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The starship Starfarer is poised for our first voyage to another star system. The Alien Contact Team - physicist Victoria Fraser MacKenzie, geneticist Stephen Thomas Gregory, geographer Satoshi Lono, and alien contact specialist J.D. Sauvage - and the rest of the faculty and staff prepare for humanity's most ambitious exploratory expedition.But the world has changed. A new regime orders the vessel to be abandoned. It will be turned into an instrument of war.What do the Starfarers do?They do show more what any red-blooded Alien Contact Team would do.They steal the starship. show lessTags
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The third in the Starfarers series is yet another step up from the first two, though I remain mystified by the Le Guin blurb "With this third novel, Starfarers clearly becomes the most important series in science fiction..." -- perhaps there was a qualifier following. At least we meet an alien. The alien is biologically interesting though in conversation it comes across about as human as most SF aliens do. The start and end of the book are the most interesting as they focus on the alien and Starfarer's quest to meet the Galactic Civilization. The middle is a mix of things still going haywire with Arachne (the ship's version of the internet) and way too much time on the mechanics of underwater group sex and the travails of Stephen show more Thomas, the hot guy that no man or woman can resist.
Recommended, despite the sagging middle. show less
Recommended, despite the sagging middle. show less
Third in a series...
In this installment, disappointed by the two human representatives of interstellar 'Civilization,' the crew of the 'Starfarer' go to meet a more alien species, the squidmoths. Unfortunately (?), the squidmoth they dub Nemo is about to enter the last phase of its life, where it will physically change, reproduce, and then die. They have little time to get to know this species.
Meanwhile, one of the main characters is going through his own physical change, becoming an aquatic 'diver,' due to the destruction of the genetics lab. This is not easy on his relationships...
And Starfarer itself may be in trouble... the ecological system seems to be going haywire, and politics still plague every decision...
Not bad, but I've show more become a little annoyed by the fact that although Starfarer is a community of at least several hundred people, it seems that the main dozen or so characters ONLY interact with each other. We hardly ever see random other people doing anything, and in such a small community, I'd think everyone would be getting to know one another pretty fast...
Oh well, on to the last volume in this series... show less
In this installment, disappointed by the two human representatives of interstellar 'Civilization,' the crew of the 'Starfarer' go to meet a more alien species, the squidmoths. Unfortunately (?), the squidmoth they dub Nemo is about to enter the last phase of its life, where it will physically change, reproduce, and then die. They have little time to get to know this species.
Meanwhile, one of the main characters is going through his own physical change, becoming an aquatic 'diver,' due to the destruction of the genetics lab. This is not easy on his relationships...
And Starfarer itself may be in trouble... the ecological system seems to be going haywire, and politics still plague every decision...
Not bad, but I've show more become a little annoyed by the fact that although Starfarer is a community of at least several hundred people, it seems that the main dozen or so characters ONLY interact with each other. We hardly ever see random other people doing anything, and in such a small community, I'd think everyone would be getting to know one another pretty fast...
Oh well, on to the last volume in this series... show less
Really well executed social, some lovely ideas, and overall solid writing.
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Books Set in Outer Space
39 works; 9 members
Author Information
70+ Works 14,557 Members
Vonda Neel McIntyre was born in Louisville, Kentucky on August 28, 1948. She received a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Washington in 1970 and studied genetics there as a postgraduate until ending her studies in 1971. In 1973, her short story, Of Mist, Grass, and Sand, won a Nebula Award for best novelette. Her novel, show more Dreamsnake, won a Nebula Award and a Hugo Award in 1978. She wrote five Star Trek novels including The Entropy Effect and Enterprise: The First Adventure. Her other novels included Curve of the World and The Moon and the Sun, which won a Nebula Award in 1997. She died from pancreatic cancer on April 1, 2019 at the age of 70. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Metaphase
- Original title
- Metaphase
- Original publication date
- 1992-09
- Dedication
- To the folks in the Wallingford-Wilmot Library and the Fremont Library who let me move in on them, laptop computer and all, fleeing the marisans who decided that right next to my office was a good place to build UFO hangers.<... (show all)br>
For 10 months. - First words
- J D Sauvage, the alien contact specialist, picked her way across the rough surface of the rocky planetoid.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)She imagined an ocean, a small ocean with mysterious depths, a place where she and Zev could talk together in the language of the divers, the language of true speech,
- Blurbers
- Le Guin, Ursula K.
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