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Cuckoo Saga
Farthest Star
Boards have no wear. Text is perfect. Dust jacket has light rubbing and edge wear. Same day shipping.
246 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
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239 people want to read
About the author
Frederik Pohl
1,151 books1,057 followersFrederik George Pohl, Jr. was an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years. From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine IF winning the Hugo for IF three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 26, 2015
There was much to appreciate here, but I didn't appreciate this book much.
Aliens that aren't just humans in disguise, some discussion of the psychological impact of a technology that replicates you over interstellar distances and a Mysterious Giant Object which gets more weird the more you learn about it are all good but it's all swamped by irritating problems of characterisation and plotting. The book isn't really a novel; it's a novella which subsequently got a serial of short story sequels, so the pacing is all over the place and you're left at the end with very little explained and a sense of things stopping rather than being resolved. The is a further volume which I assume clarifies matters but I'm not going to go out of my way to find it.
The characters are largely one dimensional and there is no female protagonist for the first half. The one female character up to this point exists solely to give out "hero" someone to pine for in her absence. Then once we get a proper female protagonist she is over the violent death of her husband and fancying a local tribesman in a matter of two days...
It's a shame the execution is so poor because there's a good story buried in here trying to claw it's way to the surface.
Aliens that aren't just humans in disguise, some discussion of the psychological impact of a technology that replicates you over interstellar distances and a Mysterious Giant Object which gets more weird the more you learn about it are all good but it's all swamped by irritating problems of characterisation and plotting. The book isn't really a novel; it's a novella which subsequently got a serial of short story sequels, so the pacing is all over the place and you're left at the end with very little explained and a sense of things stopping rather than being resolved. The is a further volume which I assume clarifies matters but I'm not going to go out of my way to find it.
The characters are largely one dimensional and there is no female protagonist for the first half. The one female character up to this point exists solely to give out "hero" someone to pine for in her absence. Then once we get a proper female protagonist she is over the violent death of her husband and fancying a local tribesman in a matter of two days...
It's a shame the execution is so poor because there's a good story buried in here trying to claw it's way to the surface.
March 18, 2021
This is the first book in the Williamson & Pohl Cuckoo saga. It's a high-concept, sense of wonder novel, with ideas brimming every section. I especially liked the idea of getting around faster-than-light travel via tachyon matter transmission, and, of course, the Dyson constructs. It's hard-sf at its best. The characterization isn't as strong as it is in many of their individual novels, but this one is certainly thought-provoking... I liked it better than the sequel, Wall Around a Star. I'm still intrigued by the idea of duplication via transmission; the "coin-flip" idea is priceless: you step into a box to be duplicated and there's a copy of you assembled light years away... it's a fifty-fifty chance "your" current consciousness remains behind, unchanged, or walks out of the box on the other end. Goshwow! as they used to say.
July 27, 2014
When you have a book written by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson you expeot something special, but unfortunately this isn't. The Star Trek transporter when the original does de-materialize is an interesting idea but that's not enough. I can't really say what's wrong with it, the plot isn't bad, the characters are okay for a 70s story, its just missing something which I can't put my finger on.
I really wanted it to be great, but it was just wasn't there.
I really wanted it to be great, but it was just wasn't there.
October 21, 2011
This review is being written in 2011, and I still recall being embarrassed by this book when I read it in 1975. I was embarrassed not by the content, but by my own preoccupations that caused me to miss what the book is really about. I got so caught up in the tachyon transmission way to explore the galaxy that I totally neglected to see that the book was about a Dyson sphere. In reading a review some months after I had read the novel, after that reviewer referred to the Dyson sphere by that name, I finally figured it out. Pohl and Williamson never refer to the Dyson sphere as a Dyson sphere. I was too caught up in the tachyon transmission to really think it through. Forty years later, I still remember it. Maybe it's time to reread and see if I get it right this time. I bet that I still think the tachyon transmission is cool!
December 29, 2021
The first half of this book is called Book One: Doomship. That part of the story also appeared in The 1974 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim. When I first read Doomship, I fell in love with it so much that I tracked down and read several of Pohl's novels. Eventually, I began reading Farthest Star and was elated to find that my beloved Doomship had been continued.
This is my current favorite book which probably isnt saying much because I'm not that well read. However, i will say that I've also read Pohl's novel called Gateway, for which he won the Hugo Award, and although I loved it, I still consider Farthest Star to be the better work of the two.
This is my current favorite book which probably isnt saying much because I'm not that well read. However, i will say that I've also read Pohl's novel called Gateway, for which he won the Hugo Award, and although I loved it, I still consider Farthest Star to be the better work of the two.
September 8, 2015
The first half was fairly interesting space exploration coupled with different alien races. The second half was confusing (and dull) planetary exploration that focused more on primitive characters.
So many issues brought up with regards to characters 'copying' themselves, but nothing was ever made of it.
This story really could have had more to it.
So many issues brought up with regards to characters 'copying' themselves, but nothing was ever made of it.
This story really could have had more to it.
May 20, 2007
This book took me a whole semester to read even though it's only 246 pages long. It got really boring and ridiculous at times but still the technology in it was fun. Even bad science fiction is still enjoyable sometimes.
March 11, 2023
The good news about this book is that it's short. The bad news is that it's rife with inconsistency. Human kind has joined the galactic civilization and risen quickly through the ranks. The galaxy is full of peaceful races who get along in harmony, and everything is keen. Many of the races have never even invented war. This is explained in the first few pages. It should be no surprise then that the rest of the story is a non-stop litany of mindless, bloody violence. The protagonists stumble from one deadly encounter to the next, dying in great piles. Fortunately for them, they can use replicating machines to churn out copy after expendable copy of themselves. This allows the authors to butcher their protagonists endlessly without any real cost. Or without any satisfying explanation.
