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The Net
JASON
starship captain, fabulaously wealthy businesswoman adventurer. To stave off Billionaire's Boredom, she steals semi-mythical gemstones from all over the galaxy.
ALECKO
Jason's omnivorous business rival. A deadly telepath who tempts Jason to the planet of New Crete wrapped in a ruby which once belonged to Catherine the Great.
THE
by which starship crews are connected to the ships they guide through interstellar space, and which Alecko misuses, thereby jeopardizing Jason-and her crew. And initiating her swift vengeance.
In his brilliant debut, Loren MacGregor creates characters as glittering and adamantine as the gemstones which, Jason Horiuchi covets a universe as complex and multi-faceted as a diamond.
starship captain, fabulaously wealthy businesswoman adventurer. To stave off Billionaire's Boredom, she steals semi-mythical gemstones from all over the galaxy.
ALECKO
Jason's omnivorous business rival. A deadly telepath who tempts Jason to the planet of New Crete wrapped in a ruby which once belonged to Catherine the Great.
THE
by which starship crews are connected to the ships they guide through interstellar space, and which Alecko misuses, thereby jeopardizing Jason-and her crew. And initiating her swift vengeance.
In his brilliant debut, Loren MacGregor creates characters as glittering and adamantine as the gemstones which, Jason Horiuchi covets a universe as complex and multi-faceted as a diamond.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 11, 2025
This is the second of the three 20th century sci fi softcovers I grabbed basically at random from a used book store while on vacation. It’s also – according to the introduction – a debut novel published as part of a series promoting unknown writers and it’s certainly not a name I’d heard otherwise. So I really have no one to blame but myself when this turned out to be a bit of a mess. A mess with fun ideas and several charming features, to be clear – but god this book needed a meaner editor.
The book follows Jason Horichi – corporate magnate, star captain, adventurer and (as a hobby) interstellar jewel thief. On the world of New Crete, the scheming son of her greatest rival offers her a bet: if she can steal the ancient ruby being exhibited in their family museum, he will pull back from every market their firms compete in; should she fail, Jason will do the same. Being something of an obsessive gambler when it comes to things like this, she accepts – and instantly begins organizing and expanding her starship’s crew to conduct the perfect heist.
The book’s most fundamental issue is probably the pacing. Told cleanly and efficiently, the plot would be a slim, sharp novelette or longer short story – you can almost count the number of scenes really concerned with the whole heist and resulting vendetta on one hand. Instead the better part of the book is devoted to a sort of meandering exploration of the world and its incredibly bloated supporting cast. The final effect is that of spending most of the story setting the table for a feast far, far larger than the host can actually afford to put on. There are no economies taken at any point, the book abounds with characters introduced with potted biographies and lengthy explanations of their relationship and history with Jason who never appear on screen again. More dynamics and conflicts are established than I can even remember, the overwhelming majority near-instantly forgotten about. It’s the sort of thing that might be forgivable if this was the start of a massive series that would eventually make use of all the setup. As a standalone book it’s just incredibly frustrating.
The same issue is replicated on the level of prose and description. This is a very, very visual book, and no restraint is ever employed when it comes to painting vivid, detailed pictures in the reader’s mind. Even if it’s just describing a stairway or an anonymous bar, or the look of a lawyer who will never appear again. It makes reading the book an oddly exhausting experience, slogging through so many irrelevant details.
Doubly and trebly so because the complete lack of focus means all the extraneous detail crowds out the few character arcs that really do matter. Choices that the whole plot hinges on and character-defining revelations are brushed over with mechanical efficiency, almost just from lack of space to give them the focus they really need. People’s inner lives and motivations feel either mechanical or outright inexplicable. Which is kind of a fundamental issue, when it comes to what is driving and keeping loyal the crew very literally and directly risking life and limb to indulge an oligarch’s ego-trip and hobby (which would feel less pressing if Jason’s ego didn’t get so many of the supporting cast crippled or killed for no actual reason at all through the course of the book, something the narrative really does not seem to properly appreciate.)
Jason herself is a kind of fascinating character, in that she is both intensely, intensely ‘80s (Japanese in the ‘written-by-a-white-guy-in-Seattle’ way, described with comparisons to a samurai at least twice, wears exclusively black leather and skin-tight denim) and a bit of a fossil of older golden/silver-age space opera, but now coming in woman (hundred-year-old trillionaire oligarch space captain titan of the interstellar economy, almost none of which actually matter to the plot). The end result feels like someone’s beloved and incredibly overpowered rpg character, honestly.
