GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I'll never know whether it was the homage as apology that prefaced this book which coloured my reaction to it. My suspicion, however, is that it played a minor role.I dug out the two preceding books and rifled through each after I finished The Ascension Factor. Rather fearfully, in fact. I was hoping that my memory of both justified the five star ratings I'd given, simultaneously sad that the premise set up in the series should have come to such a dismal end, and worried that in actuality The Jesus Incident and The Lazarus Effect were as poorly written and trite as The Ascension Factor.One of the things which reportedly frustrates people about Herbert is his prose. He doesn't explain his meaning - the reader must sift through clues, piece together snippets, hold multiple abstract concepts simultaneously in sight. He does not elucidate beyond a chapter quote that teases a direction of thought. It was this brilliance that was most clearly, and quite painfully, missing from The Ascension Factor. The n-dimensional perspectives that Herbert brings to his work, the nuanced meaning and cryptic references to ideas that entice groping towards understanding, were wholly absent. This book was void (pardon the pun) of Herbert's ability to interweave themes through subtlety and inference.So talking about the plot is a bit of a farce. It all went . . . nowhere. It didn't finish on a note of grand vision or even abstruse complexity. It was a let-down of quantum proportions.To be fair to the real author of this work, which is not Frank Herbert but Bill Ransom, who in their right mind would want the thankless task of trying to put pen to the path blazed by Herbert? A brave soul, indeed, if a well-meaning and somewhat foolhardy one.
Though not nearly as well known as the Dune series, Herbert's trilogy with Bill Ransom is at least as potent, if not even more so. Whereas the Dune storyline gets progressively larger and larger, and more and more snarled and difficult to decypher, the drama on the planet of Pandora is far more streamlined. Rather than the competing interests of 28 different guilds and houses, etc, Pandora has a single space-ships crew of humans....the first book is them trying to settle the planet, the 2nd book is 500 years into the aftermath of that botched attempt, and the 3rd book is the immediate consequences of the 2nd book, 25 years later.Instead of a desert and sandworms, the planet presents the settlers with a sentient lifeform almost unimaginable in our experience: Kelp. But not just kelp...its more than that. Its hard to describe without the space of three books to do it justice!Basically, if you even vaguely like Dune, you should find these books and give them a chance. Like me, you just might love them!
What do You think about The Ascension Factor (1990)?
...Given the obstacles life threw in Herbert's direction during the writing of the series, it shouldn't come as a surprise that it is not his a highlight in his oeuvre. They are perfectly readable in a way but The Jesus Incident is unpolished, The Lazarus Effect uninspired and The Ascension Factor unconvincing. In a way, I can still enjoy the ideas Herbert and Ransom put in this novel. They are genuine Herbert in most places and I can see how they fit in the larger body of his work, but the story itself is just weak and not very well executed. It's not the kind of novel one would wish for when closing a successful careerer in science fiction. Full Random Comments review
—Rob
