ALT.SF4M

  Amusements - "Tides of Light" -spoilers

   • j********o@***.com
     19/06/1997 00:00:000 UTC

     Next book (after "Great Sky River") in Benford's Galactic Center series.

     Features the same band of primitive mech fighters as they escape their
     own

     world for another, in nearly as bad shape. There, hostile alien cyborgs

     have squashed the local mechs and are dismantling the planet with a big

     cosmic string loop. The refugees are (of course) forced down to the

     surface and fall into the intrigues of the aliens and the zealous human

     fighters they find there, and finally, the broader mysteries of the

     Galactic Center. Ho hum. Still OK, but tired, rehashing the previous

     plot elements, and forced. The transformation of these meat heads into

     anything like ship crew is unbelievable, as is the shift in dialog from

     clipped slang to sophisticated language more familiar to, and easier
     for,

     Professor Benford. Again, the use of such primitive characters both

     allows and forces the writer to push them along with a linear plot line
     in

     which they have nothing to decide (as TOAST(tm) might say, "Well, wake
     me

     when I get to make a decision.") Deus-ex-machinas abound. Benford also

     continues to abuse the cheap theatric of the horrific as audience
     grabber

     (this annoyed me in "Across the Sea of Suns" as well.) The childish

     diagrams scattered through the book serve to insult the reader's

     intelligence and illustrate the goofy, forced quality of the events

     diagrammed ("Oh, wow, a skyhook. Look, he's falling through the planet.

     Gosh, a magnetic field line.") They also question the writer's faith in

     his descriptive talents, and his opinion of his readers. Getting sick of

     his universe, or at least, the ground level view of it. This reminds me

     of Brin: "Flickers in the starry nebula above bespoke distant battles
     for

     the fate of the universe, but Gaven had to concentrate on matters closer

     to hand. He carefully pleated the palm strips into the basket-to-be:

     first right hand, then left, then right, then left. He swore, and for
     the

     hundredth time undid an errant pleat and wished he'd done something

     interesting with his life; something that would have taken him off a

     goddamn planet to be where the action was, instead of leaving the damn

     audience hanging through five novels for something with some scope to

     happen, boring them with his stupid little aliens and contrived little

     planets and even less convincing yet still achingly dull human
     characters,

     amazing when contrasted with his better works, including 'The Postman,'

     although that too suffered from some wishful and irritating thinking,

     gender-equality-wise; and what's the deal with all the namby-pamby men
     we

     find in SF stories, alongside super confident women? This occurs in

     practically all the Benford books - is this a sign of some lingering

     adolescent trauma, or is he just so PC he writes the way he wants the

     world to be, or is he just p-whipped? - All these thoughts rushed
     through

     Gaven's mind as he sighed and began to pleat again. At that moment, a

     cat-sized, squid-like ET struggled through the underbrush. Its pelican

     beak (with beady eyes where the nostrils should be) stared curiously at

     Gaven, then it chirped 'Fwoooon,' and exploded into a dozen minute and

     scrambling copies of itself. They lined up, bobbing in place, and looked

     expectantly at the human. Gaven simply hocked a lugee and growled 'Who

     cares?'"

     Let's have a universe where the Berserkers are just runaway, self

     reproducing battle robots (more like the real Saberhagen Berserkers) and

     aren't the tip of any mech civilization. All intelligences, machine and

     biologic, cooperate against (when they aren't fighting amongst
     themselves

     and letting warbots slip away to breed) and fall prey to these clever
     but

     non sentient critters (actually, Saberhagen may have had some friendly

     sentient non-Berserker machine intelligences - but the "Red Race"
     doesn't

     count, since he didn't write that story).

     Gorno

     The ship's speakers roared mechanically, "You think I'm one of those

     monsters?! Are you insane? They're robots!!"