Blueheart

by Alison Sinclair

Book Overview

Alisan Sinclair's brilliant new novel of an underwater world inhabited by genetically adapted humans ranks her among today's best hard science fiction writers.Pioneering can be Perilous. Often, the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061058203
• ISBN13: 9780061058202
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Eos
• Length: 544 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Worldbuilding good, Nag-porn bad

Blueheart is a very solid job of 'world-building'; the work of presenting a whole planet is done as well as any Poul Anderson or the first Dune book. And it's nice to read a modern office-politics story in science fiction; Galactic Feudalism gets old. However, I'm a guy. This book is the story of a guy who gets nagged 24/7. It's like a 'Sweet Savage Love' story where the alpha male rapes the heroine in the first chapter and catches hell for it for the rest of the book, except Rache,in 'Blueheart', isn't the kind of cartoon-macho rapist who deserves 200 pages of nagging. He's just an ordinary man, trying to get by in the universe. And it's 500 pages. 5 stars for being the kind of book Miss Alison wanted to write, as well as a good tripwire. ...

Fantastic

Alison Sinclair is one of the best new writers in hard SF today. Her future worlds are based on a strong background in real science, combined with complex and interesting characters and spellbinding plots. Blueheart starts with the question of whether to terraform a colonized world or genetically adapt to it, and tells the story of the people whose lives will be changed forever by the outcome of that political decision.

World creation at its best

This is a novel of colonisation and the changes it brings to the place and the colonists. Where many books in this genre develop either the setting at the expense of the characters or the characters at the expense of the setting, Alison Sinclair manages both, and throws in all sorts of current political concerns (environmental destruction, genetic engineering etc.). The way these elements (the water-covered planet with its complex ecosystem and characters you can believe) are moulded together with slow-burning but intriguing plot development is so masterly that it makes it hard to believe that the author is so young... AND her first book, Legacies, was so good too! Alison Sinclair deserves a much wider readership.

Richly detailed physical AND political world

This book is not for those in search of pure adventure or thinly-drawn characters. This is David Brin with more emotion and more science. It's filled with politics, families coping, concensus building and finely revealed plot turns. Ms. Sinclair has created the planet Blueheart as a perfect setting for illustrating the intricate human issues related to gene manipulation, human-engineered adaptation, star-travel and terraforming. I was entertained from start to finish and am rathering hoping the author returns to Blueheart - I want to know what happens to these people!