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Donald Kingsbury

Teoksen Man-Kzin Wars IV tekijä

13+ teosta 1,609 jäsentä 22 arvostelua 6 Favorited

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Associated Works

The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (1994) — Avustaja — 392 kappaletta
Man-Kzin Wars VI (1994) — Avustaja — 379 kappaletta
The Space Opera Renaissance (2007) — Avustaja — 282 kappaletta
The Best Science Fiction of the Year #8 (1979) — Avustaja — 194 kappaletta
The Endless Frontier (1979) — Avustaja — 140 kappaletta
Far Futures (1995) — Avustaja — 130 kappaletta
Republic and Empire (Imperial Stars, Vol 2) (1987) — Avustaja — 126 kappaletta
Northern Stars: The Anthology of Canadian Science Fiction (1994) — Avustaja — 83 kappaletta
The Endless Frontier: Volume II (1982) — Avustaja — 79 kappaletta
The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year #1 (1979) — Avustaja — 67 kappaletta

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Found: Science fiction approx 1970?, Name that Book (tammikuu 2023)

Kirja-arvosteluja

Descendientes de una diáspora humana los habitantes de Geta dominan la biología y desconocen las ciencias físicas. Manipulan los genes y todavía no han sido capaces de inventar ni siquiera la bicicleta. En un mundo hostil que sólo dispone de carne humana, el canibalismo es más que un rito, es una obligación religiosa, un medio que garantiza la supervivencia y, tambien, la mejora de la especie. Los habitantes de Geta se comen ritualmente al bebé con un cociente intelectual bajo, al anciano llegado al fin de sus días, al criminal o al enemigo vencido. Los ritos lo son todo en un Geta escindido en clanes y donde la lucha por el poder pasa por la selección genética. En este planeta de escasos recursos y de ecología rigurosa y dura, una célula matrimonial, un "cinco", del clan de los Kaiel debe encontrar su nueva compañera. El matrimonio de cinco, tres "hermanos" y dos mujeres, se ha enamorado colectivamente de una mujer con la que desea desposarse, pero el Primer Profeta de los Kaiel les impone otra elección. Problemas amorosos, intrigas políticas, extraños ritos, aventuras y descubrimientos se suceden en una brillante y ambiciosa novela que honra a la mejor ciencia ficción. Donald Kinsgbury se muestra como un gran creador de mundos, atento a la ecología, a la antropología y a la psicología de sus personajes. Rito de cortejo es un éxito de la mejor especulación con un extraordinario sentido de lo maravilloso. Lo mejor de la ciencia ficción reunido en una sola entrega. La moderna versión de un Dune mejorado. Finalista del premio HUGO. "Rara y original... una increíble y maravillosa novela de aventuras... un excepcional grupo de personajes masculinos y femeninos. Con Rito de cortejo la ciencia ficción avanza un paso hacia delante y adquiere nueva belleza."… (lisätietoja)
 
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Natt90 | 8 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Mar 28, 2023 |
Out of all of the bad sequels to the Foundation trilogy, namely the Bear/Benford/Brin ones and Asimov's own attempts, this one probably comes nearest to standing on its own, in part because it wisely ignores the existence of all the rest of those terrible books, and it tries to give its own take on the concept of psychohistory instead of thinking up stupid new gimmicks like chaos plagues or living planets.

It opens several thousand years after the Foundation reunified the Galaxy, where psychohistorian Eron Osa has been sentenced to have his brain augmentation implant destroyed for an unknown crime. The action follows him and a few others as he tries to figure out what he did to have such a drastic punishment applied to him, and what's become of psychohistory after it "won" and the Interregnum is only a brief and distant memory behind the new Second Empire.

