The Sword and Laser discussion

Overall, I enjoyed the book and felt the world building and descriptions of other colonies were interesting. The idea of clones being used for dangerous jobs that robots can't do is clever.

The only issue I had was that the resolution with the indigenous species on the planet was too similar to Ender's game. The 'prime' alien was not aware that individual humans were sapient and not just an extension / tool of the queen/prime. A little unoriginal.

Overall, great story.

It is good policy to put spoilers inside spoiler tags. Especially this early in the month.

Putting (spoilers) in the title isn't enough, some members receive their posts in a daily digest. Titles can be missed.

Thanks.

Snazzy Dave! A little instruction might help. I recall having a rough time figuring out tags on this site early on.

So anyhoo, it's like this.

< spoiler >text goes here< /spoiler > but take out the spaces.

So you get (view spoiler)[Darth Vader is Luke's father. (hide spoiler)] spoiler tags!

It seems to be a pretty standard hive mind trope. It goes back to HG Welss so I think I will give Ashton a pass.

Of course his solution is very different

I guess the title could be interpreted 2 different ways - someone might think you're saying there's a fake simulation war. Still, I would have titled it "Similarities to other big SF novel" because the title itself is a bit of a spoiler.

That said, I agree with Iain that this is just SF tropes. My whole review revolved around the fact that Ashton is taking a bunch of tropes and putting them in a blender to get something new out.