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The Last Theorem

Arthur C. Clarke, Frederik Pohl

The Last Theorem Arthur C. Clarke, Frederik Pohl Amazon Price: $17.82
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Two of science fiction’s most renowned writers join forces for a storytelling sensation. The historic collaboration between Frederik Pohl and his fellow founding father of the genre, Arthur C. Clarke, is both a momentous literary event and a fittingly grand farewell from the late, great visionary author of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Last Theorem is a story of one man’s mathematical obsession, and a celebration of the human spirit and the scientific method. It is also a gripping intellectual thriller in which humanity, facing extermination from all-but-omnipotent aliens, the Grand Galactics, must overcome differences of politics and religion and come together . . . or perish.

In 1637, the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat scrawled a note in the margin of a book about an enigmatic theorem: “I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.” He also neglected to record his proof elsewhere. Thus began a search for the Holy Grail of mathematics–a search that didn’t end until 1994, when Andrew Wiles published a 150-page proof. But the proof was burdensome, overlong, and utilized mathematical techniques undreamed of in Fermat’s time, and so it left many critics unsatisfied–including young Ranjit Subramanian, a Sri Lankan with a special gift for mathematics and a passion for the famous “Last Theorem.”

When Ranjit writes a three-page proof of the theorem that relies exclusively on knowledge available to Fermat, his achievement is hailed as a work of genius, bringing him fame and fortune. But it also brings him to the attention of the National Security Agency and a shadowy United Nations outfit called Pax per Fidem, or Peace Through Transparency, whose secretive workings belie its name. Suddenly Ranjit–together with his wife, Myra de Soyza, an expert in artificial intelligence, and their burgeoning family–finds himself swept up in world-shaking events, his genius for abstract mathematical thought put to uses that are both concrete and potentially deadly.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone on Earth, an alien fleet is approaching the planet at a significant percentage of the speed of light. Their mission: to exterminate the dangerous species of primates known as homo sapiens.

Gateway (Heechee Saga)

Frederik Pohl

Gateway (Heechee Saga) Frederik Pohl Amazon Price: $10.17
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 89 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Good premise, good climax, dull execution 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book started out with a neat premise: an ancient alien civilization has left a few traces behind in our solar system, including a tunnel-filled asteroid with a thousand faster-than-light rockets attached. The rockets hold one, three or five humans and though they have a navigation system no human can figure it out. People can ship up to the asteroid, board a rocket and launch themselves randomly into space. It's entirely a crapshoot where the voyagers end up - some ships come back with a happy crew and a ship full of pricy alien artifacts (so they go home rich), and others come back mangled and destroyed (or not at all).

The climax was a pretty solid idea, too. I found it extremely chilling, and the way the ending played out was suspenseful enough. Pohl managed to make his statement heard.

But I have a number of problems with the vision of future human technology (notably, they send people to their death instead of just placing a recording device in the rockets to make sure they'd come back safely...) The entire business with the psychologist computer (Sigfrid) struck me as very hokey, and the main character REALLY bothered me during these sequences. He spends practically the entire book pretending as though he doesn't have anything he wants to talk about, and won't discuss anything from his past. But why would he bother with therapy if he was so opposed to actually getting any therapy done? And there was some kind of subplot that was meant to explain his latent homosexuality, but that came way out of left field for anybody reading. I didn't find the psychology believable AT ALL.

In the end I think this entire story could have been reduced to a nice novella or even a short story: put the introduction, a little bit about the characters, then hit us with the ending and leave everyone thinking. Even for such a short novel it felt too long - there were little excerpts of 'Gateway classified ads' and also some transcripts of a professor educating potential prospectors about the dangers of the galaxy, but they did nothing for me except to interrupt the flow of the book.

Editorial Review:

Gateway opened on all the wealth of the Universe...and on reaches of unimaginable horror. When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is...in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!
THE HEECHEE SAGA
Book One:GATEWAY
Book Two:BEYOND THE BLUE EVENT HORIZON
Book Three: HEECHEE RENDEZVOUS
Book Four: THE ANNALS OF THE HEECHEE


From the Paperback edition.

Heechee Rendezvous

Frederik Pohl

Heechee Rendezvous Frederik Pohl List Price: $5.99
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Disappointing after "Gateway" and "Beyond..." 2 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I returned to read the gateway trilogy after a 15-year absense (!) and I found this one to be the most disappointing. Gone is the sense of mystery and struggle, in this third book Robinette seems like an annoying Richie Rich character surrounded by exotic Heechee toys and and annoying friends and helpers dredged up the first two books in the series plus a few new ones. Klara even makes a comeback, but it's disjointed, unbelievable and emotionless. Pointless, even; I'd say Robinettes longing and guilt for Klara is best left unresolved. I recommend Gateway (the best) and Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (quite interesting, especially when you figure out what the artifact is and its history), but then stop it there because this book is pretty much a loser.

