Assemblers of Infinity

By: Kevin J. Anderson, Doug Beason

Narrated by: Jim Meskimen

The crew of Moonbase Columbus makes an amazing discovery on the far side of the Moon - a massive alien structure is erecting itself, built up atom by atom by living machines, microscopically small, intelligent, and unstoppable, consuming everything they touch. The mysterious structure begins to expand and take shape, and its creators begin to multiply.

Is this the first strike in an alien invasion from the stars? Or has human nanotechnology experimentation gone awry, triggering an unexpected infestation? As riots rage across a panicked Earth, scientists scramble to learn the truth before humanity’s home is engulfed by the voracious machines.

©1993 Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Entertaining and Thoughtful, Classic SciFi!

What made the experience of listening to Assemblers of Infinity the most enjoyable?

I reserve triple-fives for the rare experience. First, the book's theme is well explored and well explained. Though the main scientist is a bit slow sometimes, like why her cleaning of the larger threat on the Moon won't work. I knew the "clean up" was going to have to fail right away, or this book would have gotten a three. I also found some of the Moon base's characters a bit petty at times in their reactions. These are highly trained professionals in a deadly environment for which they volunteered in an informed condition. However, the writers give the main scientist an out as she is very tired. Anyway the overall theme is well explored and well developed. The book is thoughtful without pushing to any extreme. I never said "oh, come on," to myself once.Second, the actual writing is very good. The characters are fully formed. The threat and issues are well explained. There is tension. There is relief. There is grief. There is love. The writing itself does not get in the way. The two authors move us between multiple venues easily and without losing me or jarring me. I was somewhat surprised since in KA's "Saga of the Seven Suns" are, in my opinion, written at a 9th grade level. This book is maturely written and KA's collaboration with DB works well.Third, the narrator is great, and I am not easy on narrators. I reserve great for narrators that can audibly separate characters without getting ridiculous; can separate the sentences and paragraphs; and read the book without getting in the way. JM does a great job in all three categories. I always know who is talking and when the narrative of the book is moving the book along. I am never shaking my head wondering what is going on. I never react to JM personally. I did have to adjust to him as I do all narrators when I first hear them. But his overall reading was a joy. That coming from a person who will return a book if the narrator is displeasing. (BTW, Audible's return policy is why I have sooo many in my library! I can't praise Audible enough for this policy.)

What did you like best about this story?

The thoughtful and exploration of the overall theme of nanotechnology.

Which scene was your favorite?

The scene in the lab on Antarctica where things come apart. You'll know it when you hear it. Though this was dropped for a bit too long as the rest of the story moved forward.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

I don't do tag lines.

Any additional comments?

I am looking forward to another book along this line from this pair of authors and hopefully this narrator. I will search for any other books this pair of authors may have written and any other SciFi books that this narrator may have read. I don't think I can give much higher praise than that.

An interesting concept.

I like science fiction for the different views & perspective. A good author is creative and surprising.

Alien nanotech unbound

After the moon has been colonized, humanity gets down to the business of exploitation (an astronomical array on the far side) as well as utilizing Antarctica for both a dry run for a manned Mars mission and an isolated facility serving as a nanotech lab (due to fear of potential catastrophe). Upsetting all these carefully laid plans is the discovery of an alien nanotech structure growing on the moon. What ensues is a rather inept series of attempts to discern the function and intent of the evolving alien structure.

Sadly, the characters are largely unremarkable and forgettable. Their personal features are mostly annoying and uninteresting. In the case of the future seeing dreamer. a rabid dog that must be put down comes to mind. While there are various scenes of actions taking place concurrently, much is simply irrelevant to the overall plot. For example, after supplying one of the main characters, Antarctica contributes little to the rest of players other than supplying some background and infodumps to the listener. The nuclear weapon retrieval process was cumbersome and unnecessary.

Conceptually, the idea of alien nanotech is fascinating and compelling and should have resulted in a better tale. The narration is well done, but there is little for the narrator to work with.

Alien nanotech unbound

After the moon has been colonized, humanity gets down to the business of exploitation (an astronomical array on the far side) as well as utilizing Antarctica for both a dry run for a manned Mars mission and an isolated facility serving as a nanotech lab (due to fear of potential catastrophe). Upsetting all these carefully laid plans is the discovery of an alien nanotech structure growing on the moon. What ensues is a rather inept series of attempts to discern the function and intent of the evolving alien structure.

Interesting premise

Interesting story, likable characters and good narration. The science seemed quite plausible. Will be reading the next installment.

VERY COOL!

Nano tech. It realy makes you think! Great story. Well written and has great narration. Hope we get a second book. Good Science thats important.

Very good story, but not narrated so good.

Nanotech... It's been in the news for a long time and it will not disappear soon. Quite the contrary. And in this book, set in the near future, it will definitely be on every human's mind.

I will not go into the story so much, as you can find information about it in other reviews, but I liked it very much. It was intriguing and thought provoking. Small SPOILER here: But I thought the addition of precognition into the mix was unnecessary. I know, it's a scifi book, but it seemed out of place.

A few words on the narration... Jim Meskimen did a good job portraying the different characters – and there were a few to keep track on. But unfortunately I was bothered by some things.

First: When characters stop talking/thinking and the story goes on, you stop sounding like the character. Even if it will be clear soon that the character has stopped talking, it's annoying when you can't hear the difference from the start. That happened a little too often.

Second: There should have been longer silent pauses between different events in time. Now it sounded like the narrator rushed, making it unclear whether the new paragraph was joined in time with the previous paragraph or not.

And third: Automaton... That was a word frequently used throughout the book, but the narrator must have pronounced it incorrectly when he first made the recording. You notice it, because every time the word "automaton" is used, the recording shifts slightly in tone and quality. Like he's gone back and re-recorded every instance of the word, but just that word (although sometimes a full sentence), and changed those soundbites. Which was probably what he/they did. It is obvious. And quite annoying.

don't want to give the gems away.

Some neat characters. Good reader. tense in place' with fear and suspense. beware of what you can't see with a microscope.

An OK escapist thriller movie in book form

This book ponders some of the interesting new solutions and problems that nanotechnology may bring us. There's a kernel of a good escapist (as opposed to hard sci-fi) story here, starting with the get-you-hooked first chapter from the Moon Base perspective and then branching into three different locales (two Earth-based and the moon) with a few different characters that are iterated through for the rest of the story. There are a couple of sub-stories that are wound in with the overall plot that don't really add anything to the story and there's a somewhat bizarre twist to one of the main characters that actively detracts from the story.

The general shape of the plot was good, and the characters are somewhat interesting but every now and then there was a statement that blatantly contradicted information from earlier in the book, on one occasion earlier in the sentence. The characters too suffer from this problem and (relatively infrequently, to be fair) make completely out of character statements or decisions that brought me to a jarring stop while I tried to do the mental gymnastics to assimilate whatever just happened into my understanding of the people and their world. I don't want to give any specific example because they're rather spoilery, which is the annoying thing as these out-of-character moments often involved rather major plot points.

The narration by Jim Meskimen was, frankly, poor. It's read with almost no feeling whatsoever and I found it to be slow and bland (I actually started listening on 1.5 speed about five chapters in because it was driving me crazy) and there are frequent changes in audio quality where pieces have been re-recorded for some reason. Mr Meskimen does manage to individually voice the characters but he frequently runs these individual voices into sentences following speech from a character, even if it's nothing related to that characters internal dialog.

This is an OK escapist thriller movie in book form and ultimately there was too much about this book that annoyed me to let me really enjoy it.