Artifact

Rating:
Summary: Don't Bother With This Confusing Attempt At Sci-Fci Romance
Review: "Artifact" is an unsuccessful, confusing attempt to blend a mystery, politico, thriller into a science fiction genre. Benford's great talent for science fiction writing apparently loses this skill when attempting to write a romantic, adventure story and only periodically impresses its readers with an science fiction angle. Ironically some of his best moments come in the epilogue and technical remarks at the end of the novel which would have been much more successful incorporated into the text of the novel. His characters are no better than cheap imitations of romance novels and the lack of a consistent building of physics as well as balanced archeological investigation of this mysterious artifact soon leaves the reader bored. There are a number of frustrating plot designs that are too pedestrian such as the airport escape and the obvious lack of intelligence at providing security for the artifact. The novel shares the same lack of interest as the characte! rs themselves when they go about their daily lives even when they are in the possession of this important archeological and physics find. In sum, this novel doesn't sustain much interest and actually descends below the quality of a number of romance novels. One would be better off reading Frank DeFelitta's "Golgotha Falls" (1984), a novel about a suspenseful scientific investigation of an abandoned church gone awry along with some fascinating political involvement at the highest levels of religion.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful premises let down by poor scripting
Review: An ancient artefact containing ... what (I won't spoil the joy for readers)? The story began with a tantalising pre-historic sequence of how the artefact was buried with an ancient king but then left the readers with no further 'retrospective' of how the artefact was used (or otherwise ravaged) the ancient world. Cut to the present, the reader is then confronted with huge chunks of irrelevant rivalry amongst academic-types, including a Greek archaeologist unfortunately miscast in an MCP role. All very well but handled badly and detracting seriously from the implications of the Artefact on human history. A wonderful premise by a brilliant author, but needs to be reworked drastically.

Rating:
Summary: You need a physics degree to follow this one
Review: And I don't have that degree. Fortunately I do have advanced math and some engineering physics under my metaphorical belt, otherwise I would've been completely lost when reading this book. As it was I was only lost about half of the time.

All the elements of a good story are here, a mystery, interesting characters and conflict, but the author just doesn't seem to know how to pull it all together successfully. For every step the plot or character development advances, you're slapped with a load of technobabble. A little science is good, too much and you're writing a technical manual, not a sci-fi novel.

I really was intrigued by this mysterious artifact and what it ended up containing, and by the character conflicts, but overall it was just impossible to focus on any of that when trying to wade through yet *another* round of math/chemistry/physics lectures.

Give this one a miss, unless of course reading textbooks is your idea of a good time.

Rating:
Summary: Far, far from his best . . .
Review: Benford can be infuriatingly inconsistent in the style and quality of his writing, but the occasional winner keeps me reading his stuff. This one is a combination of speculative particle physics (pretty good), Mycenaean archaeology (acceptable), and neo-fascist Greek machismo politics (mediocre). Claire the archaeologist and John the mathematician are both reasonably well-drawn, but the character of Kontos, the Greek archaeologist-com-colonel, is grotesquely overdone. Unlike most adventure novels, the latter part of the book is actually better written than the early part.

Rating:
Summary: Have a Physics Text Handy!
Review: Benford grabs you early with interesting characters, a mesmerizing premise, and international intrigue. The story opens invitingly, drawing you in with its gravitational pull, luring you to the anticipated finish, and then....it reminds you of all the stuff you didn't learn in physics class. Benford weaves a fascinating tale in layman's terms for about 80 percent of the story, then resorts to Einsteinian (at least to those of us who are not scientists) concepts to finish the story. A good advanture, but you'll need a Cliff's notes of your college physics text by your side as the plot collapses under its science-heavy gravitational force. With some less lofty language, this book could avoid being a neutron "bomb."

Rating:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: Benford is a solid writer, and i ahve enjoyed many of his novels (including Timescape, which I recommend highly) but this is a slow-moving novel with stock (and not very interesting) characters. The science-fiction aspects of the novel are VERY interesting, but without a solid plot anc charcters to back them up, it all falls apart. A major disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: Benford Meets Ancient Crete
Review: Gregory Benford's _Artifact_ is an intriguing sci'fi novel involving a mysterious radioactive ancient object discovered in the Greek Archipelago. His essays into scientific detail can be tedious at times, but the central adventure, romance, and scientific mystery are excellent and absorbing. Too bad it has been unavailable for years! I recommend it to any borderline sci-fi reader who has an interest in ancient history.

Rating:
Summary: Hard (to read) SF
Review: Hard sf is not one of my favorite genres but the backcover looked promising. Unfortunately this novel did not deliver. It is an interesting premise---a black hole or "singularity" existing in the bowels of a Greek tomb. While readable and scientifically sound, however, Benford's story is bogged down by an amazingly imperialist and racist ethos. Greeks, we read, are not capable of caring for their own national treasures. Thus an American heroine steals one of them and is never brought to justice. Instead Benford congratulates her for doing the right thing. The Greeks, after all, he describes as "oily"---and worse they are Marxists. What's especially amusing is that despite Benford's distaste for the humanities he himself is unable to negotiate its finer points---like the difference between Spanish and Italian. One of the physicist characters, an Italian, is prone to spats of broken English dialect, laced with homecountry ejaculations. At one point, the Italian says, "Comprende?" Of course, an Italian would say, "Capisce?" since it is, after all Italian and not Spanish like the former word. But these nitpickings aside, the Cold War politics of the novel are disturbing in their relentless disregard for the rights of indigenous people and their legitimate grievances against the imperialist powers that have systematically exploited them and appropriated enough loot to fill a continent's worth of art galleries. Hopefully Benford's racist attitude toward Greeks and other countries that America has plundered will itself become the true artifact.

Rating:
Summary: A new edition
Review: I appreciate all comments; I am a full time working scientist and so don't get the usual readerly feedback since I do few signings etc. Also, I cut anachronisms and small details from this reissue, so it's a new edition, technically. Had to get rid of the Soviet Union, thank God! ARTIFACT was my attempt to incorporate one of my hobbies, archeology, and is modeled on a real incident in Greek archeology of about 15 years ago...with embellishments, of course!

Rating:
Summary: [Weak]
Review: I found the science vaguely interesting (particle erotique); but the main premise of an adventure -- which this novel pretends to be -- is likeable characters; and it is here that the book fails. Also: the Greece of the novel is cartoonish; it feels like a bad Latin-American country in a Hollywood movie. Finally: the heroine's Bostonian mother must have been some ingenuous Baroque music buff to listen to a piece for harpsichord by Vivaldi (of all the composers)... While I understand that a sci-fi writer doesn't need to show superior sensitivity and taste, I hate it when a writer of sorts tries to fool the reader. Just stick to your Einstein, Mr. Benford.