Review: [no spoilers] Best short fiction. Very polished.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 17, 2011
First, there's novel tech trees I've never even heard of in here, such as the nanoweave clothing; the novella is emersed in this stuff! It's genuine scifi because you get just enough for it to be plausible and it's probably stuff that **will** be invented, in the medium term.Second, I felt far more strongly for both the protagonist and antagonist (both beautifully mastered, tempered and explored in this story) after about 30 pages than I did about any of the characters of most books after 300. I really got into their heads, could empathize with both, and at the end, I totally couldn't choose one over the other.Tl;dr: For $1, The Epoch Index is a steal! In 30 years, people will probably point to it as prophetic, just as we do to 2001: A Space Odyssey today.I don't know how he did it! By all means and purposes, after about 30 pages, I felt like I had read a 300 page novel. The closest experience I can relate this to is The Unincorporated Man (one of my favorite works of fiction); but The Epoch Index got close in about 1/10th of the words.Oustanding!