Finity
John Barnes
303 pages
published in 1999

John Barnes is one of those writers whom a lot of people have difficulties with. Not because he's a bad writer, far from it, but because he is a disturbing writer (some would even say, a disturbed writer). He has an extremely cynical view of human nature and it often shows in his books. He also has a tendency towards sadism in his writing, showing in unpleasant detail what people can do to each other if they really put their minds to it. His cynicism and sadist sides are not present in all his books, which led some people to speculate that there are two John Barnes: "good" Barnes, who isn't into cynicism and sadism and "bad" Barnes, who is.

Personally, I quite enjoyed some of his most cynical books, including the much maligned Kaleidoscope Century, in which two psychopaths manage to shape the 21st century into an even bigger orgy of violence than the 20th ever was... Some of his novels are pointlessly sadistic, Patton's Spaceship frex, but for the most part it is justified for the sort of story he likes to tell; Barnes is just somebody who's more interested in the darker sides of human nature than much of his readership is.

If you don't share his fascination with those darker sides, you may be relieved to know that Finity is fairly optimistic and clean. There's only one squeemish scene in there, a fairly standard S&M sex scene.

Finity is set in 2062, in a world where Germany and its allies won World War II. Lyle Peripart is an nth generation American expat, born and raised in New Zealand, his mother's family descending from MacArthur's Remnant, his father's parents being part of the last wave of emigrants fromt he American Reich in 2019. At the beginning of the story, he is offered a job with ConTech, one of the biggest non-German technology firms in the world --which is where his troubles start.

Before he knows it, he is targeted by the German Reich's security services, roughed up by the Gestapo and coming home to a smoking crater. Why is he, an American expat astronomer targeted? And could it have something to do with the way in which the American Reich has isolated itself from the rest of the world?

The answer to that and other questions is not to be found in his own world and it is not long before Lyle and his girlfriend, Helen Perdida are jumping through alternate Earths...

An interesting novel, if slightly sloppy and with a disappointing ending. The solution for the central mystery of just what was happening in America didn't satisfy me at all and seemed like cheap political point scoring on Barnes' part. This is not the best book to start Barnes with.