Genesis

In a genre noted for epic scope and lengthy timelines _Genesis_ by Poul Anderson really stands out. A billion years passes in the course of the novel though as one might imagine the reader does not follow along all or even most of what transpires in this setting's history. Reminding me in some ways o......more

There's some really interesting stuff here, as the novel explores the singularity of human and machine, predicting the rise of a galactic consciousness, and touches on what it means to be human and the way human civilizations develop. If the execution of the narrative was as impressive as those the......more

I tend to be more forgiving of hard SciFi storytelling foibles than other genres and with that in mind, this was...fine? I'm glad I spent the time reading Genesis but I would not generally recommend it. Which is a shame. There were some really interesting concepts (the Galaxy Brain, our "heroes" being......more

This is my first dip into the writing of Poul Anderson, and the result is...odd. The first act is fascinating and implies a complicated yet epic journey of personal and technological growth. But the second act turns into a long, rambling, pseudo-historical fantasy, which didn't hold my attention at......more

This had great promise, a the mind of a man uploaded into a artificial intelligence sent to the stars. Somehow though, it broke down into a series of disjointed stories and I lost the thread of the thing. It seems a shame too, I read a lot of Poul Anderson years ago. But this one just didn't do it f......more