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Giants #4
Entoverse
Sul pianeta Jevlen la società umana, affidata ai pacifici e illuminati Ganiani, è allo sbando: l'incuria e l'irresponsabilità dei nativi li sta trascinando verso un inesorabile degrado morale e materiale. E tutto sembra dovuto a Jevex, il super computer che gestisce per intero gli affari jevleniani. Eppure, la situazione non migliora quando il cervellone viene spento... Nel frattempo, in un universo molto diverso, dove la magia funziona e niente è già deciso, sette mistiche e para-religiose conquistano sempre più adepti e preparano un piano per rovesciare il governo. Perché quando il cuore è puro, la mente allenata e le circostanze quelle giuste, alcune anime fortunate possono fare il passaggio all'altro universo. Se solo potessero riuscirci tutti...
Copertina di Franco Brambilla
Copertina di Franco Brambilla
610 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 1991
8 people are currently reading
521 people want to read
About the author
James P. Hogan
111 books262 followersJames Patrick Hogan was a British science fiction author.
Hogan was was raised in the Portobello Road area on the west side of London. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, he worked various odd jobs until, after receiving a scholarship, he began a five-year program at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough covering the practical and theoretical sides of electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. He first married at the age of twenty, and he has had three other subsequent marriages and fathered six children.
Hogan worked as a design engineer for several companies and eventually moved into sales in the 1960s, travelling around Europe as a sales engineer for Honeywell. In the 1970s he joined the Digital Equipment Corporation's Laboratory Data Processing Group and in 1977 moved to Boston, Massachusetts to run its sales training program. He published his first novel, Inherit the Stars, in the same year to win an office bet. He quit DEC in 1979 and began writing full time, moving to Orlando, Florida, for a year where he met his third wife Jackie. They then moved to Sonora, California.
Hogan's style of science fiction is usually hard science fiction. In his earlier works he conveyed a sense of what science and scientists were about. His philosophical view on how science should be done comes through in many of his novels; theories should be formulated based on empirical research, not the other way around. If a theory does not match the facts, it is theory that should be discarded, not the facts. This is very evident in the Giants series, which begins with the discovery of a 50,000 year-old human body on the Moon. This discovery leads to a series of investigations, and as facts are discovered, theories on how the astronaut's body arrived on the Moon 50,000 years ago are elaborated, discarded, and replaced.
Hogan's fiction also reflects anti-authoritarian social views. Many of his novels have strong anarchist or libertarian themes, often promoting the idea that new technological advances render certain social conventions obsolete. For example, the effectively limitless availability of energy that would result from the development of controlled nuclear fusion would make it unnecessary to limit access to energy resources. In essence, energy would become free. This melding of scientific and social speculation is clearly present in the novel Voyage from Yesteryear (strongly influenced by Eric Frank Russell's famous story "And Then There Were None"), which describes the contact between a high-tech anarchist society on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, with a starship sent from Earth by a dictatorial government. The story uses many elements of civil disobedience.
James Hogan died unexpectedly from a heart attack at his home in Ireland.
Hogan was was raised in the Portobello Road area on the west side of London. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, he worked various odd jobs until, after receiving a scholarship, he began a five-year program at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough covering the practical and theoretical sides of electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. He first married at the age of twenty, and he has had three other subsequent marriages and fathered six children.
Hogan worked as a design engineer for several companies and eventually moved into sales in the 1960s, travelling around Europe as a sales engineer for Honeywell. In the 1970s he joined the Digital Equipment Corporation's Laboratory Data Processing Group and in 1977 moved to Boston, Massachusetts to run its sales training program. He published his first novel, Inherit the Stars, in the same year to win an office bet. He quit DEC in 1979 and began writing full time, moving to Orlando, Florida, for a year where he met his third wife Jackie. They then moved to Sonora, California.
Hogan's style of science fiction is usually hard science fiction. In his earlier works he conveyed a sense of what science and scientists were about. His philosophical view on how science should be done comes through in many of his novels; theories should be formulated based on empirical research, not the other way around. If a theory does not match the facts, it is theory that should be discarded, not the facts. This is very evident in the Giants series, which begins with the discovery of a 50,000 year-old human body on the Moon. This discovery leads to a series of investigations, and as facts are discovered, theories on how the astronaut's body arrived on the Moon 50,000 years ago are elaborated, discarded, and replaced.
