Macroscope

by Piers Anthony

A group of earthlings begins an exploration of the unknown when they enter the Macroscope, a doorway through time and space

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Time Travel, Space Opera

480 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Though he spent the first four years of his life in England, Piers never returned to live in his country of birth after moving to Spain and immigrated to America at age six. After graduating with a B.A. from Goddard College, he married one of his fellow students and and spent fifteen years in an assortment of professions before he began writing fiction full-time.

Piers is a self-proclaimed environmentalist and lives on a tree farm in Florida with his wife. They have two grown daughters.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

Piers Anthony's excited mind pops all over the place in this fully engorged, enjoyably messy chamber piece-cum-space opera. ok, I think that's enough sexual references for now. had to do it, if only to honor King Perv.

like with many, Piers was my gateway drug into science fiction and fantasy. I loved his imagination, his wonder, his eyebrow-raising interests (e.g. astrology, the tarot, and aliens getting it on), his goofy humor, the now-quaint "sexiness", and above all, just how fun his stories were to read. I think Macroscope was its own sort of gateway for Piers as well. all of his interests are here, front and center, topics that would later dominate the plots of his subsequent books: gender, existential journeys, finding the self and owning it, games, sexuality, astrology. He throws it all together in a way that makes clear that these are things he is absorbed by not only on the level of plot and theme, but also on a personal level, as a way to map and understand himself and the people around him. the book is a very heady experience, full of passages that will fascinate those who are in step with the author's interests but will bore senseless those who aren't. this wasn't for me when I first came across it, as a teenager. it was actually hard for me to even understand. but it is not written for kids in junior high; it is an adult book. and so I gave up on it. I'm really happy I read it now, because it gives me hope that some of his earlier works will be just as enjoyable to revisit. especially since his later works all seemed to devolve into unseemly old-man perviness and lazy humor (especially those goddamn puns). poor Piers has gone from former bestselling author to rather a joke nowadays. I'd like to think that there are a lot more books like Macroscope that I will also love (or love again).

the outstanding thing for me in this book was its engagement with race and how racism dooms the potential growth of humanity (or any conscious species). this was very unexpected! and he does it so well, starting with bits here and there, one character considering his (imaginary) past life and the slaves on his family estate, another character casually stating that astrology does not depend on race, a third character admitting her racist tendencies and her unpleasant surprise at being in love with someone who is mixed race... and then racism becomes writ large, as the exact reason why evolved species are never truly evolved if they don't shed their growth-dooming tendencies to label, diminish, and compartmentalize each other in inequitable and usually violent ways. he turned what felt at first like a minor theme into one of the major points of the book. kudos, Piers Anthony!

and race isn't the only thing about this book - written in 1969 - that remains entirely relevant to the modern reader. Piers' portrait of widespread hypocrisy, corporate interests, cynical politicians expert at greasing wheels, the military-industrial complex, fragmented societies where the rich grow richer and the countries grow wealthier but the poor stay poor or inevitably grow poorer... obviously all as true today as they were half a century ago.

I really enjoyed the whole book, but my favorite parts come at the end. this is a book with only 4 major characters, each clearly defined as very different from the other. in the last parts of Macroscope, each find themselves on separate mind-adventures. and so we have a glorious Vancean picaresque featuring an amoral protagonist (Piers does a perfect pastiche of the Jack Vance style). we have a haunting, ambiguous sequence set in an idyllic beachside community that could have been written by Le Guin at her most socio-political. we have a military space opera featuring insectoid aliens that culminates with a mind-boggling infodump that both explains everything and leaves all doors open. and finally we have a PTSD-laden nightmare sequence set in a supermarket! but only briefly. the heroine decides she doesn't want to deal with that bullshit and goes on to play the game on her own terms. the casual chauvinism of the era in which this was written is still somewhat on display in Macroscope (as well as a questionable take on masochism), but I have to give credit where it's due: the author makes his heroine strong, complicated, proactive, and when it counts, more effective at getting things done than any of the other characters. that was such a happy surprise. the whole book was a happy surprise.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In case my 5 star rating is insufficient to persuade you to try this book, I prepared the following comparison scale to chart the exact amount of awesomeness contained in the story.

5.0 Stars. I think we all have those books that we absolutely love that just never seem to get the attention that we are feel deep down in our giblets they deserve. I call these my literary babies. Well this is one of my babies**.

