Fantasybookspot - Hard Science Fiction

Sly Mongoose

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:03:42 -0400

Sly Mongoose is the third novel of Tobias Buckell. It is part of the same future history as its predecessors Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin, but it is a self-contained story that can be read on its own.

It has been decades since humanity rose up and overthrew their oppressors, the alien Satraps and their client races. Now, the 48 linked worlds of the former Benevolent Satrapy are fought over by humans, once the very bottom of society. The largest of these factions is the League of Human Affairs; once revolutionaries who led the way against the Satraps, they have themselves become the oppressors as they seek to unite humanity under their banner by force and subjugate or destroy the alien races who once served the oppressive Satrapy. Their chief opponents are an alliance of free peoples centered on the formerly lost human colony world of New Anegada. Caught in the middle is the human world of Chilo, a Venus-like planet in the neutral buffer zone between the League and Nanagada. Its people live in huge floating cities, held up by Chilo’s ultra-dense lower atmosphere.

The story begins with fourteen year-old Timas, an inhabitant of one of Chilo’s poorest cities, Yatapek. He is one of the xocoyotzin, boys who periodically descend to the burning surface of Chilo to maintain the automated mining machines that sustain the city’s economy- the impoverished city is stuck with pressure suits too small for Yatapekan adults. The vital role he plays allows his family to share in the life of the city’s upper class- until Timas grows too big, or dies in the blazing Hell he descends into over and over to keep the machines running.

His life is thrown into chaos when a strange visitor from space crashes into Yatapek after making a desperate escape from a dying ship. He is pursued by the Aeolians, Yatapek’s more prosperous neighbors, who say that he murdered an entire starship crew. The stranger himself, a man named Pepper, has an even more horrifying story to tell of the crew’s fate- a fate that may overtake all of Chilo.

Sly Mongoose is the best of Buckell’s novels to date. Buckell’s greatest strengths- fast-paced action and intriguing settings- are on full display. Timas is an interesting protagonist and a well-done portrayal of someone being overwhelmed by the demands placed on him.

The novel is in some ways a return to the style of Buckell’s debut Crystal Rain; the story focuses tightly on a single world and its inhabitants, rather than continuing the wide-scale scope of Ragamuffin. This works out well, since Chilo has more than enough points of interest.

The people of Yatapek are Azteca, who have previously appeared in Buckell’s universe only as antagonists. They have abandoned the rituals of human sacrifice forced on their ancestors by the alien Teotl and sought to make a fresh start. Buckell does a great job portraying their society- poverty desperate enough to drive them to send their children into the hazardous inferno of the surface, leaders terrified that the lower classes will revert to the bloodthirsty ways of their ancestors, the fear and tension of the families of the xocoyotzin who have been given a taste of a better life among the upper classes but know it could end at any time.

While the story is confined to Chilo, the reader does still learn a number of interesting things about the wider fictional universe, some hinted at in previous books and others completely new. The shared setting of Buckell’s three novels has become increasingly intriguing with each book.

The menace to Chilo is called the Swarm- a malignant group consciousness that spreads by infection and turns humans into mindless thralls. They are a very interesting take on the idea of the zombie- they have elements reminiscent of both the modern American movie zombie and the older Vodou concept, built on a science fictional rather than supernatural base. Buckell does a great job of taking something that had become a bit of a cliché and breathing new life into it.

Buckell’s talent for action scenes is well-demonstrated here, with everything from aerial warfare between dirigibles in Chilo’s skies to desperate mass battle with the relentless hordes of the Swarm. Pepper was a powerful presence in Buckell’s first two novels, but here he really comes into his own, and some of his later scenes are among the most thrilling I’ve read in a while. The action is fast and intense, and visceral without being off-puttingly gruesome.

Sly Mongoose is an outstanding book, and one I’d recommend to any science fiction fan. If you enjoyed Buckell’s previous books, or like stories with a well-realized setting and a lot of action, you won’t be disappointed.

Star Trek Terok Nor - Day of the Vipers

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:32:46 -0400

Star Trek has always been known for throwing plenty of backstory out there in passing in its episodes, to pave the way for an hour of television. That backstory is then largely forgotten in future episodes since the majority of Star Trek’s run on television has involved stand-alone episodes. That leaves plenty of fertile ground for authors to fill in, which would certainly be a reason why Star Trek tie-in novels are as prolific as they are.

