I found this book an enormous disappointment. I generally love Sheffield (Bischoff is also appreciated). However I must say this was one of the few books I refused to finish.

It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since this book first came out. I've since read it several more times since 1982, something I rarely do with a book. I don't usually read fantasy either but "The Selkie" is a fantastic book. Some of its high points: very unique and unusual subject matter, sexy, good character development (even the minor characters from the pub are interesting), and excellent descriptive passages of the remote Scottish hinterlands. I recommend this book, it's an entertaining read. Like all good fiction, it puts you into its own little world. They've even included a map inside the front page! Now if only they would have included a sample of Mary's strange Lochinver perfume...

Selkie grabbed my attention in a way few other books have. It was filled with twists and turns, which were hard to predict. I found myself taking extra long lunch breaks, as it was impossible to put down. I'm looking forward to reading more novels by Mr. Sheffield/Bischoff. Thanks!

This is a good book and an easy read. And I did enjoy it. But I want more. I was not as challended by this book as I could have been. I love stories about colonization and terraforming without aliens and this book is in that category. About halfway into it you are feeling great and reading standing up, and then you get to the second half. I was really excited as I already read Cold as Ice and was anxious to learn about the origin of Sheffield's universe. This book did that but not much more. Not only are the dates hard to fathom, the ages are too. Is there an event that stimulates scientific development at such a rapid pace? At 16, Bat is much too young to be so eccentric. The source of his knowledge, his income, even his culinary skills are not explained. I wanted to know more about how the Bat became the Bat.
That aside. It is a good read but not exceptional. Some exciting moments. A nice book for summer that gives you somthing to think about, as the question is just how long is living forever and would you really want to. And the ethical question does not seem to come up when talking about your brain living forever. What is the big mystery plot of the Ganymede Club? It is not addressed until the very end and then it is not complete. Who are the other members? Should we be looking for them in a future Sheffield series? And why is it so hard to find Helene since they took out a lease on it? Were the records lost in the Great War? Have Bat find them. And just who was that girl on Mars? There are too many gaps in the story. But it is still an enjoyable read. A few mild sexual references, some violence, no profanity.

This is one of the better science fiction books I've read in a long time. It weaves alien symbiosis, Solar System-wide war, personality transference, and psychiatric sleuthing into a great whodunit. It's marred only by the unreasonable choice of setting it in the period A.D. 2040 to 2070. It took me half of the novel to put that in the back of my mind. A.D. 2340 would have been more appropriate. Other than that, it was an outstanding read. I don't think they come any better than Sheffield.

I really enjoyed this book. The characters were varied, the plot intriguing and the writing was clear and literate.

This novel was very hard to get into without reading the previous books. I did like the lines in the end that stated if you don't take chances you don't get anywhere in life.

The story opens with news that the Artifacts, centerpiece of this series, seem to be changing and, in some cases, disappearing. To further complicate matters, Artifact expert Darya Lang finds her academic turf threatened with the sudden appearance of newcomer Quintus Bloom who tells her he has discovered a new Artifact and also has a theory about the Builders and the purpose of their Artifacts. He thinks they were built by future humans to foster our development.

In a huff, Darya Lang sets out to explore Labyrinth and prove Bloom wrong. Hans Rebka, after a lover's quarrel with Lang, has no idea where she went and undertakes the exploration of another newly altered Artifact. Meanwhile, Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial enter Bloom's employ as he explores the Torvil Anfract, the Artifact discovered in the last book of the series, TRANSCENDCE.

The simultaneous exploration of these Artifacts gets a trifle tedious and confusing, but the characters make up for it.

If you are a sci-fi-fan you will love this book I had a copy of the Heritage Universe all the books in one. I read it about 5 times in as many years. my copy finally fell apart . so I am going to buy it again!!It's that good!!

(The Ingram reviewer must have read only the first couple pages of the book! The "Paradox" artifact pays essentially no role in the story.)

The hard thing about the "mysterious alien artifacts" theme is that if you've done the setup well the reader is wildly curious about the aliens and what astounding purposes their artifacts must have had, and doing a good ending is extremely challenging. It's hard to make the actual explanation as mind-bending and transcendant as the reader wants it, needs it, to be. The novels in "Convergent Series" are, unfortunately, an example of how the actual explanation of the enigma can disappoint.

Without giving the ending away entirely, it turns out that the aliens are basically pretty dumb. Their entire civilization was traumatized by one of those pseudo-profound questions that first year Philosophy students dissect endlessly in the pub, but that in fact evaporate under serious consideration. Their approach to working on the problem is utterly silly and implausible, and serves mainly as a plot device to get the characters to where they need to be for the next scene.

