Rating: 
Summary: Eater: Been there done that.
Review: Had this novel been the first of Benford's which I'd read, I admit I'd be pretty impressed. But knowing the works of which Benford is capable, this novel was quite a disappointment. Readers who are impressed by his examination of the scientific process may wish to look at his previous novel, Cosm, which was essentially the same thing. This novel contained two-dimensional characters, whose main duty seemed to be spewing out tiny little jokes about science and bureaucracy. Rather than coming up with an original work, Benford seems to have rehashed many of his previous novels: the probe approaching Earth in In the Ocean of Night, the examination of the possible nature of black holes in the final two novels of the Galactic Centre Cycle, the look at scientific methods and bureaucracy in Cosm--even the line, "The thing about aliens is, they're alien," had been done to death in his six-book Cycle, and was repeated here ad nauseum. From a writer of Benford's intelligence and talent, I expected much more originality and depth. This is his first work in which I was disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Sit back and enjoy
Review: I don't care what others say. I simply enjoyed this book. A real page turner. Don't miss this one!
Rating:
Summary: Damn....Benford just gets better
Review: I first started reading Benford in his collaboration with David Brin in Heart of the Comet. That book blew my mind.This one continued the process of my own mental big bang. Benford, a brilliant physicist, continues to excel at created new and realistic views of science. In Eater, he brings a brilliant view of allies and enemies, progressions in alien viewpoints and human perspectives. Keep up the great work, Gregory...oh, and while I'm at it....can I request a sequel to Heart of the Comet?
Rating:
Summary: It's a modern re-write of Hoyle's "The Black Cloud"
Review: I realised after the first few chapters that many aspects of "Eater" are directly 'borrowed' from Fred Hoyle's classic "The Black Cloud" which was published in the 1950's. e.g. 1) Strange astronomical artifact discovered to be space beast; 2) British astronomer royal named 'Kingsley' leads team; 3) Subterfuge used to recruit members of scientific team; 4) Key character killed at end by action of space beast; 5) Unsuccessful missile attack on the space beast; 6) Others that would give the end away... The coincidences are so close that they cannot be accidental. "Eater" differs by making the creature hostile, but I preferred Hoyle's ending, even though (because?) it was philosophy rather than star-wars. One week after I read "Eater", Fred Hoyle died...Hmmmm...
Rating: 
Summary: Sci Fi has done better
Review: I would rather be sent directly into the eater itself, than get stuck reading this book again. It started off promising and I thought that it might turn out to be a good read. However, the only character that had any depth, was the cancer-stricken channing. The rest of the cast was nothing short of bad comic book characters and their use of scientific jargon made the book downright baffling. To top of the bad use of prose and horribly underdeveloped characters, the conclusion to the story was downright terrible. The human race outwits an age old higher intelligence in the form of a black hole? I think not
Rating:
Summary: Benford can do much better than this
Review: I've enjoyed a lot of Benford's stuff in the past (especially his "Galactic Center" series), but I couldn't get more than halfway into this one, about an intelligent mini-black hole entering the solar system and observing/threatening Earth. Some of the astronomy is interesting, but I'm not a scientist and Benford allows too many *very* specialized techy things to go by without elucidation. He somewhat reminds me here of an updated Fred Hoyle (not a compliment).
Rating:
Summary: Is it about science, is it about government?
Review: It seems that Gregory Benford can't make up his mind. Once the science part was just about over and the government part really started I gave up on Eater. If astronomers are really like what is described here I'm glad I went into geology. The characters seemed to take on what ever characteristic necessary for a particular scene. I never bacame familiar with the characters, it seemed that any one of them could be speaking any part of dialogue. After a while it seemed that Benford changed the plot just to keep ahead of the reader. I never knew what was going to happen, in a bad sense. I did find the scientific discovery part interesting so I'll give Cosm a try.
Rating:
Summary: Yum!
Review: Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting my time reading science fiction just for the pure joy of a good story. Bedford fixes this anxiety just fine by giving me a good entry course in plasma physics at the same time he feeds my story jones. Thanks!
