Scan barcode
cloudedbyte's review against another edition
4.0
Hardfought Blew my mind. It starts slow, it builds the picture. This is the book i will read again.
Cascade point is an easy read, but it did not impress me
Cascade point is an easy read, but it did not impress me
heliopteryx's review
3.5
Hardfought
Set in the unimaginably far future, humans are locked in eternal war with the senexi. The reader sees the point of view from both sides. They are unable to communicate or understand each other, but to the reader, perhaps not that different. It's about history, change, and what it means to be human. Personally, I'm not a romantic so I don't typically appreciate love stories like the one very briefly alluded to here, but it's done in a way that helps reinforce the overall message, so it was pretty good. As I interpret it,the message is humanity will change itself into something unrecognizable in order to fight the senexi, and if only they could recover their history, they'd have a chance of recovering their humanity, but t hey've changed so much they no longer care.
Cascade Point
A bit dated by the way people avoid dealing with their emotions and the way they treat a psychiatrist and his patient. It's very archaic and I'm glad that nowadays, psychiatrists and those who see them aren't regarded in this way.
This is the sort of story where the reader is supposed to recognize the narrator is flawed and isn't right about everything.
There are two storylines here, the one about the cascade point allowing faster than light travel and how it works, and the human story about making life choices and your own mindset to perceived loss of opportunity. They were both pretty well done, though the technobabble about how to go back the way they came flew over my head a bit. The resolution of the captain's and Alana's character arcs was well done for such a short piece.
Set in the unimaginably far future, humans are locked in eternal war with the senexi. The reader sees the point of view from both sides. They are unable to communicate or understand each other, but to the reader, perhaps not that different. It's about history, change, and what it means to be human. Personally, I'm not a romantic so I don't typically appreciate love stories like the one very briefly alluded to here, but it's done in a way that helps reinforce the overall message, so it was pretty good. As I interpret it,
Cascade Point
A bit dated by the way people avoid dealing with their emotions and the way they treat a psychiatrist and his patient. It's very archaic and I'm glad that nowadays, psychiatrists and those who see them aren't regarded in this way.
This is the sort of story where the reader is supposed to recognize the narrator is flawed and isn't right about everything.
There are two storylines here, the one about the cascade point allowing faster than light travel and how it works, and the human story about making life choices and your own mindset to perceived loss of opportunity. They were both pretty well done, though the technobabble about how to go back the way they came flew over my head a bit. The resolution of the captain's and Alana's character arcs was well done for such a short piece.
patrickkanouse's review against another edition
Hardfought
Hardfought by Greg Bear was nominated the Hugo Award for Best Novella and won the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 1984. The events of the novel take place in the far, far future, where what we know of humanity has become essentially unrecognizable. The story goes back and forth between Aryz, a Senexi--an ancient alien species--and Prufrax, a human girl who is growing up and being tailored to fight.
The text is densely written and makes no apologies about being so. Some of the language is difficult to grasp even, until you learn to make a cognitive leap. I think Bear wanted to be purposively disruptive to create a distance between the reader and the events related in the story.
The Senexi are very alien. A hive mind of a sort and not based on a carbon lifeform. Aryz is tasked with understanding humans, and in doing so it is recognized that he will be corrupted and will die, but the Senexi are grappling with how to fight humanity. Prufrax in her own way is being led to understand the Senexi. She hates initially because that's what she has learned, but under the care of a mentor, Prufrax learns of humanity's history and strives to understand better the Senexi. This is a story that is best appreciated by reading it, letting the piling up of details and character development make the connections. Well worth the read.
Cascade Point
Pall Durriken is captain of a low-class passenger starship called the Aura Dancer. In Cascade Point, interstellar travel is accomplished via a hyperspace of some sort called Colloton space. One aspect of this space is that those who are awake during it witness themselves in parallel universes stretching out infinitely. Thus, Durriken, who is awake for the first jump, witnesses himself sitting in the navigator's chair over and over again--sometimes in a luxury passenger liner's captain's uniform. The effects of Colloton space can be psychologically depressing. Fortunately, most people sleep through it or are on much more financially enriched ships that can afford an auto-navigator. Zahn goes into a lot of detail about how interstellar travel works, noting that the size of the ship, its shape, and the volume of ming metal (a alloy with specific properties) influences the jump.