** I have previously reviewed two others Liege-Killer and Heroes Die which I am mentioning again because my babies need all the exposure they can get as I want them to be well-liked and popular with the other books.

While this novel was nominated for a Hugo Award when it was published in 1969, it has not remained in the collective consciousness of the SF world in the intervening years. This is something that constantly frustrates me because this book is a serious, complex, mind-expanding tour de force that seriously deserves to enjoy a wider audience as well as a spot among the towering works of the field.

I see two reasons why this might be. First, I did not find this an “easy” read and some of the plot elements and concepts are thrust upon the reader only to be explained further in the book (see my reference to Ancient History below as an example). This may be a turn off for some.

A second reason may be that it is written by Piers Anthony. I think most people who have read Anthony's work will agree that the man can come up with some brilliant ideas. I think most people would also agree that most of his books take a great idea and surround it with a significant amount of “MEH.” Even worse than the MEH component is the "SKEEVE" factor which afflict far too many of his stories. Not to worry here folks. There is very little in the way of "skeeve" in this book and it is free from MEH. It is, however, chalk full of Anthony at the top of his brilliant, mind-blowing best.

I consider this book the poster child for “BIG IDEA” science fiction. However, because so much of the magic of the story is in “out there SF concepts” and the slow unfolding of the central mystery as the various cosmic pieces are gradually layered in one on top of the other, I am not going to give a traditional plot summary. Instead, I have done a breakdown of what I consider the “components” of the story and will leave you to discover the details for yourself.



MIND-BLOWING SF CONCEPTS:First, the Macroscope which is one of the truly great SF concepts ever. For those who have read Robert Charles Wilson’s Blind Lake, I think you will see the inspiration for the technology Wilson used in that book. Add to the Macroscope nuggets like: (a) omnipresent information storage; (b) traveling through the creation of singularities and (c) galactic evolutionary criteria and you will have barely scratched the surface of the myriad of “WTF” concepts in this epic novel.

ASTROLOGY: It’s real, it’s predictive, it’s science, it’s a fact….Accept it and let’s move on shall we. Seriously, watching Anthony weave astrology as a central plot device in the midst of all of the hard science concepts was fascinating and deftly handled.

EVOLUTION OF HUMANITY: Yes, humanity is still a child race and the question is whether or not we have the potential to assume a place in the great galactic community. Place your bets people.

PIERS ANTHONY SKEEVE FACTOR: Unfortunately, I can’t say it is completely absent from the work, but I did estimate it at only 3% of the total story which may actually be a bit high. There was one 3 page sequence that I had significant “skeeve” present and a few casual statements throughout the rest of the book. However, for the most part, Piers kept himself under control (I don’t think at this point he had truly developed his inner skeeve).

UBER COOL GALACTIC-SPANNING PLOT: Uh, we are talking our whole galaxy and beyond playing a part in this plot and this is where the truly brilliant, multi-layered narrative really begins to shine.

ANCIENT HISTORY: In Chapter 8, one of the main characters, Ivo, ends up in ancient Damascus. You are going to be WTFing all over the place. I am writing this to let you know….GO WITH IT…all will be explained in the end and you will say (hopefully)…NICE!!!

PSYCHOLOGY: At the heart of the narrative there is a significant amount of psychology involving the main characters and what defines them as people and how their strengths and weaknesses become a necessary aspect of the cosmic drama to which they have been thrust.

For fans of intelligent science fiction, I give this my HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's this trope you come across every now and then in science-fiction books which annoys the hell out of anyone who's actually interested in language. You have some supergenius type who's supposed to know everything, and the way the author chooses to show you how clever they are is to have them demonstrate their knowledge of a word in some more or less obscure language.

There was a fine example in Babel-17, which I reread last month. Rydra Wong, the gorgeous supergenius poet and linguist, has ended up on this huge spaceship which turns out to be called Jebel Tarik. Now what's that supposed to mean? The lovely Rydra soon figures it out. Jebel, she says, means "mountain" in Old Moorish, so they're on Tarik's Mountain. All well and good, but jebel, as I recently discovered, also means "mountain" in Arabic, a rather less exotic language than Old Moorish.

Macroscope contains a similar example. They've just received the cryptic message

SURULLINEN XPACT SCHON AG I ENCAJE

and another hot supergenius chick is going to figure it out. It's Polyglot! she exclaims. A mixture of languages! Blah, blah, blah, the last word is Spanish, the first one is Finnish, blah, blah, what's the "I"? Oh yes, she says, Polish! It means "and"! Well, that's right, but it's the same in Russian, a less dramatic choice.

