What a wonderful concept for this book, written by one of the "old masters" of SF, and a beginning that sucks you in and compels you forward....then drops you flat on your face where you pick yourself up and ask "Why did this book interest me again?" Starting off with well rounded characterizations, and prose that takes us rapidly into some very bizarre lives; it ends with flat, paper thin characters, dialogue that is stilted and surrealistic when it shouldn't be, and the knowledge that what should have been accomplished was not. The multiple characters had a compulsion to meld in the beginning, and in the end it is not even the characters we expected and they do not meld at all in my opinion, only mish-mash into a single character with a weak explanation of "themselves" as humanity. Pah! A mere 188 pages, this none the less took me three days to slog through. Save yourself the trouble and pass on this one.