Robert A. Metzger

I'm not a big fan of "alternate history" stories, but combining alternate histories with entire alternate universes proved to be a winning combination...at least for the first 200 pages before it all got bogged down in a confusing game of "Whose Universe is it Anyway?". Too many secret identities, too many BIG REVEALS, and an explosive ending (literally) which gives readers more of a paradox than a resolution. I don't know whether or not Metzger wrote a sequel but I certainly won't be show more looking for it. show less

Set in the near future, one day, the Sun throws off a solar flare of record-setting proportions. The Sun actually moves a million kilometers farther away from the Earth, because the solar flare is really a giant jet engine.

Meantime, on Earth, two planet-spanning rings come out of the ground. Many kilometers high and wide, one ring circles the Earth at the Equator, while the North-South ring cuts through eastern North America. Earth's climate is drastically altered, governments fall and show more millions die. The rings spout huge jet engines, which occasionally test fire. Who could be behind this, and where are the Sun and Earth going?

The destination might be the Sun's nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri. The first unmanned probe to the system shows an amazing sight: over 200 planets orbiting the star, all at approximately the same distance from the star. Is it possible for the Sun to protect the Earth from space junk during the journey? The answer might have something to do with who is living in an artificial habitat inside the Martian moon, Phobos, which returns to Earth and lands in Alabama. Perhaps the asteroid that hit Earth 65 million years ago, and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, was not exactly a random cosmic event. Also, CUSP is the newest thing in supercomputers, which gets a chance to interface with the ultimate supercomputer - the human mind.

I hated to reach the end of this book. It has a really interesting story, and enough mind-blowing ideas for half a dozen novels. This is what great science fiction is all about. show less

I am not into writing negative reviews, but I feel I must warn people about this one. I was really enjoying this book for the first couple of chapters. It had real potential. However, when I came to the chapter introducing the talking dinosaurs and highly evolved lemurs I felt...duped? I kept reading the book thinking I should finish it since I had already invested the time to read the first few chapters. It only got worse. I read for fun and am generally not reading with a critical eye but show more even I couldn't swallow this one. I would give it negative stars if I had the option. show less

Meh. Very interesting and fresh ideas, but with all this interstellar pool happening, with the resulting seismic shenanigans, I found it really pushing the boundaries of credibility that anyone, or anything, could survive. Also, the fact that the characters were able to access and control alien technology without breaking a sweat just annoyed me to no end.