World Famous Comics: Great Sky River (Galactic Center)
Great Sky River (Galactic Center)
By: Gregory Benford Publisher: Aspect Average Rating: Binding: Mass Market Paperback Label: Aspect Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 464 Publication Date: August 01, 2004
A Great Tale I had always strayed away from trying Benford because of the dreaded "hard" science fiction tag. Mind, I always end up loving authors who get stuck with that tag from Alistair Reynolds to Benford's frequent writing partner David Brin. However, the term always makes the writers sound so scary and lead you to believe that you'll be reading more textbook science than characterization and plot.
Nothing could be further from the truth with Great Sky River! The book is full of examination about what it means to be human through a very strong, very human, protagonist. A lot of the ideas in this book are actually along the lines of what later was labeled "Cyberpunk" in terms of gritty survival crossed with computer-human interface tech that changes the nature of what we are as people (in this case allowing additional personalities into our head via chips called aspects.) Of course Cyberpunk was a near-future genre, and this is a very far-future setting, but there are some striking similarities. If it had been written later, it would have been called "post-Cyberpunk".
Not Free SF Reader Mechs are bad, okay.
A rag-tag fugitive bunch is trying to survive on a planet. They meet a group who have apparently cut a deal with the enemy to assure their survival. The enemy in this case being one of the Mechs. You know how this sort of story usually plays out, deals with the devil and all that sort of thing. Just not too interesting this book, as everything of course gets worse from there.
Haunting and Mesmerizing Over the last 20 years or so I've attempted to read all of the great Sci-Fi. The first time I read this book was about 15 years ago and at that time I felt that it was the best Sci-Fi novel that I have ever read. Clarke, Hebert, Asimov, Card, none of them have ever written as original and compelling a story as this one. I recently read it again and it was just as enthralling as the first time. Buy this book!
The jargon is a little challenging, but it adds to the authenticity of the novel. Once you get the feel for it, will seem natural.
The plot is flawless. Man has populated the stars and in doing so, crossed paths with a race that is so advanced, man hardly rates a second look. Unfortunately, this species requires a dry, almost waterless world, so as a result, humans find themselves on the brink of extermination at the... hands?, of a heartless, ruthless species.
Constantly on the run, reduced to a mere vestige of their great past, humanity is again a tribal unit of hunter/gatherers, scraping out an existence beneath the... radar?, forced to utilize the alien technology to their own ends, man searches for hope on the edge of extinction.
Humans In Decline This is the third in Benford's "Galactic Center" series, and the first of the novels to actually merit the name. The other books are "In the Ocean of Night" (1977) and "Across the Sea of Suns" (1984), set in the near future not far from Earth, and "Tides of Light" (1989), "Furious Gulf" (1994), and "Sailing Bright Eternity" (1995) set, as is this one, about 30,000 years later.
This is a time when humans have settled the central regions of the galaxy and have entered a period of decline forced on them by mechanical intelligences, robots who long preceded them. The middle two novels tell the story from the point of view of the man Killeen Bishop, starting on the planet "Snowglade" where humans (heavily genetically adapted and plugged in to electronic devices) live as scavengers among mechanical constructions, a world near the galactic black hole's accretion disk. Benford's treatment of the human augmentations as something they take for granted and use with considerable skill is an interesting adaptation of "cyberpunk" ideas, though he does expend many words in the novel discussing the technical details.
Most of the machines ignore the humans or treat them as simple nuisances, but the terrifying, powerful and seemingly indestructible "Mantis" pursues and haunts the Bishop family from this novel to the end of the series, ostensibly trying to understand humans better, and in particular why they are so horrified by its sense of "art".
Another entity appears in this third novel and remains through the end - a "magnetic" life-form of vast extent, with roots in the black hole accretion disk and strands reaching to nearby stars. Benford's physics blends with poetry in describing this and many other wonders he imagines for the cosmos.
The character development here is reasonably well-done, though not as convincing as in the later "Furious Gulf". Killeen starts out as a sharp but unreliable member of the clan, growing and maturing as tragedy surrounds him. Benford seems to have a relatively limited range of primary characters: once again Killeen is the rebel, suspicious of authority and the good intentions of others, yet he ends up leading a band toward new horizons at the end.
It would have been more satisfying to have other books spanning the vast gap between the end of the second novel and the beginning of this one - rather that time period appears in flashbacks from the electronic "aspects" the humans carry, always showing nostalgia for times past. This leaves the novels rather open-ended (many threads not nicely cloesd) - but life is like that too. The breadth of Benford's scientifically plausible imagination in these novels is amazing in itself; read these novels to gain a perspective on life in the universe and what a sufficiently advanced civilization might do with a galaxy such as our own.
Great Sky River - the Middle of the Series This was a great sci-fi book. Keep in mind it is also one book in the middle of a series of books dealing with the conflict between the creator and created. I would not recommend reading this book out of context. The earlier books must be read first to avoid confusion!
In this book Gregory Benford explores the human society that was so dependant on technology, that it became almost a magic art, a mystery to those using it. The basic principles of technology were buried in the distant past. When confronted with disaster, the survivors started looking for a "holy grail" of technology that would enable them to escape. A minor theme could also be how so much alike the mechs and humans were. However, at some point the human population stopped contributing to the goal of all life: survival. They ceased being "players" in the advancement of technololgy and so became prey. The book also explores how in any disaster, someone always "fills the gap" and provides leadership. The book explores the fight against an implacable enemy as well as dispair.
I read this story and straight away went to search for the sequel!
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