Star Trek Terok Nor tells the story of the occupation of Bajor by the Cardassians. Star Trek: The Next Generation first brought us the story of Bajor in a few of its later season episodes. It then became one of the main storylines of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The very final episode of the show showed us an ending of the story. Day of the Vipers by James Swallow shows us the beginning of the story. Terok Nor, as we learned on Deep Space Nine, was the Cardassians name for the space station when it was under their control. At this point however, the space station that would become the crown jewel of Cardassia’s occupation of Bajor, and later Deep Space Nine, is only a distant dream.

The novel stretches over a ten-year period, from the first Cardassian vessel traveling to make first contact with the Bajorans, all the way through the days immediately following the beginning of the occupation.

Given the timeframe of the novel most of the characters that we meet are new original characters for this story. However a young Dukat, before he becomes the Gul Dukat who is a recurring character all throughout the run of Deep Space Nine, is one of the central characters of the book. In the beginning he is the first officer of the first vessel to visit Bajor. We then watch him move up in the ranks and in power and influence throughout the novel. More importantly to a good story we learn WHY he is driven to move up in the ranks and to make it his mission to see Bajor under Cardassian rule. There is more to the story than simply waking up in the morning, deciding to hop into a spaceship and make a trip at warp speed to begin a long and complex campaign to take over the world of another civilization.

Make no mistake about it, the Cardassians are the villains of the story. But like good villains that aren’t one-dimensional they have motivations for behaving as they do. It is not evil for evil’s sake. In their minds they are entirely justified in doing what they do. Cardassia is a very resource poor world with a population that scrapes by to provide the essentials. In Bajor, they see a world that has a bounty of resources that they under-appreciate to the point of being wasteful. In Cardassian eyes they are lazy, undisciplined, and underachieving as a society and need a “firm Cardassian rule in order to make something of themselves.

Within the overall cultural motivations we have a variety of personal motivations ranging from the desire to best serve Cardassia, to personal ambitions of wealth and power, to motivations of religious faith. On the other side of the coin Cardassia was able to exploit a number of Bajoran motivations as well. Bajor didn’t willingly cede its world over to an alien race. There were segments of their society that welcomes an alliance for a variety of reasons, some personal and some societal. All of these sub-plots swirl beneath the main plot, the one we know from being Star Trek fans, and come together in the climax, in a number of surprising ways. While the end result is anticipated, the events along the way are quite surprising at times.

James Swallow wrote a very complex story and had a very good grasp of all the characters. He gave us a very good cross section of both Bajoran and Cardassian societies, from religious clerics, to politicians and their political power grabs, to career soldiers, to secret operatives, and maybe especially of Mace Darrah. Darrah is a Bajorian Militiaman who is determined to uphold his duty and serve his people as a lawman even as his society and his marriage crumble around him. While Dukat is the central villain of the story, Mace Darrah is the central hero. Given the nature of the story he was never going to have a totally heroic victory in this book. But he did get a nice little personal victory. Perhaps the stage is set for him to make a heroic comeback against all odds. But maybe he will suffer a heroic and tragic death to set the stage for the rise of other resistance fighters, such as Kira Nerys. According to her backstory she is born about 15 years after the end of this book. One would presume that she will factor into the next book based on the timeline, and the fact that she’s on the cover of the next book. Heroes inspire other heroes, so perhaps Mace Darrah will become Kira’s role model. We will see.

Throughout the story kept moving at a fast pace, even as it got more and more complex with the addition of conspiracies and even conspiracies within conspiracies. The story was well managed and was extremely plausible.

Another thing I liked was that not only was the story not Federation-centric but it didn’t cast the Federation in a particularly favorable light. They are not eager to get involved, for reasons from their point of view that are strategically plausible. It’s easy to understand Bajor’s later distrust of the Federation. It goes to show that the Federation isn’t always a bunch of Boy Scouts. Their policies are sometimes dictated by politics and other concerns just as any real organization would be. So while we had plenty of Star Trek science fiction in this story, it also maintained a strong grip on plausible reality. I thought this was a good story that just happened to be told in the Star Trek universe.

My biggest concern coming into “Day of the Vipers” would be whether or not I would care about all the new characters that we would see in the story, especially since the majority of them will probably be ground beneath the wheels of time as the series progresses over a period of about 52 years from beginning to end. For the most part these are forerunners to the characters that are “near and dear. But thankfully Swallow did not create Jar Jar Binks and gave us characters that add to the richness of the Star Trek universe, not characters that are best forgotten. Day of the Vipers was an outstanding beginning of the trilogy. We’ll see if the authors who will be concluding the series give us as compelling of a story. I rate Day of the Vipers as a 7.5.

Deepsix

Sun, 25 May 2008 13:38:34 -0400

Deepsix is the second novel in Jack McDevitt’s “Academy” series, which can be described as mostly-hard science fiction with a few exceptions like faster-than-light travel included out of narrative necessity. However, while it has the same main character as the first Academy book, The Engines of God, it is a fully self-contained story and can easily be read by someone who has not read its predecessor.

In the 23rd century, the Academy of Science and Technology and its fleet of superluminal ships is tasked with exploring the reaches of space and pushing back the frontiers of human knowledge. When a rogue gas giant adrift in deep space for half a billion years enters the Maleiva system, a scientific team is sent to watch. The rogue giant is on a near-collision course with the third planet of the Maleiva system, dubbed Deepsix, providing a rare opportunity- the chance to observe as a planet is ripped apart by gravity. Teams of scientists and an interstellar liner full of tourists gather in the Maleiva system to observe.

Deepsix is a rare life-bearing world, but has seen little exploration of its surface since the first human expedition to the planet ended with most of the survey team dying at the hands of local wildlife. But when the orbiting scientific team studying the planet in preparation for its destruction spots something that appears to be an artificial structure, rendered almost invisible beneath the ice and snow of an ice age that has frozen most of the planet for thousands of years. In desperation, Academy pilot Priscilla Hutchins is sent to the surface with a scientific team, including the leader of the ill-fated first expedition, Randall Nightingale, with the hope of learning as much as possible before Deepsix is destroyed. They are joined by a second shuttle bringing renowned journalist, essayist, and curmudgeon Gregory McAllister, who managed to talk the captain of the tourist liner into letting him go down.

The exploration of the ruins on the planet has barely begun when disaster strikes. As Deepsix strains under the growing stress of the rogue gas giant’s gravity, a violent earthquake shakes the area and wrecks both shuttles, leaving everyone stranded on the surface. Now, trapped among the ruins of a dead civilization, they must struggle to survive on a hostile, dying world while the Academy personnel in orbit desperately try to figure out a way to evacuate them before the planet is ripped apart.

Deepsix is a great combination of survival thriller, tale of discovery, and traditional hard science fiction problem-solving story. The two narrative threads- Hutchinson and company trying to survive on Deepsix, learning about the fate of its civilization as they do so, while their allies in orbit struggle with the engineering problem of a rescue- provide a great combination of both intellectual stimulation and adventure.

As is often the case in his work, McDevitt does not reveal all of Deepsix’s secrets to either the characters or the reader, with new questions arising as old ones are answered, and by the end the reader is left with as many mysteries as at the beginning. However, this didn’t leave me feeling frustrated; rather, instead McDevitt is very skilled at both satisfying and tantalizing the reader at the same time. Perhaps somewhat ironically for a story that simultaneously incorporates a lost alien civilization, bizarre and deadly wildlife, a struggle to survive in the wilderness, scientists in a race against time to mount a last-minute rescue mission, and the violent annihilation of an entire planet, McDevitt takes a “less is more” approach to the central question of Deepsix’s lost civilization. He is very effective at creating a fascinating picture by giving a bit of information here and a bit there, never filling in all the details but giving enough to stimulate the imagination and create a feeling of wonder and mystery.

The characters are not examined in extreme depth, but McDevitt is good at slipping in just the right amount of detail to make them interesting individuals. I especially liked the figure of writer Gregory McAllister, who is a type of character I’d like to see more of in fiction- a believably unpleasant person who is not a villain.

McAllister is bitter, unkind, and misogynistic. He’s doesn’t have a secret heart of gold beneath his harsh exterior and he doesn’t learn some dramatic lesson about the value of niceness. At the same time, he’s not amoral or relentlessly nasty or mean for the sake of being mean. He’s a jerk, but he’s not a caricature of a jerk.

