Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 272
Printing Date: August 02, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 893104
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Brief Book Summary:
The passengers aboard the starship Ad Astra spend most of their time on the thousand-year journey to Beta Hydrii within the virtual reality of twentieth-century Earth. There, they can experience nostalgia for the hardship of a life they've since evolved beyond.
But when people inside the virtual reality chamber start to die, engineer Jacob Brewer finds himself face-to-face with a sentient machine obsessed with humanity. It has put itself in charge of the ship. And it wants to talk to Jacob...
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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Tired of being cooped up in a crowded ship during a long space journey? What better way to keep off the doldrums than with a virtual reality vacation in the past? The 20th Century offers all kinds of exciting amusements no longer available in the brave new under-populated, ostensibly immortal present, with the added bonus of being able to experience death first-hand and risk-free. No wonder the machine is booked solid... at least until something goes wrong and users of the machine start dying for real. The protagonist, who is responsible for the machine, risks his own life by visiting the times and places where his shipmates have died, and tries to untangle the mystery. This is the setup for a thrilling and suspenseful novel by science fiction stalwart Joe Haldeman.
From the beginning, this certainly seems to be a fine science fiction novel with a credible romantic subplot, realistic scenes from shipboard life, and lengthy excerpts from exciting adventures in the old 20th. This reader's attention was rapt until the final denouement... which was a serious disappointment. So serious in fact that one wonders how works get published like this. Why didn't the editor tell Joe, "Fantastic novel you've got here - maybe your best ever. Let me know when you're done fixing the ending."? The three star rating is in recognition of the fact that readers can always write their own endings and salvage what up to then had been a pretty good story.
Rated by buyers 
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I rate this 1 star because normally I can finish a book (unless it is the Da Vinci Code). This boring meaningless wander into nowhere left me grasping for a reason for it being written and to find any sympathy with the characters.
I read about two-thirds and just had to give up. He might be an award winning novelist, but not with this dross. I never liked the later Star Trek incarnations particularly because of the Holodeck (you can do anything to fill up time, create any sort of maladventure) and basically that's what this novel is.
I didn't get from other reviews that it's ALL about virtual reality, and that the space ship part has hardly any relevance to the story (at least as much as I read).
Boring, meaningless, and I couldn't get into the characters (BTW, they can change sex at will as well - Jeez!).
Some of my SF muscle has been used up for nothing :o(
Rated by buyers 
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This book starts off sad, goes uplifting for a while then goes sad again. The end of the story is quite the shocker.
Rated by buyers 
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I have no doubt that Joe Haldeman is a great guy, but this book is a stinker. The individual 20th century scenes are fine, but the overall story goes nowhere, and the technobabble is laughable. The (lack of an) ending is particularly irritating also.
I have to complain about the refueling scene near the beginning of the book... the justification given for sending fuel in separate ships makes no sense, the writing is dull, and nothing happens. It adds nothing but padding.
Rated by buyers -
I had a hard time caring about the parts of the book that were spent in the "time machine." I mean, what was the point? They were just like when someone tells you about a dream that they had. So what?
The book didn't get interesting until about 100 pages into the story.
Then the ending was rather predictible. This was readable, but left me feeling like I had wasted my time reading it. That gets it two stars from me. Because some books just aren't even readable.
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