One rather suspects that both Samuel R. Delaney and Piers Anthony composed their examples by flicking through a few dictionaries. Moral: you can't fake what you don't got.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1969, Macroscope came close to winning a Hugo and can now be seen as something of a classic. I remember reading a fair amount of Anthony in the 80s, as his science fiction and fantasy books seemed to flood the bookstores during that time. Yet, I never read Macroscope before.

Science fiction is known for being mind-bending, and this certainly is. The Macroscope is a multinational endeavor under the coordination of the UN and was the costliest piece of humanity's space program to date (this would be in the early 1990s, so Anthony was an optimist on this count like so many others). The Macroscope sees something unique-- the interaction of light and gravity waves-- and can be used to, say, chart Earth's natural resources in 3D, down to the core of the planet. Further, it can 'see' other solar systems and planets, and even map them. In fact, people using the Macroscope already stumbled upon several alien races! We will soon find out, however, that this is just the tip of the iceberg...

Macroscope is a space opera with four main characters, with Ivo being the main protagonist. Ivo is the product of an experiment on Earth, where geniuses of many 'races' were interbreed to produce (at least the hope was) a 'true' human; going back to our origins so to speak. The multiracial offspring never knew their parents and were raised in isolation from the rest of humanity. The project fell apart when the children were in their teens and they all made their way from there. One of Ivo's project mates-- Brad-- now works on the Macroscope project and sends for Ivo for help in a way Ivo cannot refuse.

Brad, and others we find out, have discovered a strange feature of the Macroscope; it seems, besides its use as something akin to a microscope, it also receives 'streams' of information from obviously alien origins. Yet, when people of a high degree of intelligence try to decipher the message, it cooks their brain! The message become deemed 'the destroyer' to the Macroscope team, but they really want to somehow over come it; hence the summoning of Ivo.

I will stop with the plot. Basically, this turns into a space opera once four people take the Macroscope from its space station and flee from the UN. Besides Ivo, there is young Afra, Brad's super hot redheaded girlfriend (more on this below), and a couple-- Harold (an engineer) and his wife Beatryx. Anthony is not exactly known for being above sexism, and there is plenty of that here. Afra's physical features are constantly referred to, as is her 'emotionalism' so to speak. I can see this as being passable in a novel from 1969, but trigger alert just the same. IMO, Anthony does a decent job with her, as she is not just a sex symbol, but plays a key role in the plot. Anthony also takes on racism to some degree, which, again in 1969, is pretty remarkable. The story really is about the character's growth and development once they leave the station with the Macroscope as much as it is about what they discover once they manage to get around 'the destroyer'.

Part adventure story, part inner discovery, part mind-blowing science and aliens, and you have a classic science fiction story. Unlike some if not many 'classic' science fiction works, Macroscope still holds its own in the 21st century. 4 solid stars!!

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Note: This is not a library copy.

[Patrick Scheele · Rating 1 out of 5]

The setup had potential, but there were so many problems with this book that I never got a chance to enjoy reading it.

* Several times the writer pretends to answer a logical problem he has created in the story by spouting a bunch of real science and then assuming the problem answered. That really gets on my nerves. This also means the whole concept of the Macroscope became too hard to believe in. Ironically, if he had simply not given any (lengthy) explanations of how it worked, it would have been much easier to suspend my disbelief.

* I first started hating this book when the heroes try to escape the space cops from the UN and the protagonist randomly comes up with a new use for the Macroscope. It's not just a telescope on steroids and a a receiver for alien radio, the signal it receives is so magical it can even solve their problem for them. To outrun the space cops, all they have to do is activate a beam from the alien radio signal, which turns them all into a pool of goo and magically activates again later to turn them back. Oh, and the hot girl is too scared to do it, so she asks the protagonist to fondle her for a few pages, which makes her existential angst go away. Of course this makes no sense at all, but I guess the writer was horny when he wrote it or something.

* Astrology plays a big part in this book. At the risk of spoiling some of the most boring fiction ever written: at one point near the end, one character discovers a very advanced alien. This alien uses astrology to find out that the character's wife is dead...

* By the end, Piers Anthony must have run out of whatever he was smoking when he wrote this book, because nothing gets resolved. The coming disaster due to overpopulation that started the whole quest is just ignored in the end.