McDevitt grounds his events in a background that also shows his skillful use of small details. In addition to references to human technology and the state of affairs back on Earth in the early 23rd century, McDevitt effectively creates a setting that is both full of wonders and yet believably mundane. Rather than any mythological or historical name, the Maleiva solar system is named after the daughter of a Senator who voted to approve Academy funding. In the midst of a desperate do-or-die effort to get the survivors off the doomed planet before it is ripped apart, characters worry about things like lawsuits over the people who have died or the public uproar that will result if Earth’s premiere man of letters is killed- mundane but all-too-believable details. McDevitt carefully mixes these down-to-Earth elements in with more exciting ones, giving a sense of a world that is full of exciting events and yet still a place where everyday people live and go about their lives.

The more cataclysmic aspects of the premise are well-exploited too, with a growing sense of apocalyptic dread as Deepsix’s crust bucks and heaves under the growing tectonic stress, the weather is driven into chaos, and the approaching gas giant looms ever-larger larger in the sky. McDevitt does a great job of conveying the doom of an entire planet.

I would strongly recommend Jack McDevitt’s Deepsix to any fan of science fiction. If you want a book that successfully brings together adventure, discovery, hard science, and interesting characters, Deepsix is definitely a winner.

Surviving Behind Enemy Lines

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:57:19 -0400

The Galactic Star Force Battle Fleet is a cobbled together remnant of human society that is trapped in a system filled with hostile aliens. Some of the humans are kept as a foodstuff by one alien race, while the group that managed to escape and desperately wanted to free them is being maniacally attacked by another alien race that simply wants to see humans completely oblitereated.

The author obviously knows a great deal about fighting techniques and strategy. It's obvious in each battle scene that this is a guy who knows exactly what he's plotting. Most of the time, it's easy for the reader to get a very clear idea of exactly what is happening with both the enemy and the heroes. The battle scenes did flat-out work in terms of consistency and strategy. There were nearly transparent rules that were followed strictly for tactical abilities with both groups as well as equipment performance. The physics in this book neither get ignored nor do they disappear conveniently.
There are also some very helpful definitions and specifications at the front of the book, especially if the reader is starting the series with the second volume.

However, this book suffered greatly from an overabundance of repitition. Everything that happens is explained at least twice and it's usually from the same perspective. If the reader missed something important in the plot the first time, they have no need to fear, they'll get a chance for a recap in the not-too distant future.

The author's martial arts discipline also left a stamp all over this book. That isn't necessarily a terrible thing, but in this one, the stamp was at least page-sized and the letters were bright red. His heroes were very strictly honor and duty-bound to the point that there isn't even the flicker of doubt that they will always do the right thing and they will always do their absolute best to save their fallen comrades. The solidarity and hope that the humans show in this book is a beautiful dream, but the problem is that humans tend to get more complex than that. People have doubts, lose their convictions, or get scared on a regular basis and those things often get in the way of the principals that just about everyone wishes they could live by.

As for the aliens, well, both races are terrible, evil creatures. The aliens are impulsive and ruled by their greed and pride, which is what tends to get them into trouble when battles against humans are concerned. Sometimes, the aliens are so completely stupid that it's laughable. Certainly, everyone makes dumb mistakes now and then, but it's hard to believe that an alien race with such a glaringly obvious species-wide character flaw would become a conquering force of any sort of threat level.

The world of this book is very sharply delineated. Those who live by honor and adhere to duty, common sense, and careful plans of action are bound to succeed, whereas those who heed their impulses and their individual pride are doomed to fail. The bad guys are very, very bad and the good guys are very, very good.

So where does that leave this book? On a pure science fiction level, it tends to dissolve into specifications, statistics, and jargon and the story is set up and knocked down so succinctly that there's nothing to get really excited about. However, if applied as a sort of philisophical allegory, it might work as a very nice thought experiment for a class. The book holds little margin for error or misinterpretation within its pages and so could be used to help illustrate differences in Eastern and Western thought as well as helping to get people thinking about what it would actually take to get people to stop fighting amongst each other for silly, petty reasons. The book is certainly a call for peace and for that, it's very difficult to fault the author. He's just trying to show a better humanity striving its way towards a utopian existence.

Some mention should be made for the diagrams and illustrations in the book. They're very well-done pencil sketches by artist Dion Hammil and while it might have been nice to see them as full pages in the book the fact that they were included was a very nice bonus.

