Count to a Trillion (Count to the Eschaton Sequence #1)

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes. blogspot.wordpress.com by  Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission.

Title: Count to a Trillion

Series: Count to the Eschaton Sequence #1

Author: John Wright

Rating: 4 of 5 Stars

Genre: SFF

Pages: 464

Format: Kindle digital edition

Menelaus Montrose grew wondering where The Future was. Where were the moon rockets and flying cars? So Menelaus joined the army, became a gunslinging lawyer, then a scientist, then an astronaut to decipher the greatest find of Humanity’s history.

But ol’ Menelaus just wasn’t smart enough, so he shot his brain with a concoction, went insane and then deciphered parts of the Artifact. Now that he’s woken back up, on Earth, it turns out that Humanity has 10,000 years to prepare for the coming of their new overlords, who are just a bitty little power in the Universe.

Menelaus has shown humanity that they can “improve” themselves. Now it is a race to see who can successfully repeat his experiment and determine whether Humanity will capitulate or fight in 10K years.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. The pacing was really odd and I had to keep pretty close track of when I was. I also found the amount of detail a tad overwhelming but I just sat back and let it roll over me. I think this was also trying to be Hard SF, with lots of references to various theorems, technical ideas on biology, mathematical sequences, blah, blah, blah. I just skipped them, as it felt more like “Science” name dropping than actual Hard SF.

Other than that, this was a great look at what “could” happen to humanity if they messed around with their own brains. Of course, it is all predicated that you believe that garbage can produce non-garbage 😉

I think Neal Asher does a better job of showing post-Humanity. But this series will fill in the gap while I wait for his next book.

Finally, I wish I knew why the series name was Count to the Eschaton Sequence.  But I don’t want to know enough to actually do any work and investigate it.