Vast

Rating:
Summary: Vastly creative
Review: Although nothing on the Bantam pb hints at it, this is a sequel to Deception Well I should have read first (and possibly the Bohr Maker and Tech Heaven, too, for the origins of the technology?). The characters and desperate situation are already fully formed as this escape-by-sentient-spaceship adventure begins, but you have clues and time to reconstruct enough of their history and motivation during the slow chase that begins the story (stretching over years, you'll wish you could enter cold sleep, too). The story is simple: 5 humans of future aspect, perhaps the only ones left, confined to their ship on a fixed trajectory to the enemy's homeland. That said, Nagata presents an amazingly original, ingenious, and convincingly detailed universe. Every so often a stunning revelation really twisted my perspective on the story in astonishing directions. The pursuing Chenzeme are as alien a thing as I've ever read in SF, convincingly different, chemically adaptable, implacable, and ageless machines, or perhaps bio-machines just pursuing sexual congress! The story is full of concentrated invention, a whole new realm of polymentalist humans, versions of self-cloning aptly termed "ghosting," planet creation, and more. What is unsettling about Nagata's talent is how, just as I got my mind around one thrilling new alien concept, it morphs into something further, or still another entirely new idea appears. While the human interactions don't go much beyond "the eternal triangle" as new individuals are created, the intellectual fascination is what kept me reading through the slow parts, to a more exciting if abrupt end as they break out of their confining "core."

Rating:
Summary: Excelent
Review: An excelent nano-tech book with many interesting ideas. I stayed up way too late reading it; I recomend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and Forward-thinking
Review: At first I found it a tough read, with too much "jumpiness" of plot and concept. But it picks up wonderfully a hundred pages in and reads strong to the last. It will be read again!

Rating:
Summary: World-class, take-no-prisoners SF
Review: At one point in this story someone's life is in danger. Usually this would be a major inconvenience, but at this particular moment it's a terrifying risk, because he "doesn't have a backup."

If that sentence makes sense to you, you can probably understand this book. If it doesn't, maybe you can't.

No, this is not an easy book. But if you can follow it, it will take you on a hair-raising and deeply thought-provoking journey across the stars.

The scale is -- mm-hm -- vast, and the characters are fascinating. (They are all various degrees removed from what would presently be considered human -- one has a space-hardened body, for example; one exists only in software.)

Nagata uses many concepts from the farthest edges of contemporary science. The resulting story is way, way out there, but it's still "hard" science fiction, meant to be more or less plausible. There's nothing like fantasy or magic in it.

Vast drops you without preparation into the far, far, far future. There's a lot to learn for a visitor from the 21st century (that's you!). You have to be a fast learner. It helps if you've kept up with recent developments in nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and astrophysics. And it helps if you ENJOY being put into an intellectual "sink or swim" kind of situation. As you may infer, I enjoy it tremendously --

-- with the result that by the end of this book, I don't think there's any other way to describe it, I was in love with the author. An extremely smart, perceptive, and independent woman had shared with me some small part of her soul. So I googled her. She's already married, darn it.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, hard-science SF
Review: Despite its length and despite the fact that VAST is part of a series, I was completely enthralled from beginning to end by this book. I had never read anything by Linda Nagata before and lately I've shied away from thick SF (and fantasy) books, books that are hundreds and hundreds of pages thick because publishers know books hundreds and hundreds of pages thick sell. (That's why nearly all the SF and fantasy bestsellers are overwritten by hundreds of pages.) VAST, however, needed the space to tell its fascinating story. It's a genuinely brilliant novel. VAST is also one of a dying breed: an SF novel in the John W. Campbell tradition. (This book in some ways reminded me of early Van Vogt and E.E. Doc Smith, two of Campbell's greatest writers.) The science is credible, but more credible are the characters who are off on an interstellar mission that's truly mindboggling. You really don't need to read the earlier books in the series. VAST eventually fills you in on what had happened earlier to the characters. Lovely book. I highly recommend VAST to you.

Rating:
Summary: No dramatic tension
Review: I could not really care about any of the characters in this novel as their motivations were so far removed from reality that I could not identify with them. The concept of ghosts managed to destroy any dramatic tension, as any time a character was in danger my reaction was "so what?" If that character were killed they would just generate another version of him or her, so the fact that he or she dies means nothing.

Rating:
Summary: This book caught my attention on the first page
Review: I enjoyed this book very much. This is the kind of book that you want to talk about when you finish it. I am still thinking about the characters and the ideas that Nagata presented. It is an exciting story and I recommend it to anyone who likes high tech science fiction. It is like William Gibson's work without the film noir feel. I just ordered another Nagata book, and I look forward to seeing what else she has in store.

Rating:
Summary: isn't it a series?
Review: I liked what I read in the first 34 pages but realized that there was just too much background info assumed - then it occurred to me that perhaps it was a part of a series - and sure enough one of the earlier books is entitled DECEPTION WELL - so now I have to buy that, read it first, before I can continue with VAST. It may well be able to "stand alone" but for this reader it would have been nice to know before buying that VAST would make a lot more sense if one read the previous novels.

Rating:
Summary: isn't it a series?
Review: I liked what I read in the first 34 pages but realized that there was just too much background info assumed - then it occurred to me that perhaps it was a part of a series - and sure enough one of the earlier books is entitled DECEPTION WELL - so now I have to buy that, read it first, before I can continue with VAST. It may well be able to "stand alone" but for this reader it would have been nice to know before buying that VAST would make a lot more sense if one read the previous novels.

Rating:
Summary: Too far out!
Review: I love 'hard' science fiction. In my view, this book could have been 'harder' but for the fact that it's storyline is set too far into the future for my taste and thus 'fantasy' creeps in. However, it is still a good read, with nanotech portrayed in a very interesting light.