Rating:
Summary: Sci Fi has done better
Review: Space is pretty big, so it stands to reason that intelligent life must exist somewhere Out There. Most authors who write of non-human life tend to think anthropomorphically and make the aliens look and think sort of the way that we do. Other authors have the vision to make their aliens not solid in the sense that humans are. Gregory Benford, in EATER, has chosen to make his alien an intelligent black hole that has designs on uploading the intelligence of selected members of the human race. Now there is nothing inherently unbelievable with giving an alien intelligence that has no fleshly container. Fred Hoyle in THE BLACK CLOUD posited much the same,but in Hoyle's case, the cloud was given a credible existence and motivation. Benford's thinking black hole may be reasoning, but it can't be too smart as it allows a very new species, human beings, to outwit a creature that had been gobbling up innumerable species for their brains for billions of years.
Part of the problem in maintaining the reader's interest is nothing more prosaic than Benford's irritating prose style. He often spends page after page describing an event in such convoluted stream of consciousness that the reader has difficulty understanding even on a basic level what is happening. Benford likes to pepper his pages with inside jokes and witticisms that I feel sure he sees necessary as a tension breaker. Had the tension been truly palpable, then the occasional witty remark could be justified. As for the Eater itself, Benford presents it as one who is so godlike in its omnipotence that it deigns to speak in the psuedo-literary gibberish style that is learned from eavesdropping on Earth's radio transmissions. I would think that a creature with an near infinite ability to process data would be able to reply in a style that did not stamp it as a faulty computer run amuck. I had a problem with how the creature was confronted. The hero, Kingsley Dart, soon realizes that if the Eater cannot be destroyed conventionally using nuclear devices, then maybe an electrowave pulse beam shot at its metaphorical heart, the event horizon, just might short circuit it. And of course, he is right, and humanity lives to see another day.
Ultimately, this book fails to engage the reader in that the author tries too hard to show off his vast knowledge of things astronomical but does not allow for a multi-billion year old mind to anticipate that a lowly species like humanity could turn the creature's greatest strength against it, proving yet again that pulling victory out of a magician's hat at the last moment did not work for the ancient Greeks nor does it work in the here and now.
Rating:
Summary: Eater: Once Again Humanity Defeats A God
Review: Space is pretty big, so it stands to reason that intelligent life must exist somewhere Out There. Most authors who write of non-human life tend to think anthropomorphically and make the aliens look and think sort of the way that we do. Other authors have the vision to make their aliens not solid in the sense that humans are. Gregory Benford, in EATER, has chosen to make his alien an intelligent black hole that has designs on uploading the intelligence of selected members of the human race. Now there is nothing inherently unbelievable with giving an alien intelligence that has no fleshly container. Fred Hoyle in THE BLACK CLOUD posited much the same,but in Hoyle's case, the cloud was given a credible existence and motivation. Benford's thinking black hole may be reasoning, but it can't be too smart as it allows a very new species, human beings, to outwit a creature that had been gobbling up innumerable species for their brains for billions of years.
Part of the problem in maintaining the reader's interest is nothing more prosaic than Benford's irritating prose style. He often spends page after page describing an event in such convoluted stream of consciousness that the reader has difficulty understanding even on a basic level what is happening. Benford likes to pepper his pages with inside jokes and witticisms that I feel sure he sees necessary as a tension breaker. Had the tension been truly palpable, then the occasional witty remark could be justified. As for the Eater itself, Benford presents it as one who is so godlike in its omnipotence that it deigns to speak in the psuedo-literary gibberish style that is learned from eavesdropping on Earth's radio transmissions. I would think that a creature with an near infinite ability to process data would be able to reply in a style that did not stamp it as a faulty computer run amuck. I had a problem with how the creature was confronted. The hero, Kingsley Dart, soon realizes that if the Eater cannot be destroyed conventionally using nuclear devices, then maybe an electrowave pulse beam shot at its metaphorical heart, the event horizon, just might short circuit it. And of course, he is right, and humanity lives to see another day.
Ultimately, this book fails to engage the reader in that the author tries too hard to show off his vast knowledge of things astronomical but does not allow for a multi-billion year old mind to anticipate that a lowly species like humanity could turn the creature's greatest strength against it, proving yet again that pulling victory out of a magician's hat at the last moment did not work for the ancient Greeks nor does it work in the here and now.
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