OX by Piers AnthonyMy review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is the final book in Piers Anthony's 'Of Man and Manta' trilogy and is the main reason that I wanted to revisit the series after first reading it some thirty years or so ago when it was first published in the mid 70s. After dealing with the strange fungoid ecology of 'Omnivore' and the paleocene creatures of 'Orn', '0X' adds two more elements to the mix, namely intelligent machines and strangest of all pattern entities that cross the frame boundaries of different alternate universes, perceiving life as we would understand it only as disturbances in the fabric of their world.
This book is really an extended mathematical puzzle, with a jaunt through numerous interlinked alternate universes, and about the inter relations of the different entities - man, manta, orn, machine and pattern - and whether they can learn to communicate and find a common understanding. It is hugely ambitious, and somewhat strange, and it suffers from some rather jarringly sexist characterisation of the female protagonists and an ending that seems rather too neatly contrived. I am prepared to cut it a little slack for being my introduction to the mathematical game 'Life' invented by John Conway which demonstrates that simple patterns governed by a few rules can behave in surprising and unpredictable ways, which certainly sparked my imagination all of those years ago.
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