Rating: 
Summary: READ THIS BOOK.....NOW!
Review: If your a true fan of the SF genre, this book is a must read. Niven and Barnes in collaboration produce stories and characters that exceed their individual talents. The story is a mystery where the lead characters must discover the identity of a genocidal monster to save their lives, while running from the effects of the villeins plan. It is set in the near future. The authors paint a highly believable picture of the course of current technology and its effects on world order. This book compares very well with "Dreampark", another Niven, Barnes collaboration.
Rating:
Summary: Thrilling science fiction
Review: In 2020, planet earth is run by international business cartels so an individual's options can be limited. Chaz Kato offers recent recipient of a Masters from UCLA, Lenore Myles a position at Xanadu, a man-made island fortress 800 miles to the west of her college. To entice her, Chaz provides her with his security codes that enable her to check into the island's amazing technology. However, Lenore learns of a conspiracy to sterilize the weak and pathetic masses. Afraid of everyone, especially her gracious host, Lenore flees paradise. The enigmatic Saturn realizes that Lenore has broken into the top secrets of Xanadu. He sets in motion a plan to eradicate the one person who expose the class cleansing plan with Chaz her only hope for survival, that is assuming he is not working for Saturn. The Niven-Barnes team may be the best collaboration of writers in the last decade or two. Everything this dynamic duo paints is classy, thrilling science fiction as few authors can write. The latest triumphant dynamo, SATURN'S RACE, is a combination of future technology, a major social issue, and a espionage-mystery thriller blended into a superb tale that will attain top three status on everyone's end of the year list.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Niven's Best Work
Review: Lenore Myles is in the Xanadu floating habitat to celebrate her recent graduation from UCLA. She hopes to go on to a brilliant career. Instead, she stumbles upon a bit of information that changes her life. Sounds like a promising beginning for a story. Unfortunately, SATURN'S RACE fizzles somewhere along the line. Lenore gets part of her memory erased (including the crucial bit of info), which has a seriously negative effect on her life. She embarks on a quest to find out what happened to her and to get her mind back, but in the process she increasingly becomes a sideline in this story while the focus shifts to Chaz Kato, a man Lenore became involved with while on Xanadu. SATURN'S RACE is often fast-paced and it raises some very relevant issues about man's future on Earth. Unfortunately, like Lenore, the story seems to get lost in its own shifting focus. It raises issues, but never provides any satisfactory resolution. Characters that seem important at one point become unimportant, and vice versa. In the end, it all bogs down in its own confusion and cliches. I've read a lot of books either authored or co-authored by Larry Niven. Some were very good and among my favorites in the scifi genre. SATURN'S RACE, however, is not one of them. It is, in my opinion, mediocre. Does that mean it went over my head, as someone has suggested? No. Under my head, perhaps, but I think it's possible to "get" this book and still be underwhelmed by it. For me, it went briskly but I had had more than enough by the time I finished it. Ultimately, I don't read scifi to get other people's thoughts on the human condition. I read scifi for entertainment. SATURN'S RACE wasn't overly entertaining.
Rating: 
Summary: Not For Niven Fans
Review: Perhaps this is a decent cyber-punk SF novel. I wouldn't know because these reviews mark the first time I've ever heard the term cyber-punk. But I do know that as a long-time Larry Niven fan, this is the worst book by him that I've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: IRRATIONAL RACE
Review: SATURN'S RACE was an ambitious project'stitching together themes of human-fish brain augmentation, the ticking population bomb, manipulating fertility, stem cell therapy, AI, rationing the secret of longevity and other battles between the haves and have nots. All in all, a very dystopian, rationality run amuck, future for our fair world. . With talking squarks and scaliens (talking fish) the omniscient point of view must have been necessary but it made for a bumpy ride as the reader spent 15 seconds in one speaker's head and a minute in the next'a bit like sliding down the portal in the movie, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. The reader never knew whose head he would be in next or how long the visit would last. Some of the story's unevenness and bumpy ride may have been due to the long distant collaboration between Niven and Barnes. I kept wondering which author I was reading. I failed to grasp the motivation of many characters'especially the amorphous Minsky/Saturn. What would possess a man to turn himself into an aquatic alien creature in order to open the option of ruling the world. I saw many of the characters as dancing marionettes being jerked by wireless strings. Complexity of personality was talked about but the antagonist, Minsky/Saturn, took on a comic book character. Whenever a hole in the plot appeared a new character would be plugged in to fill it. Chaz,the protagonist, extricated himself from problems by jacking into video war games using an interface plug installed in his own brain. It was almost as if an AI computer program had plotted the story.
