Status
Available
Series
Collections
Publication
New York : Dial Press/James Wade, 1977.
[Book club ed.]
Description
THE BRILLIANT NOVEL THAT LAUNCHED THE VARLEY PHENOMENON The invaders came in 2050...They did not kill anyone outright. they said they came on behalf of the intelligent species of Earth--dolphins and whales. The Invaders quietly destroyed every evidence of technology, then peacefully departed, leaving behind plowed ground and sprouting seeds. In the next two years, ten billion humans starved to death. The remnants of humanity that survived relocated to the moon and other planets. But they are not alone in their struggle--someone or something, somewhere in deep space, is sending them advanced scientific data via the Ophiuchi Hotline. And by the twenty-fifth century, the technological gifts from the Hotline--especially its biological and medical solutions--have created a world unlike any ever known or imagined...… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member isabelx
I liked this book a lot a lot, although I found that I had to pay close attention in order to remember which Lilo was which, especially when two of her were with different Cathays. That sentence doesn't even make sense unless you understand the cloning process in use on the Eight Worlds!
The idea
I like the way he plays with character names, calling Tweed (the corrupt ex-president of Luna) after Boss Tweed, a corrupt 19th century New York politician. In another of his books "Steel Beach", the hero is a reporter called Hildy Johnson. The original Hildy was a male reporter in the film "The Front Page", but a woman in the remake entitled "His Girl Friday", making the name a sly reference to the ease of gender changing in Varley's books.
The first half of this book hardly mentioned the Ophiuchi Hotline. When I have read John Varley short stories in the past, I have thought of the Hotline as a convenient deus ex machina, allows the author to avoid explaining the sudden burst of technological advances (such as the null-suits, etc.) that allowed mankind to survive in hostile environments after being ejected from earth by the Invaders, by just saying that the aliens told them how. However once I had finished this book and realised the purpose of the Hotline and the reason why the aliens suddenly send a bill for services rendered, I understood the point of it.
I didn't like the ending of the book, with its fatalistic view of mankind's future - chased out of the solar system by the gas giant beings and constantly on the move from then onwards, since the galaxy is a crowded place, most of the suitable planets are already occupied and they may not find anywhere to settle down.
The idea
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of the regular recording of personality & memory back-ups is fascinating. When someone dies and is cloned, they wake up as an adult in the same body as before but with a gap in their memory, since they can only remember up until the point of their last recording. In Lilo's case, when she is in Tweed's headquarters on Poseidon, she keeps waking up in the same place that her last recording was done, but immediately knows that she has been cloned because the trees in the garden have changed with the seasons. I think that it's only because their society has strict laws against more than one version of each person being alive at the same time that its cloned inhabitants can keep up the illusion that they are the same people who originally came into the world as babies. The inhabitants of Poseidon find the presence of so many male and female clones of Vaffa disturbing, which adds to the fear engendered by their role as prison guards and their killer instinct. Lilo only really comes to terms with being many when the gas giant being causes a temporary merging of her clones' consciousness and they see each other's past, present and future.I like the way he plays with character names, calling Tweed (the corrupt ex-president of Luna) after Boss Tweed, a corrupt 19th century New York politician. In another of his books "Steel Beach", the hero is a reporter called Hildy Johnson. The original Hildy was a male reporter in the film "The Front Page", but a woman in the remake entitled "His Girl Friday", making the name a sly reference to the ease of gender changing in Varley's books.
The first half of this book hardly mentioned the Ophiuchi Hotline. When I have read John Varley short stories in the past, I have thought of the Hotline as a convenient deus ex machina, allows the author to avoid explaining the sudden burst of technological advances (such as the null-suits, etc.) that allowed mankind to survive in hostile environments after being ejected from earth by the Invaders, by just saying that the aliens told them how. However once I had finished this book and realised the purpose of the Hotline and the reason why the aliens suddenly send a bill for services rendered, I understood the point of it.
I didn't like the ending of the book, with its fatalistic view of mankind's future - chased out of the solar system by the gas giant beings and constantly on the move from then onwards, since the galaxy is a crowded place, most of the suitable planets are already occupied and they may not find anywhere to settle down.
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LibraryThing member mbg0312
John Varley's first novel has aged well. The action and characters move along quickly, and the ideas crackle. Much early science-fiction, especially in its slightly "harder" forms, tends not to do well 30 years on, but this one delivers. Recommended.
LibraryThing member wealhtheowwylfing
This book starts out *wonderfully*, and I love the premise of the book. Generations ago, humanity was cast out of Earth by Invaders who are so much smarter and more powerful, they actually operate on a completely different plain. A tinkerer of genetic structures gets caught, condemned to death, and
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rescued by various factions of humanity. It follows her story, although along the way she gets killed and cloned a half dozen times. A cool look at identity, and I definitely loved the world Varley created. Show Less
LibraryThing member Cheryl_in_CC_NV
Lots of neat ideas, skillfully explored. Fun to read, too. A little brief, maybe, a little too concise in that some ideas, as for instance I'd've welcomed maybe more history of the recent centuries since the invasion (it almost seemed like this was a sequel to that story). But considering this is a
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debut novel, wow... Show Less
LibraryThing member TheDivineOomba
What a great book! It was written in 1977, but it isn't dated. It is a story that could have been written recently.
