Eon: 1

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Don't let that put you off, this is immense sci-fi with big ideas and worthy of a place in the SF Masterworks series.

In fact, one can intelligently argue that mankind is still very, very close to destroying itself in a number of frighteningly different ways.Alternate geometries, new forms of human society in the far-future, aliens some familiar and others inherently unknowable. The rescuers are intercepted when they near Axis City and reunited with Vasquez, who is caught up in the politics of the Hexamon. However their excessive descriptions regarding their functions and physical make-up was a complete let-down and became boring to me very quickly.

Upon exploration, we discover that the asteroid is hollow, has artificial gravity and is divided up into seven huge chambers, some of which contain cities. In the second half of the book, the theme of ideological conflict is continued through the growing tensions between the hardline political officers assigned to the Soviet force, and their more moderate military leader, Mirsky, who (like Vasquez) gains life-changing insights into the situation that faces them after being exposed to the accelerated learning facilities of the Stone's libraries. I am well aware that Eon has been written in the 1980s, before the end of the Cold War, and nuclear exchange between the two superpowers was still a possibility, albeit faint.

Things become stranger still as the Americans, Chinese and Soviets realize that The asteroid was created by mankind, but a future mankind, stranger still when they find it is still occupied by our descendants. If so, I remember starting it and being taken through a room-by-room tour that was lots and lots of Tell and very Little Show…and it just seemed to go on and on and on to no discernable purpose. As for the POV characters themselves, we head hop all over the board, and though I finished the book less than two weeks ago, I can't honestly remember any of the character's names. I use that trick to post stuff I don’t want to appear in the reader, like the two index posts I did some time ago.