The book is certainly fodder for airplane reading if you have nothing else to hand. But there are lots better things out there...

The 'strange artifacts left behind by vanished races' theme has been quite a staple of hard sf writing. The problem is the difficulty of providing a satisfactory explanation of the aliens and their motives for doing whatever it was they did. That's the problem with this book. The trappings of hard sf are well done, but the story (this is actually two books in one, the first two parts of a four-book series) does not build up to a real climax. To be fair, it could be argued that at this point we are only halfway through the full story - but I think that each individual part of any series, that is published as a book by itself, ought to stand on its own.

The descriptive part of the narrative - the science, the alien artifacts - are well done. In my view, the book is let down by two weaknesses, wooden characters and the pace of the narration. None of the characters really stick in your mind; they all seem to be rather two-dimensional and ordinary. In this regard I suppose the comparison to Arthur C. Clarke is quite valid :-) Where the author falls behind in comparison with great books employing the same setting is primarily in the pace of events. Things start off slowly, seem to get even slower in the middle, and only towards the end does the pace really pick up. This may be OK for some people, but not for me.

I don't mean to give a completely negative impression here. The book is not bad, in fact it is among the better ones of its kind. Maybe my expectations were set a bit high, after having read some of the author's shorter work first. Read it, if you can borrow it. Then compare with "Ringworld" (Niven)and "Rendezvous with Rama" (Clarke).

Convergent Series is diffinenty a thinking man's book. Sheffield writes an amazing trip through the mind, and creates a new level for human thought to expand into.

When I got this book I though "oh... spaceships and dangerous aliens, sounds good!" Sheffield has a lot of interesting ideas, but they don't fit together to form a coherent world. His heros are pretty stupid and survive purely on luck, as opposed to any kind of skill.

Agree this is an excellent series. Readers should also be aware that the first three books were published by Guild America books under the title "The Heritage Universe".

This series is an excellent series, but the title shifting and confusion that has been done in the reprinting of it is unfortunate. The first two books in the series, "Summertide" and "Divergence" were reprinted as a double book in October 1998 called "Convergent Series". This was an unfortunate choice of name since the fourth book of the series is named "Convergence" and it appears together with the third book of the series "Transcendence" in a double book released in November 1999 named "Transvergence", the book subject to this review.

Sheffield has probably gotten more acclaim than he deserves because he is a "real" scientist, I admit it influenced me. His dialog and characterisations are often poor and laboured. He has the ideas okay, but Georgia on my Mind is the only story that makes it as a piece of fiction.

I don't think Sheffield is as well known as other hard sf authors like Baxter, Bear, Egan, Niven, etc. After reading some of his stuff I think that's justified. Although more human then Egan's work (but then again a dead mackerel is more human then Egan's average fair) & fairly eloquent there's nothing I couldn't get out of Clarke, Asimov, etc. (I mentioned them because he's sort of old school, but I'd like to add that I like the old school which is perhaps why I hate saying the things I'm saying.) The fact that I haven't mentioned any of the stories is kind of because they didn't strike me as that memorable. Science fiction authors (all authors really) tend to have bad marriages so it is nice to read stories about an apparently good marriage since the lost wife imagery is strong in some of his stories. (He recently remarried so it's pleasing to know he's moved on.)I've read too much hard sf I guess because if I'd started with Sheffield I'm sure I'd have a higher opinion of his stories. I'm being too harsh these are good stories there's just too much great science fiction being produced these days to make them stand out. Don't let my mood bias you & I am glad I bought it. To further defend him Asimov's my favorite author, but I've read better written stories then Asimov's. I'm sure some will have the same view of Sheffield. A good hard sf author worth reading, but his overshadowed status is understandable since hard sf is such a big field.

With the second book of the Heritage Universe series, Sheffield kicks things into high gear. All the characters from the first book are back along with the addition of E.C. Tally, a computer brain in a human body. The book gets a fair amount of comedy out of the discrepancy between his Federation supplied databanks and real galactic affairs.

But the main drama comes from further exploration of Builder artifacts and a meeting with artifical constructs of theirs who may or may not be telling the truth about the Builders' origins and the purpose of their artifacts. Also making an appearance are the legendary Zardalu, land-octopi thought long dead after their Empire was overthrown by their underlings.

Sheffield also throws in some inventive entries from the Universal Species Catalog for humans and aliens, major and minor.

Originally planned as just a trilogy, Sheffield's Heritage Universe series originally ended with this book. Like the preceding novels, it's a treasure hunt story with an element of scientific speculation, here about quantam mechanics, thrown in.