[Greg Frederick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was told that Piers Anthony writes silly sci-fi, which I've never read before. Then I ran into a couple of his works at a thrift store and thought I'd give them a try. This is the first one I started reading, and boy was it surprising! This is not a silly book, and ended up becoming one of my all-time favorite sci-fi reads. Macroscope is so creative, well spun, and perfectly paced that once the ball got rolling it was really hard to put it down.

So apparently Piers Anthony deserves some serious respect, and though I look forward to reading the next book (which just has to be silly based on the title), I also hope to dig up more serious works by him of this ilk. I can't say enough good things about this book.

One warning - it is a product of it's era, and includes sexism throughout that is not tolerated in this day and age. But unless you're easily offended, the story is worth looking past that.

[Zach · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the worst science fiction books I've ever read. Hard to follow, clumsy language, ridiculous dialogue, long and interminably boring tangents into astrology... there isn't much to like here. The central mystery of the book was just compelling enough to get through to the end, but the revelation wasn't all that satisfying and the denouement was very bland.

[prcardi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Storyline: 2/5
Characters: 2/5
Writing Style: 2/5
World: 4/5

How did so many good ideas turn out so abysmally? I admit, at the beginning I was a little dispirited. "Oh, another mysterious character on the run from shadowy organizations..." I had no need to revisit one of those novels again. But then it turned out to be a poorly constructed hook, a badly envisioned starting point designed to get the reader elsewhere - to the macroscope. And the macroscope was very much a place worth going. There's a place in the middle where we get the novel's best: it is hard science fiction from someone in awe of the universe, it is speculative fiction proposing wondrous possibilities, it is technological gadgetry made plausible and revolutionary. Sure, far into the work there's this hokey aura leftover from that beginning conspiracy story. And, yes, Anthony's placed about a dozen soap boxes in an unrecognizable pattern (if it was that at all) from which he jumps seemingly randomly. And, you're right, that whole psychoanalysis portion was, at best, completely unnecessary and at worst a burning wound. But - but! - one could get caught up in the possibilities of the macroscope. One can see how later writers were influenced by this and had their visions of space and time formed by this very novel. There was something here very much worth encountering in that been-there-done-that-science-fiction-merit-badge sort of way. And then it all fell apart. Moments where I was completely at a loss as to what was going on. Even learning what was going on I couldn't find a plausible reason for sending us that direction. Disorientation and confusion with revelations tardily made and with little reward. More of all the worst of the elements - too much of what was an awful character quirk, too much astrology posing as hard science fiction, too many hops on the soap boxes, too many uses of the deus ex machina, too much awful dialogue. Those last chapters were some of the most excruciating science fiction storytelling I've ever encountered, and it was sprinkled with the awesome resolutions that - despite having more than 300 pages to prepare for - Anthony never got around to setting up. I don't know that I've ever read a science fiction work so packed with good ideas and so utterly ruined by failings of execution. One could pick up on Anthony's ambitions to greatness: to artistry, to significance, to deepness and richness. It was plain for all to see, unfortunately, that the book didn't remotely come close to achieving any of these. Leaving you embarrassed for the macroscope, for the book, for Anthony, for science fiction.... just embarrassed.

[James Hoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

From a general summary of Macroscope, you might get the impression that Piers Anthony took the "throw everything in but the kitchen sink" approach. After all, the book is bursting with ideas and oddities. Just some its component elements include astrology, ancient history, Sidney Lanier's poetry, a grand history of a multifarious universe, and the wars it endured, mind destroying beams, a project to create genetically perfect geniuses. And on... From these few sentences alone, you might think it a convoluted irreparable mess. You would be wrong. Long before huge epic novels became the norm rather than the exception in sf, Piers Anthony created this massive book. Ivo Archer, the protagonist is the product of one the aforementioned genius creating projects. He becomes immersed in a plot to save the titualar macroscope, an instrument orbiting the earth. The macroscope itself is a device which can read macrons. In other words, it can give a literal glimpse into any past. With this instrument, man now has the power to discover any portion of any alien history it can find via the macroscope. It is something like having a vast galactic library or internet at your disposal. Only there are a few hitches. For starters, it stops a viewer at a certain level of technology. A destroyer beam literally renders comatose any brain that tries get beyond it at a certain level. Adding to the trouble is that some politicians are trying to pull the plug on the project to save money. Ivo, and three others hijack the macroscope and set out for Neptune. How they pull this off and what happens from this point is mind bending. Discoveries continue via the use of the macroscope and the ever expanding scope (excuse the unintentional pun) make this book extraordinary. It doesn't hurt that the quality of writing is exceptional, either. A grand, epic masterpiece.

