Regular Price:
$7.99
|
| |
Dear visitor! This website has been designed to help you find THE BEST PRICE. When you are ready to buy, your payment will be processed through one of the most TRUSTED SUPPLIERS directly.
Thank you for shopping with us!
|
Customer Review
Farfetched, but Immensely Entertaining
The sequel to Cold as Ice, Sheffield brings back one who is becoming one of the great characters of science fiction, Rustum "Bat" Battachariya, along with a whole host of new characters. (He likely drew Bat's Puzzle Network handle, "Megachirops," from "chiropter", a noun meaning any mammal of the order Chiroptera, comprising the bats. Weighing in at 300 kilos or thereabouts, he definitely is "mega.") Two of the new characters, Janeed Jannex, an orphan who has looked after her self-adopted "brother" (also an orphan) for almost her entire life, and Paul Marr, First Mate on the Outer System Line (OSL) Achilles, come together in a manner distinctly reminiscent of Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and First Mate Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) of the original, 1933 version of the movie King Kong.While not without blemishes (such as putting the action a mere 95 years from now, much too soon for the technology and colonization described in the book to take place -- why, oh why, do sci fi authors...
Top to learn more
November 28, 2002
(Huntsville, AL USA) | Helpful Votes: 13 | Rating: 5
Great cerebral dark futuristic tale
Three decades have passed since the Great War left mankind on the brink of extinction. The devastating twenty-first century is a period of initial greatness throughout the solar system that turned deadly with weapons of mass destruction seemingly in use everywhere especially the biological ones on earth. Now that the century nears its end, humanity seems to have begun recovering especially in the Jupiter-Saturn region, but much more gradually on Earth where the Southern Hemisphere is starting to recuperate. In 2097 on the moon Ganymede, Alex Ligon, son of a family of trading giants, has rebuilt the "seine" computer network. However, his program predicts humanity will become extinct in less than a hundred years. On the asteroids near Jupiter, SETI researcher Milly Wu believes she has received an alien communication. Rustum "Bat" Battachariya, who collects weapons from the Great War, follows rumors of a doomsday weapon. He consults with Milly and her SETI peers...
Top to learn more
March 1, 2002
| Helpful Votes: 5 | Rating: 5
Product Description
The Solar System is finally recovering from the Great War – a war that devastated the planets and nearly wiped out the human race – and the population of the outer moons, orbiting Jupiter and Saturn, is growing.
On one of those moons, Alex Ligon, scion of a great interplanetary trading family has developed a wonderfully accurate new population model, and cannot wait until the newly reconstituted "Seine," the interlinked network of computers that spans the planets and moons and asteroids, comes back on line. But when it does, and he extends his perfect model a century into the future, it predicts the complete destruction of the human race.
On another moon, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence goes on, undaunted by generations of failure. And to her amazement, Millie Wu, a young genius newly recruited to the project, has found a signal . . . a signal that is coming from outside the solar system.
And in his new retreat on a minor moon of Saturn, the cranky genius Rustam Battacharyia is still collecting weapons from the Great War. He thinks he may have stumbled on an unexpected new one...but he’ll need to disarm it before it destroys the Sun.
Top to learn more
The Great War is over and humans have spread across the solar system, but mathematician Alex Ligon's complex computer model has just predicted that humanity is inexplicably doomed within a century. At the same time, scientist Milly Wu has identified what appears to be an extraterrestrial signal, and the idiosyncratic genius Bat searches for weapons from the Great War to add to his collection, finding much more than he bargained for. Their stories and others are intertwined in this tightly plotted and thoroughly engaging follow-up to Sheffield's
Cold as Ice.
Nebula Award winner Sheffield distinguishes himself as a writer of intelligence, humor, and a pleasing balance of hard science and interesting, engaging characters. Fans will be particularly delighted to renew their acquaintance with Bat, but readers new to Sheffield's work should take the plunge enthusiastically--this novel easily and gracefully stands alone as a story of people, science, and the puzzles that both can produce. --Roz Genessee Top to learn more
A treat for Bat Fans
After reading Cold as Ice I was disappointed by this book. Dark as Day is longer and had more characters, which is not necessarily a good thing. Most of the characters are not fully developed or introduced and then dropped along the way. The parallel storylines do converge at the end, but it is incomplete and sloppy. The glue that holds the book together is the Great Bat. In all my literary tours of the universe I have never encountered a character like him. He prefers to be totally alone to think and study and solve puzzles. He does not wash, he does not dress, he does not travel; he eats and he thinks. Facinating. It is The Bat who finds the clues in the historic documents and puts everything together. Therefore, it is not until you get to the chapters featuring The Bat that the story gets exciting. Science fiction is supposed to pose some interesting concepts for better living through technology and this book is no exception. There are people with enhanced bodies...
Top to learn more
July 11, 2002
(Langhorne, PA United States) | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 3
Good quality. No linear lock.