The setting is interesting, for all of the very odd choices in focus. Beyond the very mid-80s genre writer representation of sexuality and people of colour, it commits more to how genuinely weird cosmetic surgery would get and how odd a lot of people would choose to look given the technology and budget that makes it possible. The main villain has four arms and one of the most important secondary characters has a thick coat of bears fur and these were both basically just the results of impulsive surgery they got as teenagers. It’s unironically one of the book’s strongest points.
The other big, salient feature of the setting is that the better part of the story takes place on New Crete, which is one of the more orientalist things I’ve read recently, let alone ‘space Greece’s.’ There’s even a hooting, jeering crowd swarming around the arena to watch some major characters be publicly lashed to death, and a bunch of strange and freakish religious sects.
Anyway, not one I’d recommend – though it does have flashes of personality and eccentricity that made it at least a memorable read.
The book follows Jason Horichi – corporate magnate, star captain, adventurer and (as a hobby) interstellar jewel thief. On the world of New Crete, the scheming son of her greatest rival offers her a bet: if she can steal the ancient ruby being exhibited in their family museum, he will pull back from every market their firms compete in; should she fail, Jason will do the same. Being something of an obsessive gambler when it comes to things like this, she accepts – and instantly begins organizing and expanding her starship’s crew to conduct the perfect heist.
The book’s most fundamental issue is probably the pacing. Told cleanly and efficiently, the plot would be a slim, sharp novelette or longer short story – you can almost count the number of scenes really concerned with the whole heist and resulting vendetta on one hand. Instead the better part of the book is devoted to a sort of meandering exploration of the world and its incredibly bloated supporting cast. The final effect is that of spending most of the story setting the table for a feast far, far larger than the host can actually afford to put on. There are no economies taken at any point, the book abounds with characters introduced with potted biographies and lengthy explanations of their relationship and history with Jason who never appear on screen again. More dynamics and conflicts are established than I can even remember, the overwhelming majority near-instantly forgotten about. It’s the sort of thing that might be forgivable if this was the start of a massive series that would eventually make use of all the setup. As a standalone book it’s just incredibly frustrating.
The same issue is replicated on the level of prose and description. This is a very, very visual book, and no restraint is ever employed when it comes to painting vivid, detailed pictures in the reader’s mind. Even if it’s just describing a stairway or an anonymous bar, or the look of a lawyer who will never appear again. It makes reading the book an oddly exhausting experience, slogging through so many irrelevant details.
Doubly and trebly so because the complete lack of focus means all the extraneous detail crowds out the few character arcs that really do matter. Choices that the whole plot hinges on and character-defining revelations are brushed over with mechanical efficiency, almost just from lack of space to give them the focus they really need. People’s inner lives and motivations feel either mechanical or outright inexplicable. Which is kind of a fundamental issue, when it comes to what is driving and keeping loyal the crew very literally and directly risking life and limb to indulge an oligarch’s ego-trip and hobby (which would feel less pressing if Jason’s ego didn’t get so many of the supporting cast crippled or killed for no actual reason at all through the course of the book, something the narrative really does not seem to properly appreciate.)
Jason herself is a kind of fascinating character, in that she is both intensely, intensely ‘80s (Japanese in the ‘written-by-a-white-guy-in-Seattle’ way, described with comparisons to a samurai at least twice, wears exclusively black leather and skin-tight denim) and a bit of a fossil of older golden/silver-age space opera, but now coming in woman (hundred-year-old trillionaire oligarch space captain titan of the interstellar economy, almost none of which actually matter to the plot). The end result feels like someone’s beloved and incredibly overpowered rpg character, honestly.
The setting is interesting, for all of the very odd choices in focus. Beyond the very mid-80s genre writer representation of sexuality and people of colour, it commits more to how genuinely weird cosmetic surgery would get and how odd a lot of people would choose to look given the technology and budget that makes it possible. The main villain has four arms and one of the most important secondary characters has a thick coat of bears fur and these were both basically just the results of impulsive surgery they got as teenagers. It’s unironically one of the book’s strongest points.
The other big, salient feature of the setting is that the better part of the story takes place on New Crete, which is one of the more orientalist things I’ve read recently, let alone ‘space Greece’s.’ There’s even a hooting, jeering crowd swarming around the arena to watch some major characters be publicly lashed to death, and a bunch of strange and freakish religious sects.
Anyway, not one I’d recommend – though it does have flashes of personality and eccentricity that made it at least a memorable read.
