Don Sakers has a review of The Godel Operation posted in the current issue of Analog. You can see it online here (but only until the next issue comes out).
Because of that time limit, I'm going to quote it, especially since the review really is quite favorable.
In science fiction we deal with weirdness budgets all the time, especially in stories set in the far future and dealing with technology advanced enough to be, in Arthur C. Clarke’s phrase, “indistinguishable from magic.”
Any advanced far future must include elements that today’s readers find unfamiliar, if not downright bizarre. We know that time brings change. Any world of future millennia in which everything is just like today just isn’t convincing.
At the same time, a future world with too much change borders on the incomprehensible. . . . Indeed, some cross right over the border. If we’re going to be honest, a realistic depiction of a society thousands of years in the future would be foreign in language, culture, technology, and a thousand other variables. It would be at least as hard for a present-day reader to apprehend as are Sumerian cuneiform or Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Authors of far future SF must tread a thin line: Exceed the weirdness budget and lose readers, or use too little weirdness and bore them.
In The Godel Operation James L. Cambias hits the balance just right.
This was an issue I really worried about while writing Godel Operation. I wanted to have relatable characters at least similar to modern humans, but I wanted to convey the fantastic reality of the Billion Worlds. Glad to hear I managed to thread that needle.
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