Author:	Piers Anthony
Copyright:	1969
Date Reviewed:	1/7/85
Rating:	8.5

Synopsis: Ivo Archer is summoned to the Macroscope by his friend Brad Carpenter. The Macroscope is a space station in orbit around the sun about 6 light seconds from Earth. It is like a telescope peering into the galaxy. However, unlike a telescope, the macrons that it uses are as clear near the station as they are across the galaxy.

There is a wealth of information out there but most of it is obscured by the Destroyer station. The Destroyer destroys the minds of people whose I.Q. is above 150. Less intelligent people can not understand the message and are not affected. Brad summoned Ivo to the station because Ivo is his only link to Schon, a super intelligent man who might know how to get around the Destroyer. Ivo is unwilling to contact Schon. A senator arrives demanding a first hand view of the Destroyer and he, Brad and Ivo experience it. Ivo is unharmed, being borderline intelligent, but Brad's mind is destroyed and the Senator is killed.

Before the politicians can dismantle the Macroscope, Ivo and three other people steal it and the now mindless Brad and head for Neptune. The others are Afra, Brad's girlfriend who Ivo now loves, Harold Groton an engineer astrologist, and his wife Beatryx. In order to outrun their pursuers, the four must accelerate up to 10G which is impossible for a human body to take. On the way Ivo finds that he can get by the Destroyer by relaying information without fully understanding it. He finds the Traveler station and learns how to reduce the crew to a liquid state so they can take the acceleration. It works and they arrive at Neptune but when Afra tries to tamper with Brad's restoration process, in the hope of making him well, she kills him.

With the Traveler station the crew learns how to travel intra-galactic distances by creating their own mini black holes (sort of). They make one out of Neptune and begin to map intra-galactic spatial contortions. During their travels it is learned that Ivo is really Schon, or rather a part of him. Ivo and Brad were part of a project to raise children to become geniuses. The project was pretty much a failure except for Brad (I.Q. = 205) and Schon who was as far above Brad and Brad was above an idiot. For some reason, at age eight, Schon created an Ivo personality of mediocre abilities and submerged himself. Ivo can release Schon but doesn't want to loose his personality and fears Schon who has no conscience.

Harold's interest in astrology is also explored. 3,000 light years from home the crew trains the Macroscope on Earth and see it's past in detail. While Ivo is scanning near Tyre, he falls into the world. Some how he is transported 3,000 years into the past. He is taken to the King of Tyre, charged with espionage, captured, and escapes. He meets a runaway slave girl and together they leave Tyre but return again because Ivo seeks a man of intelligence who in that time would be an astrologer.

He finds an astrologer and soon the vision dissipates and the ancient astrologer becomes Harold. The whole episode was a very real dream engineered by Schon in an attempt to escape from his submergence in Ivo's mind. Eventually the crew reaches a Destroyer station, one of six in the galaxy and tries to turn it off. To their surprise they find a museum and at the end of its corridors, a single musical instrument. Ivo begins to play it and a door opens to a large chamber were each person dreams some sequence similar in detail to Ivo's. In her dream, Beatryx dies and in his, Harold goes away for a few million years. Afra wakes from her dream immediately and when she hears Beatryx dying, she wakes Ivo. Schon, however has taken control and the two of them engage in several mind battles, one for each planetary symbol in astrology.

The impartial mediator (Ivo, now submerged) gives the win to Afra and they live happily ever after. During the battle and the dream sequences we learn that the traveler's signal is in its third iteration. Each time it starts, civilizations die, since now each has the means to travel to other civilizations and make war. Without the Traveler signal, only an intellectual exchange is possible. 15,000 years ago the more intelligent civilizations set up the Destroyer station to counter the Traveler signal. In a sudden wave of inspiration Afra realizes that the traveler is not a menacing signal from another galaxy sent to destroy this one but rather a galactic intelligence that is molding the galaxy through survival of the fittest. Many must suffer for civilization to truly evolve.

Review: "Macroscope" might as well have been called "Kitchen Sink" because it has everything in it including that. It is a long book but unlike many of the long books I've read lately, it is not padded ("Timescape" by Gregory Benford comes to mind). If anything, it has too much detail. When you tell a story about galactic information which is generally accessible, anything can happen and in this book it does. The author took a greater chance than David Brin ("Sundiver", "Startide Rising") who also wrote about a galactic library of information but never gave any of its contents.

There were a lot of things I liked about this novel and a lot I didn't. I gave it an 8.5 not so much because I enjoyed it but because I thought about it often when I wasn't reading. Throughout novel there are many twists which I appreciated. For example, it took a long time revealing why Ivo didn't want to contact Schon. It took so long that I didn't believe the truth could be worth the wait but it was. I was very surprised in an "of course" way rather than a "left field" way. Similarly, I was disappointed when Ivo went back in time because it didn't seem consistent with the rest of the story. However the controlled dream made a lot of sense.

I also liked the idea that civilizations must fight. This reminded me of the short story "First Contact" by Murray Leinster in "The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume I". The method of space travel was not too believable but I can accept that. The prejudice issue was somewhat outdated. The only thing about the novel that I strongly objected to was the astrology lectures and the final battle that revolved around astrological symbols. I don't believe in astrology now and don't believe it ever will or could by any stretch of imagination be related to science. "Macroscope" might have been a great book without it.