January 18, 2019
As science fiction goes, the author makes an attempt to show how a system called the NET which links mind of a crew allows them to operate as a single unit using all five senses - sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. What is very unclear is how it works. The reader is left with the concept and basically told, "It just does". It actually sounded very silly to me. Still, it is important because the using of the NET is key to the story.
The author is very descriptive of scenes. He will, for example, tell how what a stairway is composed of, how it angles, and more. Someone must have told this author that the setting of the scene is critical and so he does it to excess. Further, the main locale is on a planet with a modern Greek society so the author constantly uses Greek terms, which I have absolutely no idea what they mean and so find them annoying.
Now perhaps this author felt that with his heavy purple prose for the scenery and his inclusion of Greek dialect he was creating something special and so focused on those aspects. What he forgot to do was not make the story BORING! This is a yawner of epic proportions. It was hard to read because I never felt engaged. Maybe if he had spent more time on action and not describing the vistas he might have done something with what, from an outside perspective, was a reasonable premise.
I would only recommend this book to insomniacs.
The author is very descriptive of scenes. He will, for example, tell how what a stairway is composed of, how it angles, and more. Someone must have told this author that the setting of the scene is critical and so he does it to excess. Further, the main locale is on a planet with a modern Greek society so the author constantly uses Greek terms, which I have absolutely no idea what they mean and so find them annoying.
Now perhaps this author felt that with his heavy purple prose for the scenery and his inclusion of Greek dialect he was creating something special and so focused on those aspects. What he forgot to do was not make the story BORING! This is a yawner of epic proportions. It was hard to read because I never felt engaged. Maybe if he had spent more time on action and not describing the vistas he might have done something with what, from an outside perspective, was a reasonable premise.
I would only recommend this book to insomniacs.
March 25, 2024
Can you be the head of an interplanetary trading corporation and well-known as a suspected jewel thief? If you had a means to ptroject a hologram around yourself while, perhaps trying to steal priceless jems, where would you get a computer powerful enough to hide you from all onlookers and cameras? When the crew of a spaceship is ogether so each crew member provides one of the senses such as sight, hearing, and smell used to guide the ship, who is hurt the most by an attack from another such ship? These might be some he questions pondered while this story was being written.
September 23, 2024
When I first read this shortly after it came out, it confused me a bit. A lot of this is quite ahead of its time. Now, with a second read, I find that it is a gem and deserves a wider audience. A pity MacGregor did not keep publishing. It would have been fascinating to see what he would have done.
February 15, 2022
Senza infamia e senza lode. Piuttosto confusionario. Mi piace la grande presenza di personaggi femminili e il fatto che praticamente sia ambientato in Grecia.
July 27, 2016
Ace Science Fiction Specials are three series of science fiction and fantasy books edited by Terry Carr and published by Ace Books between 1968 and 1990. The first series was one of the most influential in the history of science fiction publishing; four of the six novels nominated for 1970 Nebula Awards were from the series. The third series (1984-90) featured all new writers including now familiar names such as Kim Stanley Robinson, Lucius Shepherd, William Gibson, Michael Swanwick, and Jack McDevitt. Among the lesser known of the third series was this one - The Net, by Loren J. MacGregor. As far as I can tell, this was MacGregor's only novel.
The story itself is essentially a jewel heist. Jason Horiuchi is the dark sheep of her powerfully wealthy family, whose starship captaincy is more a base for her criminal activities than a commercial endeavor. When dared to steal a fabulously valuable ruby by her rival Alecko Papandreou, she gathers her crew and begins to plan. The setting is a planet on which the culture of Greece (modern Greece, not historical) is preserved and nurtured. The Papandreou family rules, and bends science fictional and telepathic technologies toward the norms of a mafia-like culture. Lives are lost as the rivalry steepens to the conclusion.
Overall, I found the story entertaining, but a bit tedious, as I have never been a big fan of "Oceans Eleven" plotlines.
The story itself is essentially a jewel heist. Jason Horiuchi is the dark sheep of her powerfully wealthy family, whose starship captaincy is more a base for her criminal activities than a commercial endeavor. When dared to steal a fabulously valuable ruby by her rival Alecko Papandreou, she gathers her crew and begins to plan. The setting is a planet on which the culture of Greece (modern Greece, not historical) is preserved and nurtured. The Papandreou family rules, and bends science fictional and telepathic technologies toward the norms of a mafia-like culture. Lives are lost as the rivalry steepens to the conclusion.
Overall, I found the story entertaining, but a bit tedious, as I have never been a big fan of "Oceans Eleven" plotlines.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews