This was one of the slowest reads I've ever encountered!
> Early start tracked the TV series -- more or less.
> But, then turned into a lengthy exploration of cosmology
> and cosmogony.
>
> So, what started out as a ~7/10 ended up as a ~3/10.
>
> But, some interesting concepts (that would probably have
> been better presented without the pretext of a "story")
>
It seems really difficult to reason abut the potential motivations of super-advanced alien civilizations, godlike artificial intelligences, and combinations thereof.