Product Description

Set a billion years into the future, this novel by the multiple award-winning author of "The Martian Race" involves the idea of a Library of Life, which preserves earlier life forms.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #493540 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 464 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Expanded from his 1990 novella, "Beyond the Fall of Night," this dense, lively, far-future SF novel from Benford (The Martian Race) sweeps readers away in a taut adventure that examines humanity's role in steering the fate of the universe. Young Cley is an Original, a genetically pure example of the oldest species of humans on Earth. Though the genetically reengineered Supras regard her as limited in intelligence, Cley's precocious nature lands her a job helping to recover scientific and historical data from the immense caches called the Library of Life. When a vicious attack by transdimensional life forms leaves Cley the last Original alive, the Supras blame an extradimensional race known as the Malign. Cley knows, though, the Supras aren't telling her the whole story. Aided by the raccoon-like alien Seeker-After-Patterns, which seems to have a parallel agenda all its own, Cley flees Supra captivity and Earth. Her journey quickly takes on an Alice-in-Wonderland quality, as she and Seeker traverse bewildering multidimensional spaces and encounter the immense Leviathan, a living ship that roams the solar system. Cley won't be safe until she solves the secret of the Malign-a secret whose truth lies far back in the past, when the human race first set out to explore the galaxy. With its thoughtful extrapolation and mind-bending physics, this book reinforces Benford's position as one of today's foremost writers of hard SF.
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Customer Reviews

Incomprehensible and boring
I found it incomprehensible, chaotic and boring. Character development was non-existent. Description of scenery was unclear.
The premise of people battling machines with clay overlords weighing in for reasons unclear, "you are not a high enough phylum to understand", in a region composed of somehow solidified
space-time is just plain silly. [I wont mention the magic genetic bullet installed in us by the "Ancient Ones" that saves the day...]

The one-two page chapter literary device does not work well without continuity.

Very strange for a writer of Mr. Benford's caliber and capabilities, I expect better from him.

Maybe it's me, I couldn't understand "Dalghren" either.

Challenging Task
There is always a problem with stories set so far in the future that they have little or no connection to anything or anyone living today. _Beyond Infinity_ is takes place more than a billion years in Earths future, where so many races and have risen and died that nobody is close to even knowing the names of all of them even though the current race, the Supras" live more many centuries.

The scale of time is such that the sun has gone around the galaxy four times, and the continents are no longer recognizable.

Enter Cley, the heroine. She is an "Original" or one of the "Ur-Humans" which is close to our kind. Close as is desirable, since Supras in resurrecting our species added to the basic gene type telepathic abilities and the ability to live several centuries. It is so hard to latch on to her motivations that the author had to resort to more-extensive-than-necessary explorations of her sexual development. Her first affair is with a Supra, who dies in an attack that nearly kills Cley as well. It does kill off her entire tribe and she is the only one left.

The rest of the story is about the journey Cley has in the battle against the thing that attacked. In this she is saved, then abetted, then led by a raccoon-type creature that turns out to be another higher intelligence. Through all this she is understandably but frustratingly passive, doing little other than surviving while events unfold around her. Through it all she has obscure and occasionally enlightening conversations with Supras and her raccoon friend, centered around Benford's well-founded ideas of astrophysics, biology, and sociology.

Only if you are interested in these topics will you get anything out of this book. I give it four stars because I think Benford rises to much of the challenges of his topic, even though the resulting story will confuse the average reader and leave them unsatisfied.

Favorite line: "Cley could not help but smile. 'I think I prefer my lust in smaller doses.'".

Beyond Belief
I would like to know what the writer of this novel has done with the real Gregory Benford. I honestly can't credit that this book was written by the author of the Galactic Center series.

This exercise was at best reminiscent of an early Andre Norton - heroine plus furry companion wanders through a jungle and some mild, uninvolving perils.

I started skip reading - about 1 paragraph in 4 - at 70 or so pages into the book. I know I didn't miss anything in character or plot development and it let me get to the denouement (such as it was) a lot faster.

Amazon insist on a minimum one star rating. This novel was so poor that even that rating is one star too many. Bad book - stay away.