The Ophiuchi Hotline
by John Varley

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Book Reviews of The Ophiuchi Hotline

Book Review: A Great Hard Idea oriented SF novel
Summary: 4 Stars

The consensus amoung SF fans seems to be that Varley is a great short story writer, but not a terrific novelist. When thy talk about his novels, the only one that is REALLY appreciated seems to be 'The Ophiuchi Hotline'. After reading it, I can testify that it is indeed a novel worth talking about.

The Ophiuchi Hotline of the title is a stream of information coming from Ophiuchius constelation. It is the basis of all human knowledge for 5 hundred years - after all, when you got all the answers supplied, why bother studying?

The Story's heroine, Lilo, does wish to study. Furthermore, she wishes to study human genetics - which is illegal. The book follows her story, mostly, as she struggles in a world filled with deception, intrigue, and some of the coolest Science Fictional explorations of many a theme, most notably cloning.

the stuff John Varley does with the idea of cloning in this story, especially at one point about 50 pages into it is brilliant and original. Varley's thoughts about cloning are striking and very clever.

The plotting and characterisation of the novel is generally very well done. Varley can truely differentiate his characters, and manages to make a very complicated plot decievingly simple to follow.

If there's a weakness to the novel it is the ending. All the plots line are resolved, which is quite a difficult and an impressive task, but the novel's end of kind of disappoint anyway. You're expecting a bang, and it goes down with a whispher. A LOUD whispher, mind you, but nonetheless.

Still, Varley is in top form here, and I would recommand this novel easily. It is out of print, but not too hard to find. Go get it.

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