- Pohl, Frederik — Gateway (278 pages)
- Clement, Hal — Mission of Gravity (193 pages)
Page count: 471 of targeted 12,500.
This was a fairly uninteresting read. I thought Clement would make more of the fact that his story takes place on a high-gravity planet, but most of the narrative takes place on the oddly-shaped planet's low-gravity areas. Thus, there's nothing very peculiar or different about most of the story. The plot ends up being a list of moderately challenging situations with their fairly straightforward resolutions, and that doesn't make for very exciting reading. Plus, one thing in particular bugged the hell out of me: the author is obsessed with hard science and goes to great lengths to ensure that the oddities of his planet are adequately explained and scientifically plausible; yet he never explains how a species equipped only with pincers for hands can become so proficient at skills that require a high level of manual dexterity. For a novel which is all about the science, this oversight felt like a letdown.
