Reviews for The Wellstone

The average rating for The Wellstone based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-09-27 00:00:00 Ali Ibrahim I enjoy the way Wil McCarthy thinks. I didn't like the main character - Prince Bascal, the son of Bruno and Queen Tamra from the first book in this series, The Collapsium - I found him spoiled, thoughtless, boringly reckless, and somewhat gratuitously teenager-like. However, I realized he had to be that way for the story to be told the way it was. But it wasn't even the story of Bascal's rebellion (which was the plot of the entire book) which fascinated me, it was all of the other stuff surrounding that plot that was so intriguing, and so it goes with hard science fiction. In The Collapsium, we were introduced to a society, the Queendom of Sol, where what we think of as telecommunications, merged with instantaneous space travel via "collapsium" or a lattice of super small black holes designed to facilitate faster-than-light information transfer. Basically, a person can be "faxed" somewhere, anywhere (distance is irrelevant) instantaneously by being destroyed in one place, and reassembled (perfectly, with memories, and their soul intact) somewhere else. A very important by-product of this technology is immorbidity - you can be killed, but in absence of that, you'll never actually die because you're being repaired to a "saved" (as in a computer "saving," or warehousing that version of you) state any time you travel. What Wil McCarthy does with that is basically as "if this, then what else?" In The Wellstone that "what else" is: if everyone is immorbid, what does that mean for children? They never get to fill the jobs that no one retires from (dies), they don't get to take over from where their parents left off, because their parents never "leave off" (die). Their parents always treat them like children. Not for dozens of years, not for hundreds of years, but for forever. A teenager's struggle to find their own identity, their own place in the world, may take thousands of years, if not forever. Ok, it's a good plot. But all the other things that service this plot, and this world are fascinating. The summer camp the prince goes to with his friends is technologically very interesting - not to them, because there is no advanced technology there - but how it is constructed, literally constructed. Without spoiling anything, the way the kids devise a plan regarding a log cabin is also very, very interesting. The idea of "programmable matter*," which just kind of seems like something that is just there in the Queendom of Sol, is a fantastical, but not altogether out of the realm of future possibility (as it's related to a lot of bleeding-edge tech now). Again, no spoilers (I don't think so, anyway) - matter collectors and what they're collecting the matter for is hardly even mentioned in the story, but it is nothing short of spectacular (and the science behind the concepts is all in the book's appendices and technical notes!). The investigation of crimes, helped along by advanced detection of quantum states, as well as investigation techniques that retain a suspect's privacy, were touched upon in the first book, and mentioned in this book as well, and they kind of blew my mind! There was even a psychobiologic idea in the book that I keep thinking about - neurosensory dystrophia on page 9 -- or "pathways worn smooth in the brain through constant, repetitive stimulation." This is another great example of "if this, then what else" because if people do live thousands of years, this is bound to be a very common, but eventually reversible occurrence. Of course this would be a normal part of life, and to be expected, especially in remote areas! These are just a few examples of the science background that made the book so interesting to me. Lastly, I loved this quote from page 301 In all the world -- in all the universe -- there's not a thing worth having that comes any way but dear. You choose what you want, and spend the rest of your life paying. * The book is named after one of the types of programmable matter in the book, Wellstone, which McCarthy informs us in the technical notes is "an actual patent-pending invention, although one that is unlikely to be built or tested in the near future, owing mainly to the nanometer-scale manufacturing tolerances required." It's probably not a coincidence that the first things listed under "summary" on Wil McCarthy's LinkedIn profile are Inventor: 17 issued and 11 pending U.S. patents, many also issued in overseas jurisdictions. Developed a patent portfolio valued in excess of $60 million. Entrepreneur: President and co-founder of The Programmable Matter Corporation and RavenBrick LLC

Review # 2 was written on 2020-02-26 00:00:00 Pranav Desai [ -- When no one can "die," any attempts at tension are wasted. -- This is Book 2 of a series, apparently. This was NOT mentioned on the front or back cover, nor elsewhere. There was only the vague mention of another book (Collapsium) set in the same universe. This is a fail in marketing and information. (Perhaps your copy of the book is updated and more accurately presented?) -- Lots of other things I won't bore you with. But if you like your "science" fiction pretty silly and fantastical, this may be a fun book for you. (hide spoiler)]