[Phil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ever read a 20 year old sci-fi book in 1989 at the age of 19 while under the influence of hallucinogens on a regular basis, then spend the next twenty plus years remembering it as this mind blowing experience? No? You're lucky. I came across a copy of this at an estate sale and was so excited to read it again, remembering it as this amazing book that had so much to say about the universe and how it worked. While I respect other novels by Piers Anthony, the reality is that this was a rambling, sexist, unbelievable piece of tripe that also managed to argue that astrology is somehow legitimate science. I trucked through it waiting for the revelation to come, only to remember that it was only going to come to someone coming down from a three day acid binge. Live and learn.

[Ira (SF Words of Wonder) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Check out my full, spoiler light, video review HERE.
This is a galaxy spanning space opera that has many familiar tropes as well as some unconventional topics such as; astrology, poetry and music, a game called sprouts, race/gender issues, a sort of astral projection sequence, and a bit of body horror. At times this one had me scratching my head, but the ideas and plot kept me engaged throughout this almost 500 page novel. A hard one to recommend because it gets weird and pervy at times but I’m glad I read this one and think Piers did a great job weaving all these elements into an interesting story.

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 Stars

This book was fucking garbage. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to remember all the bad aspects in one writing but neither is it worth going back to later. I'll try.

I've never read a book more in need of a firm (stony; iron; leaden) editor. No one told the author that he doesn't have to put every idea he's ever had (philosophical, science, cultural) in one story. There were a couple of interesting science-fiction ideas here, but they are subsumed in bullshit. The characters are unlikable or vapid. The plot is internally inconsistent and derivative of older space operas (particularly the Skylark series). The characters are super-geniuses who can understand abstract thought, remember everything they've ever read or heard (unless it's convenient for them to forget), and apparently draw facts out of nothing. But they don't see obvious uses of the tools at their disposal, going out of their way to make bad decisions.

The main character has no personality. He's in love with a "genius" woman who can't keep up with any of the men in the book (the sexism is both overt and less so) who is disgusted because she finds out her boyfriend is mixed race (the main character is in love with her and the fact that she's a blatant racist does not faze him, although he is also mixed race). Her "redemption" is realizing she hates black people due to a childhood memory where a black person was trying to help her; she triumphs by asking a bunch of questions of a smarter man; her big success in the big battle is for a plot device to speak to her for no reason (really, there is no reason why it happens here and not elsewhere or elsewhen).

The background hero of the story is a poet named Sidney Lumier, aka "the Poet of the Confederacy." The only person in the story who tries to help a black person gets killed for it; later, a pseudo-omniscient character says she was in the wrong (for trying to help black people). One of the protagonists experiences bug rape (thankfully this is not very explicit). The setup doesn't make much sense for what the story becomes, and the conclusion doesn't actually address the setup in any way - the characters have the same problems they did before, but some of them are dead now.

The narrative structure is that of three or four short stories tied together by ratty shoestring; the different acts of the book are thoroughly dissonant. I briefly considered that this was intentional, but I seriously doubt it. The tension in the book is nonexistent because it's not at all clear who (or what) we should be rooting for. Classism is celebrated. A key theme throughout the book is that astrology is legit and that any reason to doubt it is misguided at best, and more likely ignorant. There are several pages devoted to explaining some Astrological system. I would like to meet the person who carefully read those pages and ask them what the fuck is wrong with them.

This book is bad.

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 1 out of 5]

Re-reading this book after 30 years didn't improve it much. I could only remember one thing from my first reading: a detailed description of how the characters melted into glup to withstand 10G acceleration in a space vehicle, and the reconstitution process beginning with a tadpole like creature swimming around in the glup and swallowing it until the person was restored. But the rest remains forgettable. Even for science fiction, this was simply beyond belief.

[Miles Carter · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to flog myself to finish this book. Nearly unreadable. PA finds it necessary to craft a narrative that requires a woman to be strip naked and be fondled by every male in the vicinity. And then that same woman is put on trial and as a result required to be subservient to every male and call them sir. Pass.

