If you're a fan of the first book, or even of the first few books, please, do yourself a favour and leave this book on the shelf. You'll learn nothing new in here, and I seriously doubt there's anything new to be gleaned in the final book, which I won't be reading. There is no story to speak of, and there aren't really any characters to speak of. Robin Broodhead's character arc ended in the final pages of 'Gateway' but 'Beyond the Blue Event Horizon' teased out a continuation of that arc when really there was nothing new to learn and nowhere new to go for Robin. And yet here he is again, in yet another book, with yet more guilt that he needs to work through. Except it's the same old guilt and the same old problems (except *SPOILER* they're now in a digital realm *END SPOILER*).Pohl gets lost exploring ideas he'd already told us about in the preceding volumes, and with each book he's become (became?) more and more blunt with his handling of exposition (most notably in his introduction of the A.I. Einstein) until, here in the penultimate book (not including short stories), the whole thing is made up of exposition.Making matters more difficult, he stretches the ability of the reader to suspend disbelief by throwing too many ideas into the mix, and fails to adequately imbue any of them with a feeling of credibility and reality - which is what made 'Gateway' work so well. I could spend thousands upon thousands of words taking issue with 'The Annals of...', particularly with Pohl's failure to mention the singularity when it would be in his interest to do so, his inability to match his first book's beautiful sense of mystery, the terrible names for his characters, species and other objects ('Voodo Pigs', 'Sneezy', then there's the actual name of Sneezy which I'm trying desperately not to recall, and many other irksome terms besides), and on and on the list goes.This book reminds me of something Bob Dylan mentions in his memoir - I'll paraphrase as best I can - about how at the peak of his fame people wouldn't leave him alone so he self-sabotaged and produced the worst album he could. When that didn't work he did it again. And again. Now he was probably just making excuses for a rather questionable period during his creative output, but reading 'The Annals of...' I kept thinking 'Maybe people wouldn't leave Frederik alone', because this book would most definitely have fixed that.
En el cuarto libro de la saga de los Heechee por fin conocemos al Adversario, Robin Broadhead se pasa a ser uno con la internet, vuelven los terroristas y los Heechee pierden toda el aura de misterio de los libros anteriores. Esto último es quizás lo que más me decepcionó de este libro, después de que en las partes anteriores te cuentan de los increíbles logros tecnológicos de los Heechee en esta historia se reducen a ser los vecinos nuevos de los humanos. Es más, son mostrados como incompetentes para lidiar con el Adversario en comparación con los humanos.Aún así hay cosas interesantes. Que Robin viva como una inteligencia almacenada en el equivalente a la Iinternet es una idea intrigante, aunque Pohl describe una y otra y otra y otra vez cómo Robin y las demás inteligencias almacenadas superan las posibilidad de un ser humano de carne, hueso y tripas. El origen del Adversario es ingenioso y justifica que esta entidad sea temida como una amenaza para todo el universo. Las aventuras en la escuela primaria espacial son adorables aunque se sienten fuera de lugar en esta serie de libros.Es una conclusión decepcionante a la historia de los Heechee y casi opuesta en tono a Pórtico. En el lado positivo la inteligencia Albert Einstein tiene una vez más un rol importante en la historia.Recomendable solo si de verdad quieres saber en qué terminan los asuntos de los Heechee y el Adversario.
Nieco rozczarowujące zakończenie serii, zwłaszcza w pierwszej, nazbyt rozwleczonej, pierwszej połowie. Po raz kolejny Pohl wprowadza postaci, obdarowuje je obszernym, rozpisanym na wiele stron dossier, by potem wykorzystać ich w marginalnych - choć z wyjątkami - wątkach, a w każdym bądź razie wątkach, które znajdują nazbyt szybkie, niewspółmierne do żmudnego ich rozwijania i, rzekłbym, wymagające od czytelnika, pewnej dozy naiwności, rozwiązania.Druga połowa zdecydowanie lepsza. Autor konsekwentnie - co wynika z tego, jak prowadził wątki sztucznych a.k.a. "mechanicznych" inteligencji w tomach poprzednich - skupił się na nieco "matriksowym" rozwiązaniu opowieści, i przyznam, że przypadło mi to do gustu. Oczywiście, pozostawił masę furtek i niedopowiedzeń, co może trochę irytować, ale mi akurat absolutnie nie przeszkadzało.Podsumowując: bardzo dobry cykl science-fiction. Pohl to zdecydowanie jeden z tych pisarzy, którzy musieli odcisnąć swoje piętno na autorach tego nurtu. Czuć u niego trendy, które na dobre zagościły się w fantastyce dopiero od końca lat dziewięćdziesiątych ubiegłego stulecia a które obecnie eksploatują autorzy tacy, jak Ian McDonald, czy (nawet bardziej) Charles Stross. Jeśli nieobca jest Wam twórczość tych dwóch panów, a Pohla jeszcze nie znacie, to czym prędzej powinniście nadrobić - jako i ja - zaległości.
—Rafal Jasinski
I read the first books of this series, and they were interesting, although it was starting to get slow at the end. But I wanted to finish the series while I still remembered the characters, so I kept going. Well, I almost regretted that decision.The book really started to drag, mostly because of the repeated explanations of the difference between time for living people ("meat" people, they called them) and the electronically-stored versions, who interacted in milliseconds rather than seconds or minutes. Not to mention hearing over and over about the protagonist's psychological problems and his worries about everything.My rating reflects the entire series, and is more of an average than a total rating, because I enjoyed the first parts. But if it were all one book, it might be lower.
—Marty Fried
It was an interesting book, but not nearly as good as the rest in the series. As other reviewers here have stated, the over-repetition of explaining how their "virtual" or "machine-stored" lives worked really got old and was unnecessary. It was certainly interesting and curious at first but didn't need to be re-explained and in the same manner so often throughout the book. Also, Pohl seemed to try to bring back more of the angst / ennui into the main character than was present in the last two novels. It worked excellently in the very first book of the series and made it incredible, but it really just wasn't necessary anymore. I could see using a little of it again just to make a point about "virtual" life, but overall it's just been overdone in this series by now. I did enjoy the couple of extended scientific explanations and they were interesting, but honestly I felt like they were mostly a bit too dumbed-down and ended too soon for the sort of significance they held within the plot.Overall it was interesting to continue the story, but it all felt like it was over-hyped without actually enough substance (in plot events) behind the significance given to them by the narrative. Definitely don't start with this book, but if you loved all the previous ones in the series and want to know how it "ends", then this will satisfy you.
—Adam
