Fiction: March 2008 Archives
Winter Rose is more of a fairy tale than an ordinary fantasy novel. It's about two sisters, one wild and free, other steady and stable, whose lives are changed by a new neighbour, Corbet Lynn. He returns to the family mansion where his father slayed his grandfather. The grandfather, a rather nasty person really, cursed his son on his last breath. But what was the curse about, exactly, and is Corbet threatened by that curse? Nobody seems to remember the exact words.
Rois, the wild sister, is enthralled by the curse and the mystery Corbet represents. Laurel, steady and to be married soon, falls for Corbet in different way. It's a busy autumn that eventually turns into a long, dark winter, with ill consequences. Patricia McKillip has weaved a beautiful story, perhaps a tad slow for my tastes, but very atmospheric nonetheless. Like I said, Winter Rose owes a lot to fairy tales and legends (Tam Lin is an important reference). Beautiful words, but I wouldn't have minded a slightly swifter plot. [ Winter Rose at Amazon.co.uk ]
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author with a head full of ideas. I think his novels can't always keep up with his ideas, but these short stories work well. It's a creative collection of stories based on wild ideas. Some fall a bit short, but there are no misses in the collection and the stories range from quite good to very good.
The web site of this collection has six of the nine stories available. I think Craphound is the best of the bunch. 0wnz0red, which is my favourite of this collection, is available on Salon's web site. [ Place So Foreign and Eight More Stories, A at Amazon.co.uk ]
Generation ship Argonos has travelled deep space for centuries looking for signs of life. By the time of this story, it's been years since their last visit on a planet. A strange signal lures Argonos to a distant planet, where the remains of a colony are found. There are no survivors, but instead something else, something rather creepy...
However, finding the planet is only a beginning. There's unrest among the passengers of the ship and then there's the question of another signal... Things get quite spooky, in a rather quiet and subtle way. This is not an action-packed story, but contains lots of quiet suspense. Some reviews claim the book leaves too many things unresolved and while that's true to some extent, it didn't bother me.
This book was originally published in US as Ship of Fools. Unto Leviathan is the British edition published by Orbit. [ Ship of Fools at Amazon.com ]
This is a wonderful book. It's top class popular science: well written, fairly easy to understand and full of information about an engrossing topic. After you read this book, you view the world in a different light. It's easy to not think about parasites, but the cold fact is that parasites form the majority of life on earth.
Parasite Rex is somewhat gross, but text is merciful. Still, you can't avoid it: parasites are really interesting. They showcase amazing variety, controlling and using their hosts in myriad ways to fulfill their twisted life cycles. Parasites are a major element in evolution, too. If you don't know much about parasites, you don't know much about life. This book helps there and is highly recommended. [ Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures at Amazon.co.uk ]
Lauren used to be able to call cats to her. Now she's married to Jason, a professional cyclist who cheats on her. Michel wakes up, having lost his memory. He has just few clues to help him to find himself. The three main characters meet and collide in a world that's slowly driven to ruins: Los Angels is being covered in sand, Paris gets dark and Venice is drying.
This book is also about the Paris of the 1920s and the most glorious movie project of the era. Everything fits together in the end, believe it or not. Steve Erickson knows how to write beautiful prose. Even if you don't quite get the story, you can enjoy the language. [ Days Between Stations at Amazon.co.uk ]
Photojournalist Molly Drake arrives in Cambodia to make an article of the hunt for the remains of American soldiers lost in the jungles during the Vietnam war. Drake makes a mistake and is expelled from the excavation, along with two non-army researchers. The three are planning on leaving, when they get a hot lead and decide to follow it deep in the jungles of Cambodia.
What happens turns swiftly to supernatural. The events take Drake and her group to beautiful ruins in the middle of jungle and things soon become lethal. The story is fascinating, I just had to read it all. Jeff Long has a tendency to wander, I think, but this book was tighter than his other books. I liked that, and to me, The Reckoning is Jeff Long's best novel I've read so far. If you're looking for a highly atmospheric modern ghost story, this one fits the bill. (Review based on the Finnish translation.) [ The Reckoning at Amazon.co.uk ]
Changing Planes is a collection of stories. They are united by a silly backstory: while waiting in an airport while changing planes, a woman named Sita Dulip has invented a method of changing planes - that is, traveling between realities. Thus we get fifteen travel stories that describe strange, new worlds.
The idea is funny, but once you dig in to the stories, you'll find more proof of Le Guin's skills as an author. The worlds are fantastic. Some are relatively simple satires, others more subtle explorations of various themes, real social anthropology of the invented. The book is at the same time light and entertaining, yet deep and thoughtful.
There are many really excellent stories in the collection, but I think the one I enjoyed most was Seasons of Ansarac, which tells a story of a curious society of remarkably bird-like people. It's very Le Guin, indeed. Oh, and I must mention The Building, which is another real highlight, a wonderful and fascinating little story of a rather cryptic world. Le Guin's literary talent is something to envy. [ Changing Planes at Amazon.co.uk ]
Accelerando mixes the cosmic scale of Stephen Baxter's Manifold series with the transhuman glee of Cory Doctorow. The book begins with Manfred Macx, living in 2010, somewhat transhuman, yet quite understandable. Flip flop goes time and we're looking at Amber Macx, Manfred's daughter, whose augmented and implanted mind is a lot harder to understand and her life in simulation spaces something far beyond ours. Then there's the third generation, living in post-singular world completely unlike our own.
It's an amazing novel, full of brilliant ideas and incomprehensible transhuman ways of life. There's an arc, but as the novel is made of nine linked novellas previously published separately, the plot isn't the strongest point (if you want transhumans and singularity with a strong plot, Glasshouse is an excellent choice). It doesn't matter, because the barrage of ideas is so strong and tempting.
There's an obscene amount of praise for this book, and I can see why. I enjoyed it, though I admit it wasn't able to keep my attention all the time - parts of it were a tad long-winded. Still, the sheer audacity of the book is something worth experiencing. Accelerando could be new Neuromancer, a visionary novel that keeps on being referenced. If you want a glimpse of one possible transhuman post-singularity reality, read this book.
Accelerando is available as a free download at Accelerando web site. Accelerando Technical Companion helps with the wacky technical concepts - only a real nerd can read Accelerando without needing to google stuff. [ Accelerando at Amazon.co.uk ]