This book is one that I would recommend to a middle-school or junior high-school aged boy, especially one who hasn't got a great deal of time for reading. The repetitiveness of the book would serve him well if he has to put the book down for a length of time before he gets a chance to read it again. It could be the kind of book that would get boys to read more, especially if they prefer to have far more action sequences in their entertainment and it offers enough in the way of ethical and moral questions that it could probably get him thinking beyond the confines of this fictional world.

Fleet of Worlds

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:48:50 -0400

“Fleet of Worlds” is part of Larry Niven’s Known Space future history best known as the setting of the Ringworld books. However, while it utilizes characters and settings from other Known Space books, extensive knowledge of Known Space isn’t essential to understanding the book. The book does contain a number of other nods to other Known Space stories and events, however, so a previous knowledge of the setting will increase enjoyment of the book. It is also Niven’s first collaboration written in that setting.

In 2198, the human interstellar colonist ship “Long Pass” suffers a mishap in deep space, but is salvaged by a race of aliens who call themselves Citizens, but who are better known to most of humanity (and long-time Niven readers) as Puppeteers. “Long Pass’” crew does not survive, but the thousands of frozen human embryos aboard are taken by the Puppeteers, grown to adulthood, and given a place to live on one of the Puppeteers’ agricultural worlds, ignorant of their own origins.
The Puppeteers are an ancient and advanced race of tripedal herbivores with technology far surpassing that of humanity. Even the boldest Puppeteer is pathologically cowardly by human standards, and those few Puppeteer’s willing to risk themselves by traveling in deep space or dealing with outsiders are considered insane by their own kind.

Their home, the Fleet of Worlds, is a group of five planets, the Puppeteer homeworld and four agricultural planets, set adrift from their home stars and propelled through space by a reactionless drive to escape an approaching wave of deadly radiation from the galactic core, sustained by artificial suns and Puppeteer civilization’s staggering waste heat. On one of the agricultural worlds is Arcadia, the continent given to human habitation.

450 years after the demise of the “Long Pass,” The Puppeteer’s are faced with a problem: they need to scout ahead to ensure that the path of the Fleet of Worlds is safe, but Puppeteers capable of leaving the safety of the Fleet and braving the dangers of hyperspace travel are hard to come by. An innovative solution is reached: crew scout ships with humans, who are all insanely oblivious to risk by Puppeteer standards.

So, a crew of four humans is sent, guided by an insane Puppeteer named Nessus. They search solar systems along the route of the Fleet for potential threats, and in particular for any intelligent race that might develop the technology to harm the Puppeteers. Along the journey one of the human crew, Kirsten Quinn-Kovacs, begins to wonder about the lost history of her own race. Where did they come from? Just what caused the wreck of the “Long Pass?” Are her races’ benefactors, the Puppeteers, telling everything they know? Her attempts to discover the truth about her people will send her into dangerous conflict with both her fellow humans and powerful factions within the Puppeteer government.

“Fleet of Worlds” is an extremely satisfying science fiction story and a worthy addition to the Known Space universe. The central plot is exciting and suspenseful, and the alien setting allows Niven’s talent for bizarre aliens to come to the fore. The solution to the book’s central mystery was somewhat predictable, but the details surrounding it were interesting and the revelation is executed well.

Aliens figure prominently in the in the form of both the Puppeteers-whose society is shown in more detail than in previous Known Space books- and a new race, the aquatic and frighteningly intelligent Gw’oth. Several Puppeteers figure prominently as characters, and they are well-drawn and interesting. Much of what the readers see of Puppeteer society has already been revealed in other books, but this is the best close look we’ve had of them through their own eyes. Unfortunately, the human characters are somewhat less satisfying, and are not as memorable as their Puppeteer counterparts.
While the book stands alone reasonably well, it definitely rewards a prior knowledge of Niven’s work. There are lots of little bits- especially in the parts Puppeteers manipulation of Earth society- that tie into past books, giving new context to previously know details about Known Space and clearing up a mystery or two.

I would definitely recommend “Fleet of Worlds” for any fan of Larry Niven and Known Space. For those unfamiliar with Niven’s work, it may be better to start elsewhere- perhaps with “Tales of Known Space” or “Ringworld”- and then return to “Fleet of Worlds.” Either way, “Fleet of Worlds” is well worth your time.

