Infinite
Ratings33
Average rating3.9
15
Ratings33
Average rating3.9
SEARCHING FOR A NEW HOME...The Galahad, a faster-than-light spacecraft, carries fifty scientists and engineers on a mission to prepare Kepler 452b, Earth's nearest habitable neighbor at 1400 light years away. With Earth no longer habitable and the Mars colony slowly failing, they are humanity's best hope.After ten years in a failed cryogenic bed--body asleep, mind awake--William Chanokh's torture comes to an end as the fog clears, the hatch opens, and his friend and fellow hacker, Tom, greets him...by stabbing a screwdriver into his heart. This is the first time William dies.It is not the last.When he wakes from death, William discovers that all but one crew member--Capria Dixon--is either dead at Tom's hands, or escaped to the surface of Kepler 452b. This dire situation is made worse when Tom attacks again--and is killed. Driven mad by a rare reaction to extended cryo-sleep, Tom hacked the Galahad's navigation system and locked the ship on a faster-than-light journey through the universe, destination: nowhere. Ever.Mysteriously immortal, William is taken on a journey with no end, where he encounters solitary desperation, strange and violent lifeforms, a forbidden love, and the nature of reality itself....HE DISCOVERS THE INFINITE.Jeremy Robinson, the master of fast-paced and highly original stories seamlessly blending elements of horror, science fiction, and thrillers, tackles his most ambitious subject matter to date: reality itself. An amalgam of the works of J.J. Abrams and Ridley Scott, Infinite is a bold science fiction novel exploring the vastness of space and a man's desire to exist, find love, and alter the course of his life.
Reviews with the most likes.
This is exactly the genre of science fiction that I like to read: using the future to explore themes of identity, consciousness, artificial intelligence, and the nature of reality. It wasn't as “deep” as some works in this vein (like those of Greg Egan), and sometimes the characters rushed too readily to conclusions which I thought warranted more investigation. But it was a page-turner, keeping me engaged all the way through with cliffhanger chapter-endings that repeatedly rushed from crazy scenario to new revelations.
I'd only caution that the opening chapters, in particular, are fairly gross, with unnecessarily-gory or fetid descriptions of the protagonist's unpleasant situation and the ways he has to cope with it. If you can get past those, you'll likely enjoy the rest.
I love it when the story manages to trick me, and then pulls the run from under my feet with a twist. If you like science fiction about world simulations and AI, this is your book.
This was a great book that unfortunately was slightly less affecting than it should have been thanks to an extremely sign posted plot twist.
Infinite is easily Robinson's most mind-bending work yet. With his masterful as always story telling, he introduces concepts that lead you to question everything about... well, everything. Admittedly written during times when he was going through some pretty intense drama in his real life, Robinson turns his own questions into one of his all around best works yet. While other Robinson works have had better focus on action and adventure, and there is still plenty of that here (including an opening scene of our protagonist being repeatedly killed), this book uses the action to set the space (literally) for the questions to be explored. And this, to my mind, is what contributes to it being all the stronger for it. There is still the great deal of escapism that we have come to expect from Robinson, yet there is also the much deeper questioning, should we decide to go there in our own heads.
And the ending... well, that might be the single most mind bending part of the entire story.
