The Digital Dead (The Forge of Mars series Book 2)
Mar 22, Mark rated it liked it Shelves: I like a decent science fiction story, it does not have to be amazing, just fun. Was it overly complex with a lot of characters? Did it not fully flesh out many of these characters, such as the protagonist Tau Wolfsinger? However, I enjoyed the discussions of Artificial Intelligence, the ethical quandaries of producing a virtual copy of an individual's memories and personality while they are alive and then after they I like a decent science fiction story, it does not have to be amazing, just fun.
However, I enjoyed the discussions of Artificial Intelligence, the ethical quandaries of producing a virtual copy of an individual's memories and personality while they are alive and then after they die allowing them to inhabit an artificial afterlife, and how politicians or advertisers! Balfour elected in this book to deal with a possible future where "Whole Brain Emulation" WBE is a reality and is in widespread use.
Some derivation of this already exists; social media sites like Facebook have had to hash out what do with an account when the end user dies. Relatives have demanded that Facebook keep up their deceased relation's accounts as a permanent memorial to their loved ones. Ethical and existential questions abound in The Digital Dead ; also a lot of silliness. This book is a sequel to Balfour's The Forge of Mars and consequently there is a lot clumsy references to that previous novel in this book. So, gentle reader, I would strongly recommend reading these books in their proper order.
I enjoyed a Lord Byron quote cited by one of the digital damned according to his own virtual opinion in the final portion of the novel: If there the cherish'd heart be fond The eye the same, except in tears-- How welcome those untrodden spheres!
How sweet this very hour to die! To soar from earth, and find all fears Lost in thy light--Eternity! It must be so: Jul 22, Scott Holstad rated it liked it. Not a bad book, but not a great book either. Could have been better. First, though, it's about a new company called Elysian Fields that offers eternal life by implanting chips in people's heads and then when you die, an electronic copy of your personality is stored in a digital universe for people to interact with as though you're still alive. It's an odd premise and hard to pull off.
I'm not convinced the book accomplished that for me. This book is also a sequel, which I wish I would have known Not a bad book, but not a great book either. This book is also a sequel, which I wish I would have known. I could never figure out why an alien version of the Egyptian god Thoth was wandering around Kate's head. Ultimately the book is about power, and the scramble to attain it. The thing that irritated me about the book was that there were too many darn characters! I'm not completely stupid, but I had a hard time keeping up with them all.
It doesn't help that I read books at a time, so I'd set this down for a couple of days and then had a hard time catching up when I picked it up again. I just kept think that Dick and Pohl, two of my sci fi favorites, never had to resort to dozens of characters. You usually have one or two with them and they still pull off a mean story. It just aggravated me and I almost gave up reading the book several times. However, I managed to finish and I guess I'm glad I did. Things were haphazardly tied up at the end, so I guess all is well with the universe. I'm still not completely satisfied with what happens to all of the digitally living dead people at the end of the book, but I won't write a spoiler.
I guess I mildly recommend the book, but with some reservation. Mar 26, Andreas rated it did not like it. In the setting for novel, one can get an implant that takes a snapshot of the brain at death a little like in Altered Carbon. This snapshot is transferred to the databanks of the company Elysian Fields and a sort of electronic heaven. So the dead are not really dead. Looks promising, but my first question is: Th In the setting for novel, one can get an implant that takes a snapshot of the brain at death a little like in Altered Carbon.
The story is rather complex, with a host of characters being introduced in the first eighty pages or so. It remains complex for most of the novel, but without ever really coming into focus. The driving threat feels abstract and the actions of the characters are rather erratic. The writing is average. Many good ideas are competently presented, but there is no sign of prose virtuosity.
Not because it is implausible, but because it is so uncool. His descriptions of locales are formulaic and boring and I found myself skimming through them. I was left dissatisfied. I could barely work up the energy to finish the book, and it took a long time. Balfour has some great ideas, but does not present them nearly well enough. Mar 16, Tom rated it it was ok. This book was like a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios.
The Forge of God: Greg Bear: www.newyorkethnicfood.com: Books
It seems like it should be really good, but then while you eat it, you realize it's sugary, but not really delicious. It ought to be delicious! And then when you're done, you think, "Did I really just eat a whole bowl of that? The main character is either an amazing super-agent guy, or just some Navajo dope This book was like a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios.
