michiel reseñó The probability broach de L. Neil Smith
Good fun, I'm not the target audience.
3 estrellas
First of all, this book is good fun to read. The author manages to imitate Heinlein's style in an uncanny way.
But I'm not the target audience; I'm not a thirteen year-old American boy raised to think of the founding fathers as unified, benign philosopher-warriors who set their country on a path to greatness. In the rest of the world, other than George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, these guys aren't particularly well known.
And I'm not nearly naive enough to fall for the Anarcho-Capitalist politics that are espoused on every page.
The main character has problems; he's a forty-eight year-old man who travels through a dimensional gap to encounter his twin who is healthier, better-looking, and more successful than he is. An author writing for adults would be able to spin just this idea into an entire novel, but instead this is mostly ignored; the main character …
First of all, this book is good fun to read. The author manages to imitate Heinlein's style in an uncanny way.
But I'm not the target audience; I'm not a thirteen year-old American boy raised to think of the founding fathers as unified, benign philosopher-warriors who set their country on a path to greatness. In the rest of the world, other than George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, these guys aren't particularly well known.
And I'm not nearly naive enough to fall for the Anarcho-Capitalist politics that are espoused on every page.
The main character has problems; he's a forty-eight year-old man who travels through a dimensional gap to encounter his twin who is healthier, better-looking, and more successful than he is. An author writing for adults would be able to spin just this idea into an entire novel, but instead this is mostly ignored; the main character spends his time pining for his new love interest ... more like a thirteen year-old would. And the problems don't end there. Half the time he's breathlessly conveying the technological marvels of a world without government interference. Then he turns around and acts as a strawman defending government, to be torn apart by his friends. And he's also supposed to be a cynical, Philip Marlowe-esque gumshoe.
That being said, this novel never bores. From highway shootouts in high-speed hovercraft, to talking dolphins, to cynical long-lived motormouth Lucy Kropotkin, there is plenty of fun to be had.
The politics are tolerable precisely because it's clear the author is writing an idealized history he wishes had happened; one where humans can live together without power and politics. As the novel illustrates, that is not the world we live in.