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tuftymctavish's review against another edition
2.0
Struggled a lot with this, reflected in the nearly 2 months it took to tackle. Wasn't expecting the plot, though I quite liked the final third. Strange sort of universe setup that took a bit of adjusting to.
tome15's review against another edition
5.0
Benford, Gregory. Great Sky River. 1987. Galactic Center No. 3. Aspect, 2004.
I like to imagine Gregory Benford sitting in a theater in 1984 watching Arnold Schwarzenegger terrorize California in The Terminator. He must have thought, I can do this in my Galactic Hub series and make the mechs more plausible. Three years later, that is exactly what he accomplished in Great Sky River. Having discovered the hostile mech civilization at the center of the galaxy, humans have begun to settle multiple systems trying to grab a toehold in which they can survive. Great Sky River is set on a colony planet where things have not gone well. The ecology has been devastated by mech invaders and only a few bands of nomadic humans survive to wage a feeble insurgency. They scavenge and adapt what they can of mech technology and struggle to maintain their cultural heritage. By this point in the series, Benford has a solid grip on where he wants the six-novel sequence to go. Epic space opera at its best.
I like to imagine Gregory Benford sitting in a theater in 1984 watching Arnold Schwarzenegger terrorize California in The Terminator. He must have thought, I can do this in my Galactic Hub series and make the mechs more plausible. Three years later, that is exactly what he accomplished in Great Sky River. Having discovered the hostile mech civilization at the center of the galaxy, humans have begun to settle multiple systems trying to grab a toehold in which they can survive. Great Sky River is set on a colony planet where things have not gone well. The ecology has been devastated by mech invaders and only a few bands of nomadic humans survive to wage a feeble insurgency. They scavenge and adapt what they can of mech technology and struggle to maintain their cultural heritage. By this point in the series, Benford has a solid grip on where he wants the six-novel sequence to go. Epic space opera at its best.
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