From: psperson@old.netcom.invalid   
      
   On 30 Nov 2025 21:43:49 GMT, ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan   
   ) wrote:   
      
   >In article ,   
   >Christian Weisgerber   wrote:   
   >>On 2025-11-30, Paul S Person  wrote:   
   >>   
   >>>>I would advise skipping this book.  The subjects are horrible and not    
   >>>>for the faint at heart or the squeamish.  All of the States in the USA    
   >>>>except Hawaii have worm infestations with worm huts all over the place.    
   >>>>Various cults of worm worshipers have sprung up of people actually    
   >>>>living with the worms and feeding their ... to the worms.  There is also    
   >>>>aberrant sex in the book.   
   >>>   
   >>> Sounds like Gerrold all right. Book 4 didn't, by any chance, come out   
   >>> after he decided to emulate the later Heinlein, did it?   
   >>   
   >>I've mostly forgotten the details, but I think the books started   
   >>to veer off a simple "heroic humans fight evil bugs" template and   
   >>the protagonist went through a major self-finding phase.   
   >>   
   >>The sex can't have been all that interesting or I would remember   
   >>it. ;-)  Some body swapping with the telepathy thing, ending up in   
   >>a body of the opposite sex, IIRC?   
   >>   
   >   
   >It would be hard to outdo _The Man Who Folded Himself_.   
      
   I found that one ... idiotic. I didn't so much get the feeling that   
   the main character gradually understood his position as that Gerrold   
   only figured it out at the end and then decided to pretend that he had   
   known it all along. Note that this is just my impression; Gerrold   
   could indeed have had it figured out from the beginning.   
      
   From the sex standpoint, both /Jacob/ and /Moonstar Odyssey/   
   (available as /Moonstar: Jobe, Book One/; there is no Book Two; this   
   is the first book of a one-book series) rival anything Heinlein did.   
   Since it wasn't intrinsically interesting, I soon got bored, driving   
   on only on the chance that something worth reading would eventually   
   happen. And, in a way, it did. Less so in /Jacob/.   
      
   >That said, there was a very Heinleinesque feel to the last book I thought,   
   >though I can recall very little of it now.   
   >   
   >While I would certainly buy a new Chtorr book, I would much rather have    
   >a new Steerswoman, an eventuality which seems equally unlikely.   
   --    
   "Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,   
   Who evil spoke of everyone but God,   
   Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)