So I just finished reading Jack McDevitt's "Cauldron"

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Junghalli
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So I just finished reading Jack McDevitt's "Cauldron"

Post by Junghalli »

For those who follow his Academy Novels/Omega series.

I was totally pumped when I found this book at the library. We finally get to find out where the Omegas come from.

The good was, his prose has improved significantly since The Engines of God (general quality of the novels go up and down through the series, Odyssey was probably the weakest and EoG is still the strongest IMO) and it was a passable read. However, I have to say I was kind of disappointed in the execution.


1) The pacing was not very good. The book dragged a lot through the first half, and then the second half when the actual interesting stuff was going on felt quite rushed. It was like he had writers block and wrote a bunch of fluff, and then realized too late he was running out of room for the meat. The book would have been much better if the part devoted to the actual expedition to the galactic core would have, you know, covered most of the book. It was like reading a book about Cortez's conquest of the Aztecs where literally half the book took place in Spain before he set sail and was all about describing his preparations.

I was especially annoyed with the exploration of Sigma Whatsthenumber being accomplished in all of maybe one chapter.


2) I'm starting to get annoyed with some of the repeatitive stuff he pulls in all his books. Like the "I will throw in a random fatal animal attack to artificially pump up tension and drama" trick. He's done that in, what, three books now? Not to mention the whole "I will throw a crew of inadequately trained underequipped people at the worst the cosmos can offer" thing. Something like the first voyage to the galactic core should be done by trained astronauts, or at least professional scientists, not some crew of amateurs. Especially since he has a tendency to make said undertrained amateurs do stupid stuff just so they can get in danger, because apparently people getting killed pointlessly and stupidly = moar drama and tension to him. Rudy I'm talking about you.


3) Cauldron is where we finally get to answer the central mystery of the series; where the Omega Clouds come from. Frankly after reading it I'd rather it stayed unanswered, because IMHO the answer was really lame.
Spoiler
Apparently there's some solar system sized plasma beasty that got trapped in the galactic core, and it sends out the Omega Clouds and hedgehogs to create explosions as a signal to others like it, out of desperation, even though it knows they can't help it because if they approach it they'll get stuck too.
For the love of God, why couldn't he just have made the Omegas Beserker probes? It would have made vastly more sense. The whole thing fits together perfectly. You've got the Omegas, which are obviously designed to fuck up civilizations (seeing as they attack right angles). The hedgehogs are obviously built by a race that's trying to trap and kill them. I mean, they're giant antimatter bombs covered with right angles designed to lure Omegas in and then blow up when they try to destroy them, how does that not scream "booby trap"? And then in Odyssey he drops that there's some physics experiment humans were about to perform that might have destroyed the entire universe, and only some aliens coming along and blowing up the facility before we were stupid enough to turn it on stopped it. Which sets up a pretty solid motive for someone wanting to prevent technological civilizations from existing. You have to keep everyone else too primitive to do the doomsday experiment.

But honestly from the moment I heard that "art" theory I just knew he was going to make it turn out to be something like that.

Also I found the bit with Smith's race to have rather disturbingly luddite undertones (lol we shouldn't develop immortality), but I might just be reading too much into it.

Anybody else follow the series?
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Re: So I just finished reading Jack McDevitt's "Cauldron"

Post by Samuel »

"raises hand"

The book that got me off McDevitt. One of the few books I actually formed an independent opinion on. With your leave, I'll share the three buggy parts that stood out. Only the third really matters though.

1)The new drive. They invent a new drive that goes even faster with no side affects. Why is it no one makes the theory than the device? It is almost a cliche- guess anything to avoid explaining the black box. Anyway, it is odd that the new idea happens now, when the field would have been most supported in the beginning. Not really big, but annoying.

2)The planet of the luddites, along with one of the characters was annoying.

3)The ending was a complete and total let down. It didn't follow from ANY of the clues that were dropped and doesn't make alot of sense. We have a giant sentient cloud that got trapped... :wtf: And it wants to steal their ship to escape. :banghead: I can't think of any rationalization.

Interestingly, we still don't know about the Monument Builders or why they were too stupid to figure this out with a couple thousand more years. Seriously, all you need to survive is to set it off early and use your own hedgehog. Or nuke it- how much heat can nanites take?
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dragon
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Re: So I just finished reading Jack McDevitt's "Cauldron"

Post by dragon »

When I read that part of the book brought to my mind the quote "Why does God need a spaceship" wonder if he was watching ST5 when he wrote it.

What I'm curious about is what happened to all the other advanced civilations. The ones that created the Anti Omega cloud weapons, the billion year old space station they found not to mention more info about the Cloud Riders or what ever they were called. There was so many ways he could have taken the book but it seems he had a serious case of writters block, or maybe he just wanted to end the series in a way that people would not ask for more.
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Junghalli
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Re: So I just finished reading Jack McDevitt's "Cauldron"

Post by Junghalli »

"Frank" wanted to reverse-engineer the Preston's engines. Apparently it can make Omegas and giant antimatter bombs, and shoot them out at significant fractions of c, but it can't figure out how to build a rocket. No, it doesn't make any sense to me either.

And if the same intelligence built the Omegas and the hedgehogs, why bother with the Omegas at all? Just put a timer in the hedgehogs. Omegas are ridiculously overelaborate as a timer-detonator mechanism. It makes no sense.

And yeah, the series has accumulated a lot of loose ends and inconsistencies over the years. Why didn't the Monument Makers just make all their buildings without right angles if the Omegas aren't Beserker probes that are smarter than just ignoring obviously artificial stuff if it doesn't have the right shape? They've been retroactively rendered stupid. The billion year old artifact at the beginning of Cauldron? Apparently a total red herring with no plot relevance at all, unless it's a tie-in for a later book. Same with the Lighthouse. And then there's the plot of Odyssey, which sets up the perfect motivation for somebody wanting to send out Beserker probes.

Another gripe I have is, well, the human society he presents doesn't seem like 250 years in the future. It seems to be one of those universes where non-spaceship technology just stays stagnant for some reason.
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Re: So I just finished reading Jack McDevitt's "Cauldron"

Post by Samuel »

Another gripe I have is, well, the human society he presents doesn't seem like 250 years in the future. It seems to be one of those universes where non-spaceship technology just stays stagnant for some reason.
You (or some one else on the board) linked to a rant on this. The only futury things that I remember from his books is the proliferation of virtual reality plays and AI spaceship drivers. Thats it.

It gets really bad in the A Talent for War trilogy. A character remarks that they don't have enough ships to evacuate a single planet even with several years warning! Think about the size of the universe, the time they have been around and the sheer amount of industrial production- an it all comes up to nothing!
Apparently it can make Omegas and giant antimatter bombs, and shoot them out at significant fractions of c, but it can't figure out how to build a rocket. No, it doesn't make any sense to me either.
No, the problem is how it could even use the engines.
Junghalli
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Re: So I just finished reading Jack McDevitt's "Cauldron"

Post by Junghalli »

Samuel wrote:You (or some one else on the board) linked to a rant on this. The only futury things that I remember from his books is the proliferation of virtual reality plays and AI spaceship drivers. Thats it.
They also have a degree of life prolongation too, but it's short of true biological immortality. And flying cars. In Cauldron he also mentions they're working on true biological immortality, and meat producers are going out of business because they make meat artificially with nanotech now. I get the feeling he's caught on to the fact that his world sounds too much like ours with starships and antigravity magically tacked on, and he's figured he needs to insert more futuristic stuff.

I think the most bothersome thing is that Africa and India/Middle East are apparently still underdeveloped poor hellholes that don't seem to have made any progress at all in 250 years. The First World is building FTL starships, but apparently the kind of technology and energy-generation that implies isn't being applied to the problems of the Third World at all for some reason.

BTW, if he is going to write another book, I'd like to see something about the Noks already. The universe has had a living alien civilization there from the first book, but it never gets explored in any detail.
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Re: So I just finished reading Jack McDevitt's "Cauldron"

Post by B5B7 »

Samuel wrote:
Another gripe I have is, well, the human society he presents doesn't seem like 250 years in the future. It seems to be one of those universes where non-spaceship technology just stays stagnant for some reason.
You (or some one else on the board) linked to a rant on this. The only futury things that I remember from his books is the proliferation of virtual reality plays and AI spaceship drivers. Thats it.

It gets really bad in the A Talent for War trilogy. A character remarks that they don't have enough ships to evacuate a single planet even with several years warning! Think about the size of the universe, the time they have been around and the sheer amount of industrial production- an it all comes up to nothing!
Apparently it can make Omegas and giant antimatter bombs, and shoot them out at significant fractions of c, but it can't figure out how to build a rocket. No, it doesn't make any sense to me either.
No, the problem is how it could even use the engines.
That was probably me linking to my rant(s), in the thread topic: Looking for Science Fiction
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