In the first third of the novel, our hero Ben Pertin, (rather, a copy of him), has been sent away on a suicide mission. He's been beat half to death a dozen ways, and gotten into deadly scrapes with eight or ten different "peaceful" alien races. Little explanation was given for why they were fighting, and it was impossible to track who was fighting on what side. But that's ok, because long before that I'd given up caring. The next two thirds of the book was wash, rinse, repeat.
I'm usually pretty fond of Fred Pohl. I'm not as familiar with Jack Williamson, in spite of the fact that he was one of the longest lived and most prolific science fiction authors of the 20th century. I had hoped that writing together, this book would be a gem. But it turned out to be rather less than that. Like so much of the early science fiction these men turned out, it is full of carefully described physical detail. The orbital mechanics seem correct, I'm sure the authors ran the numbers. The way the various characters behaved in different gravity environments, (heavy or light), sounded plausible. The way communications are handled between various races, and the problems that may arise when the translating equipment malfunctions was well thought out. But one of the key technologies introduced in the story was the Tachyon transmitter. Machinery is used to scan an item, a person, or another creature, right down to the last atom. This information is then transmitted at superluminal speed across the galaxy, where the pattern is reconstructed, atom by atom, to produce an identical copy. Something like Star Trek transporters, but the original copy remains behind. No actual matter is transmitted, just the information regarding the scanned item or person's structure. This implies that the copy of the person is reconstructed from material stocks at the receiving end. But no, the copy is reconstructed out of thin air, or in many cases, thinner vacuum. No matter is needed. This doesn't make any sense, and severely detracts from the story. I haven't dug into it, but I'm sure the authors must have been given their lumps be their readers. I could almost forgive them, had the story been written any earlier. But it was written in 1975, and by a pair of writers who surely knew better.
Considering my love for Pohl, and my respect for Williamson, it pains me to give this novel such a bad review. But I can only give it 1.5 stars.
In the first third of the novel, our hero Ben Pertin, (rather, a copy of him), has been sent away on a suicide mission. He's been beat half to death a dozen ways, and gotten into deadly scrapes with eight or ten different "peaceful" alien races. Little explanation was given for why they were fighting, and it was impossible to track who was fighting on what side. But that's ok, because long before that I'd given up caring. The next two thirds of the book was wash, rinse, repeat.
I'm usually pretty fond of Fred Pohl. I'm not as familiar with Jack Williamson, in spite of the fact that he was one of the longest lived and most prolific science fiction authors of the 20th century. I had hoped that writing together, this book would be a gem. But it turned out to be rather less than that. Like so much of the early science fiction these men turned out, it is full of carefully described physical detail. The orbital mechanics seem correct, I'm sure the authors ran the numbers. The way the various characters behaved in different gravity environments, (heavy or light), sounded plausible. The way communications are handled between various races, and the problems that may arise when the translating equipment malfunctions was well thought out. But one of the key technologies introduced in the story was the Tachyon transmitter. Machinery is used to scan an item, a person, or another creature, right down to the last atom. This information is then transmitted at superluminal speed across the galaxy, where the pattern is reconstructed, atom by atom, to produce an identical copy. Something like Star Trek transporters, but the original copy remains behind. No actual matter is transmitted, just the information regarding the scanned item or person's structure. This implies that the copy of the person is reconstructed from material stocks at the receiving end. But no, the copy is reconstructed out of thin air, or in many cases, thinner vacuum. No matter is needed. This doesn't make any sense, and severely detracts from the story. I haven't dug into it, but I'm sure the authors must have been given their lumps be their readers. I could almost forgive them, had the story been written any earlier. But it was written in 1975, and by a pair of writers who surely knew better.
Considering my love for Pohl, and my respect for Williamson, it pains me to give this novel such a bad review. But I can only give it 1.5 stars.
August 24, 2022
Not my favorit Pohl book, (that would be gateway), and one I'm still trying to figure out if it should get 2 stars or 3. It's an ok story, but nothing about it jumps out at me as being a great story, which is what this author is known for. Can't say I loved it, though I do have the next book in the series, so probably will read that one, just to see what happens, but honestly, this one doesn't appeal to me all that much, but since I already have the next one, what the heck.
June 3, 2019
I think, for that time, it was quite good. I always wondered how it would be to to transfer your thoughts to a machine. This is quite the same: open your eyes and discover you are the original. So the projection is really good. What I didn’t like is the end, is it a series? As nothing much is explained and it’s all cut very quickly, as if they were bored with it. Pitty, could have been more.
January 8, 2022
I read this quite some time ago and I'm not so sure about the details any more.
But I do like the notion of zapping a tachyon image of a person across the parsecs pretty much instantaneously. One copy fails, fine send another.
How did it end? Can't remember. But I do recall liking it.
But I do like the notion of zapping a tachyon image of a person across the parsecs pretty much instantaneously. One copy fails, fine send another.
How did it end? Can't remember. But I do recall liking it.
January 22, 2024
I really enjoyed it. The first part was more difficult to follow than the second. Interesting concepts. Sending copies of yourself via tachyon beam. I really enjoy the less technological natives vs technology theme. I am looking forward to finding the second book.
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January 7, 2015I vaguely remember reading this book when I was a teenager. I was very fascinated by the "teleportation" system and what it implied. But that's also about all I remember from it! I had to google for ages before finding the book again. I guess I'll have to re-read it.
March 12, 2015
1977 grade C
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews