Rating: 
Summary: A Combination of Mindless Techno-Babble and Mindless Sex
Review: This book starts out with a promising premise, but someone along the road must have decided that it wouldn't sell without graphic sexual content, including child sex and unnecessary intense descriptions of sexual torture and molestation (I felt the author must have been ENJOYing writing about the rape of a little girl). There is even a character whose sole purpose, due to an organization called Indigo, is to have sex with as many women as he possibly can. Admittedly, I didn't read enough to find out why.The characters would have been believable, except that they are all motivated singularly by sex (no WONDER the Earth, in this novel, is overpopulated with 40 billion people). I can't figure out why this isn't marketed as porn. It would have saved me and many others from spending money on it. The book is composed of alternating scenes of scientific babble and sexual escapades. Since it was written by two different men, I had the impression that they took turns at the computer, with one of them writing all the techno-jargon scenes and the other writing all the pointless sex. Don't buy this marketing mistake, unless you're into sci-fi porn (no, seriously).
Rating: 
Summary: Challenging, painful, melancholy, but fascinating
Review: This is a difficult book to like. It does however strive to be what science fiction should be, which is a literature of ideas. As such, it presents an unflinching examination of the darker, complicated aspects of human nature and a profoundly unsympathetic cosmos. I am immediately reminded of the desolate final scenes of H G Wells' The Time Machine or the ruthlessly Darwinian universes of Stephen Baxter's Manifold stories. In this novel, a group of explorers from a crowded solar system coming close to its malthusian limits arrives at the eponymous stellar system. They are part of an exploration fleet searching for potential colony sites that may be the salvation of humanity. They uncover the ancient ruins of an alien civilisation, maybe two civilisations. The solar system is threatened with total collapse whereas these aliens seemed to have kept their civilisation running for billions of years, but then they finally became extinct. Their worlds are ancient, depleted, but what caused them to die is not as simple as it may seem, and may be a warning to humankind. What they learn about these beings seems horrible, but their are strange parallels with their own situation. Barton and Capobianco refuse to draw a sharp line between good and evil. They show the compulsions of hunger and sexuality as being intrinsic to life: they may be good, they may be vicious, but they are inseparable from the process of living. Human characters and aliens ephemerally resurrected through advanced simulations each display some aspect or other of the conflicts of desire, purpose and virtue. To their credit, the authors allow even the apparent villains the qualities of intelligence, sympathy and the need for love, no matter how awful their actions. They argue that even the worst still must be acknowledged as our kin. The point being that one must realise honestly one's animal legacy, but somehow rise above it, and a purely reasonable approach may itself be insuffient. Indeed, as is suggested in the ideology of a shadowy terrorist group called Indigo and in the terminal ennui of a race dubbed the Leospiders, pure reason may lead only to extinction. On the other hand, false religion, shallow pop anthropology and other ideologies are held up only for cruel (and viscerally upsetting) parody. A fault of this novel (if it is a fault as such) would be in the fact that what hope is offered is of a vague and hard to perceive. In fact, the conclusions are left quite open, balanced on a knife edge. The reader is challenged to argue their own case and their own causes for hope. It is a sceptical book, a hard book, but we do see people striving to be better than they might be. If anything, this is a novel not about the promise of a bright future, but the aching desire for hope. Ultimately, they suggest whatever one does and whatever fate results from that, it is due to the exercise of awareness, responsibility and choice. Significantly, the most dangerous character, Mies, is also the most pitiful because he has allowed himself to become the puppet of conditioned reflexes, while the principle viewpoint character is named Kai, a word that we are told means "or", indicating uncertainty and ambiguity. You may find yourself in profound disagreement with the authors, and put off by the frequent and graphic scenes of exploitation and abuse, but it will provoke you into thinking about the questions that they raise.
Rating: 
Summary: Sex Galore, Nothing else!
Review: This is about all I have to say. Young readers(like me) will enjoy this book. If they can get throught those desgusting but interesting parts. I tried to read it to one of my freinds 13 and he treid to make me shut up as I read the ritual part. I pitty Genny.
Rating: 
Summary: Compolicated and boring
Review: This is an "Extremely" challenging book, a little sci-fi a little sexual fantasy. Containing many high vocabulary and self-created words. Reading the first half of the book took an effort, nevertheless once the twist and turns come together the story reveals itself. Reading the first part of this book could possibly be the most boring thing I've done, the story was taken out of order then mixed up. To understand and to be able to start enjoying this book I had to get threw at least the first hundred pages.
The story Alpha Centauri moves very slow, therefore you will encounter lots of boring and meaningless parts. This story focuses mainly on teamwork, emotions and most of all sex, which over time could get old and extremely boring, with little changes in plot and style. Also the author often skips off the middle of a topic and moves to a totally unrelated subject.
If you are looking for a sci-fi with lots of confusing parts and twist in the story, and you are a hardcore reader with high vocabulary, who is willing to spend months to read a book, Alpha Centauri could very possibly be your book. Other wise don't waste your time trying to read it, go find something more meaningful to spend time on.
Rating:
Summary: Distasteful and horrible
Review: This is not a completely fair review since I didn't get past page 50 (and I got this far only because I was in a carwash and had nothing better to do). However, these 50 pages were enough to convince me that this book is waste of good paper and belongs in the trash can. This is not a SF book, it belongs in the porn section. There is nothing but sex in this book, unjustified and sickening. I don't care what point the authors were trying to make (and I have read the other reviews so I see the point), there is simply no justification for descriptions so horrible. I am sure the authors could have chosen another way of proving their point. Avoid this book at all costs.
Rating:
Summary: Nifty scientific extrapolation, but...
Review: This is not a novel to be devoured on a summer day at the beach or by anyone without at least a layman's interest in theoretical physics, stellar cartography, or geology. In addition, if you're put off by extreme sexual situations including rape, incest, and child abuse, don't go here. This is a very, very bleak novel with very complex, emotionally-damaged characters. Not to say that the subject matter isn't relevant to the plot, because it is - to a point. Alpha Centauri contains some of the most brilliant extrapolations in the area of theoretical physics, genetic engineering, and nanotech phages that I've read. The very idea of the Synchronoptic Analysis Engine is so, well, out there, that at first you'll want to wave it off as another magical Star Trek construct... until and unless you take the time to really understand how it works. Mies Cochrane's human-induced multiple personality disorder, along with his cargo of sterilizing sperm is brilliant, once you wade through the psychobabble that accompanies his character's interior monologue. The authors' portrait of a dead solar system, complete with extinct races, is excellently done. Barton and Copobianco definitely know their stuff when it comes to science. They may also know their stuff when it comes to shocking the reader with explicit sex acts, but the sexual antics of the crew are so often revisited that one begins to scan through them, looking for something more palatable. There is also a tendency for the authors to fall into a stylistically challenging stream-of-consciousness narrative style that leaves the reader wondering who is doing the thinking, and what they're thinking about. This is a philosophical SF piece, to be sure. There are some great ideas in these pages, if you can punch your way through some very confusing passages on the nature of humanity - a nature, Barton and Copobianco remind us, that might cry out for extinction. Extremely bleak, low-key stuff.
Rating:
Summary: what has sci-fi become???
Review: When I bought this book, I was looking for something interesting to read, since I enjoy sci-fi books with passion. I went to my nearest market and looked for the most interesting title I could find. So I bought Alpha Centauri, and regreted it. Since I started to read this book, I found myself submerged in a very unorganized and many times boring story. The manipulation of sex and its explicit detail grew more and more until it was unbearable. I decided to close this book, never to open it again. If I wanted to read a sex book, I would've picked up a love novel widely sold on supermarkets. I'm very sad bout the intentions of the authors of getting our attention by means of sexual overload, sci-fi is not that, it is pure what may-be science. When I compare this book with the one by Dale Brown, "Silver Tower", Alpha Centauri seems as a cheap, vaguely tought novel.In all of my life, this is the only book I have never finished, and I have read some bad literature.
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