Blindsight

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 00:03:17 -0400

One of the things I find interesting about "hard" science fiction -- by way of introducing Peter Watts's Hugo-nominated novel Blindsight, the best example of the type that I have read in years -- is that it is probably the most legitimate heir to the original remit of story, a remit that has existed since humans first gained sufficient consciousness and intelligence both to create stories and to need to create stories. Looking at the earliest stories we have record of, we can always see several purposes at work: stories existed to inform; to entertain; and, from the start, stories have existed at the level of myth to theorize, to suggest and test possibilities about the unknown elements of the world that we see and experience. What are those odd looking animals, where did they come from; where did we come from; what are those flashes of light in the darkness?

I imagine that within any given movement, though, there comes a time when some sufficiently large number of people -- a majority in fact or at least in voice -- decides that they've carried things as far as they want to, that any further change, any further speculating, is as likely to impact them for the worse as for the better. And we can see this in modern Western fiction, as the new game of literature is "the human condition" -- showing what we know rather than grappling with what we don't know. There is the pressure to see literature according to a single aesthetic, to judge it based solely on how well it captures our humanist understanding of a fixed present. It's no surprise that such a static, unchanging view of the world would be anathema to a writer like Peter Watts, an evolution-minded marine biologist by training. Watts understands that life is not static, that we are part of a world, part of a universe, that is constantly evolving. At a high level, Watts is interested in how this evolution, our evolution, may play out; he is as interested in what we don't yet know about ourselves as what we do. It's easy to see why this type of speculative fiction has become gauche in many circles: we like to think we know everything.

That state of human self-satisfaction nicely sums up where Blindsight begins. It is 2082, and Earth is shaken out of its contemplation of the Fermi paradox by the sudden arrival of tens of thousands of alien probes. These "Fireflies" quickly appear in Earth orbit, take a snapshot of our world -- our technologies, communications and activities -- broadcast that captured data out into space, and then burn up in our atmosphere. Watts's description of the event is characteristic of the book as a whole: densely filled with detailed jargon, yet sleek and sharp because of that very precision of language; fast-paced and poetic.

[The Fireflies] clenched around the world like a fist, each black as the inside of an event horizon until those last bright moments when they all burned together. They screamed as they died. Every radio up to geostat groaned in unison, every infrared telescope went briefly snowblind. Ashes stained the sky for weeks afterwards; mesospheric clouds, high above the jet stream, turned to glowing rust with every sunrise.

In typical SF fashion, a swiftly-united Earth responds by assembling a small team of specialists to follow the probes' signal to its destination. There the team encounters the alien, the Other. Described thus, the surface-level plot of Blindsight is self-consciously pedestrian, a first contact/"big dumb object" melange that evokes such novels as Sagan's Contact, Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, Niven's Ringworld, and Lem's Solaris -- with a mix of the horrors found in films like 2001 and Alien. What becomes clear as the novel progresses, however, is that Watts is attempting a very dextrous piece of narrative sleight of hand, where the conventional SF setup gradually bleeds into the thesis and thought-experiment that is at the heart -- or rather, the mind -- of Blindsight. At issue is consciousness, viewed from an unsentimental, relentlessly biological perspective.

The composition of the team sent by Earth is one of our first clues as to what Watts is up to (if the book's title wasn't enough). Each character represents a different mix of, or perspective on, the interplay between consciousness and intelligence.

Siri Keeton is our narrator, and as presented he seems eminently qualified to be so. Childhood brain surgery to cure his epilepsy took with it Siri's ability to feel empathy; to compensate, he has developed a refined sense of information topology, the ability to model interior characteristics based solely on exterior appearances, surfaces. Siri's task is to observe and report back to Earth as the mission progresses, using his skills to translate the complexities of the alien into language and concepts that a general audience can understand.

Susan James is the group's linguist, four separate people (consciousnesses) residing in a single brain, timesharing a single intelligence to work out linguistic problems from four different angles. Amanda Bates is the military arm of the expedition, a woman whose single consciousness is a gatekeeper to the multiple intelligent battle drones she commands. Isaac Szpindel is the medical officer, a man who has expanded his conscious sensory perception outside of himself, into his medical tools and equipment. The Captain of the ship is a sophisticated artificial intelligence -- an intelligence without apparent sentience -- who communicates mainly with the mission leader, Jukka Sarasti. And Sarasti is a vampire.

