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Harvest of Stars #4
The Fleet of Stars
In Fleet of Stars , Poul Anderson brings back the wildly colorful Anson Guthrie, his iconoclastic hero from Harvest of Stars. The staid, somber people of Earth are not only dependent on technology, they are all but ruled by machine intelligence. Suspecting a conspiracy to suppress humankind's last vestiges of freedom, Guthrie begins a dangerous journey across the realm of the comets, the asteroids, and the stars themselves--willing to risk his life to preserve humanity's ability to roam the universe.
416 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 1, 1997
34 people are currently reading
288 people want to read
About the author
Poul Anderson
1,621 books1,105 followersPseudonym A. A. Craig, Michael Karageorge, Winston P. Sanders, P. A. Kingsley.
Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.
Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972. He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.[2][3]
Poul Anderson died of cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. Several of his novels were published posthumously.
Series:
* Time Patrol
* Psychotechnic League
* Trygve Yamamura
* Harvest of Stars
* King of Ys
* Last Viking
* Hoka
* Future history of the Polesotechnic League
* Flandry
Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.
Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972. He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.[2][3]
Poul Anderson died of cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. Several of his novels were published posthumously.
Series:
* Time Patrol
* Psychotechnic League
* Trygve Yamamura
* Harvest of Stars
* King of Ys
* Last Viking
* Hoka
* Future history of the Polesotechnic League
* Flandry
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 1, 2016
If you liked "Harvest of Stars", "The Stars Are Also Fire", and/or "Harvest the Fire", you'll probably like this. Standard space libertarian ubermensch novel.
July 30, 2024
Was rather underwhelmed. Plenty of very interesting sci fi ideas here, many under utilized in the genre. But a whole lot of preaching re the ills of governments and so on. Narratively there were threads that had nothing to do with each other until the last few pages, and even then much that had no connection. Character development was overall weak. Probably won’t give Paul Andersön another shot, too much good sci fi out there.
January 13, 2024
I found this book very long and drawn out, often boring and I would skim. And the main character is an AH.
May 20, 2021
Bad end to a bad series, probably the worst of Anderson's career. Throughout the series, he gives full voice to the worst of his libertarianism, and it badly damages the writing. Instead of rousing tales of roguish entrepreneurs, Anderson gives way to Randian droning about the horrors of "governments." There are interesting science-fictional ideas, but they drown in shoehorned grousing about vaguely defined liberty. The series is ~1500 pages, skip and read The Broken Sword five times instead.
November 20, 2022
A long drawn out book with a main character that was simply a jerk. The story was about freedom and implications of a machine society, but very watered down and nothing special. A gigantic reveal that was long hinted at turned out to be bleh, and then a final even more explosive reveal at the very end also left me underwhelmed. Possibly just dated, but also possibly just bloated and boring...
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January 23, 2024The first book of his that I found dull. I think this series may be more realistic by modern sensibilities, but I won't read any more of this series.
May 10, 2017
In 1993, science-fiction author Poul Anderson published Harvest of Stars, the first in a four-volume future history that depicted the human race grappling with machine intelligences. That first volume was mainly a libertarian fantasy about independent spacers evading a tyrannical world government, but it ended with a colony to Alpha Centauri launched just as true AI was appearing on Earth.
For Anderson, superhuman intelligences were scary because they might lead to a managed economy, the great bugbear of libertarians like himself. But also, Anderson started off writing science-fiction in the 1950s when everyone envisaged intrepid space cowboys flying their ships all over the galaxy. By his old age, it was becoming evident that automation meant humans would have little direct role in piloting craft or working any other machines. Furthermore, other forward-thinking authors like Vernor Vinge were suggesting that humanity might even choose to simply stay put and move into a virtual reality instead of expanding outward into the galaxy. This reversal of all he had held dear left Anderson appalled.
FLEET OF STARS is the fourth and final volume of this series. While the middle volumes had been set in the solar system and dealt entirely with the struggle against domineering AI, here Anderson brings back the interstellar colonization theme. The freewheeling humans that made it to Alpha Centauri have, in the subsequent centuries, expanded further to other star systems in the nearest few light years.
As the novel opens Anson Guthrie, Anderson's libertarian hero that has lived for centuries in these distant colonies as a downloaded personality, gets word that Earth's cybernetic overlords have discovered some shocking secret through their distributed space telescope array. Boarding a c-ship where he can hibernate during the long voyage, Guthrie heads for Earth to see what's up. The bulk of the book consists of a handful of discontented humans on the Moon and Mars complaining about how AI stifles the meaning of their lives and attempting to riddle out the secret discovery about which rumours are flying.