The main character is either an amazing super-agent guy, or just some Navajo dope, and you can't tell from this book. It's got that whole soap-opera vibe going, too, with multiple storylines. Unfortunately, none of them ever really get developed well enough. It touches on some really interesting ideas, but just like the storylines, they're not developed in any real depth.
Dec 29, Mark Lacy rated it liked it Shelves: I initially tried to get into this book, but just couldn't. It didn't seem that interesting. But I tried again a few years later, and it turned out to be interesting after all. For example, there were too many subplots that weren't tied together till near the end. That got confusing and aggravating. Like "The Forge of Mars", it had a variety of different themes in it, including chase scenes and espionage worthy of a thriller.
May 26, Macha rated it liked it. Apr 25, Jonathan is currently reading it. This book is so good so far - that I intend to find a copy of the first book Forge of Mars so that I can read that as well.
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Feb 15, JC rated it really liked it. Bounces around a little toward the end and leaves me wanting more details on the conspiracies that are resolved abruptly. Sergio Cespedes rated it really liked it Apr 28, Jeremy Kofoot rated it liked it Sep 29, Don Gaspar II rated it really liked it Feb 10, Peter Okeafor rated it liked it Mar 29, J Kukacka rated it it was amazing Jun 28, Military sci-fi is not a genre I have read extensively in, but if other works in the genre similarly extrapolate the implications of technological advancement for social cohesion and military strategy in the far future, then sign me up for a reading list.
I want to read more. I wasn't enamored with every element of the story, however. Bear, again, takes on the task of berating religion through caricature, suggesting to the reader that he has a decided grudge against it while at the same time misunderstanding it. It is also a smutty telling, the author seeming to take a lot of gratification in detailing the many and varied sexual liaisons of our older teenagers and young adults.
In places, both of these elements contributed to character building, but their excesses went beyond development and distracted from the otherwise measured story. And that story was, ultimately, decisive and heavy. That last page gets turned with all the necessary questions answered but without Bear offering any help in processing what happened. That happens on your own time and away from Anvil of Stars. BUT, that sort of thing is par for the golf course of black holes in SF - so no biggie.. In other words, the title is so rotten-cheese-ball that many a sensitive literary type might avoid it..
BUT, I liked this bk. A group of young people, survivors from a destroyed Earth, are traveling in a "Ship of the Law" seeking out those responsible for Earth's destruction to avenge it. Regardless of how much this story pulls out all the melodramatic stops, its scale is impressive: How many people can imagine conflicts that loom this large? Dec 13, Donna rated it liked it Shelves: This sequel is completely different from The Forge of God. I had a hard time getting into the story and found myself starting to skim--never a good sign.
About halfway through, it picked up and I liked best the part that dealt with the "Brothers", an alien species that the humans team up with. Th This sequel is completely different from The Forge of God. The theme of the appropriateness of revenge is interesting and I found myself siding with the group that wanted to forget about it and try to find someplace to go and have a life. I was disappointed in the ending. Then, to show that there were still killer machines and so they were right to destroy the system, took away all the interest.
I would much rather have them forced to deal with that uncertainty. Dec 14, Fred Hughes rated it really liked it. This book continues where The Forge of God ends off, which is the aftermath of the destruction of most of Earth and its inhabitants. Taken from the destruction by a superior race called the Benefactors a large group of children volunteer to find the race that attacked Earth and destroy them using technology supplied by the Benefactors.
After 5 years flying at near the speed of l This book continues where The Forge of God ends off, which is the aftermath of the destruction of most of Earth and its inhabitants. After 5 years flying at near the speed of light their ship sensors indicate the solar system ahead has attributes that match the drones that destroyed Earth.
However what they find is a system so far ahead of any technology that they know of or that the Benefactors can supply that it looks like a suicide mission. Can the children of Earth destroy this alien race? Questions are raised by some as to whether it should be an eye for an eye. Are the benefactors holding back on information that the children of Earth will need?
There is politics involved, questions of belief, mind numbing technology and the ultimate question of good versus evil. Highly recommended read and up to the full level of professionalism in any other of Greg Bears other books. Aug 31, Pete Harris rated it it was amazing Shelves: This blew my mind when I read it, which I did before I read the first one Forge of God , but it didn't suffer from any lack of context, standing alone perfectly well. I think it's a better book, with a huge concept and deep, dark themes.