[Jenn Raley · Rating 1 out of 5]

When I opened up this used paperback for the first time and read "first edition, 1969", I marveled that the object I was holding was 50 years old. I have some reverence for that.

This is pretty much the best thing I have to say about this book.

This book is sexist, racist (while at times pretending not to be), insulting about intellect, and just generally patronizing. Meanwhile the plot is a mess, the pacing is uneven, and the final sequence is completely contrived.

I don't recall having read Piers Anthony prior to this. Unless someone I trust commends a particular work of his and certifies it as avoiding the problems of this book, I won't feel the need to continue exploring this particular classic SciFi author.

[MissingNorth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Loose and rambling with annoying stereotypical characters that made me think it was written in the 1950s when women were only either good wives or good-for-now. It also struggles with identity, starting in pseudo noir then fumbling ineptly into the fantastic, finally coming out crudely and unsatisfyingly scrambled.

If this had been the first book by Piers Anthony I had read, I would never pick up another of his books. I love science-fiction. Love fantasy, the absurd, the fantastic. Macroscope belongs in the genre of awful, in the museum of fossilized relics we dust off on occasion to see from whence we came and relish how far we've come.

[Lorelei · Rating 4 out of 5]

More than thirty years after I first read this book, the exposition and environmental lectures at the beginning are a bit dull, but otherwise it is just as wonderful as when I first read it. So much for people who claim that you can't write technology-based sf anymore - you just need to have enough imagination to come up with something new and different.

[Richard Friedericks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this Macroscope in the 1970s when it came out. I was intrigued and its ideas and images stayed with me all these years. Finding my copy again, I read it again and loved it even more. It combines astrology with Type II and Type III technology in the context of a personal and human development.

[5greenway · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5, maybe a little higher despite the hokum and fair bit of Problematic Content.

Pervs in Peril!

The finest minds of the Earth are in danger, a terrifying alien technology is on the loose and Our Hero has got the horn... Hello, Piers, I've missed you.

[Victor Pagona · Rating 5 out of 5]

woooooaaaaaahhh...

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

IIRC this was the first book of his that I read and I loved it. His writing was good and the story was entertaining.

How I use stars.

5 means I have re-read the book, which is the best recommendation for me.
4 means I enjoyed this book and might re-read it at some future date, but I haven't so far. Life is short and there are many books to read.
3 means I enjoyed the book but I don't feel the need to re-read it.
2 means not for me, but you may like it.
1 means I couldn't get into it, or finish it and didn't enjoy the read, which sometimes is a sad thing, other times not so much.

[Bryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book 25 years ago, and back then it made a stunning impression on me. As an experiment, I decided to read it again to see how my thoughts and tastes had evolved. Sadly, "Macroscope" has not stood the test of time. A pretentious jumbled mess of astrology, eugenics and Civil War history, this book aspires to be an epic but falls a long way short. Horrendously dated (complete with undercurrents of racism and utterly overt sexism), bloated and rambling. A big disappointment.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I agree with Stephen.... nuff said.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

(i) Why I'm reading Piers Anthony books:
Because people's responses tend to his work fall roughly within three categories:

(A) Most people know him mainly for the Xanth series, many recoil at their past fondness for it and the compulsive but not very smart wordplay and sexualized depictions of sometimes very young girls. He's usually seen as someone you can make fun of without hurting anyone's feelings because it seems like his phenomenal success in the 80s and 90s is fading away quickly (?)

(B) Some will stand up for his 60s and 70s books, especially Macroscope, Tarot, Of Man And Manta, Battle Circle, Steppe, Cththon series, Cluster series and maybe a few others (a couple of these nominated for big awards).

There must be at least 30 people who I'm inclined to trust that fall into this group. I recently seen an interview with Ian Watson from the late 1970s in which he called Anthony an appalling but consistently interesting writer.
Some say that at best Anthony has a wild uninhibited freewheeling energy, inventive and very strange. These are things I'm always looking for.
Some of these readers will say Piers Anthony sold out and became a very different writer in the 80s.

(C) A much smaller group will say that on occasion Anthony still written interesting stuff into the 80s, 90s and maybe still today?

For better or worse I'm attracted to authors like Anthony, Jack L Chalker, (Andre Norton and Poul Anderson to a lesser extent) partly because their reputation is so mixed, their body of work so large and critically un-mapped. Despite their popularity it seems like uncharted territory full of landmines. I'm especially attracted to the idea of hidden treasure which was once selling very well but nobody seems to talk about it anymore.

