Helix

by Eric Brown

Paperback, 2007

Status

Available

Call number

823.92

Publication

Solaris (2007), Edition: First Thus, Mass Market Paperback, 528 pages

Description

Helix is a fast-paced action adventure novel following the plight of four humans when they crashland on what they think is a desolate, ice-bound planet. Daylight brings the discovery that the planet is one of thousands arranged in a vast spiral wound about a central sun. They set off to discover a more habitable, Earth-like world and come across strange races of aliens, and life-threatening perils, on their way.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Homechicken

Helix is a decent sci-fi story, kind of a post-apocalyptic, hail mary chance for the human race. I picked this book off the shelf at Powell's and bought it after reading the back cover, but the back cover had facts wrong about the story. There were some things just plain wrong with the story, but

if you don't mind looking past them it's not a bad book.

The story is about a colonization ship launched by a dying Earth to start over out amongst the stars. Humanity has already mostly died off, and the Mars and Lunar colonies have all returned to a polluted and resource-shy Earth. The ship is launched and a small team of technicians are awoken when the engines explode at just under light speed (this is the most glaringly obvious hole in the book: how did they slow down to crash-land from that speed??) and they are forced to crash-land on an upcoming planet.

The planet turns out to be one of thousands, strung along in a spiraling helix shape around a star. The technicians leave on a journey to find a habitable part of the helix to start their new colony, enounter several strange alien species, and eventually locate and communicate with the original builders of the helix itself.

So it wasn't bad, just don't expect it to be on par with great science fiction like Alastair Reynolds.

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LibraryThing member gaidheal01

I enjoyed Brown's epic perspective, but the book felt a little lacking in the 3rd dimension. The sheer size of the Helix (which is itself a marvellous concept) is conveyed well, or at least as well as such size can be conveyed, both by prose, and by the reaction of the characters. But somehow I

never really felt drawn down to ground level. Perhaps the continued emphasis on the astronomical scale of the helix served in part to highlight that the characters might just as well be there to show off the creation. I loved the twists in the characters' development, although Friday's continued - relentless, even - assertion that the 'rats' would just assault them started to irritate me, although I was amused when it eventually happened. Some of the writing was awkward, which was disappointing: one example being something like "Kaluchek looked up at Hendry, smiling", which appears twice, close together, with little variation.

I've been feeling the need for grit and dirt and blood in my fiction recently, and some of that does indeed show up, but I don't feel that the depth of characters is portrayed quite as well as by David Gemmell, for example. Overall, where reading Cecilia Dart-Thornton is like wading through gloriously treacly wodges of the English language, reading Brown is like taking a stroll in the open air, suggesting almost a sliding through the book rather than reading. I'm rather proud of that simile, also of the word 'wodge'.

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LibraryThing member gregandlarry

While the plot was a bit contrived the story was good. Interesting world. I am not sure about the ending.

LibraryThing member mzieg

I kind of liked Necropath, so thought I'd give this a try. Sad to say, it was every bit as good as Cosmopath.

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