The Belt, by Gerald Kilby

ISBN: 9781983567292, 9781982934750, 9781729083581, (Trilogy: 9781999328672)
Amazon ID: B08JQN6D7Z

The very start of the book is rather marred by the phrase "comprises of" on the copyright page. It should be "comprises" or "comprised of", but "comprises of" is just wrong.

Anyway, The Belt is a series of books, and the edition I bought is comprised of:

1. Entanglement
2. Entropy
3. Evolution
4. Enigma

Enigma ends with the same comment as the others: "To be continued…"

My overall summary of the series (for details see each of the books above) is that the story is okay (nothing like as good as Colony Mars), but the writing desperately needs a proofreader.

There are also strange and not entirely pleasant shadows of Blade Runner throughout The Belt - whether deliberate or subconscious on the part of the author, I don't know, but so far I've been distracted by:

• a major theme throughout the series referring to Dyrell Labs, reminiscent of the Tyrell Corporation
• references to "the off-world colonies"
• the existence of "EPR devices" where EPR stands for Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen - Rosen is the family name of the character Rachael in Blade Runner, although given that the EPR devices really do serve a meaningful rôle in The Belt, and have a solid scientific basis for the name, this one's certainly just a coincidence
• a character named Pris
• Enigma introduces people called Node Runners…

Go up
Return to main index.