope they snap out of it.

     After recovering from the plague himself, Our Hero is sent to a "clean"

     world and tasked with running it. He soon discovers the cause of the

     plague and sets out to save humanity. Or so he thinks.

     This was Benford's first book, and even though he rewrote it years later

     it's far from his best. He notes in the afterword that this would be the

     last book he'd write in a comfortable "human scale" universe. I suggest

     skipping this one and trying his _In the Ocean of the Night_ and

     _Across the Sea of Stars_.

     Wonder: **1/2

     Technical: **

     Fun: * 1/2

     _The Player of Games_ by Iain M. Banks

     My second time reading this proved as enjoyable as the first.

     Gurgeh is a game player . . . a professional. HE lives in The Culture,

     a mind-hurtingly advanced galaxy-spanning civilization. Members of the

     culture live a life of liesure, or persuing chosen avocations; all of
     the

     dirty work (and most of the decisions) are made by benevolent Minds
     (AIs).

     Gurgeh's life takes a nasty turn when a bitter, malignent drone (a minor

     AI in a robot body) convinces him to cheat while playing a promising
     young

     lady gamer. He finds himself blackmailed into doing a job for the
     Contact

     service; traveling to the Empire of Azad in the LEsser Magellanic Cloud

     and participating in the great game which determines who rules.

     A great book, and a really nifty setting. This should be the first of

     the "Culture" books you read, if any. They can be rather brutal and

     intense; this one is merely exhausting.

     Wonder: ***

     Technical: ***

     Fun: ***1/2

     _The Edges of Science: Crossing the Boundary from Physics to
     Metaphysics_

     by Richard Morris

     This somewhat mistitled book is a great primer on cosmology, particle
     physics,

     and quantum theory. It doesn't get to "weird" stuff (wormholes, time
     travel,

     tachyons) until the end, and then takes a rather cautious approach to
     them.

     _From Eros to Gaia_ by Freeman Dyson.

     Yes, this is the sphere guy... an immigrant from Britain who became a
     top

     physicist without the benefit of a Phd., an arms control consultant,
     worked

     on a nifty space drive (Orion) and had a clutch of talented kids.

     This is a collection of 35 essays, book reviews, letters, speeches and

     book prefaces. They're about science, scientists, politics, arms
     control,

     nature, literature, and more. Dyson can WRITE. He is literate and lucid;

     a true pleasure to read.

     Favorites: The essays "The Human Implications of Space Travel" and "The
     Face

     of Gaia."

     Most remarkable: A tribute to Richard Feynman in the form of a bunch of

     letters Dyson wrote home to Mom and Pop in 1948-49. Feynman was a 30
     year

     old professor at Cornell at the time; Dyson, a 24 year old grad student.

     The most interesting letter describes a road trip Dyson and Feynman took

     to Chicago and then down Route 66, to Santa Fe. My God, What I'd give to

     be a hitchhiker in that car! (Eh . . . it would probably be impossible
     to

     work out a schedule with all of the other time travellers wanting to
     take

     a turn.)

     --

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