Alpha Centauri

by William Barton

Book Overview

From the creators of the popular SF thriller Iris comes a tale of love, a deadly contagious disease, an alien civilization -- and the possible destruction of life as we know it.In deep space, the crew... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0380792826
• ISBN13: 9780380792825
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Avon Books
• Length: 438 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

I Didn't Hate It

Not only do the authors explore fun science and species functions, but they also explore human sexuality and various permutations. People have sex. People in sci-fi novels, however, rarely have sex, but the act is certainly part of the human condition. I liked this book enough to have read it twice, and thoroughly enjoyed it both times. So: not everyone hated it. ;-)

Challenging, painful, melancholy, but fascinating

This is a difficult book to like. It does however strive to be what science fiction should be, which is a literature of ideas. As such, it presents an unflinching examination of the darker, complicated aspects of human nature and a profoundly unsympathetic cosmos. I am immediately reminded of the desolate final scenes of H G Wells' The Time Machine or the ruthlessly Darwinian universes of Stephen Baxter's Manifold stories. In this novel, a group of explorers from a crowded solar system coming close to its malthusian limits arrives at the eponymous stellar system. They are part of an exploration fleet searching for potential colony sites that may be the salvation of humanity. They uncover the ancient ruins of an alien civilisation, maybe two civilisations. The solar system is threatened with total collapse whereas these aliens seemed to have kept their civilisation running for billions of years, but then they finally became extinct. Their worlds are ancient, depleted, but what caused them to die is not as simple as it may seem, and may be a warning to humankind.What they learn about these beings seems horrible, but their are strange parallels with their own situation. Barton and Capobianco refuse to draw a sharp line between good and evil. They show the compulsions of hunger and sexuality as being intrinsic to life: they may be good, they may be vicious, but they are inseparable from the process of living. Human characters and aliens ephemerally resurrected through advanced simulations each display some aspect or other of the conflicts of desire, purpose and virtue.To their credit, the authors allow even the apparent villains the qualities of intelligence, sympathy and the need for love, no matter how awful their actions. They argue that even the worst still must be acknowledged as our kin. The point being that one must realise honestly one's animal legacy, but somehow rise above it, and a purely reasonable approach may itself be insuffient. Indeed, as is suggested in the ideology of a shadowy terrorist group called Indigo and in the terminal ennui of a race dubbed the Leospiders, pure reason may lead only to extinction. On the other hand, false religion, shallow pop anthropology and other ideologies are held up only for cruel (and viscerally upsetting) parody.A fault of this novel (if it is a fault as such) would be in the fact that what hope is offered is of a vague and hard to perceive. In fact, the conclusions are left quite open, balanced on a knife edge. The reader is challenged to argue their own case and their own causes for hope. It is a sceptical book, a hard book, but we do see people striving to be better than they might be. If anything, this is a novel not about the promise of a bright future, but the aching desire for hope.Ultimately, they suggest whatever one does and whatever fate results from that, it is due to the exercise of awareness, responsibility and choice. Significantly, the most dangerous character, Mies, is also the mos

Finish the book no matter how you feel

I think that it is just as confusing to write a review of this book as it was when I first starting reading this book. But here it goes. At first, I wanted to throw this book into the trash. The writing style was hard to follow (initially)and the subjects that were discussed in the novel were....uncomfortable. Which made me want to throw it away all the more. But I continued to read it and boy am I glad that I did. This book deals with so much more than those who have given it negative reviews here. Yes it deals with sex and sexuality. Yes it deals with science and the science of sex and sexuality. Yes it deals with science fiction and the sex behind the science fiction. But if that is all you get out of this book than you didn't dive deep enough into it or didn't finish it. It deals with human nature and our place within the cosmos based on an extinct alien society that is discovered. It plunges head long into human weaknesses and our lack of understanding. It deals with uncomfortable situations with uncomfortable characters. It asks us "do we have the right to be immortal?" "Should we want to be immortal?" Oh yes, folks. This book deals with much more than sex. Pick it up and don't throw it down...although you WILL feel like it, trust me.

Fabulous.

Simply excellent. Barton ranks as my favorite all time sci-fi (and sci-fantasy) author.

sex, death, sex, nothing, death and sex

If you are looking for a challenge, try reading "Alpha Centauri". This is a book that is undeniably difficult to read. It is slow moving, full of (sometimes maybe unneccassary) graphic and odd sexual acts, and just not very likeable. BUT.... maybe it is difficult convey the type of darkly complex concepts that are expressed in this book without the type of framework it puts them in. Barton and Capobiance explore issues such as "what is the point of it all?" and "should we go on?" and provides starkly contrasting examples of some of the opinions that different people (and races) have on them. Such things are best examined in all their bleak detail under the mood created by the characters and circumstances of the book. There are simularities between this book and Barton's "Acts of Concience" both in mood, and in content. They both involve a lot of sex, although "Alpha Centauri"'s is more frequent and arguably stranger(?) and the aliens (when we eventually do learn of them) display a similar master/slave relationship to the wolfen/dollies from "Acts of Conscience". This book took me a long time to read, but towards the end became intensly interesting. Definately a book I will remember.