The Einstein Intersection

This is a really short book and I didn't really care for it, so I'm forgoing my usual format to just include a few words.

I've never read anything by Mr. Delany before, and if this is an indication of his work, I likely won't read anything else.

My understanding however is that this is one of his earlier works, so maybe I'll like his later works better.

This was the January 2014 pick for Sword & Laser and I've had pretty good luck with the Sci-Fi picks in 2013, sadly the trend hasn't continued to kick off 2014.

I read this all in one sitting in an airport/on the plane to Vegas. I'm now trying to recall what I liked/disliked about this story a long sleep deprived weekend later.

My only recollections were that “thankfully this is short” and “I'm glad I'm done with this.” This is really a story about the journey and not the destination I guess, but I just found it strange and mostly pointless. There are universal themes of love and loss in a post-apocalyptic type setting.

The one highlight for me was the ancient lore of “The Beatles”. They are one of my favorite bands so the notion of them being used as some kind of parable was amusing to me. I will however point out that Ringo DID sing some Beatles songs albeit much fewer than the other three. I'm not sure if Mr. Delany did that on purpose because of bad information discovered/passed down from generation to generation or if he simply got it wrong. It still irks me though.

Overall I think this is one of those books whose enjoyment will vary largely from person to person. It just really didn't work for me.