Having thoroughly enjoyed "The Execution Channel" and most of Ken Macleod's novels, I was excited to pick up a copy of "Night Sessions" on a recent trip through Inverness.
"Execution Channel" is a novel of the near-future, post 9-11. Terror, torture, surveillance, paranoia are intertwined in a near enough future that's eerily familiar. "Night Sessions" sets its sights a little further into the future, and yet seems no less relevant to the world around us.
The chief obsession of "Night Sessions" is religion, and Macleod tackles the material with his usual deep sense of history and fantastic imagination. The world has literally been to Armageddon, and still bears the scars of the "Faith Wars". A large portion of the world has reacted by rejecting religion nearly altogether. The Edinburgh in which "Night Sessions" is largely set has most traces of religion scrubbed from its public life. Churches are converted to public halls and bars. Religion still exists, but the police go out of their way not to be aware of their activities. It's a kind of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which permits religion to exist in the shadows of a secular society without attracting its wrath.
I won't go into anything further to avoid spoiling it. This is a genre-hopping novel, a sci-fi crime thriller steeped in the history of religion, and a great read. Highly recommended.
Monday, 13 October 2008
Monday, 6 October 2008
Review: "Footfall" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
A couple of years ago, a colleague of mine recommended "The Mote in God's Eye" to me, also by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Since then, I've read and enjoyed "Oath of Fealty", "Lucifer's Hammer" and "The Burning City" by the same pair.
At around the time this book came out, I (as a twelve year old) was a huge fan of Stephen King, blazing through everything he had published to that point. Some of his books (notably "The Stand") were long, but all had a fairly simple vocabulary and cinematic plots. Reading "Footfall", I realized that it had that same feeling. It's a long, fast run over even terrain, where Banks and Macleod require slower passage over steeper ground. "Footfall" is also very cinematic. Each scene comes easily to mind and seems like something that can and should have been filmed (it would have made a good miniseries, and I swear bits of it showed up in "Independence Day").
If you've enjoyed "Lucifer's Hammer" or "The Stand" or any other similar bit of disaster fiction, this book is certainly enjoyable enough. Well worth taking along to the pub on a rainy Sunday (as I did).
At around the time this book came out, I (as a twelve year old) was a huge fan of Stephen King, blazing through everything he had published to that point. Some of his books (notably "The Stand") were long, but all had a fairly simple vocabulary and cinematic plots. Reading "Footfall", I realized that it had that same feeling. It's a long, fast run over even terrain, where Banks and Macleod require slower passage over steeper ground. "Footfall" is also very cinematic. Each scene comes easily to mind and seems like something that can and should have been filmed (it would have made a good miniseries, and I swear bits of it showed up in "Independence Day").
If you've enjoyed "Lucifer's Hammer" or "The Stand" or any other similar bit of disaster fiction, this book is certainly enjoyable enough. Well worth taking along to the pub on a rainy Sunday (as I did).
Thursday, 2 October 2008
Review: "Excession" by Iain M. Banks
Having previously read "State of the Art", "Use of Weapons", and "Against a Dark Background", I've started filling in gaps and reading the rest of Iain M. Banks Science Fiction novels.
"Excession" is one of the best I've read so far (second only to the original "State of the Art" novella in my mind). I particularly like the details of the machine culture that sits parallel to (and in some ways governs) human society.
As with other Culture novels, "Excession" has a rich cast of characters and settings. The Affront culture in particular stands as a nice contrast to the tolerance of the Culture.
Banks has imagination to spare, and every aspect of the story just drips novelty and wit. Here's an example: as with every other experience in the Culture, childbirth is no longer an inflexible biological fact limited to one of two sexes. An individual in the Culture can change sex at will, get pregnant as a woman, and then become a man again, holding the fertilised egg in suspension indefinitely.
The story itself is more coherent than "Against a Dark Background", and ties together the various scenes better as a result.
This is a good book, one of the author's best, and well recommended.
"Excession" is one of the best I've read so far (second only to the original "State of the Art" novella in my mind). I particularly like the details of the machine culture that sits parallel to (and in some ways governs) human society.
As with other Culture novels, "Excession" has a rich cast of characters and settings. The Affront culture in particular stands as a nice contrast to the tolerance of the Culture.
Banks has imagination to spare, and every aspect of the story just drips novelty and wit. Here's an example: as with every other experience in the Culture, childbirth is no longer an inflexible biological fact limited to one of two sexes. An individual in the Culture can change sex at will, get pregnant as a woman, and then become a man again, holding the fertilised egg in suspension indefinitely.
The story itself is more coherent than "Against a Dark Background", and ties together the various scenes better as a result.
This is a good book, one of the author's best, and well recommended.
Review: "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula LeGuin
"Light is the left hand of darkness, and darkness the right hand of light"
On a recent trip through Inverness, I was pleased to find a copy of "The Left Hand of Darkness" at Leakey's bookshop. I have enjoyed "The Lathe of Heaven", "The Dispossed", "Four Ways to Forgiveness" and other collections of her short stories in the past. What I've liked most in other works I've read is her ability to craft detailed and compelling personalities and cultures around a handful of key differences. An example would be the four-way marriage contract outlined in one of her short stories, in which each partner is paired with one opposite sex partner, one same sex partner, and has a platonic relationship with the remaining opposite sex partner.
