Helpful Score: 2
Another good Brin book. "Practice makes perfect" brings a whole new meaning when the physics have gone a bit strange. In this, people make simple clothes out of rags and junk, and give them to others to wear and use for a while. Later, those practiced items are taken back once they are high enough quality. The upperclass has even more of a reason to make the lowerclass do all the work.
Helpful Score: 1
Not my favorite Brin, but fun concept.
Helpful Score: 1
a unique story about travel to a strange world where the laws of physics are different. Science is a mix of modern and stoneage and used items get better no worse with time.
I really like this book. It's not as well known as Brin's other books, but this is fun as well as well as philosophically interesting. The way science fiction used to be!
A very enjoyable and well thought out book.
Not my favorite Brin, either, but still an enjoyable quick read.
A Connecticut Yankee? Well, maybe.
Dennis Nuel is chief physicist of a team exploring the possibility of space exploration via a new wonder, called the Zievatron, which creates a portal between their Sahara Tech lab and some other point. But politics have somehow removed Dennis from the team just when he had figured how to adjust the Zievatron search algorithms to enable them to actually find new worlds. Only when things go wrong, is Dennis called back to the team.
The Zievatron has indeed found a new planet. And the team had gathered a wondrous collection of flora and fauna, when something went wrong at the other end, and they lost communication with their explorer 'bots. The only way Dennis could repair the other side was to go through to this strange world. But, once on the other side, he finds himself in the middle of a power struggle among the inhabitants, who seem to live in a feudal society of little technology.
Dennis now finds himself hailed a "Wizard", and must choose sides to save himself, and those who are being wronged, before he can get back to repair the broken portal. And all he has to accomplish these goals is his ingenuity, and a strange anomaly, common to this planet, called "The Practice Effect".
I very much enjoyed this novel. Just like Mark Twain's classic tour de farce, this story is frought with adventure and humor. And I even caught a wiff of The Force in one of the seat-gripping scenes. Two Thumbs Up.
Dennis Nuel is chief physicist of a team exploring the possibility of space exploration via a new wonder, called the Zievatron, which creates a portal between their Sahara Tech lab and some other point. But politics have somehow removed Dennis from the team just when he had figured how to adjust the Zievatron search algorithms to enable them to actually find new worlds. Only when things go wrong, is Dennis called back to the team.
The Zievatron has indeed found a new planet. And the team had gathered a wondrous collection of flora and fauna, when something went wrong at the other end, and they lost communication with their explorer 'bots. The only way Dennis could repair the other side was to go through to this strange world. But, once on the other side, he finds himself in the middle of a power struggle among the inhabitants, who seem to live in a feudal society of little technology.
Dennis now finds himself hailed a "Wizard", and must choose sides to save himself, and those who are being wronged, before he can get back to repair the broken portal. And all he has to accomplish these goals is his ingenuity, and a strange anomaly, common to this planet, called "The Practice Effect".
I very much enjoyed this novel. Just like Mark Twain's classic tour de farce, this story is frought with adventure and humor. And I even caught a wiff of The Force in one of the seat-gripping scenes. Two Thumbs Up.
A good if simple book. Better for the YA set, I think.