Rating:
Summary: IRRATIONAL RACE
Review: SATURN�S RACE was an ambitious project�stitching together themes of human-fish brain augmentation, the ticking population bomb, manipulating fertility, stem cell therapy, AI, rationing the secret of longevity and other battles between the haves and have nots. All in all, a very dystopian, rationality run amuck, future for our fair world. . With talking squarks and scaliens (talking fish) the omniscient point of view must have been necessary but it made for a bumpy ride as the reader spent 15 seconds in one speaker�s head and a minute in the next�a bit like sliding down the portal in the movie, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. The reader never knew whose head he would be in next or how long the visit would last. Some of the story�s unevenness and bumpy ride may have been due to the long distant collaboration between Niven and Barnes. I kept wondering which author I was reading. I failed to grasp the motivation of many characters�especially the amorphous Minsky/Saturn. What would possess a man to turn himself into an aquatic alien creature in order to open the option of ruling the world. I saw many of the characters as dancing marionettes being jerked by wireless strings. Complexity of personality was talked about but the antagonist, Minsky/Saturn, took on a comic book character. Whenever a hole in the plot appeared a new character would be plugged in to fill it. Chaz,the protagonist, extricated himself from problems by jacking into video war games using an interface plug installed in his own brain. It was almost as if an AI computer program had plotted the story.
Rating:
Summary: Boldly moving into the future...
Review: Six years ago, I had the opportunity to read an excellent bookby Marshall Savage called "The Millennial Project : Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps." It dealt with a hands on approach at mankind's future, including floating cities using OTEC energy sources, seacrete construction, algae farming and much, much more. It is wonderful to see that others have embraced this vision of the near future that is supported by the Living Universe Foundation ...and in fact turned it into the backdrop for this energetically entertaining novel. Larry Niven and Steven Barnes have done a fine job incorporating a first rate mystery into a tale of human frailty and scientific possibilities. They work with dry humor and a level of intelligence that is both accessible and stimulating. A fine tale that keeps you guessing right up to the last few pages. Most Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't be put off by the cover, it's a good read
Review: So, the cover art shows two sharks with hands swimming past an underwater installation. You'd think it was some sort of b-movie style moster story. You'd be wrong. Instead we've been given one of the best books with Larry's name on it in recents months. This isn't a gimmick story like Rainbow Mars or Burning City. This is a nicely plotted story with lots of interesting concepts. The story centers around biological-computer interfaces, tied in to philosophical discusion centering around third-world birth rates and life expectancy. And we've got some great character development, including some pretty good love scenes (which fade to black before getting too graphic). Definitely a recommended read.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but empty in the center
Review: The book is very well written and poses the marching morons thesis along with the population explosion/limits to growth problem. It also provides a solution that the bad guy(s) execute. But, in the midst of defeating the bad guy, who is such an obviously grotesque comic-book villian, the book forgets to actually make any argumenta at all against either the thesis or the solution provided. Nor does it suggest any alternatives. If it had, it would have been 5 stars. But it doesn't, which leaves this reader thinking - Why not do it that way? Better than thermonuclear war, don't you think? Better than mass casualties from sophisticated biological war, no? Or do the authors prefer those two options with corpses rotting in the streets? Better than drowning our cities from global warming, eh? We are facing massive casualties whichever way you cut it, may as well be as nice as possible. So what IS wrong with the Kali Option? Fact is, fellow earth-dwellers, we really are faced with exactly such a crisis. We are watching the world hit the wall right now, and we will see a massive denouement that will make the plot of "Saturn's Race" look sweet. So how can the authors argue against such a merciful course without bloodshed, in order to blunder on into a future where far worse horrors beyond imagining loom? What sort of peacock drivel-tripe philosophy is that? This insipid generation taking control of the world just now should have started to grasp how incredibly quickly the world can spiral into war. All it takes is a few thousand people killed in the right provocation, and kaboom - it's on. This is especially true when the generations have no experience of what real war is like, only blap from TV announced by the likes of Geraldo. The world is a tinder-box sitting next to a powderkeg, just waiting for the right spark to really blow sky-high. The primary drivers are want, overpopulation, greed, religion and insipid naivete. We will have this crash, and well over a billion are almost certain to die of it. A billion these days scarcely scratches the surface. A billion people, as described in the book, just creates about 20 years of elbow room is all. Hardly worth sneezing for in planetary terms. Big deal. All replaced in a few years. A book like this that begs the question of what is wrong with the "Kali Option" turns itself into one more insipid little entertainment while flirting with asking real, hard questions. But the questions remain, and the solutions are all ugly as sin. That's the reality of the world we live in when you put down this book.
Rating:
Summary: In this future, we are all politically correct Californians
Review: The comment about being a profound disapoointment, rang true for me too. There is no inspiration here; just alot of formulaic pc ideas that have no life, no depth, no breadth to them; they are never fleshed out, just a string of descriptives: Capuccino, PC, the Kaypro, The Osborne, MAC lives! O comeon, there's more to sci-fi than reading PC Week.
Alot of reading this book is like going to Fry's Electronics in Sunnyvale & not FINDING the diy computer kits; just the brand name pre-assembled off-the-shelf pcs & wondering why everyone is talking about this place; as a Niven (and Fry Electronics :-) fan I felt as though I had been rooked; it was incredibly boring and drawn out to get ....where?
I honestly could not recommend this book that takes 10 chapters to get to some kind of plot & then jumps someplace before you totally understand what's happening.
Buy it used if you must; read it at your own peril.
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