Editorial Review:

"The Heechee are one of the great creations of science fiction."
Jack Williamson
After millennia had passed, Mankind discovered the Heechee legacy (an alien culture that fled to the reative safety of a black hole)--in particular an asteroid stocked with autonavigating spacecraft. Robinette Broadhead, who had led the expedition that unlocked the many secrets of Heechee technology, is now forced once more to make a perilous voyage into space--where the Heechee are waiting. And this time the future of Man is at stake....
A SCIENCE FICTION BOOK CLUB SELECTION
THE HEECHEE SAGA
Book One:GATEWAY
Book Two:BEYOND THE BLUE EVENT HORIZON
Book Three:HEECHEE RENDEZVOUS
Book Four:THE ANNALS OF THE HEECHEE

Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories

Frederik Pohl

Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories Frederik Pohl Amazon Price: $13.22
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Platinum Pohl is the first collection to collect all of the essential works of Frederik Pohl. First and foremost, Pohl is a master of the science fiction short story. For more than fifty years he has been writing incisive, entertaining SF stories, several hundred in all. Even while writing his bestselling triple-crown (Hugo, Nebula, Campbell Award) novel Gateway and the other Heechee Saga novels, he has always written short fiction.

Now, for the first time, he has gathered together the best of his many stories. Spanning the decades, these tales are in their way a living history of science fiction. Because Frederik Pohl has been on the frontlines of the field since the halcyon days of the late 1930s, and has written short stories in every decade since. And because he has always been a keen observer of the human condition and the world that is shaped by it, his stories reflect the currents of political movements, social trends, major events that have shaken the world . . .

Yet at their core, all his stories are most acutely concerned with people. All sorts of people. Some are people you’ll love, some you’ll hate. But you will need to find out what happens to the people who inhabit these stories. Because Frederik Pohl imbues his characters with a depth and individuality that makes them as real as people you see every day. Of course, he also employs a mind-boggling variety of scientific ideas and science fictional tropes with which his characters must interact. And he does it all with seemingly no effort at all. That’s some trick. Not everyone can do that . . . but that’s why he was named a Grand Master of Science Fiction by his peers in the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Here are his two Hugo Award winning stories, “Fermi and Frost” and “The Meeting” (with C. M. Kornbluth), along with such classic novellas as the powerful “The Gold at the Starbow's End” and “The Greening of Bed-Stuy,” and stories such as “Servant of the People,” “Shaffery Among the Immortals,” and “Growing Up in Edge City,” all finalists for major awards. And dozens of other tales, like the wonderful “The Mayor of Mare Tranq” and the provocative “The Day the Martians Landed” and many others.

Altogether, a grand collection of thought-provoking, entertaining science fiction by one of the all-time greats!

Gateway Trip

Frederik Pohl

Gateway Trip Frederik Pohl List Price: $4.99
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Heechee were perhaps the greatest and most tantalizing mystery the human race had ever known. The first Heechee artifacts were uncovered on Venus, and in the beginning they were treated as nothing more than costly souvenirs and curiosities for tourists from Earth and Mars. But when an asteroid stocked with autonavigating spacecraft was discovered, suddenly the Heechee universe was thrown wide open, giving birth to the Gateway Corporation and bringing untold riches to the adventurers who risked the unknown to see where those Heechee spacecraft would take them.

Many of those brave souls never returned. The ones who did brought back technological wonders that transformed life on Earth -- but of the Heechee themselves there was no sign...

The Gateway Trip, lavishly illustrated by artist Frank Kelly Freas, presents the tales of those perilous journeys and marvelous discoveries, as those intrepid pioneers followed the trail of the elusive Heechee and changed the course of human history forever!

The Space Merchants

Frederik Pohl, C. M. Kornbluth

The Space Merchants Frederik Pohl, C. M. Kornbluth Amazon Price: $15.95
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Cynicism at its thought provoking best! 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Brilliantly written in the 1950s, "The Space Merchants" is a deeply cynical and darkly prescient dystopian novel in which advertising, conspicuous consumption and capitalism have run rampant in a world beset with overpopulation and environmental degradation.

Mitch Courtenay is an executive copywriter with Fowler Schocken, an advertising agency that has been given the task of selling the notion of colonizing Venus, an environmental hell-hole, to an over-populated and environmentally stressed earth. Courtenay, born with a proverbial silver spoon in his mouth and unaccustomed to anything but a pampered lifestyle is attacked by a deadly corporate conspiracy, robbed of his identity and imprisoned in an impoverished third world environment, the very existence of which came as a complete shock to him.

At the end of the day, whether you believe Courtenay to be an incorrigible villain or a reformed conservationist, "The Space Merchants" is a soft sci-fi classic well ahead of its time that explores thought-provoking themes and disturbing political issues that will be with us for many years to come. A gripping novel that well deserves it place in classic sci-fi libraries.

Paul Weiss

The Other End of Time (Eschaton)

Frederik Pohl

The Other End of Time (Eschaton) Frederik Pohl Amazon Price: $7.99
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 36 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Different, Solid and Enjoyable 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I give THE OTHER END OF TIME (1996) 4.5 stars. The book offers a variety of different kinds of plot and technology angles. For example, the method of star travel, in which beings are transported using Tachyons (faster than light particles).