I suspect Greg Bear had Anvil of Stars in mind as a destination when Forge of God was being written, because the first book is more or less a setup for the much more interesting and horrifying story that follows. I say horrifying, and it is, on multiple levels. But you see this through the eyes of very weak and flawed humans, and a protagonist who agonises over it to the very end.
The horror, cruelty and regret is all very personal. There's plenty of hard science as well as hard moral decisions. There are robots and antimatter and superweapons that make antimatter look tame. I don't give out a lot of 5 star ratings but this book is amazing.
It did actually amaze me. Jul 22, Chris Van Dyke rated it really liked it Shelves: A fantastic, if completely unexpected follow up to "Forge of God. This book follows a group of young survivors who were rescued by a mysterious race of benefactors at the end of "Forge. Bear creates great characters and great social tensions as this close-knit, somewhat in-bred community is forced to try to finish "the Job" and not destroy themselves in the process.
Jun 14, Zac rated it really liked it Shelves: The Forge of God was incredible. This doesn't necessarily pick up where it left off, but it's the sequel. A very different book from Forge. The science fiction is good, the writing isn't terrible - Bear manages to sustain a fairly consistent and growing atmosphere of tension and uncertainty throughout. The ideas are engaging and the world building is solid. The first half, however, I struggled completely to identify with the characters in any meaningful way.
Other things I disliked: And was that somehow more significant to the narrative than I took it? I'm assuming there was a device here that Bear intended that just failed for me completely. Aug 27, Hien rated it really liked it Shelves: This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is the sequel to "The Forge of God".
By the end of the first book, earth had been destroyed by alien von Neumann probes while another alien race had saved a small fraction of humans and transplanted them to Mars. They also constructed planet busting dreadnoughts to be sent out to hunt down and destroy the aliens responsible for the destruction of earth.
In this book we follow one of these dreadnoughts crewed by human children. The ships are crewed by children because of the length of the mis This is the sequel to "The Forge of God". The ships are crewed by children because of the length of the mission. When the ship finally finds what they think is the home world of the aliens, they have a tough decision to make. Do they have the right to commit genocide? Mar 12, Tomislav rated it really liked it Shelves: Fortunately, it is not a tightly coupled sequel. In other words, while the plot events are a consequence of what happens in The Forge of God, there is no character continuity — and a reader could plausibly read it as a stand-alone.
I will expose no spoilers to Anvil of Stars in these comments, but it is not really possible to talk much about the plot without giving a major spoiler to The Forge of God. So stop now, if that would affect you. The space ship Dawn Treader is a Ship of the Law, provided by the Benefactors and staffed by teenage human exiles. Its mission is to locate the home world of the Killers of Earth, judge them, and carry out a sentence of extermination. On the face of it, this sounds like a juvenile revenge fantasy, but in the hands of Greg Bear, justice is not so simple a thing.
Over the couple of years of the duration of the novel, the crew members mature well, some of them and grapple with the ethical issues which arise from this premise. These can be manipulated by an advanced technology not explained. It enables, for example, all kinds of things, from instant FTL communication to the conversion of matter to anti-matter from a distance.
Anvil of Stars
I guess this must be loosely based on quantum entanglement, but it's never justified. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I would prefer not to inch through every plot revelation serially through the eyes of every major character. Close to pages is just too much for the number of actual events contained. However, the plot tension holds right to nearly the last page, and the ending is NOT overly simplistic. I recommend the book, with the two caveats above. Oct 17, Annette rated it liked it Recommends it for: Only if you read the prequel and have a high tollerance for depression.
Plot in a nutshell: Martin, son of one of the main characters from "Forge," is the protagonist. What I liked about the book: Several novels I've read lately have given travel at relativistic speeds a fair shake, but they all proposed faster-than-light communications to smooth things out. This book does not: Everyone is pretty much on their own, with no-one to turn to for impossibly difficult decisions. No parents, no planet, no hope of ever seeing another human other than themselves, and instructions from their rescuers to go commit genocide of their own - presuming they can find the culprits.
The book is in fact far more about this psychology and group dynamic than anything else, although the science is interesting. This all said, honestly I struggled to get through it. There are several suicides, and the main character himself is deeply depressed for much of the book. At one point he goes off alone to pray - but he doesn't know to what or whom, because he has never really believed in any god.
