Tides of Light

Some GR alternate edition pages don't offer a book blurb, so I'm copying one into my review:

Piloting an ancient starship, Killeen and the Bishop tribe escape the mech-ruled world of Snowglade. Seeking refuge on a far away planet, they discover vast wonders: an organic life-form as large as a world, a planet-coring cosmic string, a community of humans ruled by a brutal tyrant, and ultimately an alien race more awesome than any they have encountered. As they battle for survival against these myriad dangers, Killeen and his crew will gain an unforeseen ally—one that may determine humanity's true destiny...

This series continues to improve. Tides of Light builds on the series course correction that was Great Sky River. The book blurb show more summarizes the story pretty well. Whereas Great Sky River laid the groundwork for where the series now takes place, Tides of Light focuses more on how these tribes of humanity deal with each other and one another. The militaristic hierarchy is more prominent than I remember it being in Great Sky River, but if you're fighting for survival against intractable enemies every day, then I guess war is all you know.

The "alien race more awesome than any they have encountered" refers to the Cybers. I thought that was an odd name choice considering how cybernetically enhanced our Humans are here. But if you compare the two, the Humans are entry level cyborgs compared to these new aliens. And Benford does a great job of giving us their POV, particularly through the alien known as Quath. They look down on the Humans as being mere animals, but Quath comes to realize that they're something more.

The way the "organic life-form as large as a world" was introduced was a bit jarring. It seemed like Benford had gone off on a speculative tangent for the hell of it, but eventually he brought it back around into the story. Killeen's encounter with the planet-coring cosmic string also seemed like a physicist's thought experiment that was conveniently contrived because, well, he's an astrophysicist! Show off! ;-P But in the grand scheme of the story, Benford made it fit.

Speculative science and tech marvels aside, I think that at this point in Benford's career he finally got a good handle on characterization. I finally felt some attachment to these characters rather than being an dispassionate observer of the story's events (or worse). Even the Cyber Quath proved interesting. The tyrant was less so. He was two-dimensional, and it isn't until the end of the novel that we learn why; finding out earlier would've been a spoiler.

Overall, a good blend of speculative ideas and characterization. show less

This is an immediate sequel -- well, two years have passed, but not too eventfully -- to Great Sky River, with the same characters, but back to Benford's interplanetary comfort zone. It continues the tone and structure of the previous novel surprisingly well, given the dramatic change in canvas. As before, there is a message literally out of the blue from the magnetic entity that is annoyingly human sounding, but this time the plot effects are not so pulp-ishly broad. As before, Benford has to explain absolutely everything. This time, our heroes have to contend not only with the mech super-civilization but super-intelligent cyber-spiders, a cosmic string planet slicer, and, eventually, a space "tree" 1000s of miles long. Benford just show more barely manages to hold everything in place for the story to flow along, but can't avoid having everything eventually depend on a major piece of fortuitous timing.

Despite the cyber-spiders and space tree, this is one of Benford's better books. A worthy sequel and recommended to fans of far-fetched space opera. show less

Benford, Gregory. Tides of Light. Galactic Center No. 4. Bantam, 1989.
The collaboration between Gregory Benford and Larry Niven on The Bowl of Heaven in 2012 sparked a discussion between them about the differences between Big Dumb Objects and what they wanted to call the alien object they were building, a Big Smart Object. Benford might have mentioned that in Tides of Light, he had already created several BSOs. If you like epic-scale hard scifi, you can’t do much better than Benford. Tides of Light is a direct sequel to Great Sky River. The Bishop family has escaped from the mechs on Snowglade and reached the preprogrammed destination in their ancient spacecraft. There they find another band of human refugees, a race of cyborg-like show more aliens, and the Big Smart Objects. If, by some chance, this is your first Galactic Center novel, you might do well to read the chronology at the end first. One big idea here is that it is not always easy to distinguish between life and other varieties of intelligence. show less

Ciclo del Centro Galactico IV

Seguito diretto de *il grande fiume del cielo*, è un romanzo sicuramente molto ricco in termini di costrutto fantastico/scientifico/tecnologico, vicende, avventure, risvolti umani, ecc...
Pur con alcuni capitoli un po' confusi e con alcune divagazioni piuttosto inutili, è una storia avvincente e si legge bene.

Non è riuscita però ad entusiasmarmi, a coinvolgermi davvero... non saprei ben dire perchè... forse un po' per l'atmosfera drammatica e disperata che si respira, un po' per la vena di "misticismo" presente sia per gli umani che per i ciberneti, un po' per la stranezza di certi fenomeni e dinamiche presenti.

L'ho comunque trovato migliore del precedente romanzo.

La novela narra las vicisitudes sin fin de Killeen y la Familia en un nuevo planeta en el que habrán de luchar al lado de otros humanos, gobernados por un megalómano (que finalmente resultará ser otra cosa), contra una nueva especie más poderosa incluso que los mecs, y a los que los humanos dan el nombre de cíbers. Para éstos, los componentes de la Familia no son más que una molestia insignificante a la que exterminar. Poseedores de una increíble tecnología capaz de domar cuerdas cósmicas con las que sangrar los distintos planetas por donde pasan, los cíbers pretenden desvelar el misterio que ata a los mecs con los múltiples quasares de la galaxia, totalmente ajenos, por otra parte, a la importancia que los humanos tienen en show more su propia herencia genética. show less