The book is largely decent. Kingsbury has renamed a bunch of stuff (e.g. Trantor is now Splendid Wisdon, Hari Seldon is the Founder, the Mule is Cloun-the-Stubborn, Kalgan is Lakgan, etc) presumably for copyright reasons, but it's not too hard to figure out what's going on. Eron Osa is an okay protagonist, somewhat in the mold of Golan Trevize from Foundation's Edge/Foundation and Earth, though luckily this book avoids mentioning anything that happened in those. As far as concepts go, there's some interesting stuff about the relationship between psychohistory and the determinism/free will debate, and also good investigation into if the dynamic of having Second Foundationers continuously pulling puppet strings from the shadows is actually stable or not. Kingsbury is probably right that they aren't in a stable equilibrium, and that an economist Illuminati whose efforts only work if no one knows they exist probably wouldn't be in business for very long.

Unfortunately the good bits are lost in a story that takes forever to go anywhere, and you miss Asimov's ability to say what he wanted to say in about 80 pages per time period and then move on. Easily the most irritating parts of the book are whenever Kingsbury gets cute with the state of historical knowledge in the year one zillion. Get ready to read lots of "funny" passages that the reader is supposed to chuckle at like "Democracy was invented by the slave Lincoln, who led a great revolt against his Virginian masters, forcing them to come down from Mount Ararat to grant his people the Magna Carta." And yet somehow the Second Empire has complete copies of works by people like Cicero, Max Planck, and Edward Gibbon (in a nod to the origin of the original Foundation trilogy), and they've figured out that Earth is the original planet of mankind, leading to some pointless scenes where Eron has to re-engineer a WW2-era bomber. What's the point of this stuff? Even worse, the cutesy history references are often placed in irritating sub-Dune-quality chapter epigraphs, which are never insightful and frequently long enough to noticeably slow down the book.

The original Foundation trilogy had a number of good features:
- Quick pacing
- Memorable characters
- A willingness to leave those characters behind as the story required
- Action and different scenery
- A then-clever concept of macroeconomists trying to prevent the fall of the Space Roman Empire
- Social commentary that was both apt and concise
- A sense of excitement and intellectual thrill

This book has some good extensions of Asimov's original ideas about civilizational dynamics, but like a number of other books, including some by Asimov himself, it's run into the problem that the original trilogy said so much with so few words that further works in this vein are basically pointless unless you happen to be both as smart as Asimov and without a trace of that fanfiction-y vibe that infests so many sci-fi sequels. Nice try though.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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aaronarnold | 7 muuta kirja-arvostelua | May 11, 2021 |
If you read Asimov's Foundation and others in the Series-- this offering is a homage to that universe.

Kingsbury gives us a long deep dive into the future Society of a Foundation-like derived Galaxy thru the eyes of a few 'ordinary' denizens of this far-flung empire who get caught between the ruling Pscholars and a secretive rebel group of psycho-historians.

I give it 3 stars-- however it isn't a total downer...it flows with the same languid energy of the original Foundation. Very descriptive. Very intellectual. The main sin of the author is how he gives in to the desire to drown the reader in theoretical Psuedo-Science detail.

But if you are thinking of Battles filled with lightspeed dreadnoughts destroying entire star systems...uhm...no.

This Galaxy is utterly civilized. It's about Espionage spanning centuries using the tools of Psyho-Historical Analysis and warring Mathematics.

A Tome for Deep-thinking Sci-Fi readers who will be tickled by the notion of imagined social manipulation via esoteric formulae.

Let's just say, the story isn't very Flashy...but the characters are urbanely fascinating. You won't be impelled to finish this book in one reading...but it is very easy to put down--and then to pick it up again at a later time and continue where you left off...
… (lisätietoja)
 
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Caragen87 | 7 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Apr 6, 2021 |
A human telepath, with mind-control powers, is enough to win the battle, but not stop the war. It's a nice gimmick, and entertaining, but a wee bit of a hokey deux ex machina.
 
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majackson | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jul 13, 2018 |

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1,609
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#16,022
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22
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Kuinka monen suosikki
6

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