Alpha Centauri has to be one of the worst books I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. Of all the hundreds of books I’ve read, this has to rank in the bottom 10, if not the bottom 5. I can’t remember reading a book this bad in the last 10 years. The suckitude this book exhibits simply cannot be overstated.

From the back cover:

The last salvation of humanity is traveling with the crew of the starship Mother Night, on a colonizing mission to Alpha Centauri.

But a terrorist plague has infiltrated the ship, planting the seeds of failure and extinction in every man and woman aboard.

Initially, there are 10 crew members and supposedly 10,000 people in cold storage. The crew members are woken as the approach Alpha Centauri, although one has died due to equipment failure. One of the remaining 9, Mies, carries an engineered autoviroids in his testicles. Any female he has sex with will become sterile, with no evidence as to why. Mies’ mission is to have sex with anything that has a pulse.

And from that point, you have most of the book. Some of the characters are both male and female, thanks to surgery and hormone treatments. Meis will screw any of them. Oh, and apparently he has some sort of personality overlay that drives this, and provided the cover he needed to get assigned to the mission. Complete crap.

The only redeeming technology in this entire book is the idea that cosmic string fragments exist everywhere, and with certain technology, the “hyperpipes” can be examined, and resulting data close to the near end can be constructed to form images of events the hyperpipes have “seen”. Although the hyperpipes do carry information, they can’t be used for instellar transport. Or not at least until the crew members discover the amazing alien technology that lets them do just that.

The characters are not engaging, the unbelievability level is off the charts, and Mies trying to screw everything and his internal conflict surrounding it gets monotonous very quickly. Personally, I think the authors have some serious mental issues, and should seek professional help. And perhaps consider attending several years worth of classes in writing science fiction.

Kevin J. Anderson said:

The fiction of William Barton and Michael Capobianco is always remarkable, a compelling and masterful blend of diamond-hard sf and humanistic character studies… which is what science fiction is all about.”

I’ve liked KJA’s books. But personally I think he received a big check to dash off a complementary line, and never picked the book up. I can’t imagine anyone actually liking this book. You can be sure I won’t waste the cover price on anything else they’ve written.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I give this a solid -74.

Publisher: Avalon, Year: 1997, ISBN: 0-380-78205-7, Price: $6.99

I’ve enjoyed almost all the JPH books I’ve read, and Voyage From Yesteryear falls solidly in there. Written in 1982, it still holds up well in 2008. Even the best authors didn’t foresee where our technology was going: people “flipping switches” to get reports. Nor have any of them foreseen the fall of the Soviet Union, or Americans molasses-like progress in exploiting the frontiers of space.

Nonetheless, the characters are well developed and consistent, the plot viable, and the pacing good. It’s an entertaining read, and I can recommend this book to anyone that enjoys hard science fiction.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d rate this an 8.5 or 9.

Publisher: Del Rey, Year: 1982, ISBN: 0-345-34246-1, Price: $4.99