The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is some classy hard-hard SF. :) Black hole/worm hole drive using new and real theories? Hell yeah.

But beyond that, I love the whole idea of short periods of wakefulness during a single trip that takes 65 million years.

Add a rebellion against IBM... I mean HAL... I mean CHIMP, without expecting anything to go quite the way that 2001 went, or even remotely like it, and we've got a really fascinating story.

Watts knows how to build really fascinating locations and situations... maybe better than almost any other writer. He never rests on a single awesome idea but adds to it and introduces even more interesting wrinkles such as watching an AI dance, or truly alien intelligences, or maybe just freaking out because the rest of humanity must necessarily be dead during the scope of your mission.

But add a complicated revolution among sleepers using old D&D manuals? Adding jarring notes during a musical composition?

Oh yeah, the devil is in the details. :)

I'm enjoying this novel(la according to the author) through Netgalley as an ARC, but this wonderful reviewer here: Claudia's Review has pointed out that this is not a standalone story. She's even provided a link to the author's website for the other stories (free to download) as well as the suggested reading order. Thank you!

I might be reading out of order, but I don't mind it all that much. Watts is a thinking man's hard-SF writer. I expect to be at least a little challenged and delighted. As anyone who has read Blindsight knows. :)

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