Encounter With Tiber

Rating:
Summary: This will not make your Book Recommendations Contest
Review: Although the technical detail of Buzz Aldrin's novel is refreshingly accurate, it is clear to me that John Barnes has not held to his part of the bargain -- namely, to bring the same level of attention to plot and characterization to the novel as his associate Dr. Aldrin has brought the realities of space flight. The novel samples a range of characters, none of which are treated with enough concentration to make them memorable. Any richness of character is sorely absent. I cared little for the number of faceless astronauts of the novel, but no less so than, evidently, Mr. Barnes. In my view, their collaborative effort is a failure: the novel still reads with the flat ring of Buzz Aldrin, Scientist and Astronaut; Nowhere in it do I see any mark at all of the artist's hand.

Rating:
Summary: My god, how sweet it IS. You gotta read this.
Review: Anybody who gave this book less than four stars should be dragged into the street and shot. The parts that took place on earth involving the two or three generations of astronauts was SO real and SO cool, I wouldn't be surprised if everything happens in reality exactly as they say it does, well, the human part anyway. The humans in this were SO human and the humanity, OH THE HUMANITY! I beg to god that I could be one of those astronauts and do those things, (all except the ones that died of course). I'm lucky, cause I got my copy signed by Buzz Aldrin at Planetfest 97 where they showed the first pictures from Pathfinder live. Anyway, the aliens were cool, and strangely sympathy evoking. Two species, related to each other, one looks like siamese cats, the other like a bunch of Lynx cats. Man, you really gotta read this.

Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting, slow to start
Review: At first I was somewhat disappointed. I saw lots of Aldrin's knowledge, but at times it read like a technical manual. I am quite familiar with many of the technical factoids, but some of the technical explanations were not necessary. As the book progressed, I was more pleased. It developed into a very interesting story, made more interesting by the ring of reality that it conveyed. You get some feel for the vast distances between the stars, and what it will take to travel there.

Rating:
Summary: Great Contact Book, 200 pages too long!
Review: Buzz Adrin is one of the top sci-fi writers today of what I call "realistic near-future space history". Encounter with Tiber combines this type historical yarn with two other highly popular sci-fi genres: the Contact story, where we first meet our interstellar neighbors, and the Ancient Astronaut, a variation of the Contact story, but in the distant past. The story itself was a 10, the characters were well fleshed out, the story at times was riveting and exciting, and Buzz has the knowledge to portray a very believeable future in which fantastic events occur. The bad news is the sheer length of the book, all 631 pages of it. Even that would not detract from a "stellar" book, but Buzz tends to wander into excruciating detailed descriptions of how space technology works in the 21st century, sometimes for tens of pages. It almost appears as if Buzz couldn't make up his mind what he wanted to do: write an exciting Contact story that spans decades, similar to James P. Hogan's "Giant's Star" series, or write a 21st century space tech manual. Bottom line: skim the tech lessons, and you have a superb read on your hands. I look forward to the sequel!

Rating:
Summary: Thick novel of ideas...
Review: Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes wrote the long, but quite thought-provoking science fiction story "Encounter with Tiber". At almost 600 pages, it takes a reader at least a couple of days to trudge through the story, especially the early highly technical parts of the story. Aldrin essentially predicted commerical space travel, and from the news, we may not be far off from the scenerio that Aldrin and Barnes present here. The story is told through five different narrators with three humans at various points in the 2lst Century, and two "Tiberians" who came to Earth(or as they called it Setepos) in ancient times. Basically, the message is that science and space exploration takes time and commitment, but it's worth pursuing. The novel leaves the reader wanting more, as Clio(an astronaut traveling in the late 21st Century) discovers that her journey is just beginning. It leaves room for a sequel, which depending on your attitude towards the story is good or bad. I enjoyed this rich novel, and recommend this for anyone who really wants to know why we should try to go to Mars.

Rating:
Summary: A Believable Story
Review: Contrary to an earlier reviewer, I found the Tiberians to be some of the best thought-out aliens in SF writing. The parallels with our own societies was hard hitting and to the point. While it was a bit dry and technical, this is the first SF novel I've read in a long time where I finished by thinking.."Yes. This could happen."

Rating:
Summary: A Close Encounter of the Familiar Kind
Review: Encounter with Tiber is really two separate stories (I'm not counting the very tenuous Clio Trigorin sections.) Taken as a whole, I'd say it's a worthy effort, not spectacularly bad but with some definite room for improvement. In the Jason Terence subplot, which forms the beginning and most of the end, the science and technology is competently described, and is a very reasonable depiction of some current ideas, eg. spaceplanes, permanent orbiting stations, the commercialisation of space. Where it fails, predictably, is in the human part of the equation, one reason being that we experience a lot of the story second-hand, in the form of Jason's reminiscences. It is difficult, I know, to avoid two-dimensional characterisation in this kind of book, as the personalities will inevitably play second fiddle to the hardware. But it can be done; one example is Voyage by Stephen Baxter (not everyone will agree with me, just read the reviews!) My main moan, however, is reserved for the midsection of the book, a lengthy account of aliens from Alpha Centauri travelling to Earth and struggling to say alive. Creating an alien civilization is a bit of a balancing act. On the one hand, the aliens can't be too alien, as their story would then be incomprehensible; however, the other extreme is to make them more or less the same as humans, and this is the pitfall that our authors have tumbled into. Beneath their Wookiee-like exteriors, the Tiberians (or Nisuans) seem to be human to the core, right down to their dismal politics, race relations and sexual inequalities. It's interesting that an earlier review mentioned cats and dogs. If we left some ordinary domestic cats on an island for several million years and let them evolve into language-using, tool-wielding bipeds, would their thought processes be anything like ours? I don't think so, and yet cats are terrestrial creatures and almost our cousins, viewed from the vast perspective of geological time. As a contrast, I recommend reading The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, for some superbly imagined ETs. My final question is - given the nature of mankind's encounter with the Tiberians, would we really be that eager to meet them again?

Rating:
Summary: Arthur C. Clarke on Steroids
Review: Encounter With Tiber was, simultaneously, a great read and a chore to plow through. The sense of wonder that Aldrin and Barnes conveyed was woven so closely with a physics primer that I found myself alternately wishing for more and less. The short last chapter closed nicely, emphasizing promise and potential. It was a bumpy ride. But worth it

Rating:
Summary: Good science, fair fiction
Review: First off, this book is worth reading. This science is interesting, long, and at times much too simple for even moderately sophisticated readers (as another review noted, do we really need Doppler explained to us?!) The writing at times lacks imagination, and it falls especially short of excitement. The description of the first encounter with Tiberian video transmissions conveyed all the excitement of an average baseball game. Where's the wonder? Where's the existential confusion, the mixed feelings of belonging and fear? Nothing of the like -- just calculations and competition to be the first to crack the code. I wonder if Arthur C Clarke really meant what he said in the prologue. Still, if you can provide your own sense of excitement and wonder, the book is otherwise very rewarding.

Rating:
Summary: So this is what it takes to get to space?
Review: For all the effort at giving us the minutia about how space travel will come to pass, Aldrin and Barnes have to invent spacefaring cats and a series of stupid moves by humans to get us off our earthbound duffs and to the stars. Buzz must be pretty frustrated with the progress of the space program to resort to such plot devices. Ignore the praise from Arthur C. Clarke, he must have been thinking about some other novel...