Reviews for Null-A Continuum

The average rating for Null-A Continuum based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-06-01 00:00:00 Ranada Grossman I had my expectations high because, well, this is John C. Wright. After picking up the pieces of my brain, which exploded somewhere in the latter third of the book trying to wrap my head around the mere concepts Wright was using, I can honestly say that he exceeded any expectations I had for the book. This is a continuation of A.E. Van Vogt's World of Null-A and Players of Null-A. I never even read the other book in the Null-A series by Vogt because it was much derided as not really following the quality or heart of the first two. That being said, Wright does an excellent job of pulling in all of the first two books (as well as certain events/elements from the third) and fitting them all into a meta-narrative which manages to eclipse the vision of them all - in a good way. Wright always likes to up the anty, and he ups it about as far as one could in this novel. As far as writing style and movement, Wright did his best to duplicate the pulp fiction style of Vogt. And for the early part of the novel he hits it dead center, but by the middle he's drifting conceptually beyond where Vogt was in his first two novels (though I have no doubt Vogt would have loved where Wright decided to take the storyline). But throughout the novel the pace is quick and doesn't really relent much until the last page. All in all, an excellent read. A must-read for any fan of Wright or Vogt. A must read for any fans of science-fiction in general. I do highly recommend you read first World of Null-A and then Players of Null-A before diving into this because I think it will help you enjoy the world, characters, and story even more (never fear, you can snag a kindle edition of each for $1 each!). If you just want to read Wright's book, though, he has a very solid summary of all the books which precede his in this Null-A series at the beginning of his book. In two words: Read it!!!!

Review # 2 was written on 2009-07-08 00:00:00 Desprez Frederic For me, this was Wright's best yet. The wildly differing rankings here and at Amazon suggest that this book is not for everyone, though. I never read the original Null-A books, because I disliked Van Vogt's writing style. Still, I have read and enjoyed a lot of older science fiction, so Wright's superior prose styling underlying Van Vogt's pulpishness is a good combination for me. I am also a big fan of Alfred Korzybski and general semantics. I got my introduction to this powerful pattern of thinking via Robert Anton Wilson's Quantum Psychology, which I also highly recommend. Finally reading a Wright novel that is only one book long is a supreme pleasure. This one is even more condensed as it retells the story of the 3 original Van Vogt books from a meta narrative as part of its plot. Things get a bit thick and thorny with multiple streams of reality and the action occuring at all points and scales of the meta-universe. This is great intellectually engaging big pulp science fun, if you like that sort of thing. My only complaint is that the ending lacks a little punch. Getting there was so much fun that this is easily forgiven.