Fool's War

by Sarah Zettel

Book Overview

Four centuries after humanity has colonized the galaxy, information freight companies are used as an alternative to electronic communication. On one of her frequent trips into deep space, Katmer... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446602930
• ISBN13: 9780446602938
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Aspect
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.2" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

Very unusual and well-written novel

"Fool's War" was Sarah Zettel's second published novel and is one of the best and most original books that a sci-fi author of either sex has written in the last decade. One of the principal characters in the book is a muslim woman. If you have little or no personal experience of professional muslims and think of them in terms of stereotypes, you may have some difficulty with this book. And if you also have a stereotypical idea of how women write - this point goes for males and females alike - and start projecting your own gender preconceptions onto this book, you may get funny ideas about it. Judging Sarah Zettel as a writer and not as a woman writer, and speaking as someone with a reasonable number of male and female Muslim friends and colleagues, most of whom are devout but not fundamentalists, I found the book excellent and the Muslim characters perfectly plausible. The book is set five hundred years in the future, at a time when humans have spread to many stars. One of the greatest dangers to spaceships, habitats and terraformed colonies is that sentient and independent intelligences can develop in their computer systems. Starship captain Katmer Al Shei is trying to recruit new crew members for her ship the "Pasadena" and signs on Evelyn Dobbs as the ship's professional fool. The cover role for the Fool's Guild members on starships is that their jokes help starship crew stay sane in space. Although they do perform this role, the members of the Fool's guild are much stranger and more important than they appear and have a vital secret purpose. Soon after Evelyn Dobbs signs on to the Pasadena she has to try to avert a war which could destroy worlds - and meanwhile everyone on the ship is in danger. This novel is something else - part cyberpunk, part space opera, but mostly sui generis. I strongly recommend it, expecialy to anyone who enjoyed Sarah Zettel's other novels such as "Reclamation" and "The Quiet Invasion."

Hi tech sci-fi

If you're into computers, especially networking, you'll like this one. Not that it is for geeks or is stuffed with technical lingo but the ideas are based on enough reality to allow it to work. Great concepts folded into a compelling story. A pretty fast read. I'll definetly read her other books. I found the characters refreshing if not totally original.

Page tuner

Definitely a fast-paced plot. A interesting mix of characters. Since the author is a woman, it stands to reason, female characters are better developed. One main character, Al Shei, had a mix of traits I didn't buy. A muslum woman that owns a spaceship and travels extensively without her husband (.i.e very independent), 8 months at a time, yet her beliefs make her wear a veil around male crew and do ridiculous things like adopting her first mate so they can be in the same room together alone because he's male and she's female. That just doesn't fit. A traditional muslum in the future owning a spaceship doesn't make sence. The plot was reasonable, but the exact nature of the threat is unclear as well as the resolution. The descriptions of the network was enjoyable and plausable.

Thought-provoking and exciting.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The characters are well-developed, the story line is original, there is plenty of fast-paced action, the ending is good - there are no loose ends. It is well-written. This is one of the best sci-fi AI-focused books I have read.