When psychiatrist Dr. Hammerfeld Lanton and his patient, Rik Bradley, join the flight, however, things go awry. Lanton hopes to learn if Colloton space and assist Bradley in a recovering. He fails to note or simply doesn't know (in the novella he claims to not know) that one of his devices contains ming metal, and that unshielded ming metal results in a the Aura Dancer not just traveling through space but through universes. As the crew works to figure out how they return to their own universe, questions arise on how it will affect Bradley, who had demonstrated some improvement.
The story is quite simple in that the ship flies out and flies back and in the intervening travel determine that it has switched universes and then working their way back. Two characters are really the focus of the novella: Durriken and his first mate Alana Keal. Durriken is haunted by a rash action years before that sent him down the path, and the Colloton space luxury passenger ship version of him gives him insight into what might have happened had he acted differently. Keal is largely a mystery to her captain, who describes her as somebody that finds damaged people in an effort to fix them. Keal gravitates to Bradley.
I thought the novella missed some opportunities in really exploring having alternate realities demonstrated to you or the idea that regardless when infinite universes show all possibilities, some version of "you" made each of those decisions. Some weighty philosophical themes are possible, and though they are touched on, they do not come out in full force, for Zahn prefers to stick to mechanics of navigating Colloton space or the character's immediate actions.
The characters are finely drawn, even the minor characters. The story itself is well told, though weakened by an overly "happy" ending I think. A much younger Zahn wrote this, and you can see many of the tell-tale aspects of his later writing. Worth a read.
Hardfought by Greg Bear was nominated the Hugo Award for Best Novella and won the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 1984. The events of the novel take place in the far, far future, where what we know of humanity has become essentially unrecognizable. The story goes back and forth between Aryz, a Senexi--an ancient alien species--and Prufrax, a human girl who is growing up and being tailored to fight.
The text is densely written and makes no apologies about being so. Some of the language is difficult to grasp even, until you learn to make a cognitive leap. I think Bear wanted to be purposively disruptive to create a distance between the reader and the events related in the story.
The Senexi are very alien. A hive mind of a sort and not based on a carbon lifeform. Aryz is tasked with understanding humans, and in doing so it is recognized that he will be corrupted and will die, but the Senexi are grappling with how to fight humanity. Prufrax in her own way is being led to understand the Senexi. She hates initially because that's what she has learned, but under the care of a mentor, Prufrax learns of humanity's history and strives to understand better the Senexi. This is a story that is best appreciated by reading it, letting the piling up of details and character development make the connections. Well worth the read.
Cascade Point
Pall Durriken is captain of a low-class passenger starship called the Aura Dancer. In Cascade Point, interstellar travel is accomplished via a hyperspace of some sort called Colloton space. One aspect of this space is that those who are awake during it witness themselves in parallel universes stretching out infinitely. Thus, Durriken, who is awake for the first jump, witnesses himself sitting in the navigator's chair over and over again--sometimes in a luxury passenger liner's captain's uniform. The effects of Colloton space can be psychologically depressing. Fortunately, most people sleep through it or are on much more financially enriched ships that can afford an auto-navigator. Zahn goes into a lot of detail about how interstellar travel works, noting that the size of the ship, its shape, and the volume of ming metal (a alloy with specific properties) influences the jump.
When psychiatrist Dr. Hammerfeld Lanton and his patient, Rik Bradley, join the flight, however, things go awry. Lanton hopes to learn if Colloton space and assist Bradley in a recovering. He fails to note or simply doesn't know (in the novella he claims to not know) that one of his devices contains ming metal, and that unshielded ming metal results in a the Aura Dancer not just traveling through space but through universes. As the crew works to figure out how they return to their own universe, questions arise on how it will affect Bradley, who had demonstrated some improvement.
The story is quite simple in that the ship flies out and flies back and in the intervening travel determine that it has switched universes and then working their way back. Two characters are really the focus of the novella: Durriken and his first mate Alana Keal. Durriken is haunted by a rash action years before that sent him down the path, and the Colloton space luxury passenger ship version of him gives him insight into what might have happened had he acted differently. Keal is largely a mystery to her captain, who describes her as somebody that finds damaged people in an effort to fix them. Keal gravitates to Bradley.
I thought the novella missed some opportunities in really exploring having alternate realities demonstrated to you or the idea that regardless when infinite universes show all possibilities, some version of "you" made each of those decisions. Some weighty philosophical themes are possible, and though they are touched on, they do not come out in full force, for Zahn prefers to stick to mechanics of navigating Colloton space or the character's immediate actions.
The characters are finely drawn, even the minor characters. The story itself is well told, though weakened by an overly "happy" ending I think. A much younger Zahn wrote this, and you can see many of the tell-tale aspects of his later writing. Worth a read.
More...