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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A Wild Soup of Sprouts, Genius, and Astrology, 19 Dec 2002
A long, long time ago when the world was young and Anthony was a fresh new face in the science fiction world, he blessed us with works of power, incredible imagination, great originality, depth and meaning. This is one of those very early works, and by some measures it may be his best, or very nearly so, standing with his Chthon and Orn as a seminal work that introduced ideas that are still fresh and very different from the standard run-of-the-mill stuff of both then and today. The main idea behind this novel is the macroscope itself, an instrument that focuses a new particle and allows the user to effectively look anywhere and anytime at people, places, and events. Clearly this has an implication of being usable as a 'spy' scope, where everyone's most private actions can be discerned. It is this use that gets the scope dubbed as the 'Pooper Scooper' and leads to political machinations for control of its use. But the scientists running the scope have also stumbled across messages encoded within the particle stream, messages sent by alien civilizations for unclear purposes and which when viewed leave the viewer with a burnt out mind. Into this hardware scenario Anthony sends a very enigmatic individual, one Ivo Archer, (note that name choices are important here), an apparently normal person who happens to have some very wild, super-genius level talents in certain very restricted areas, to help determine what these messages are and why they are so destructive. But Ivo is more than he seems to be, and as we follow the story as it progresses from Earth bound considerations to a galactic encyclopedia to interstellar war with some truly different alien life forms all the way to the fate of universe and folding other ideas into the mix, such as astrology as a true science, the reader is treated to an incredible trip through the minds of more than one genius. Anthony's characterization of these geniuses is very well done, and gives great insight into the thought processes and emotional characteristics of these exceptional people. On top of that, he buries a character mystery inside the main story, a question of just who is the legendary Schön, a supposed super-genius with absolutely no conscience, and how such a person is molded by his compatriots and environment. The psychological insights displayed here form a prime sub-text underneath the fantastic action of the story, and elevate this work well beyond a simple adventure novel. In most of early works, Anthony showed a predilection for playing with mathematical ideas rather than physics concepts, and this work is no exception, introducing the game of sprouts, an apparently simple pencil and paper game that the reader will find is actually a fiendishly complicated foray into the world of 'rubber-band' mapping (topology), neatly folded into and enhancing the main story line. This work was nominated for the 1970 Hugo Award. Unfortunately, it was up against both Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five that year, two other truly great works in the SF world. But it is more than worth the effort to find and read this incomprehensibly out-of-print book of fantastic ideas, high adventure, and great character, which I have kept on my top 50 list of best all-time science fiction works ever since I first read it. --- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
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