Against Infinity

Benford, Gregory. Against Infinity. 1983. Jupiter Project No. 2. Pocket, 1984.
The project that Gregory Benford set for himself in Against Infinity is ambitious, to say the least. He takes a classic coming of age story by William Faulkner, “The Bear,” and moves it from the nineteenth-century Mississippi wilderness to the frozen moons of Jupiter. At the same time, Benford wants to keep the science believable. It is thus a much more serious and fully developed story than the first Jupiter Project novel. Manuel, the son of a labor boss called the Colonel, learns to hunt the mutant animals that are preying on the genetically modified animals that are being used in his father’s terraforming project. Along the way, he learns the sad show more lessons of adulthood and faces a choice between the wilderness and the domed society humans are creating. The final confrontation with a beast that would be a match for anything in the Alien-Predator movies is fully satisfying, and the style at times reaches almost Faulknerian heights. In the end, this is a coming of age story that is aimed at adults, and it gets five stars from me. show less

Solidly OK, but not "if you only read one sf book this year this should be it". I'll try more benford.

A hard sci fi retelling of the Faulkner short story, the Bear. I hate faulkner and I'm not overly fond of hard sci fi, so the cruddy rating I gave this novel is probably based on personal taste rather than the fact the work was duller'n watchin' paint dry.

NIL

Ganímedes: una de las lunas de Júpiter, un mundo de hielo y roca, de ríos de amoníaco y restos de meteoritos profundamente enterrados, ricos en minerales. Un mundo sin aire, hostil al hombre, pero que éste quiere conquistar a toda costa. En este entorno, se desarrolla la vida de un puñado de valientes, pioneros en todos los sentidos de la palabra, que extienden sus asentamientos herméticos y vencen todas las dificultades, día a día, kilómetro a kilómetro, con sus mutados animales y las criaturas creadas por la bioingeniería para transformar la biosfera.