Further

By: Chris Roberson

Narrated by: Jeff Crawford

Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's Summary

The 34th century: Humankind is spread across 3,000 light years in myriad worlds and habitats known as the Human Entelechy. Linked by a network of wormholes with Earth at its center, it is the world Captain RJ Stone awakens to after a twelve-thousand-year cryogenic suspension.

Stone soon finds himself commanding the maiden voyage of the first spacecraft to break the light speed barrier: the FTL Further. In search of extraterrestrial intelligence, the landing party explores a distant pulsar only to be taken prisoner by the bloodthirsty Iron Mass, a religious sect exiled from the Entelechy millennia before. Now Stone and his crew must escape while they try to solve the riddle of the planet’s network of stone towers that may be proof of the intelligence they’ve come to find.

The first in critically acclaimed author Chris Roberson’s scintillating new series, Further: Beyond the Threshold is a fascinating ride to the farthest reaches of the imagination.

©2012 Chris Roberson (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Nostalgic old school sci-fi

The premise of Further is simple enough: a cryogenically frozen deep space astronaut (RJ) is revived 12,000 years in the future due to a course malfunction. The current known space has evolved far beyond anything our intrepid hero has experienced or can imagine. Walk through wormholes exist resulting in much less need for space travel. In addition, along the way, society has decided to "uplift" or impart human intelligence and consciousness into just about every extant species along with machine intelligence, distributed human consciousness, and pure digital representations. Since RJ is the only real live astronaut he is selected to lead a team using an experimental spaceship that will explore deep, deep space. As a result, they have an adventure.

Further is definitely written in a classical sci-fi format. The "science" completely overwhelms the story. The author throws in just about everything imaginable without much explanation or rationale for motivation. 12,000 years in the future is a peaceful and pastoral utopia where simply because something was conceived, it has been realized. There is little historical context provided and no attempt to portray or demonstrate the viability of such a society (what do intelligent bovines do for a living?). This future derives from the 1950's perspective where the expectation was the main problem of how to spend your leisure time while wars, politics, crime, disease, religion, and socioeconomic disparities have been eliminated simply because a Miss America contestant once suggested it might be a good idea.

There is much liberal borrowing: a bored super-intelligent robot wanting to find some interesting alien intelligence, a scholarly physician chimpanzee with a penchant for wine and cigars, cyber attack by a digital entity, etc. The format, depth, and length place the story as concordant with classical authors such as Asimov or Clarke.

The narration is adequate with an easy listening flow. This is definitely a day at the beach listen.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Great romp through the very distant future!

If you could sum up Further in three words, what would they be?

Imaginative, humorous, and thought provoking

Any additional comments?

I was very impressed by the author taking you to the VERY distant future and his wonderful take on what that will be like. It was a very addictive book, I wanted to keep reading as the story kept unfolding in unexpected directions. I really enjoyed the humor!

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Talking Dog,Lions and Apes! Come on!

I listened to about 30 minutes of this and x out of it. A space traveler from Earth wakes up and finds talking Dogs,Lions and Apes. What was the writer smoking when he wrote this?
A wast of money. I should get a refund!

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

Not interesting until last third of book

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

If you like lots of stereotypic science fiction dialog for chapter after chapter than you might like this book but if you were looking for action or excitement or even something slightly interesting then don't start at the first chapter skip to the last 25% of the book.

Would you ever listen to anything by Chris Roberson again?

Yes

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

The audio performer was good and did the best he could with the book to make it interesting

What character would you cut from Further?

90% of the kooky characters and side bar characters that never really added anything to the story.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Dreadful

The science is the main character, very little actual story here. Characters exist inly to explain science, which is dreadfully boring. If you read text books for fun this may be the book for you.

The Adventures of a cave man in the 140th century!

Roberson made a good future world in this book. so much of the book was spent setting up & explaning the technology that the story is short. It would do great for a book 1 of a series. Crawford did a good job too. He could have done more voices for thr different characters but he changed up the tones of most speakers so that we knew who was who.

Not bad, not great

Definitely a book for a young audience. I take issue with many of the boasts in the publishers summary. Anyway, If you want a lightweight sci-fi jaunt it's not bad for the price.

1 of 2 people found this review helpful