I think Anthony would rather be best known for different books (though he never stopped writing Xanth) and it's probably better for everyone if an artist is best known for their best works. He'd probably be more celebrated if he was a film director because flawed books are so much harder to deal with than flawed films.

I kind of want to figure Piers out too, he's an odd, unpredictable person and I enjoy reading his journals sometimes.

(ii) The actual novel:
I really liked the idea of the alien signal which is a potentially fatal cognitive puzzle (I think there was another signal described as something like a huge library you could explore?), the titular Macroscope that can see across the universe was interesting and I admire how it floated so easily between a surprising variety of subjects (astrology, Sidney Lanier, split personalities, education systems, types of intelligence, prejudices, games), but the slow pace and sheer volume of hard science and lengthy explanations of so many subjects left me so bruised that I couldn't get further than halfway.

There was some unconvincing situations with Afra (her asking everyone to check her body, the trial and punishment) but the exhausting explanations of everything are what defeated me. I skimmed around the remainder and I had a tough time letting go because there's more adventure in the second half but I couldn't make myself finish. I prefer not to review books I can't finish but I had too much to say. Better readers than me have enjoyed the book more but be warned that all the science, history and astrology lectures far outweigh the space opera action/adventure.

Note: the Sphere edition is heavily abridged and apparently makes a lot less sense.

[Sergio Mars · Rating 2 out of 5]

He de confesar que es uno de los libros más locos que he leído. No en un buen sentido. No es una locura controlada. Es un batiburrillo que toca desde homenajes a la space opera clásica (la de Doc Smith) a largas parrafadas (pseudo)hard, pasando por escenas simbólicas, fantasías históricas a lo Abraham Merritt, un confuso intento de análisis social (sobre la cuestión racial), cierto machismo inconsciente subyacente y astrología, mucha astrología.

Si tuviera que especular, diría que Anthony pretendía con "Macroscope" subirse al carro de la New Wave, sin comprender que no basta con lanzar alegremente simbolismos al lector. Debe existir una idea detrás, un tema sólido, una inquietud filosófica. Esta novela lo tiene todo salvo ese anclaje que podría evitar que todo deviniera en una opera bufa. Terriblemente pedante, eso sí (puede que sea la novela más pedenta que he leído... y eso que he leído varias de Thomas S. Disch).

Lo peor es que debajo de todo eso hay ideas interesantes, e incluso pasajes que casi incitan a pensar si no se la ha juzgado mal. Sin embargo, nunca tarda mucho en tirar esa impresión por la borda con la siguiente ocurrencia estrambótica.

En algún momento del futuro cercano (para la novela), se ha construido el Macroscope, una base espacial que funciona como una especie de superteslecopio que capta no luz, sino macrones. De algún modo, esa radiación macrónica resulta ser portadora de una señal que, básicamente, codifica el conocimiento de miles, quizás millones de especies alienígenas, con tecnologías maravillosas y soluciones jamás imaginadas. Sin embargo, antes de poder empezar a explorar esas posibilidades, aparece un segunda señal superpuesta, el Destructor, que convierte a los más inteligentes de entre los receptores en vegetales.

Por no se sabe bien qué líos políticos, cuatro personajes acaban robando el macroscopio y llevándolo a Neptuno, que será solo el principio de un viaje interestelar (casi intergaláctico) a la búsqueda de la fuente del Destructor.

Con esto, tan solo he rascado la superficie, porque antes de lo que puedas imaginar, Piers Anthony está dibujando la historia del universo desde miles de millones de años atrás, divagando sobre un experimento de mestizaje extremo que dio lugar a un grupo de niños superinteligentes o entrando en exhaustivo detalle sobre los fundamentos "científicos" de la astrología.

Tengo la sospecha de que ese último punto constituye en realidad el origen de todo. Me da que, como Philip K. Dick con el I-Ching para escribir "El hombre en el castillo", Anthony empleó un manual astrológico para redactar "Macroscope". La diferencia es que, aun dentro de su estilo para nada concretizador, Dick tenía bastante claro sobre qué estaba hablando. Anthony, por su parte, parece quedarse en el símbolo y demuestra grandes problemas para otorgarle un significado.