Here the hunt is for the Zardalu, the villains of DIVERGENCE. They're alive and well and breeding, but the Federation doesn't believe they've returned after their 11,000 year absence, so Darya Lang and company from DIVERGENCE set out to bring back a live specimen. They find the Zardalu homeworld in a mysterious region of space called the Torvil Anfract, a place where the some of the phenomena of quantam physics manifest themselves on a macrosopic level.

Besides exciting escapes, scientific puzzles, and more encounters with the sentient constructs of the Builders, Sheffield does a nice job with his characters. Louis Nenda continues to deny, unconvincingly, that he has feelings for Lang. Kallik and J'merlia joyously return to servitude. One of the fe

I read a lot of reviews for this book before starting it, so I wasn't expecting it to be great. But a lot of the complaints I read about it dealt with it being part of a series and not resolving much of the story in this book, so I thought if I was prepared for this going in, it wouldn't detract from my enjoyment of the book.

Unfortunately, not resolving much of the plot isn't the only thing wrong with this book. In fact, about the only good thing that I can say about it was that it was interesting enough to hold my attention long enough to finish it. There were just too many things in it that bothered me as I read.

I really didn't think much of the characters in the book, they weren't terribly likeable, and their actions a lot of the time seemed to go against common sense. Also, there were a lot of silly coincidences in the book that just didn't make much sense except to make the story easier on the writer. I'm sure with such a major catastrophe there are interesting things going on somewhere outside of Washington, let's hear about some of those. And I can buy that Oliver Guest is in judicial sleep in Washington, but then, he just happens to live there too, come on. Finally, there were several minor things that just didn't make any sense, like calling people when the phones only work on old equipment, and then asking where they are, as Art did to Dana. Or , supposedly when Seth go the call, he had "gone to ground", so then how did Dana know where to call him? And finally, the president remembering when the auto teacher machine had broken down 45 years ago. That would have made it about 1981, and I was in school then, and all my teachers were still actual people.

I really wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, there is just too much wrong with it. Having said that, however, I may read the sequel, just to find out what happens in the story because everything was left completely up in the air in this one.

the book itself is good, and the beginning lays the groundwork for a promising novel....still, the middle is horribly slow, and gets off on alot of tangents...i found it hard to bring myself to finish the book..the only plotline of interest was the one about the doctor turned killer Oliver Guest...and the more reviews i read of lucifers hammer (the next book on my list of must-reads) the more i begin to think that this book is a muddled [copy] of that book...what a shame, when a promising book turns out slow....still, the book itself is pretty good but dont buy it...if youre gonna read it, be sure you have alot of free time on your hands and your library card handy

Many of the reviews posted here berate Sheffield's work for weak characterizations. I think that those readers were spoiled by Tomorrow and Tomorrow, in which Sheffield had the entire book to develop ONE character. Now, in Aftermath, Sheffield has many more characters to develop, and not enough space to do all fully. Overall, I think Aftermath was a strong work. Sheffield effectively presents state of the art scientific ideas such that they can be understood by the average reader. The book isn't as strong on its own as Tomorrow and Tomorrow, but then again it was never meant to be, Starfire is its sequel. This book shouldn't be judged lightly, it does contain breakthrough science, and it's only the beginning of the plot.

The alien squid are menacing, the shallow female characters are boinkable. What more could you want? What more could anyone want?

SUMMERTIDE is the first novel of Sheffield's Heritage Universe series. Though a complete story in itself, it is a teaser for the later and better books. Sheffield peppers his universe with a series of Builder artifacts, remanents of a long vanished alien race. The surviving sentient races, particularly humans and the insectoid Cecropians, seek to discover the secrets of the Builders.

An interesting collection of characters independently come to the conclusion that some of those secrets may be unlocked during Summertide, a time of violent seismic disturbances on the planet Quake caused by a rare alignment of planets. There's Darya Lang, the leading, but naive, human authority on Builder artifacts. Julian/Steven Graves, elite Alliance counciler and possessor of two personalities and two brains. He's in pursuit of two teenage girls charged with genocide. There's the ruthless Cecropian, Atvar H'sial, sometime ally of Louis Nenda, a shady, equally ruthless human, and Kallik, Nenda's smart but cong

This story explores a detailed universe that you only get a taste of in this first of four books. Each chapter makes you yearn for the discoveries to come in the next, and the book as a whole makes you eager to learn about the rest of the 'mysterious artifacts'. The characters are fairly well developed with a hint of romantic interest here and there. The story centers on the action and a relentless countdown to the event the book is named after; "Summertide". I haven't had a book stay on my mind between readings like this in a while. I'm ordering the next three books so I can continue with the characters and artifacts introduced in this book as soon as possible. It was a fun escape into a well developed future universe.