ceoln reviewed Annals of the Heechee (Heechee Saga, Book 4) by Frederik Pohl (Heechee Saga (4))
Review of 'Annals of the Heechee (Heechee Saga, Book 4)' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
(All quantities approximate)
Pages of interesting ideas, total: 15
Pages of interesting ideas not already presented earlier in the series: 2
Pages of plot or character development: 20
Pages of actual action: 10
Pages of Robinette Broadhead being annoyingly moody and whiny for no apparent reason: 120
Pages of poorly-explained cosmological theory to which everyone overreacts: 30
Pages of endless repetitive tedious repetition over and over again in a redundant and repetitive way which repeats itself many many many times again and again and again in case you've forgotten in the last two paragraphs since the last time it was repeatedly explained over and over about how Robinette Broadhead is not a "real" person, because he is "dead" and just "a string of bits in a computer" most of whose environment is "simulated" and who is not a "meat person" because you see he is "digital" and "machine stored" and …
(All quantities approximate)
Pages of interesting ideas, total: 15
Pages of interesting ideas not already presented earlier in the series: 2
Pages of plot or character development: 20
Pages of actual action: 10
Pages of Robinette Broadhead being annoyingly moody and whiny for no apparent reason: 120
Pages of poorly-explained cosmological theory to which everyone overreacts: 30
Pages of endless repetitive tedious repetition over and over again in a redundant and repetitive way which repeats itself many many many times again and again and again in case you've forgotten in the last two paragraphs since the last time it was repeatedly explained over and over about how Robinette Broadhead is not a "real" person, because he is "dead" and just "a string of bits in a computer" most of whose environment is "simulated" and who is not a "meat person" because you see he is "digital" and "machine stored" and experiences everything including many "simulated" things much much faster than "meat people" who unlike him are not "dead" and "machine stored" and are so very very very slow that he, who is "dead" and "a string of bits in a computer", can do hundreds and hundreds of things at the same time while waiting for the "meat people", who unlike him are not "machine-stored" and "dead", to get around to finishing a sentence (but instead just whines moodily for another five pages): 80
How many pages that feels like: 550
Huge anticlimaxes that end with a dull thud the series that started so promisingly with "Gateway": 1
(And as an extra bonus, constant uses of "gigabit" to mean "a huge amount of computer capacity"; which it may have been in 1987, but even then was pretty obviously not going to be for long, and is now roughly the power of a cheap smartphone (and not nearly enough to host a machine-stored intelligence).)
Oh, well!
