Pacifica is a peaceful planet, masters of the Galactic Media Web and rightly proud of their democratic, almost anarchic, government. Then a spaceship enters the system and although its message is peaceful, it could shatter the Pacifican way of life.There were some interesting ideas in this book, such as the rather shrewd prediction of a global communications network (even called the Web) and the importance of the media in politics, but this was more then counter-balanced by a crude and awfully simplistic level of gender politics.On the one side you've got the Transcendental Scientists, noble scientist types, with a large dose of chauvinism, but just about believable as an ideology, and on the other you've got the most caricatured crypto-feminists I've ever read. Every caricature of feminism is there (lesbians: check, man-haters: check, wanting to eliminate all men and use cloning to reproduce: check), with a side-order of communism to boot. The simplification and caricature of what could be a very interesting subject - the balance of male and female and their roles in society - completely ruined this book for me. I kept going until the end since I wanted to see how the Pacificans solved the problem introduced by these two competing ideologies, but the book is definitely not worth it overall.Although the importance of the media and a global electronic network is well-predicted in this book, Spinrad somehow fails to predict the vast number of cat pictures that infest the real Web, instead favouring a total politics immersion, making the Pacificans extremely savvy in their politics and making for a (not quite) perfect electronic democracy. I'd have liked to have seen more of that rather than the crass gender divide that the book actually focused on.
Really enjoyed the world and backstory, and found the characters interesting.The problem is, the plot was completely unbelievable...I don't know how to critique a plot line without filling this with spoilers, so I'll just leave it at this - I can suspend belief to get into a story, I can suspend belief to keep a story going. I can swallow FTL and talking dragons if you do it well enough - but this was just so full of it in spots I really had trouble holding my nose and soldiering on. Only the relationships kept it from a two or less..