Hogan's fiction also reflects anti-authoritarian social views. Many of his novels have strong anarchist or libertarian themes, often promoting the idea that new technological advances render certain social conventions obsolete. For example, the effectively limitless availability of energy that would result from the development of controlled nuclear fusion would make it unnecessary to limit access to energy resources. In essence, energy would become free. This melding of scientific and social speculation is clearly present in the novel Voyage from Yesteryear (strongly influenced by Eric Frank Russell's famous story "And Then There Were None"), which describes the contact between a high-tech anarchist society on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, with a starship sent from Earth by a dictatorial government. The story uses many elements of civil disobedience.
James Hogan died unexpectedly from a heart attack at his home in Ireland.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
August 11, 2024
Entoverse is the fourth novel in Hogan's Giants series. It's a wild story, with all manner of science fictional tropes and kitchen sinks tossed into the mix, and I think I would have been much happier with it if it hadn't been set in the Giants continuity. It's not a bad read, the scientific speculation is interesting and the political philosophizing not -too- boring, but it lacked the verve and sense-of-wonder of the first couple of books.
August 3, 2012
Wow, it took me from the 28th of July to the 2nd of August to read this book. That’s really a long time for me. It has nothing to do with the book though but rather due to the fact that we constantly seem to be doing things that keep me away from my reading during the summer holidays. Rather the inverse from what I expected.
Anyway, this book in the Giants series wanders quite far from the original. It starts of like the previous book but it never really recovers from its nose dive into a more traditional thriller story with a lot of political manipulation and lurking around in the shadows. Gone are really the research and discovery parts that made me like the first couple of books so much.
The more or less accidental creation of a universe with sentient beings within a giant computer was surely an interesting twist and one I didn’t expect but it still didn’t work out very well for me. It was really overshadowed by the general plot which focused way too much on the politics and way too little on the actual discovery. Then when Hunt & Co “travelled” into this universe it actually went a bit silly, especially the carousel bit, as far as I am concerned.
I really liked the first two books but this one…not so much.
Anyway, this book in the Giants series wanders quite far from the original. It starts of like the previous book but it never really recovers from its nose dive into a more traditional thriller story with a lot of political manipulation and lurking around in the shadows. Gone are really the research and discovery parts that made me like the first couple of books so much.
The more or less accidental creation of a universe with sentient beings within a giant computer was surely an interesting twist and one I didn’t expect but it still didn’t work out very well for me. It was really overshadowed by the general plot which focused way too much on the politics and way too little on the actual discovery. Then when Hunt & Co “travelled” into this universe it actually went a bit silly, especially the carousel bit, as far as I am concerned.
I really liked the first two books but this one…not so much.
March 28, 2013
Awesomely innovative. A worthy book in the "Giants" saga. Hard scifi that completely blew me away with its imaginative storyline. Hogan is gone, and we as a species are so much the poorer as a result.
If you like hard scifi, you will love this book. If you're a "Giants" series lover, it will put you in heaven.
James P. Hogan was one of the most creative writers of the 20th century. Entoverse brilliantly shows why that was the case.
Perhaps the best "aliens" ever!
If you like hard scifi, you will love this book. If you're a "Giants" series lover, it will put you in heaven.
James P. Hogan was one of the most creative writers of the 20th century. Entoverse brilliantly shows why that was the case.
Perhaps the best "aliens" ever!
June 17, 2014
Not very interesting. This series could do without this book
May 2, 2015
Difficult to start but you become engrossed in it all
April 21, 2010
I did like the first two Giants novels. Hogan's writing could be somewhat clunky and a bit dry in scientific detail, but the imagination and play with scientific ideas are often first rate. I found that redeeming in the first two novels. I was majorly annoyed in the third novel though when the conspiracy angle came up. That probably didn't leave me in a very forgiving mood going into this fourth novel, written over a decade after the first three. It just got way too eye-rolling ridiculous for me when Velikovsky's name came up on Page 30, and even though I persisted beyond that by page 100 I was wondering why I kept trying with all those lovely books out there unread. I'd still recommend Hogan's Voyage to Yesteryear and Code of the Lifemaker, and maybe Realtime Interrupt, though I can't imagine wanting to reread the last. But unless you're a completest, I'd skip this one.
November 8, 2012
This one wasn't as good as the first two in the series, but had some good ideas. Definitely wandered more and didn't grab my attention as well.
April 17, 2019
Didn't even get half way. So predictable already. Not much left of the science. And politics...well, we live that every day.
November 12, 2018
Read some reviews saying this was the weakest of the series. Both yes it was and yes it wasn't.
The read was indeed tougher on this one. But I give it a break for the hypercomplex world the author put together:
Towards the end of the book you are trying to balance two universes, with multiple copies of man characters existing in both, with three fully fleshed-out societies, including two distinct subsets of two of them, with modern tech, far future tech, and archaic tech, with the effects of two separate sets of base physics rules between the two universes.
