by Piers Anthony

isbn: 0380002094
subject: SF, Fiction and Literature
finished: 3/22/2002

Piers Anthony almost always writes badly, but Macroscope is one of the books where he writes badly well. It's not that his usual flaws -- shallow characters, barely concealed sexism, contrived plots, and a weird obsession with games -- are missing, but rather that they are overshadowed by a deluge of wonderful ideas. These ideas are centered around the macroscope, a sort of super-telescope that can provide detailed images of any place in the galaxy, even through walls or other solid matter. The macroscope also carries a dangerous alien signal; the consequences of this signal force an unlikely quartet to steal the macroscope; adventures ensue.