This books manages, despite significant flaws, to engagingly mix a golden age of sci-fi "engineers solving a technical problem" kind of plot with wild philosophizing and thriller elements.It rests on a somewhat wonky premise (I'm not spoiling anything btw - the following is all revealed early on). Apparently, in the future, the most effective and cost-efficient way to research artificial consciousness is to build a huge colonization ship and launch it towards Tau Ceti with its self-monitoring mechanisms (disembodied human brains hooked up to the ship's computers) programmed to fail, so that the crew has to create a artificial consciousness to guide and monitor the ship, or perish if they fail to do so. The experiment, complete with re-building and re-launching the ship, is repeated until breakthrough trumps death. Rationales are given for this set-up: the crew is comprised of clones whose lives are valued less than 'normal' humans; an earlier Earth-bound experiment in artificial consciousness created a "rogue consciousness" that destroyed itself and its makers; it's believed that crisis situations inspire conceptual breakthroughs -- and the crew themselves try to puzzle out why they've been set-up this way. But it still felt a bit off.Nevertheless, this set-up allows "let's solve an immense engineering problem" to drive the plot, while the nature of the problem brings up many complex philosophical and moral issues that Herbert loves diving into. Something else that separates it from typical "engineer hero" sci-fi is the signficant amount of (sometimes heavy-handed) psychology Herbert injects into the crew's often manipulative interactions. Through the characters' stressed psyches Herbet explores the limits of human awareness and states of enlightenment -- strong themes in the Dune series that are interesting to see him pursuing here. Surprisingly, the archaic computer technology utilized doesn't ruin things, as the differences with modern components seem mostly a matter of scale, and the interrelations between the various abstract systems seem more important than the components they use. However, there are many times the technical explanations get so dense and hard-to-parse that you wonder whether Herbert is being incredibly smart or simply indulging in technobabble.The end is also pretty cheesy, but sets up this book's sequels well. Overall, the book is rough - Herbert doesn't manage to merge its various elements as well as he does with the early Dune books. On just its quality of writing and structure, the book probably deserves only three stars, but the subject matter was fascinating enough that I give it an extra star for personal enjoyment.
I had to force myself to read this through. The book is almost entirely dialog between its four characters with hardly any action, and the dialog itself is littered with technobabble, amid which there is some interesting meditation on consciousness and even religion, much of which I would have rather read in essay form. I was reminded of those philosophers who dress up their ideas in nearly impenetrable verbiage, perhaps to make them sound more profound than they are.I remember reading (or trying to read) this book's sequel The Jesus Incident a long time ago, when I found it in the English books section of a public library. As I recall I had big difficulties with that book as well, which I attributed to my poor understanding of English at that time. However, I had no such problems with the Dune books little later.The problem with technobabble in this book is that it is difficult to see what is important and what is mere window dressing. Herbert often uses actual terminology from neuroscience and the electronics of his time, but often the end result is confusing. I am reminded of those New Age charlatans who sprinkle their spiel with misapplied scientific terms. It doesn't help that all of the four characters speak in jargon and are pretty much up to speed on things, so there is no space for "as you know, Bob" lectures. Instead, the dialog often left me feeling either stupid or annoyed because I did not understand and did not know if there really was anything to understand.The references to Frankenstein in the epigraphs are, of course, apt, considering the subject matter.
What do You think about Destination Void (1984)?
This book was frustrating. I felt like chunks of it were flying right over my head. There's a ton of dialog, which bogs it down and leaves a bit to be desired in terms of world building, as it were. There's precious little set up to help you understand what is going on with the characters, which makes the lofty concepts it's lobbing up that much more difficult to sort through. The jumping perspectives were confusing until you got used to it (it felt like a more frustrating third person Omniscient POV).And yet. When I did feel like I was following the concepts lobbed at me, they were incredibly interesting and exciting. The way the story plays out in dialog makes it very unique, and lends a certain sense of immediacy, like you are there with it. The characters were interesting, each with their own agendas that frequently didn't mesh. I want to follow this universe more. The ending was incredibly intriguing.
—Megan
OK, disposable human clones sent on a deep space mission... on a spaceship driven by integrated bodyless human brains which go mad after a short while and kill themselves... so there's no point in further debating the setting of any Frank Herbert's book (it's evidently just amazingly awesome!)... Most of the actual plot takes place after that and follows four characters trying to develop an artificial replacement for the brains which in the book's internal logic has to be conscious. The debates between the characters are written in a very interesting and convincing way. It usually takes them a while to catch up with each other and we also get to hear their inner voices again (Dune) which put them on a lot more equal ground (even though Bickel is just our great genius most of the time). The debates are also very philosophically heavy and... some of it is quite insightful even today... but most of it is quite vague and concerned with religion which worked very well in Dune but may be pretty tedious in here. I may find it worth re-reading some day and appreciate some missed (unrecognized) ideas, but right now I have no idea if they were ideas or just some filler sci-fi poetry gone awry.
—Cryptid
Anyone else out there try to read this. I love Frank Herbert's stuff, but this was like reading an essay on the essence of consciousness. I wonder how this book did when it came out, if it sold lots of copies or not.The one thing about Frank Herbert's writing is that he violates many of the rules we're told not to do, for example, he has lots of sections where there is just static dialogue, no action in the scene. I've been told that's a no-no and can be very boring, yet he does it in this book successfully and it's not boring. If you go back and read the Dune series, you see that everywhere. The other thing he does is to shift point of view in the middle of the page...multiple times, and somehow, you don't get confused and you don't ask...how can the PoV character know what he is thinking, you just accept it. And again in Dune, he does this everywhere. Frank Herbert was certainly a masterful writer, and I think his writing needs more exploration.Mark
—Mark Cheverton
