- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Gollancz; New edition edition (11 Jan 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1857987403
- ISBN-13: 978-1857987409
- Product Dimensions: 17.6 x 11.2 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,870,746 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
A skilled SF author who's been publishing novels since 1987, John Barnes seems underrated in the field--perhaps because he is so versatile. His 1990s work included the disaster blockbuster Mother of Storms, the doomy political tragedy Earth Made of Glass, and the only whimsical fantasy to rival William Goldman's The Princess Bride--Barnes's One for Morning Glory.
Finity could be called his Philip K. Dick novel. Opening in a future where Hitler won and American expats huddle in the remaining free countries like New Zealand, it features several Dick-style chatty machines and what seems to be an increasing breakdown of reality. The hero Lyle Peripart, an "abductive logic" expert, confronts the great mystery of 2062: what happened to the USA, which is vaguely accepted as still existing but can't be visited, can't be phoned, can't even be thought about for long?
Soon Peripart faces assassination, but some of the forces manipulating the world seem to be on his side--his own gentle fiancé saves him by switching mysteriously into an armed secret agent with hair-trigger reflexes, and back again. All the people our hero knows have mutually incompatible pasts ... Answers await within the former USA, whose idealistic Department for the Pursuit of Happiness did something deeply strange to quantum reality: Peripart joins a crazy expedition to learn just what. The ultimate surprises are daft and delightful. Great fun. - -David Langford --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
A gripping alternative future from one of the great ideas men of the genre
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Bother With This Book,
By A Customer
This review is from: Finity (Paperback)
When I first picked up this novel, I was expecting an interesting read due to the number of positive reviews surrounding it. The first half of the novel does have points of interest as it follows the travels of Lyle Peripart as he attempts to uncover the truth behind a Nazi Germany defeat of the USA during World War Two and why the former USA seems to have simply 'vanished'. Indeed the first half does reverberate with a buzzy energy reminiscient of the Philip K. Dick novel THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. This promising start simply falls apart with the onset of the second half of the novel in a most atrocious sort of way. The second half seems to consist of nothing but meandering explanations of virtual reality that simply don't appear to make sense and the ending .... well, I won't even bother going there. It was hard enough trying to understand the concept of 'abductive reasoning' in the novel's first half.I can only hope that any future John Barnes novels will have a much stronger storyline and avoid this novel's nonsensical concepts and ideas.
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Interesting, Stimulating Read,
By Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Finity (Paperback)
I have only recently discovered John Barnes, but I can say that he is a very talented writer. I had had this book on my shelf for a good while now, and I am glad I finally picked it up to read it. I found this novel very entertaining and "gripping." Granted, the story is disjointed at points, but so is the world that Barnes has created here, one where people "jump" back and forth between dimensions or universes. Some of the characters are quite forgettable, but the narrator and Iphwin stand out from the crowd. Despite this, I would like to have seen more "fleshing out" of Iphwin in the novel; there were aspects about him that lingered in my mind until the end. I expected to get some insight on these traits, but the lines were left dangling somewhat. What I remember most about the narrator is his detailed explanations of and conjectures based on "abductive reasoning." Maybe I have managed to get away from hard science fiction long enough to be impressed by Barnes' elaboration of these ideas, but the fact of the matter is that I was impressed (in a similar way as I am impressed--though somewhat bored--by Jules Verne's prosaic "scientific" tangents). The ending of the story was indeed somewhat anticlimactic. With just a few pages to go, I kept wondering how the author was going to tie everything up into a neat little bow in so short a time. In point of fact, Barnes did the opposite of what I was looking for and resolved very little. In a way, though, it is nice for an author to resist the pressure to achieve balance and full illumination in his writing. All in all, I found this to be a very good novel; before I was halfway through it, in fact, I had already gone out to buy all of Barnes' books that I could find locally. I have read a couple of his other novels since reading Finity, but I found this book to be the most interesting and memorable of the group.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Endless variations,
By A Customer
This review is from: Finity (Paperback)
A New Zealand citizen of American expatriate descent from a world in which the Nazis won and now dominate a high-tech 21st century gets to know other American expatriates. The trouble is that they often disagree on important points of both world history and recent events. Barnes' Finity thus combines both the Alternate History subgenre and the "someone is really messing with my head"-kind of science fiction. While not all might feel that the solution to the mystery is quite as exciting as the original mystery itself, Finity is still a good example of the kind of SF that both makes you think and your head spin. It should be given a try by those interested in alternate realities fiction.
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