He can find no hope and no meaning in life. The "Job" they were sent to do is no longer enough, and he cannot envision life after it's done, assuming they survive. Everything is told from his POV, and there's frequently a nightmarish quality to his observations - cycling around and around unanswerable questions and insoluable problems, interacticing clumsily and inconclusively with his cohort, never asking the right questions or taking the decisive action we, the reader, want him to take. Frankly, I think the author did a very good job of homing in on the hopelessness and uselessness of life without God and the inadequacies of whatever we try and replace him with.
It's a problem anyone who's determined to go it alone must wrestle with. But the author doesn't propose any realistic solution, and this made the book pretty hard to read. In the end, I am glad I did read it, but I would not do so again. View all 8 comments.
Jul 05, Gendou rated it liked it Shelves: Like the prequel, this book revels in doom and gloom. The characters are children on a trip to enact vengeance for the Earth's destruction. Most of the book is them on their way, fucking which they call "slicking" and bickering and training on useless weapon-ships which they don't end up using. There's some crazy girl who has religious visions for some reason. The only redeeming part of this book is when the rag-tag team of human kids teams up with some aliens. The creativity that goes into the Like the prequel, this book revels in doom and gloom.
The creativity that goes into the aliens is really neat. The moral lesson is disgusting. Shoot first, ask questions later. Dec 26, Mike rated it did not like it. I really didn't think this was very good.
More books from this author: Graham McNeill
It was heavy going and I nearly gave up a couple of times in the first or so pages, but ploughed on in the hope it would get better, but it just seem to plod along. It would have helped if I liked some of the characters, but none of them came out and grabbed me. I really couldn't get any feeling for them. This book is a perfect example of not knowing when enough is enough. The conclusion to The Forge of God is a completely different book.
Narrowly focused upon the children who seek to avenge the destruction of the first book. I struggled to get into the dynamic of this story at first And then it hooked me with its fantastic and nuanced conclusion. Nov 16, Derek rated it it was ok Shelves: Quite a bit less impressive than Forge of God. An interesting effort, but Bear seems best when he sticks to stories grounded on earth. Mar 14, Jonathan Lochhaas rated it liked it. Not as good as the first book. Interesting read, but less challenging. Aug 21, AndrewP rated it really liked it Shelves: Sequel to The Forge of God.
Not as good as the first one as it follows a group of survivors from the destruction of earth. Interesting high tech stuff, but lacks the drama of the first one. May 21, The Professor rated it really liked it. We follow a group of volunteer twenty-somethings - merrily coupling without regard for convention - who are taske "All intelligences responsible for or associated with the manufacture of self-replicating and destructive devices will be destroyed.
We follow a group of volunteer twenty-somethings - merrily coupling without regard for convention - who are tasked with exacting vengeance on the murderers of Earth, a bunch of fiends who appear to be able to turn matter into anti-matter and cloak entire planets. Group dynamics are fragile, the current leader is flakey, the first drill is a disaster and their robot guardians are refusing to nanny them anymore.
They find a likely looking system for destruction, start dropping bombs and then What I like about this and "Forge" is that Bear does not screw around. There's no piddling about before Big Stuff happens, pages in and you're reeling from the events and ideas in play. One suspects an audience with Mr Bear would be a dizzying experience. Very eager now to explore his other work which, by the blurbs, sound right up my street. Aug 20, Chris Meads rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is the continuation of the Forge of God.
At the end of that book, the Earth had been destroyed and those that were placed on the ships, watched it disappear. Martin was one of the kids there. The group was able to live between Mars and Venus. Now Martin and a group of kids are traveling on one of the Ships of Law. They are out to find out who destroyed Earth and destroy them. They travel a great distance, learning ever hear of momerath?
They make plans for when they finish the "job" just like anyone would. Will they finish the "Job"? Will there be a future for them? Will they even find the ones that destroyed the Earth? This is a great and scary ending to the story. Sci-fi fans should read the series. Oct 12, Tapio Kurkinen rated it liked it. Personally, I didn't find this one as captivating as the first book in the series but it certainly had its moments. I didn't care for the characters as much and I missed the atmosphere of its predecessor.
I personally would have preferred for it to start right after the first book ended but after kind of mediocre first half the story really picked up for an exciting second half. As a math and physics student, I really appreciate the detail and accuracy Bear goes for in the physics of space travel Personally, I didn't find this one as captivating as the first book in the series but it certainly had its moments. As a math and physics student, I really appreciate the detail and accuracy Bear goes for in the physics of space travel.
The book gets a huge extra point in my book for that.