Rating: 
Summary: A good time
Review: 'Light' on the science and heavy on fiction but fun to read and that the most important part.
Rating: 
Summary: Enchanting!
Review: Easily one of the most enchanting, touching, books I have read in a long time. Do yourself a favor: just read the first few pages. You'll be immediately hooked!
Rating:
Summary: Immortality: Gift? Or Curse?
Review: Maybe it's because I'm an old f**t, but I think a lot of reviewers have missed a key theme of this book.I'll quickly mention points made by others before I center in on the immortality & "meaning of life" themes I've found here. First, this is hard science fiction, but if like me you're no scientist, there is a way to read it and get the gist of the science without getting hopelessly confused. Secondly, while the second half of the book is more serious with bad things happening, there's a playful perspective to the entire book that can be compared to fairy tales, or to "Tom Swift" solutions, or to glorious "pulp" science-fiction of the '30's and '40's. This might put off some readers and charm others. However you react to the hard science and/or the allusions to
more faniful genres, don't overlook what is being said about immortality. The novel's protagonist and antagonist are both among the first to embark into immortal life and are reacting to such a life's implications. As if immortality isn't enough to deal with, there's also the faxing of people creating copies of individuals who have the memories and personalities of the originals but go into divergent paths. The principal character, after a long period of being the Queen's "Philander", has become a hermit buried in endless scientific research which will hopefully enable him to see the end of time. His opposite number, also for a time the Queen's "Philander", has a similar goal, but due to his immortality has become what could be thought of as a souless entity, with little regard for humanity. We're also given glimpses at other characters, each of whom attempt to deal with the prospect of immortality and the challenge to make unending life meaningful. The question of God, of religion, or of lack of either is also looked at. In fact, it seems to me that contemporary science-fiction as a whole is giving religion and its impact on society much more consideration than it once did. Either that, or I'm noticing it more. At any rate, if you bear in mind that this book does have a serious philosophical theme along with the "technobabble" and is framed in a pulpish, Tom Swiftian, fairy-tale like mold, you should find it well worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: A Long Time to Mature
Review: The Collapsium is a novel of the intermediate future. Many years from now, at least a century and probably more, mankind has machines that can build anything from a pattern, including the human body. Moreover, these facsimile (or fax) machines can be connected to transmitters and receivers to send one or more copies of someone's body pattern to other locations on the planets or in space and then to merge the copies back to a single individual. All illness, injuries, and aging are filtered out of the body pattern during transmission, thereby ensuring effective immorbidity and extreme longevity for everyone. Now that everyone is planning on living forever and has all the wealth that they can possibly use, mankind has become tired of democracy and individual responsibility, so they have created the Queendom of Sol. Fortunately, one royal personage remains after all the years of slaughtering monarchs to obtain liberty: Princess Tamatra Litui of the tiny kingdom of Tonga. Without asking her opinion on the matter, mankind has elected her Queen of Sol with an overwhelming majority and has carefully ensured that she has responsibilities, obligations and moral authority, but no real power. Furthermore, mankind has decided that she should be the Virgin Queen, but her first official act as Queen was to Censure all involved in forcing the position upon her, then her second act was to ensure that her virginity would be renewed as needed, and her third act was to call for suitors. In this novel, Bruno de Towaji is a Declarant-Philander; that is, he has been granted the highest honor in the Kingdom for his construction of the Iscog (Inner-System Collapsiter Grid) linking the inner planets and he has been further honored as one of the Queen's consorts. He is also unbelievably rich from his royalties from Iscog; for example, he donates a hundred trillion dollars to the Venus terraforming effort. Bruno has spent the last eleven years alone on his tiny world with its miniature mountains, low-flying clouds, and neubles to provide gravity. He is attempting to build an Arc de Fin, to see the light at the end of the universe. However, trouble comes knocking in the form of the Queen herself. While Bruno has been away, Declarant-Philander Marlon Sykes has started a giant project to build a bypass collapsiter ring around Sol to speed messages and matter patterns through the inner-system. However, a solar flare has knocked many grapple stations offline and the incomplete ring is dropping inward. Although Marlon and others have tried everything that they can conceive to slow or reverse the fall, nothing has worked and they are running out of time. Tamra asks that Bruno come to assist in the recovery and he agrees. In this novel, Bruno and Marlon are understandably uneasy around each other. Both are Declarants, an elite group of only twenty-nine persons in the entire history of the Queendom. Moreover, they are both former consorts of the Queen and both are still deeply enamored with her, although she is partial to Bruno. Nevertheless, they are both genius-level scientists, far superior to any other person in the Queendom, and neither has any other peers, so they can only really talk shop with each other. Bruno has problems fitting into Queendom society, yet the public seems to lionize him. He keeps making faux pas in conversation and behavior, but the people forgive him. He can't understand