The "Left Hand of Darkness" centers on the world of Winter, which has two key characteristics. One is that its climate is comparable to the lower arctic regions of Earth even at its equator. The other is that its inhabitants are asexual for 20 or so of their 26 month days, and only assume a gender when in heat (or kemmer).
Leguin takes these two vanishing points and paints a believable world. She is a gifted storyteller, and presents the worlds she writes not as dry facts and third-person narrative, but as a series of first-person moments and third-person histories. We see their present as a thing lived by people, and their past as a series of stories and rumours about people who lived before.
The story itself is slow to develop, but well laid out, much as "The Dispossessed" was. It is the journey as much as the waypoints that we are meant to savour. Through the person of an envoy whose world and world view are closer to our own, we come to appreciate the colour of the world, the subtle differences in personality and culture.
This is a great book by a gifted storyteller writing at the top of her form, and is highly recommended.
Saturday, 20 September 2008
Review: "Let the Fire Fall" by Kate Wilhelm
Having read and enjoyed "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" by Kate Wilhelm, I was pleased to pick up "Let the Fire Fall" on a recent trip to Leakey's bookshop in Inverness. I've always enjoyed used bookstores as a source of books that are no longer in print, and Leakey's did not disappoint in this case.
"Let the Fire Fall" is a novel about an alien ship landing on Earth, and about a single survivor making his way in a world gripped by Millennial hysteria. The fear and paranoia of the age are fueled by an evangelist, who amasses power and influence through a blend of showmanship and gut instinct.
I'm reminded of "The World Jones Made" by Philip K. Dick. Both feature fear, spawned by an encounter with aliens, and an evangelist rising to power. I'm also reminded of "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein. The main character in "Let the Fire Fall" is not a human with an alien upbringing, but an alien with a human upbringing who strikes out on his own and becomes a self-made individual, yearning to learn about his past.
This is a good book. Not quite as classic as "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang", but still well worth picking up at a library or used book store.
"Let the Fire Fall" is a novel about an alien ship landing on Earth, and about a single survivor making his way in a world gripped by Millennial hysteria. The fear and paranoia of the age are fueled by an evangelist, who amasses power and influence through a blend of showmanship and gut instinct.
I'm reminded of "The World Jones Made" by Philip K. Dick. Both feature fear, spawned by an encounter with aliens, and an evangelist rising to power. I'm also reminded of "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein. The main character in "Let the Fire Fall" is not a human with an alien upbringing, but an alien with a human upbringing who strikes out on his own and becomes a self-made individual, yearning to learn about his past.
This is a good book. Not quite as classic as "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang", but still well worth picking up at a library or used book store.
Review: "More Than Human" by Theodore Sturgeon
I sat down to write this review after reading "More than Human" by Theodore Sturgeon and "Cryptozoic" by Brian Aldiss within a day of each other. I had thought at first that "Cryptozoic" was the older work, and had hoped that might explain the somewhat dated feel of "Cryptozoic" and the apparent modernity of "More Than Human". In fact, "More Than Human" was printed in 1953, and "Cryptozoic" in 1967. I suppose what makes "More Than Human" the more timeless work is in part the fact that it tends to show rather than tell. In reading "More Than Human", we experience the evolution of a new communal being as a series of experiences, with words that seem to come naturally from those experiencing it. Rather than telling us about the technology involved through one or more characters, Sturgeon shows us an extended example of evolving human potential and the impact of that evolution on ethics (personal rules for conduct) and morals (societal rules for conduct).
This is, in short, a classic.
This is, in short, a classic.
Review: "Cryptozoic" by Brian Aldiss
After reading the flawed but compelling "Against a Dark Background", it was refreshing to read an older work, with a straightforward central premise. In "Cryptozoic", humans have discovered that they can (through the aid of drugs and mental discipline) project their consciousness back to visit the distant past. They can observe but not interact with the past, thus avoiding any number of paradoxes. The main character is an artist, who intends to exploit the past as inspiration to express the spirit of the time-travelling age that is his native time.
I won't give away the ending of the book, but will say that my experience of the climax of the book was somewhat dimmed by my particular copy of the book, which had pages 17-32 printed a second time in place of pages 161-176. I thought at first that the character had backed himself in some kind of time paradox, and was reliving past events with an increased awareness of their real meaning. On closer inspection, it was clear that the text was repeated without variation, and that it was unintentional. I'll have to find a better copy of the book at some point, but honestly, the plot was straightforward enough that it was easy enough to fill in the gaps.
Anyway, this is a good book, but still firmly a part of the older and simpler school of Science Fiction. The novel's central conceit is like a single diamond in a simple setting. Tasteful, easy to appreciate, but not quite as appealing to the jaded palate as a glittering and ornate Ken MacLeod or Iain M. Banks novel.
I won't give away the ending of the book, but will say that my experience of the climax of the book was somewhat dimmed by my particular copy of the book, which had pages 17-32 printed a second time in place of pages 161-176. I thought at first that the character had backed himself in some kind of time paradox, and was reliving past events with an increased awareness of their real meaning. On closer inspection, it was clear that the text was repeated without variation, and that it was unintentional. I'll have to find a better copy of the book at some point, but honestly, the plot was straightforward enough that it was easy enough to fill in the gaps.
Anyway, this is a good book, but still firmly a part of the older and simpler school of Science Fiction. The novel's central conceit is like a single diamond in a simple setting. Tasteful, easy to appreciate, but not quite as appealing to the jaded palate as a glittering and ornate Ken MacLeod or Iain M. Banks novel.
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