What was your first impression?

This is a science fiction story without humans.  The cover aroused my curiosity.  I wanted to see what the author would do with intelligent dinosaurs.

Plot summary?

Afsan is the apprentice court astrologer.  He is the seventh because the previous six had been rejected.  But Asfan is destined to become The One.  Far-Seer was published in 1992, seven years before The Matrix and is the first book of the Quintaglio series.   That is what the dinosaurs call themselves.  As an astrologer Asfan must study the skies and as a court astrologer he must go on a pilgrimage to see The Face of God.  But Asfan demonstrates why he was worthy of replacing the previous apprentices.

Robert J. Sawyer created an unusual and complete world and society in the Quintaglion Trilogy.  Asfan's world is actually a moon of a Jupiter like planet.  It is a one-face world that always keeps one side facing toward The Face of God.  Afsan figures out that it is nothing but a BIG planet and disrupts the beliefs of his ENTIRE world.

What's the bottom line?

The Quintaglio Trilogy is a kind of recapitulation of our scientific history.  In Far-Seer Afsan is like a combination of Galileo and Isaac Newton.  The second book is Fossil Hunter, and one of Afsan's sons becomes the dinosaur Darwin.  The third book, Foreigner, has a female dinosaur Sigmund Freud psychoanalyzing Asfan.  The three books present conventional scientific ideas and could be very good for making these ideas entertaining and showing them in context.  That is a useful purpose for science fiction.  TEACHING SCIENCE! Plenty of stuff that is called science fiction these days is scientifically worthless and may just be good for entertainment.  Unfortunately plenty of people who say they like science fiction don't seem to be interested in science.  They just want unusual but entertaining fiction.

The Quintaglio Trilogy is multi-purpose.

Oh, I forgot.  God turns up in book two and a near-death experience occurs in book three.

God wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth.  That is what they get for not burning enough incense.

Science fiction writers are weird.  At least if they are any good.
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