Heres a quick plot, well, wait. The plot is so intricate that I won't even mention it. Lets just say it involves invaders, clones, and different scenarios that is repeated as
With all the stuff that happens, it isn't slow, you need to be paying attention to understand it. Everything that happens fits together and is plausible within the story. I even enjoyed the ending - usually in books that end the way this one did, I feel sad that I don't know how the characters will spend the rest of their lives.
Heres a quick plot, well, wait. The plot is so intricate that I won't even mention it. Lets just say it involves invaders, clones, and different scenarios that is repeated as
Show More
characters gain new knowledge. With all the stuff that happens, it isn't slow, you need to be paying attention to understand it. Everything that happens fits together and is plausible within the story. I even enjoyed the ending - usually in books that end the way this one did, I feel sad that I don't know how the characters will spend the rest of their lives.
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LibraryThing member johnylitnin
Alien invaders evicted humanity from the earth, but the human race managed to survive by scattering to form societies on the moon and the other planets. They get a lot of help from highly advanced technological data streaming from the direction of the star 70 Ophiuchi. The advances in biotechnology
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are most noteworthy. People routinely restructure their body parts, and store the contents of their psyche in memory recordings which can be used to “reconstitute” a person who has died. It is in this universe that we follow our heroine as she becomes an unwilling participant in a mission to free the earth from the invaders. Show Less
LibraryThing member datrappert
This is the first novel I read by Varley, and although he would get better with his Titan/Wizard/Demon trilogy, this is already first-rate. His ideas and imagination, at least early in his career, were pretty mind blowing to me at the age I read them.
LibraryThing member helver
The Ophiuchi Hotline is a mammoth data stream that contains the knowledge needed for humans to adapt to life among the stars. Engineering, genetics, bio-engineering - knowledge that could fundamentally change what it means to be human. Cloning is commonplace as is the process of storing off a
Our story focuses on Lilo, a genetic engineer who ends up running afoul of crimes against humanity laws and is sentenced to permanent death. When I say focuses, that's not entirely true - because Lilo dies several times and is reborn several more times. When the book ends there are at least 3 Lilos active.
Speaking of the end of the book... I was not a big fan. The book spends quite a bit of time talking about the tech and the culture that the various Lilos exist in. Then we discover the reason the Ophiuchi Hotline exists and what its existence means about the future of humanity in the universe. Once the problem is identified, the story ends. No resolution. To me, very unsatisfying.
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person's personality and memories, and the corollary process of re-implanting that personality and memories. Surgery is a self-help thing. Sex changes are routine and people tend to switch sexes every year or so. Our story focuses on Lilo, a genetic engineer who ends up running afoul of crimes against humanity laws and is sentenced to permanent death. When I say focuses, that's not entirely true - because Lilo dies several times and is reborn several more times. When the book ends there are at least 3 Lilos active.
Speaking of the end of the book... I was not a big fan. The book spends quite a bit of time talking about the tech and the culture that the various Lilos exist in. Then we discover the reason the Ophiuchi Hotline exists and what its existence means about the future of humanity in the universe. Once the problem is identified, the story ends. No resolution. To me, very unsatisfying.
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LibraryThing member Paul_S
Kill all dolphins and whales NOW! And possibly octopuses as well, although they have been known to use tools so maybe they're OK but why take chances?
In all seriousness this has aged remarkably well (by not going into any day to day details)! Really clever, except the non-ending but I guess it was
In all seriousness this has aged remarkably well (by not going into any day to day details)! Really clever, except the non-ending but I guess it was
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written with a sequel in mind which I will definitely be picking up. People who read the book on release had quite a wait (15 years)! Show Less
LibraryThing member wishanem
This was a very novel take on post-Earth humanity and human encounters with aliens. There were a few elements I found unsatisfying (mostly the aliens themselves) but I think those weren't really mistakes on the author's part, just stylistic choices that didn't fit my preferences. Most of the drama
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of the story centers on cloned individuals of the magical memories-retained variety, which I find a little tired. However, the book itself is from the 1970's so when the author wrote it that idea was more fresh. Speaking of which, the book was surprisingly not dated considering its age. Nearly all of the Sci-Fi trappings were still plausible today, without any old-timey-Sci-Fi stuff that I noticed. Show Less
LibraryThing member KittyCunningham
A lot of science fiction gets dated because technology outruns the story. This one doesn't, and probably won't, suffer from that problem.
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1977-04
Physical description
237 p.; 22 cm
Local notes
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Pages
237