Transmigration of Souls

Rating:
Summary: "White Light" like, strong start/middle, confused ending
Review: Barton's tales are a different read. Good, hard sci-fi but always with a central thread of sexual obsession. I liked this book and "Acts of Conscience" almost despite the prevalent thread. Subtitled Americans tour the multiverse in search of God or fleeing from him. Similar themes to Simmon's Hyperion series but a whole different view.

Rating:
Summary: Hard Sci-Fi with a religious philosophical bent
Review: Barton's tales are a different read. Good, hard sci-fi but always with a central thread of sexual obsession. I liked this book and "Acts of Conscience" almost despite the prevalent thread. Subtitled Americans tour the multiverse in search of God or fleeing from him. Similar themes to Simmon's Hyperion series but a whole different view.

Rating:
Summary: Hard Sci-Fi with a religious philosophical bent
Review: Barton's tales are a different read. Good, hard sci-fi but always with a central thread of sexual obsession. I liked this book and "Acts of Conscience" almost despite the prevalent thread. Subtitled Americans tour the multiverse in search of God or fleeing from him. Similar themes to Simmon's Hyperion series but a whole different view.

Rating:
Summary: Very complex! Worth a second read.
Review: Several years from now, a joint US and Russian team discover something on the moon, something that leads to greater advances in technology than anything ever before. However, shortly after the discovery, both groups pull out, hiding themselves in their respective countries, without a word of explanation. Decades later, other governments, seek to discover the secrets that could frighten the two greatest powers on the world. The Americans send a force to prevent this, and the two groups unfortunately find out that somethings are better left undisturbed. What follows is a Panuniversal traveling adventure, as they discover more about their universe than they, or anyone else, ever hoped to know. And gain a glimpse of What may be God, or the Devil. If you like Barton's stuff, I sincerly suggest you take a look at the works of Robert A Heinlein. He works with similar ideas, but does them in a lighter approach which should appeal to most people.

Rating:
Summary: "White Light" like, strong start/middle, confused ending
Review: This was the first book by Barton I ever read. Albeit some of the ideas (stargates etc...) are quite worn out by now, they are intricately rendered. Interesting depiction of a background US isolated from the rest of the decaying world, employing alien technology to create a nation of immortal but infantile shapechangers. Also interesting theme of the Universe as something of a software toolkit. I found the start and middle of this "stargate"-like story actually very good, but found the end a huge letdown. It then starts to borrow to much there from Heinlein and other "classicals" to remain original, and gets entangled to much into absurd many-world quantum theoretical stuff (which the author seems to like - a little to much, for my taste). At least the "SF author becomes god" part is somewhat funny... Overall, this story is very very similar in theme, structure, setup, ideas and execution to "White Light" from the same author, albeit not so extremely entangled in sex as that story. I'd judge "Transmigration" the better story, overall, with more "involvement" in the story than e.g "Alpha Centauri". Albeit its not as good as "Acts of Conscience" or the excellent "When We Were Real" by far, I'd still judge it as recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Internalized literary scie-fi - a must read
Review: William Barton, author of what is beginning to be a significant corpus of literary science fiction, does it, again, here. I don't mean literary in the classic sence, though. Barton excells at referencing the sci-fi literature. He alludes to the great works of the genre for purpose. Too bad, I think, that many readers of the genre are not noticing it. This is a writer with great potential. In the present work, among his best, Americans have uncovered an alien technology hidden on the moon and have used it to makethemselves rather god-like. But these are gods afraid of the return of the REAL gods. At heart a quest work like Simmons "Endymion" or, even, "Gilgamesh," Barton's work glows with a knowledge of the genre and the will to pull the past into the present. One of the best (and least appreciated) writers around.