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Title: Bloom
ISBN: 0345485378
Author:
Wil Mccarthy
Publicate Date: 1999-08-03
Publish: 1999-08-03
List Price: $19.00
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $11.31
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $14.19
Amazon Merchant Price: $19.00
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Not Free SF Reader
This book definitely disappointed me. The people on Earth screwed up in a bit way, creating a substance called mycora. It expanded exponentially and took over the place, and kept on going.
A few people got away. The rest of it to me seems very fuzzy and furry, and generally pretty dull.
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2: Flowering Inferno
What happened to my man McCarthy? He had the fabulous Continuum series and then tried to get all metaphysical on us. In the process, he seems to have taken a stupid pill for we are back to the old Star Trek days of smart, living non-coporal bodies. You remember, the big cloud that was alive or the germs that were smart? In this case it's origin, though never actually confirmed, seems to be a product of Earth. Yep, it's evil nanotech gone wild. A self-replicating nanobot escapes and turns the Earth into goo. A few lucky ones escape to Mars or the asterois or Jupiter.
OUr hero, a reporter in the future, is from one of Jumpiter's moons. He is selected for a mission to study the Bloom phenomena on Earth and send his trademark stories back to a world waiting with bated breath. At the same time there has risen a group that attaches spiritual qualities to the bloom (the process of converting mass) and have conducted terrorist attacks using blooms as weapons. I won't bore you but eventually you learn that the evil politicians actually want to hurt the poor thing that destroyed the Earth, Moon and Mars. Thankfully, at the last minute, our hero's gal in the hay fesses up - Yep, she's a believer and in fact is infected with the bloom and ....EEEEEEEE. She goes ballistic before their stunned faces but she is thankfully pushed into the air lock. This got our reporter thinking that maybe, just maybe, they were right and the Bloom was alive.
Suddenly, like Jehova speaking to Moses (or more apt, "God" speaking to Star Trek crew in that hokey movie) a face of the bloom emerges and "speaks" to them. Think seances, nebulous 20 questions and "spiritual" qualities and you're on the right path. Mankind discovers the errors of their ways and in the end, slowly we become on with the Bloomers. The characters were interesting but their actions made about as much sense as the overall philosophy of the book. It was a good description of Nano but we've got those by the thousands. Next time Wil should use a focus group before going through with something as corny as this.
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3: Good idea for not an easy read
Lots of technical, detailed descriptions about the science behind the idea of nanotechnology gone amuck. If you like your hard sci-fi very hard this book is for you.
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4: Blooming Good Fun
Really excellent hard SF. McCarthy makes the story both relevant and accessible, despite staying within the world of his story even in his use of language. I'll definitely be reading more McCarthy.
Charles Gramlich
Author of "Cold in the Light."
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5: Scared the heck out of me.
The main idea brought forth in this book scared the heck out of me. The idea is that wandering nanotech could drift for ages, then suddenly "bloom", eating all matter in the vicinty, thus creating terrible destruction. The book would translate to film very well. Sure, some of the characterization is weak, but that's not why we read hard-SF like this. The science and the ideas are key here, and Wil McCarthy delivers on both.
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