This is all extremely disappointing science-fiction: though now set well over a millennium in the future, the culture and technology here is hardly any different than in previous volumes of the series, and indeed the computing interfaces they use were already coming to seem clunky and primitive when Anderson wrote this book in the 1900s. In spite of his reputation as a proponent of "hard science-fiction", Anderson in fact shows very little imagination, especially compared to the cyberpunks who were turning out such fresh work in the same period that he was writing.
In the third volume of the series, Harvest the Fire, it seemed like Anderson's plot was bringing him past mere libertarian ranting, but sadly the reappearance of the Anson Guthrie character allows him to crank it up all over again. Guthrie, the book's second protagonist alongside the restless moondweller Fen, serves only to voice Anderson's dislike of governments, income tax, etc. The big reveal of the AI secret that the reader waits for turns out not to be any big reveal at all, and this is not the first time in this series that Anderson keeps us in suspense only to find out there was nothing really there.
Thus, all in all, it feels like Anderson gave up on hard science fiction and just wanted to quickly build a generic and invariable mid-20th-century space opera setting where he could bang on about political themes without the actual march of technology or the fact that human cultures change over time getting in his way. I can't recommend this series, even if the epic scope of the first volume might (in spite of the libertarian agitprop) augur well.
For Anderson, superhuman intelligences were scary because they might lead to a managed economy, the great bugbear of libertarians like himself. But also, Anderson started off writing science-fiction in the 1950s when everyone envisaged intrepid space cowboys flying their ships all over the galaxy. By his old age, it was becoming evident that automation meant humans would have little direct role in piloting craft or working any other machines. Furthermore, other forward-thinking authors like Vernor Vinge were suggesting that humanity might even choose to simply stay put and move into a virtual reality instead of expanding outward into the galaxy. This reversal of all he had held dear left Anderson appalled.
FLEET OF STARS is the fourth and final volume of this series. While the middle volumes had been set in the solar system and dealt entirely with the struggle against domineering AI, here Anderson brings back the interstellar colonization theme. The freewheeling humans that made it to Alpha Centauri have, in the subsequent centuries, expanded further to other star systems in the nearest few light years.
As the novel opens Anson Guthrie, Anderson's libertarian hero that has lived for centuries in these distant colonies as a downloaded personality, gets word that Earth's cybernetic overlords have discovered some shocking secret through their distributed space telescope array. Boarding a c-ship where he can hibernate during the long voyage, Guthrie heads for Earth to see what's up. The bulk of the book consists of a handful of discontented humans on the Moon and Mars complaining about how AI stifles the meaning of their lives and attempting to riddle out the secret discovery about which rumours are flying.
This is all extremely disappointing science-fiction: though now set well over a millennium in the future, the culture and technology here is hardly any different than in previous volumes of the series, and indeed the computing interfaces they use were already coming to seem clunky and primitive when Anderson wrote this book in the 1900s. In spite of his reputation as a proponent of "hard science-fiction", Anderson in fact shows very little imagination, especially compared to the cyberpunks who were turning out such fresh work in the same period that he was writing.
In the third volume of the series, Harvest the Fire, it seemed like Anderson's plot was bringing him past mere libertarian ranting, but sadly the reappearance of the Anson Guthrie character allows him to crank it up all over again. Guthrie, the book's second protagonist alongside the restless moondweller Fen, serves only to voice Anderson's dislike of governments, income tax, etc. The big reveal of the AI secret that the reader waits for turns out not to be any big reveal at all, and this is not the first time in this series that Anderson keeps us in suspense only to find out there was nothing really there.
Thus, all in all, it feels like Anderson gave up on hard science fiction and just wanted to quickly build a generic and invariable mid-20th-century space opera setting where he could bang on about political themes without the actual march of technology or the fact that human cultures change over time getting in his way. I can't recommend this series, even if the epic scope of the first volume might (in spite of the libertarian agitprop) augur well.
April 12, 2012
Decent read until the last few pages, in which a Anderson destroys an element that I was actually really liking. Still worth the time (Even if it did take me a month. Stupid school, sucking up my reading time.)
July 4, 2024
The final volume of Anderson's epic Harvest of Stars series winds up the ancient conflict between freedom loving metamorphs and their human allies with the overbearing machines of the cybercosm. Big action, big ideas: Classic Space Opera.
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August 22, 2013Liked it.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews