JUST READ...

...Wake by Rob Sawyer, and it's got the most rigorous working-out of a science idea you'll ever come across in fiction. I don't even want to say what the theme of the book is, although you might well know already.

Also, the main character, Caitlin, is blind. One of my academic friends mentioned that one of the things he liked about Paradox, and my other Nulapeiron books, is that the main character is physically disabled. (Also, the early Pilots are blind in the realspace universe.) But there's no attempt really to explore the issues.

I do very little teaching these days, but the last two corporate training events I did (one was business analysis, the other software design) each included a non-sighted delegate. I was hugely impressed with both guys; and with the way they use software to navigate through GUI-heavy environments via speech synthesis and keyboard response.

And Rob's got that nailed exactly here. Another nice one, my friend.

Oh, and... there's an approach to science that I used in my only humorous story, Entangled Eyes are Smiling, but it's throw-away, because I never found a profound use for it. Rob has, and it's one of the essential steps to making his idea work as science in addition to storytelling.

I'm so trying to avoid spoilers here. This has to be least specific review ever, but the book is nice. Very nice.

Fly straight, Pilots