{"id":383,"date":"2011-10-09T15:49:27","date_gmt":"2011-10-09T15:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=383"},"modified":"2012-02-27T14:20:31","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T14:20:31","slug":"terminal-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=383","title":{"rendered":"Terminal World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Terminal World<\/em> by Alastair Reynolds<\/h3>\n

The North Reading Group met on October 9th<\/sup> to discuss Terminal World<\/em>, by Alastair Reynolds.\u00a0 The book was published in mid-2010 by Gollancz and Ace Books.\u00a0 It is set in the future, in a world with a geography resembling Mars, and begins in a city\/structure called Spearpoint.\u00a0 \u201cZones\u201d existing at different energy states are inhabited by humans, some modified to exist in specific zones.\u00a0 The zones are at different technology levels, and transitioning between them requires drugs and may induce debilitating or even fatal biological problems.\u00a0 The protagonist is an \u201cangel\u201d from \u201ccelestial levels\u201d who has been modified to exist at lower levels, who is pursued by a faction intent on killing him to prevent his carrying out the mission for which he had been modified.\u00a0 He is eventually forced to go to ever deeper levels and finally into the \u201cOutzone.\u201d\u00a0 The novel is generally classified as \u201cSteampunk,\u201d at least among some who define the genre, although some of our members didn\u2019t agree.<\/p>\n

Eight members attended the meeting, 5 had read Reynolds before, 5 started the book and 3 finished it.\u00a0 The ones who did not finish \u201cgot bogged down,\u201d and others simply decided that there were other books to read that would be more interesting.\u00a0 One person liked the book and actually read it twice.\u00a0 He concluded that he would recommend Reynolds, but not necessarily this book.<\/p>\n

One of the problems appeared to be that although Quillen (the protagonist) empathized with others on the planet, he wasn\u2019t especially likeable, nor were his associates.\u00a0 Some involved a criminal organization which valued his skill as a physician.\u00a0 One woman helped him because she was unaware of his origin; otherwise she would have refused.\u00a0 The other major objection was that very little happened.\u00a0 Some who finished the book were unsatisfied by the ending and felt they had been \u201cleft hanging.\u201d\u00a0 On the other hand, one reader thought the ending was \u201cperfect\u2014answers given, problems solved, and the start of a new journey of knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

That said, the members were generally appreciative of some of the hard SF features.\u00a0 Those who had read Reynolds\u2019 other works liked them very much and urged the other members to try one of those.<\/p>\n

–Tom Sciance<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds The North Reading Group met on October 9th to discuss Terminal World, by Alastair Reynolds.\u00a0 The book was published in mid-2010 by Gollancz and Ace Books.\u00a0 It is set in the future, in a world with a geography resembling Mars, and begins in a city\/structure called Spearpoint.\u00a0 \u201cZones\u201d existing at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":387,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}