The various kinds of aliens (a dozen or so), and the descriptions of them are interesting enough - not top notch, but interesting. The first part of the book is a kind of slow-moving "spy thriller", but the last part of the book turns into an "ordeal", once the main characters are snatched by the aliens. One kind of alien technology lets the humans be "copied", and this leads to a number of interesting scenarios, with copies meeting themselves, and so forth.

While I wouldn't say this is a book you can't put down, it certainly is a book that I always enjoyed picking up. I'm looking forward to starting the 2nd book in this series.

Editorial Review:

A distinguished veteran of science fiction, Frederik Pohl, was one of the Futurians, a New York City club of the 1930s and 40s that included Isaac Asimov. Author of The Other End of Time and The World at the End of Time, his latest novel features Dan Dannerman, a poorly paid government agent in the not-too-distant future. Dannerman discovers aliens on an abandoned space station and is drawn into a conflict that encompasses the universe. According to one of its protagonists, the war Dannerman blunders into centers on what "ordinary people have been used to calling 'Heaven.'" A sequel is promised.

The Boy Who Would Live Forever: A Novel of Gateway (Gateway Novels)

Frederik Pohl

The Boy Who Would Live Forever: A Novel of Gateway (Gateway Novels) Frederik Pohl Amazon Price: $7.99
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A Triumphant New Gateway Adventure

Twenty-five years after the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning bestseller Gateway, Frederik Pohl returns with a new Gateway novel. Filled with excitement and the sense of wonder that made Gateway a huge success, The Boy Who Would Live Forever is a memorable journey into the unknown.

Stan and Estrella, two young people from Earth, journey to the Gateway asteroid looking for adventure, and discover each other during a flight in one of the ships the alien Heechee left behind when they explored our Solar System. Stan and Estrella settle among the Heechee on a planet in the galactic core, never suspecting that the two of them may be the last, best hope to save the humans and Heechee in the core from destruction by a crazed madman.

Wan Enrique Santos-Smith, a man full of loathing for the Heechee, will stop at nothing to destroy the Heechee and their human friends. But Stan and Estrella, with the help of a fabulously wealthy philanthropist and the unique machine mind Marc Antony, are determined to thwart Wan’s terrible plan. At stake is nothing less than the fate of all life in the galaxy.

The Siege of Eternity (Eschaton)

Frederik Pohl

The Siege of Eternity (Eschaton) Frederik Pohl List Price: $6.99
By: Tor Science Fiction
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Pohl at his best 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Part of a true three novel trilogy Eschaton, including (The Other End of Time, The Siege of Eternity, The Far Shore of Time). This trio deals with first contact but Pohl couldn't let it be a simple aliens encounter, there are two different and of course warring alien alliances but that is as far as the "of course" goes. The leaders of earth first have to come to terms among themselves so they can choose correctly from slim, hidden and misleading evidences, which group of aliens is truthful and altruistic and which will conquer and enslave.
Besides the wonderful Sci-Fi and multitude of sentient beings there is a good study of the human psyche in captivity. Also a twist in dealing with unwanted clones; not knowing which is the original, if there is an original, which clone gets the spouse and like conundrums.
You have to stay alert to the fast pace and changing / multiplying cast. A very good read with interesting alien customs and biology's.

Editorial Review:

The aliens aren't coming. They're here.

We've captured some of them. Are they our saviors, or are they out to destroy us? We've seen no spaceships, received no ultimatums--but the aliens may have a more insidious plot....

Government agent Dan Dannerman and astronomer Patrice Adcock were kidnapped by the aliens and have been returned in altered states, cloned and implanted with strange devices. To what end?

Before the reasons behind their abduction can be made clear, a wave of extremist threats and terrorist attacks sweeps the globe. Are the attacks a reaction to the aliens' arrival--or a part of their plan? A race around the earth and into space begins, as humankind desperately tries to prevent the aliens from establishing a beachhead no Earth.

The siege has begun.

The Far Shore of Time (Eschaton)

Frederik Pohl

The Far Shore of Time (Eschaton) Frederik Pohl List Price: $6.99
By: Tor Science Fiction
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

I expected better 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

There just isn't much to praise in this book. Standard aliens, standard plot, and one glaring scientific error at the end when Pohl's plot relies on methane having a greater density than average Earth atmosphere and sinking and pooling at the surface of the Earth-- in fact, methane has only about half the density of "air" and rises up through it. How does someone of Pohl's experience and stature make a freshmen chemistry mistake like this? Answer: it was a rushed book, and it shows.

Editorial Review:

Dan Dannerman has been through hell. Caught in the middle of an interstellar war that will end only with the death of the universe, he's been captured by aliens who call themselves the Beloved Leaders, cloned repeatedly, torn from his wife, and brutally tortured.

Sitting in a prison cell on an alien world, slowly going mad, Dan is finally freed by the Horch, the sword enemies of the Beloved Leaders. The time has finally come for Dannerman to strike back--but at whom?

Trusting neither side, Dannerman must somehow convince the Horch to send him back to Earth so he can warn humanity of the approaching alien menace. But when he finally returns he finds an Earth far stranger than he can possibly imagine, an Earth that already has two Dan Dannermans--an Earth already under seige by the Beloved Leaders...

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