The Ocean of Years

Rating:
Summary: A Superb Sequel in an Outstanding Series: Eco-Socio Future
Review: I feel strongly that Mr. Allen's work in this series, and in both of these volumes is some of the best writing I have seen in a long long time. It excells not only as masterly work in the genre but also as truly visionary and extremely thoughtful work concerning possible ecological and social challenges facing human society not in the future, but Today! The careful, and sensitve development of all the major characters are also of a high quality. Each and every main character and even the secondary ones are fully realized, the author has thoughtfully considered each of them, and woven them into a tapestry of realism which evokes the time and situation that the story is based on. Actions, dialog, descriptions of settings, passage of time, and the complexity and paradoxes of ordinary lived life are all realized throughout this work with a masterful touch.

The descriptive prose moved easily, and with poise and grace from location to location, and the scope of a universe which we in our modern world can only glimpse is a reality of real challenges, limits, dangers, and disapointments. Beneath the plot runs a deep concern with the limits and dangers of excessive technology. I would ask that this be declared mandatory reading for all high governmental officials, science leaders and especially students and faculty of ecological study and research institutions.

The plot thoroughly entertains, and moves and beckons to the reader, and the frustrations, fears and hopes of the characters are drawn with a careful eye to detail and to humanity. I find in this book a maturity and a sensitivity that is lacking in most other leading names of the genre, where too often cheap and shallow militarism, violence and incongruous simplistic good versus bad space soap opera limit the literature and the authors' vision. I cannot truly say that there are any better authors writing today, some are Allen's equal, but he has no superiors in a critical and essential topic: the role of human society in the natural environment, and the limits imposed by the inexonerable laws of nature. These laws, complex, subtle and fundamental, require that we as a species rise to the challenges set by our desires, and needs with worthwhile contributions of our own. Allen offers the encouraging figures of Koffield, Norla, and others who show their determination and hope not in grandiose gestures, but in steady, constant, very human effort. In this fine book, and series, events change and are changed by the people involved in them, and results are never certain, yet always to be strived for. I look forward to a long and fruitful career for Mr. Allen, and believe that his critics, like Koffield's will be silenced in the end by the fundamental and undeniable quality of insight applied with veracity, vision and compassion.

Finally, in work of this genre, and in fiction, the author must first and foremost evoke and create an environment in which the characters and their story is real, and for which there are realistic paths that they can follow. In the very best fiction, the story constantly creates echos and resonance with the real reality that the reader inhabits. It is the interchange that occurs both on the conscious level and sub consiously that can bring not only entertainment but also insight bringing awareness that the reader develops in his or her own mind and thoughts. This book and this series that Allen is masterfully creating is a classic and a resource for us and our culture in our own time. I reccomend this work and this author and congratulate him on his achievement.

Rating:
Summary: high tech science fiction at its very best
Review: In the far distant future, mankind has been able to terraform whole planets so that humans could colonize them. Oskar DeSilvo is credited as the genius who brought this process about but Anton Koffield declares that the terraforming project is breaking down and if they don't evacuate the planet millions will die.

Although the authorities have proof that DeSilvo is still alive and has technologies that will save mankind, the authorities want proof that the terraforming project is imperfect. Koffield and his associates travel through a time wormhole one hundred years in the past to locate DeSilvo, get the technology, including the FTL drive and save the future. Koffield also wants vengeance on the man who destroyed his career.

THE OCEAN OF YEARS is high tech science fiction at its very best. The time travel operation, intricate to the story line, is both easy to understand and makes sense even if one is not a quantum physicist. The hero is a driven man, whom seems to place honor above all else, making him the implacable enemy of the antagonist. Yet it is his thirst for vengeance that ultimately leaves readers to wonder whether humanity will survive (at least this novel). Fans of Arthur C. Clarke will love this book.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: high tech science fiction at its very best
Review: In the far distant future, mankind has been able to terraform whole planets so that humans could colonize them. Oskar DeSilvo is credited as the genius who brought this process about but Anton Koffield declares that the terraforming project is breaking down and if they don't evacuate the planet millions will die.

Although the authorities have proof that DeSilvo is still alive and has technologies that will save mankind, the authorities want proof that the terraforming project is imperfect. Koffield and his associates travel through a time wormhole one hundred years in the past to locate DeSilvo, get the technology, including the FTL drive and save the future. Koffield also wants vengeance on the man who destroyed his career.

THE OCEAN OF YEARS is high tech science fiction at its very best. The time travel operation, intricate to the story line, is both easy to understand and makes sense even if one is not a quantum physicist. The hero is a driven man, whom seems to place honor above all else, making him the implacable enemy of the antagonist. Yet it is his thirst for vengeance that ultimately leaves readers to wonder whether humanity will survive (at least this novel). Fans of Arthur C. Clarke will love this book.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: In Pursuit of a Mad, Plagiarizing Terraformer...
Review: Picking up where "The Depths of Time" left off, "The Ocean of Years" forms the second part of Allen's "Chronicles of Solace" and sends Admiral Koffield and the crew of the Dom Pedro IV hurrying back to the Solar System to find word of Oskar deSilvo's whereabouts.

Allen's universe here revolves around an Earth and its colonies linked together by a series of timeshaft wormholes: that is, a series of fixed-distance wormholes through time that allow ships (none of which are capable of faster-than-light travel) to objectively experience a hundred-plus year trip through time in a subjective period of days or weeks. The concept is a bit complex (requiring a chart and full-page explanation at the start of each book), but comes off as oddly plausible once you think through the myriad implications of the system - which Allen seems to do well.