No dudo de la capacidad deslumbradora que tuvo en su momento (es, además, una novela de una longitud bastante superior a lo habitual en esas fechas). El problema surge cuando intentas interpretar de algún modo lo que lees y no encuentras más que ideas inconexas, conceptos anticuados y, a veces, hasta ofensivos y planteamientos sin atisbo de desarrollo o conclusión.

[Corvid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Macroscope is a novel that could have been decent had a single woman or POC had a chance to look at it before it went to press. It's very classic Piers Anthony in that the speculative fiction storyline is at times overshadowed or drowned out by the author's extremely weird takes on gender, sexuality, and race--you can find the eugenics thread in this book, as well as the "children are sexually capable nearly from birth" thread that is present in several of his other works. It also has a bit where Anthony makes an argument in favor of Lysenko, which is...definitely something, and a bit where interracial couples are directly compared to interspecies sex, which is. Definitely something.

The most annoying thing about this book is that I have, in fact, read it before. Unfortunately the main portion of the book appears to have made absolutely no impression on my memory the first run through, because of the godawful ending, in which it's revealed that the reason that the very white female character is racist, not because of societal pressures or structural racist or any explanation of racism that would actually make sense, but because of a childhood trauma involving a black man. I can get past the fascination with astrology that this book is centered around, that's fine, that's just fantasy hidden in sci fi, but Anthony's take on racism is so rancid that I'm sure in five years I will pick this book up again, go "ooh, new book I haven't read!" and read through it with no memory of the main storyline, slowly getting more and more annoyed with Piers until I finally get to the final fifty pages and suddenly go WAIT I'VE READ THIS BEFORE.

Anyway. I'm in hell. Book gets three stars because I don't actively regret reading it, I'm just so mad about its existence that I've given myself a headache.

[Darkø Tasevski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love hate relationship with this one... Started reading it two years ago and stopped reading around 50% of the book, because I couldn't stand those long discussions about astrology. Also, I'm not a SJW but I had a feeling that the author is just too much focused on Afra's womanly parts (a bit sexist and chauvinistic), maybe I'm wrong tho.

Started reading it again a few weeks ago, just to see if I was wrong, this time I've just fast forwarded through (semi-serious) astrology book parts and focused on the story about Macroscope.

The first thing I've noticed that while at the beginning of the book there was a big focus on overpopulation, but that focus suddenly disappears once the group is gone rogue, and it seems that search for overpopulation solution died with Brad. After that, the part about Neptune and Triton seemed a bit like filler content to me, no clear purpose or doing. And after this part book get a bit better, there are finally some interesting stories being told, still with some astrology spiced over but oh well...

Really a great idea for the story, with (sort of) interesting and a unique main character but it failed abysmally. In the end, I felt divided about the book: did I liked it or not? I guess something in between. 4/10

[Jeremiah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am giving "Macroscope" by "Piers Anthony" which I really loved and so am giving a 8/10...
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I really enjoyed this book it had some amazing concepts that just kept giving me all these cool theories about space and time and the whole universe! It was very well done and the entire time I was reading it I just kept wanting to find out what was going to happen next.

The different themes in this book from psychology, to the ethics of what we try to do to advance ourselves, who is really doing the correct thing in the end, who is right or wrong, and so on down the line really was amazingly done, now you may enjoy the book a little more if you are into or know more about astrology as there are quite a few themes dealing with it but even that just made me more interested and want to go look it up for myself.

If you like Science Fiction (and possibly be interest in astrology) I highly recommend you check this one out, it is extremely well written and you actually feel like all the characters are a part of the story and you really want everything to work out in the end even if you don't know if that's even how it should be.

[Evan Þ. · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book starts out interesting: Earth has intercepted an alien signal, which promises a Theory of Everything and technological riches beyond measure - but as soon as anyone sufficiently smart listens to it, they go all-but-brain-dead. The problem starts out as figuring out a way around this. Then, when one of our protagonists does, it turns into figuring out why - and also, after he constructs a stardrive from the signal, stopping the aliens who sent it.

Unfortunately, the plot is extremely disconnected, with numerous subthemes that're contradictory or going nowhere. It seems astrology is somehow a real science here? And there was this group of kids in the backstory who're somewhat telepathic? And one of our characters grew up during the US Civil War, but is somehow not unusually old? And there may or may not be real time travel? But none of this is tied into anything, and I'm left baffled what the author meant by it. At least all the distasteful racial references went somewhere, and somewhere with a fitting solution in the end.

But, in the end, the main plot is left unsettled. I'm sorry I read this book.