This was such a lovely read; I wanted it to go on longer. Brunner seems to view the human race somewhat as I do: a lot of potential, but overall, deeply disappointing. How I wish I had known this person Brunner; my all-time favorite author. ( )

Ship, huge, aware, sentient, has seeded many planets in The Arm of Stars with humanity. It is (now?) making one of its sweeps to check on the progress of the different colonies, and is also working out a strategy to overcome its sense of loneliness. Rewarding epic for the careful reader, not nearly as long as many novels because Brunner tells its stories so efficiently. ( )

An intelligent but programming-bound ship which had seeded a bunch of planets with human colonies 500 years previously returns to retrace its earlier voyage and finds each and every one of the surviving colonies to be messed up in at least one big way. Along the way the Ship picks up the occasional imperiled colonist and transports him/her/them until they get to another planet they want to try.

Some of the society building is reasonably well done, and the story gets mildly interesting during a couple of episodes, but all in all Brunner's final novel is fairly pedestrian. I never developed much empathy for any of the human characters or the Ship itself. The meta-story never really grabbed my attention and its final resolution was a puzzling yawner.

The basic premise of this novel reminded me of the very disappointing Search the Sky by the otherwise generally reliable team of Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth. At least the society building here raised legitimate questions about the dysfunction of how large groups of humanity interact. ( )

an amusing little mystery. It was entertaining watching the problems the passengers faced as they decided what their ultimate fate would be. ( )

This book is the story a bunch of Human colonies being revisited 500 years after their founding by the Ship that seeded them. The novel as a whole is episodic, dealing with different protagonists having problems on their own colony and being extracted by the Ship. The Ship has its own problems which are what tie the episodes together. I got bored with the Ship and its problems and the sensawonda explanation of the Ship at the end didn't move me. However, I was amazed by the variety of the colony worlds. It's a tour-de-force of world building. I would recommend reading it for that aspect. ( )