I admit I’ve never read any of Williamson’s previous books (something that is getting rectified immediately!) yet was able to enjoy and understand the Freehold universe, their politics, and societies.

Should a sequel come about, I’ll be among the first in line to get it.

Rob

general:
There are responses to pretty much every criticism above, but I’m not going to rewrite 323 pages of book and ~100 pages of notes in a blog post, though:)

It does reinforce that Thoreau’s philosophy, vice Aristotle, still persists: criticism does not need knowledge.;)

Uranium wasn’t that useful until some time in the 1930s, would need to reread Fermi’s biography to get a firmer date. Cesium and Rhubidium were so useless that they were given to Fermi when he went looking for them for some experiments.

You can build a NAND gate using fluidic logic and I think I’ve seen it using air as the fluid, so computers wouldn’t be impossible without electronics. Fluid logic was used in places that you could not risk sparks, I became aware of it in about 72.

It is a very interesting concept.

a) No need to read the previous books – I think its enough to read the 1 para summary I give in the review linked to in my previous post
b) Freehold is available in the Baen FREE library anyway so why not read it?

NTSC @37. Gold platinum tend to be brought to the (near) surface due to volcanic activites and meteor strikes. The planet doesn’t have much of either hence little or no near surface deposits.

The point is that on earth copper and tin (and gold and silver) were fairly easily found at first in surface deposits in raw form. Only once those surface deposits were exhausted did people start looking for these metals elsewhere. If you have a civilization that develops without these metals over a millenium or ten then even if someone develops the chemistry to extract these and other metals from their ores they will tend to become more of a curiousity than something of use. Its rather like the steam engine that some greek developed in Alexandria – pointless beyond being a curiousity when you’ve got plenty of slaves and no real need for pumping deep mines.

*speculates about publisher*

*checks Amazon*

Yup. Though I really ought to be able to just tell by the cover art and font. Predictable is nice, and makes sense market wise, but god, Baen’s art department bores the heck out of me some times.

Freehold I rate as superb. The Weapon is more disturbing but also excellent. I don’t think that Contact with Chaos is at the same level (and I hate the title, but that’s a minor thing); on the other hand, the characterisation is excellent (for the most part – Margov seems a little 2D) and I did enjoy the alternate tech tree stuff. On the gripping hand, having to write whilst in a war zone is a good excuse!