In this trilogy, outer terraformed colonies are beginning to die and the only answers as to why are linked with their terraformer - Oskar deSilvo. A man thought dead halfway through the first book, he is hiding in an undisclosed location having provided, essentially, a maze for the crew of the Dom Pedro IV to run to find him. Taking them the libraries orbiting Neptune to Earth to the long-ruined, fungally-overgrown Mars, the book is essentially a series of mysteries laid out and solved by the crew in their attempt to not only find out where deSilvo is, but what implications his pre-hibernation discoveries have for the worlds colonized by Earth.

While this book makes an excellent middle chapter in the trilogy - building on the first one and naturally extrapolating much higher stakes for the third, it does suffer from a few small problems. One is that it's virtually impossible to understand if you haven't read "The Depths of Time". While he tries to being new readers up to speed, he does so over the first hundred or so pages of the book, creating a bit of a jumble in terms of the action occurring. I found even having read the first book six or nine months ago, I was getting lost having forgotten many of the main details. Likewise, his pacing occasionally suffers from unpredictable stutters. Stylistically, it lags or surges forward at odd times. There were parts in the middle - and near the end that dragged by as you waited for characters to move on to the next key. In the same way, occasional pieces of the puzzle were laid out only to be immediately solved by the characters - not giving the reader a chance to try to stay one jump ahead of the mystery.

Nonetheless, though, this is still an outstanding book. His universe is based on a novel idea and is well extrapolated from that point. The shadowy, background villains stay suitably shadowy and a good sense of paranoia slowly infuses the book. If you read - and enjoyed - "The Depths of Time", definitely give this one ago (after having, perhaps, flipped through the first again). If not, go back and pick up "The Depths of Time"; it's worth the read.

Rating:
Summary: A great 250-page book
Review: Unfortunately the other 200+ pages make it a long and boring read.

I first encountered Roger MacBride Allen when I read 'Allies and Aliens' some years back. It was a great read and since that time I've often looked for other titles by him when browsing for books. When I spotted 'The Depths of Time' (henceforth TDOT) several months back, I picked it up immediately. It was very disappointing -- if you haven't read the reviews on that book, I recommend doing so before you buy this one (or buying TDOT if it's not too late). That novel had all of the same problems that this one does -- way too many pages for the storyline and the interest level is all or nothing. Both are largely filled with highly detailed and very uninteresting fluff, alleviated every once in a while by a few pages where something actually happens. Both spend time detailing information about politics and conspirators -- which never end up connecting back with the storyline.

The obvious question then becomes -- if I was so disappointed with volume one -- why get volume two? I bought this book for two reasons. First -- TDOT had such an incomplete and unsatisfying ending that I really wanted to find out what the final resolution was going to be -- I *hate* not knowing the ending to a story. Second -- I had enjoyed my first MacBride experience with 'Allies and Aliens' so much that I was hoping that TDOT was simply a fluke and that with the storyline now set up, the follow-on book would be considerably more interesting and loose ends from the first book would be neatly connected. I was very wrong. 'The Ocean of Years' is, if anything, even more long-winded and boring than TDOT. The ending is, if anything, even more unsatisfying and loose ends have expanded geometrically. However -- as much as I hate not finishing all the books in a trilogy -- I won't be purchasing the third book: 'The Shores of Tomorrow'.

Both books (and probably the third as well) should have been massively trimmed and either released all as a single volume or at the most as a duology. The basic concepts are interesting, the universe believable, but there's simply not enough story for the amount of pages being used to tell it.

Rating:
Summary: A great 250-page book
Review: Unfortunately the other 200+ pages make it a long and boring read.

I first encountered Roger MacBride Allen when I read 'Allies and Aliens' some years back. It was a great read and since that time I've often looked for other titles by him when browsing for books. When I spotted 'The Depths of Time' (henceforth TDOT) several months back, I picked it up immediately. It was very disappointing -- if you haven't read the reviews on that book, I recommend doing so before you buy this one (or buying TDOT if it's not too late). That novel had all of the same problems that this one does -- way too many pages for the storyline and the interest level is all or nothing. Both are largely filled with highly detailed and very uninteresting fluff, alleviated every once in a while by a few pages where something actually happens. Both spend time detailing information about politics and conspirators -- which never end up connecting back with the storyline.

The obvious question then becomes -- if I was so disappointed with volume one -- why get volume two? I bought this book for two reasons. First -- TDOT had such an incomplete and unsatisfying ending that I really wanted to find out what the final resolution was going to be -- I *hate* not knowing the ending to a story. Second -- I had enjoyed my first MacBride experience with 'Allies and Aliens' so much that I was hoping that TDOT was simply a fluke and that with the storyline now set up, the follow-on book would be considerably more interesting and loose ends from the first book would be neatly connected. I was very wrong. 'The Ocean of Years' is, if anything, even more long-winded and boring than TDOT. The ending is, if anything, even more unsatisfying and loose ends have expanded geometrically. However -- as much as I hate not finishing all the books in a trilogy -- I won't be purchasing the third book: 'The Shores of Tomorrow'.

Both books (and probably the third as well) should have been massively trimmed and either released all as a single volume or at the most as a duology. The basic concepts are interesting, the universe believable, but there's simply not enough story for the amount of pages being used to tell it.