what they want from him and it deeply embarrasses him that he doesn't know how to meet their expectations. Moreover, they cut into his think time, so he goes off to his little world and works. This story is mostly about the maturation of Bruno. Although he is continually being asked to solve complicated problems, they present no real difficulties, at least not as much as his relationships with Tamra and others whom he meets and likes. This story is also full of wonders, scientific and technological marvels based on bleeding edge speculations in contemporary Physics. While many similar ideas have been around for some time, current speculations in science and technology have provided new rationales for such notions. Much of this future technology is based on collapsium, particle sized structures constructed from synthetic black holes. Another technology of the future is wellstone, artificial atoms constructed from semiconductor chips, that can be programmed to emulate any kind of matter. Overall, this novel has almost everything a hard science fiction story should have. Maybe Bruno makes the solutions seem too easy, but he IS a supergenius. While the plot is fantastic and old-fashioned, it is not improbable. The characters are unusual, yet consistent with their histories. The dialogue is flamboyant, but so are the times. A very enjoyable read. Highly recommended for McCarthy fans and anyone else who enjoys hard science fiction stories with decent plots and good characterization.
Rating:
Summary: A fun, entertaining, intelligent novel
Review: The Collapsium is one of the best books I've read. It has a style that is reminescent of earlier pulp sci-fi stories, and yet all its own. This is the first book by Wil McCarthy I've read, and I was impressed. McCarthy's writing style in this book is quite entertaining and laden with wry humor, and is intelligent throughout.
I won't go through what the story's about; the book description does a good enough job of that. I must admit that at first it failed to really capture my interest, but once the element of sabotage came in, the plot really started gathering momentum and I was drawn in. The storyline is well-concieved, and I really liked the characters in this book - especially the endearing robot, Hugo. I found that idea interesting. The lighthearted tone that seems to pervade most of this book is dashed to pieces around the beginning of the third section, where the cataclysmic peril comes into play and people actually get killed. The world McCarthy created in The Collapsium is really intriguing. Even I'd like to live there. This book is, in my opinion, a terriffic read.
Rating:
Summary: Minus 1 star for a character development
Review: This is a sweet little gem of a book that combines good storytelling with wild science that really hangs together quite well. Since I see so many glowing reviews (and really agree with most of them), let me just tell you what disappointed me about the Collapsium: the story is brilliant and witty as it begins and seems to become less so as it progresses, until at ending (despite saving the solar system several times) our protagonists are roughed up and punished with imposed roles as "fitting rewards" to their efforts. An interesting comment on the culture created here, but a bit of a downer for this reader. I enjoyed the craft and storytelling, loved the characters and science, but found an entertaining read becoming too suddenly grim and sad.
Rating:
Summary: Quite different
Review: This is one of the most original works of SF that I have seen in a while. Of all the stories that deal with the subject of black holes, I don't think it ever occured to anyone before that they can be mere tools in the hands of humans. What would that mean for human endeavors and history? McCarthy creates a world where this does happen, and it so happens that a public works project goes awry, the consequence would be the death of the sun! Oops. It would be a spoiler to tell you what happens. There are some disturbing aspects to this world that arises from very specualtive technology. For example, they have "fax" machines that can transmit a human from one place to another, a form of travel. But the device can also be used to create a complete duplicate of that person. With memories and everything, the duplicate has no idea that they are not the original. The problem is that the law is that the duplicate does not have any legal rights whatsoever. Imagine an enemy being able to steal a copy of you and torture that copy for their own amusement, then dispose of and then go get another. Would that bother you? Yikes. Very much worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly Engrossing and Entertaining
Review: This is the story of the future and the people who molded it and lived it. Our hero is a genius who invented / worked with a product that is actually a miniaturized black hole. Although the science is a little fuzzy this led to the creation of the greatest of inventions, "The Fax", which could not only send a clone of a person to another location but simultaneously fixed all that was wrong with the copy. In other words, it guaranteed imortality. The world of the future is a matriarchy with a Virgin Queen (who just happens to love our hero). An arch-villian, a desolute madman with the charms of a playboy, sets on a course that will destroy the Solar System. It sounds outlandish but the way the future is presented, particularly with well stone and the amazing nano-technology (the descriptions are perfect), is truly amazing. The tone and setting "sound" plausible. Especially endearing was the way the hero allowed one robot to develop on his own. This was an unlikely hit, mostly underground, the story carried by word of mouth. I'd love to see this on the big screen but shudder at the horror that the editors would do - they would butcher the story, reduce it to a royal affair with about as much seriousness as a Mars candy bar. The success of this book generaged another by the author, a sequeal of sorts. I can't wait to find out what happens!
Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly Engrossing and Entertaining
Review: This is the story of the future and the people who molded it and lived it. Our hero is a genius who invented / worked with a product that is actually a miniaturized black hole. Although the science is a little fuzzy this led to the creation of the greatest of inventions, "The Fax", which could not only send a clone of a person to another location but simultaneously fixed all that was wrong with the copy. In other words, it guaranteed imortality. The world of the future is a matriarchy with a Virgin Queen (who just happens to love our hero). An arch-villian, a desolute madman with the charms of a playboy, sets on a course that will destroy the Solar System. It sounds outlandish but the way the future is presented, particularly with well stone and the amazing nano-technology (the descriptions are perfect), is truly amazing. The tone and setting "sound" plausible. Especially endearing was the way the hero allowed one robot to develop on his own. This was an unlikely hit, mostly underground, the story carried by word of mouth. I'd love to see this on the big screen but shudder at the horror that the editors would do - they would butcher the story, reduce it to a royal affair with about as much seriousness as a Mars candy bar. The success of this book generaged another by the author, a sequeal of sorts. I can't wait to find out what happens!
Rating: 
Summary: Wild Speculations, Baroque Setting, Light Tone
Review: Wil McCarthy's new novel, The Collapsium, is built around such scientific speculations based on "edge science" ideas like using black holes as elementary particles. McCarthy plays happily with these ideas, treating them in almost a Tom-Swift fashion, which makes for an implausible but fun SF novel. The book is set several centuries in the future, or, as the opening line declares, "in the eighth decade of the Queendom of Sol". The social setting for McCarthy's baroque scientific speculations is thus appropriately baroque. The Solar System is united under a monarchy, and the ruler is the heir to the only monarchy that has survived to this time: the Queen of Tonga, Tamra Lutui. The central character is Bruno de Towangi, a brilliant scientist from Catalonia, now living a hermit's life in the Kuiper Belt, on an artificial planet, playing with miniature black holes arranged to form the "element" collapsium, trying to see the end of time. Bruno is a Declarant-Philander, a title which reflects both his high scientific achievements, and his status as former official lover of the "Virgin" Queen, Tamra. As the novel begins Bruno is summoned by his Queen back to the inner Solar System to solve a problem with the Ring Collapsiter, a ring of collapsium which his rival Marlon Sykes is building around the Sun. This ring will allow faster than light travel and communications, improving on the current system of "faxes", by which people travel at light speed anywhere there is a receiving station, making copies of themselves, copies which retain their memories, and which also can be "edited" to correct internal problems. Thus, humans may have also become immortal. The novel has three sections which involve successive efforts by Bruno to save the Sun. McCarthy keeps on multiplying his weird scientific speculations: adding in such ideas as "true vacuum", elimination of inertia, electromagnetic grapples, and so on. All this is on the one hand pretty fun, but on the other hand not wholly believable. It's not so much the science itself that is unbelievable: sure, it's all speculative, and probably mostly not very likely to be true, but that's all part of the game, and all the weird stuff is pretty well (for some value of "pretty well") explained in a series of appendices. Rather, Bruno's Tom Swift-like ability to whip up new gadgets base on the new science in quick time becomes somewhat implausible. That said, given the rather light tone of the whole book (albeit a tone which is at odds with any thought for the millions of innocents who die), it all ends up being quite entertaining. The science is larger-than-life, and so are the characters. Neither is quite believable in a realistic fashion, but both are acceptable within the conventions of this book. It's baroque, superscientific, stuff: kind of like bad '30s pulp SF rewritten to be a pretty good new millennium (almost!) take on those old tropes. It's not great SF, but it's good fun, and full of neat and wild ideas.
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