With that, it read very very smoothly. How the author kept his notes straight thru the conclusion is a matter of serious data engineering! Very impressive.
See if your brain can actually simulate this story fully, it's a challenge.
The read was indeed tougher on this one. But I give it a break for the hypercomplex world the author put together:
Towards the end of the book you are trying to balance two universes, with multiple copies of man characters existing in both, with three fully fleshed-out societies, including two distinct subsets of two of them, with modern tech, far future tech, and archaic tech, with the effects of two separate sets of base physics rules between the two universes.
With that, it read very very smoothly. How the author kept his notes straight thru the conclusion is a matter of serious data engineering! Very impressive.
See if your brain can actually simulate this story fully, it's a challenge.
January 28, 2016
I found this rather interesting enough to consider ready the previous books in the series. There were moments where is was more technical that I really comprehend but it was expressed well enough in the story line to not leave you to far out in the cold. The character's were humorous enough and likable to keep the heaviness from taking over.
January 22, 2013
This one was a little harder to swallow, though still quite enjoyable. I certainly see why there's only one left, they are getting to the stage where the law of similarity becomes a bit of a drag more than anything else!
August 22, 2017
I loved the first three books of the Giants series in high school, and they have held up well for me ever since. Entoverse, however, never really drew me into the story the same way.
This is a solid continuation of the series, however, and may work better for other readers.
3 stars
This is a solid continuation of the series, however, and may work better for other readers.
3 stars
September 19, 2021
The Giants series continues ten years after Giants' Star introducing new science mysteries, but this time with even more political machinations. I found a lot of the exposition here a but much, but the story was solid. It was good to see 'our heroes' be heroic again.
December 9, 2008
Another WOW for James P. Hogan! This is the 4th book in the Giant's series and it didn't disapoint me.
February 13, 2012
This book dropped in what made the earlier books so interesting. This book was a little slow and heavy.
April 21, 2019
This book dropped in what made the earlier books so interesting. This book was a little slow and heavy.
November 16, 2018
Not as good as the first three, but still good.
May 14, 2021
I would give it a 3,5. It's fun, but was a bit too long.
Read
January 18, 2023Hard science way out on the edge. Not all of it's right, but an outstanding attempt.
March 4, 2025
In comparison to the other books in the series, this book was just mid. It's missing the wonder/mystery of discovery that the other books had, and the action was just not engaging enough. After the climax of the story when the title of the book is "revealed", the action is very linear and the suspense/hype just dies down. We already know the characters are going to "save the day" because of what was revealed earlier in the book. Also the names of the computer systems were cringe, ngl.
March 22, 2023
È difficile capire se l'autore avesse già in mente questa storia, mentre scriveva la trilogia iniziale o se l'ha creata ex-post. Comunque è ottimamente legata alla storia globale della saga ed è molto avvincente. E non si può fare a meno di affezionarsi ai personaggi.
April 27, 2022
Continuano le avventure del dottor Hunt. In questo romanzo però sembra esserci qualcosa di troppo...un po' "esagerato". Lettura comunque piacevole.
October 30, 2010
This book definitely wasn't as action packed and interesting as the first three. It got off to a really slow start and a lot of the plot on Jevlen is uninteresting. However, once the Entoverse gets discovered it really takes off. Hogan has some really cool ideas here and once they're brought to light the book sort of takes on a new form.
November 10, 2019
VOTO: 3,2
Il brodo si allunga ulteriormente con l'aggiunta di nuovi elementi ai limiti dell'inverosimile, ma si tratta appunto di fantascienza.
Lontanissimo dai fasti dei primi volumi, si lascia comunque apprezzare per il coraggio della trovata dell'autore.
Il brodo si allunga ulteriormente con l'aggiunta di nuovi elementi ai limiti dell'inverosimile, ma si tratta appunto di fantascienza.
Lontanissimo dai fasti dei primi volumi, si lascia comunque apprezzare per il coraggio della trovata dell'autore.
August 29, 2014
A continuation of the Giants series set after that does a pretty good job of asking the age old question - Just what is consciousness.
Read
June 24, 2016I liked it enough to read the next book.
February 18, 2020
I found the terse plot summary of the previous three books (which I hadn't read) in the beginning very enjoyable, but the actual novel was dated and irritating. So, good plot and not much else.
July 18, 2009
Fourth book in the series.
Read
May 4, 2012Great series. Highly recommend all the "Giant" books
August 21, 2012
This book can help you understand some aspects of quantum physics.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews