Muddled

While it starts out with a clever idea, the book loses track of the plot in a lot of improbabilities, then switched entirely from a message from interstellar space being the prime motive, to the supposed motive of computer errors adding up to causing the Earth to implode! ( )

Ok sorry but nothing special science fiction wise, except perhaps the AI and alien signals.

Enjoyable fairly short read reminiscent of 2001, from the point of view of the AI. ( )

I really enjoyed Robert J. Sawyer’s Golden Fleece!

A ship is making a huge journey across space with crowds of people and supplies aboard, to a world many lightyears distant. Running the vessel is Jason, one of several intelligent computers made throughout the world to help Man. Except the one on this trip makes HAL from 2001 seem like a running calculator!

The story starts with a murder. Diane, who has discovered “something” that the computer wants kept quiet. Aaron the ex, who is blamed for the killing, even though it was an apparent accident, because he drove her to suicide.

The rest of the story tries to exonerate Aaron’s good name and in the process he discovers too the computer’s secret. A secret that is to make a big impact in a big way on the unsuspecting colonists.

Quite a story. Suspensful and you don’t know the “secret” until near the end of the book.

The theme of keeping secrets is peppered throughout the story. Aaron is adopted but in his quest to find his biological parents he makes a shocking discovery (lots of flashbacks in this story).

There are several such things … Secrets kept, some revealed. All tied up by a shocking, satisfying ending.

Sawyer’s early novels are frankly much better than his current release, a failed comedy called Red Planet Blues. Avoid. Read instead about these Argonauts and their search for the Golden Fleece.


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I really enjoyed Robert J. Sawyer’s Golden Fleece!

A ship is making a huge journey across space with crowds of people and supplies aboard, to a world many lightyears distant. Running the vessel is Jason, one of several intelligent computers made throughout the world to help Man. Except the one on this trip makes HAL from 2001 seem like a running calculator!

The story starts with a murder. Diane, who has discovered “something” that the computer wants kept quiet. Aaron the ex, who is blamed for the killing, even though it was an apparent accident, because he drove her to suicide.

The rest of the story tries to exonerate Aaron’s good name and in the process he discovers too the computer’s secret. A secret that is to make a big impact in a big way on the unsuspecting colonists.

Quite a story. Suspensful and you don’t know the “secret” until near the end of the book.

The theme of keeping secrets is peppered throughout the story. Aaron is adopted but in his quest to find his biological parents he makes a shocking discovery (lots of flashbacks in this story).

There are several such things … Secrets kept, some revealed. All tied up by a shocking, satisfying ending.

Sawyer’s early novels are frankly much better than his current release, a failed comedy called Red Planet Blues. Avoid. Read instead about these Argonauts and their search for the Golden Fleece.


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