Yes, I did just write "vampire," in a review of a book I have labeled "hard science fiction." This may admittedly stretch the definition a bit, and acceptance of this aspect may indeed be a litmus test for how well a reader will appreciate the book. Watts does present a thorough, biologically-grounded explanation for how vampires might have come to exist in 2082, down to a sensory glitch, an inability to parse intersecting horizontal and vertical lines, that explains their legendary aversion to crucifixes. What is most important though is what vampires symbolize within the book. A recurring theme in science fiction has always been -- since Frankenstein -- the idea of human augmentation, the use of technology to bolster human strength and/or intelligence; SF often investigates what happens when these augmented individuals turn on their normal human "masters." What Blindsight does so daringly (following in the footsteps of books like Paul McAuley's Fairyland and Gene Wolfe's essay "How Science Will Conquer the World for Fantasy" from Castle of Days) is co-opt a symbol of the fantastic, of horror, for these science fictional purposes. Vampires are not just faster, stronger, smarter; they think differently than humans, see the world differently. One of the excellences of Watts's book is the selection of vampires as the perfect symbol of our fears of the augmented human, the post-human: a human-like species whose superior level of fitness causes them to see normal humans as prey.

"Hate to break it, Jukka, but the Fireflies didn't exactly slip under the rad--"

Sarasti opened his mouth, closed it again. Filed teeth, briefly visible, clicked audibly behind his face. Tabletop graphics reflected off his visor, a band of writhing polychrome distortions where eyes should be.

Sascha shut up.

Sarasti continued. "They trade stealth for speed. By the time you react, they already have what they want." He spoke quietly, patiently, a well-fed predator explaining the rules of the game to prey that really should know better....

This is all rather alien, and we haven't even gotten to the aliens yet. Suffice to say that Watts's big dumb object turns out to be a big smart object; when communication with it is achieved it names itself Rorschach, a name that in the context of the story has several meanings, not least of which is a sign that humanity will be judged based on what they project onto it. The judgment itself is a foregone conclusion: Siri reveals very early in his narration that he is returning from the encounter alone. "Point of view matters," muses Siri: "I see that now, blind, talking to myself, trapped in a coffin falling past the edge of the solar system. I see it for the first time since some beaten bloody friend on a childhood battlefield convinced me to throw my own point of view away." It's how and why this outcome occurred, how Siri came to his realization, that are the core story, and argument, of the book.

Interspersed with Siri's story of the encounter with the alien Rorschach are flashback sequences where Siri shares some of his past -- which gives Watts a chance to flesh out several other perspectives in his argument. Siri's own mental state is explained through the story of the "beaten bloody friend on a childhood battlefield": it's the first of several echoes of Card's Ender's Game, although Watts proceeds to render that book rather, well, juvenile. Siri's mother, meanwhile, is a self-obsessed aesthete. She has largely forsaken biological life, instead choosing to live in a virtual realm whose chronobiological shapes and sounds trick her brain into thinking that her body's needs are being met. His father occupies the opposite side of the spectrum, being more other-focused, empathetic. Finally, Siri's ex-girlfriend, Chelsea, represents a modern psychological point of view, the idea that natural impulses can be overcome through therapy; she is "a woman whose professional machinery edited thought itself." It is in their relationship especially that we see the conflict within Siri, what his consciousness wants for himself versus what his intelligence has learned about others:

Maybe she honestly didn't know that we were evolutionary enemies, that all relationships were doomed to failure. If I could slip that insight into her head -- if I could charm my way past her defenses -- maybe we'd be able to hold things together.

Blindsight is a challenging book in many ways. As a scientific argument it is difficult and unpalatable, a bitter pill to swallow; as a piece of writing it is dense with philosophical allusion and scientific detail, requiring the reader to either be familiar with the associated language, or confident enough to plow forward trusting Watts to explain the important bits of terminology (as he nearly always does). Not least of the challenges, though, is deciphering Siri. His surgery has rendered him rather impersonal and unlikable, and he is not always aware of how conflicted his own perspective is. Indeed, Siri is not always aware, period. As the book progresses we realize more and more that Siri is as unreliable as any of Gene Wolfe's famous narrators; not intentionally so, but unavoidably so, because he is human and thus necessarily has a narrow focus, a susceptibility to misdirection. Such is the argument that Watts is making and his skill in making it, however, that by the end of the book, when the narrative collapses and we, like Siri, are left experiencing effects without knowing causes, this can only feel right and necessary. It is after all the narrative limitation we all live with. And while aspects of the story are, from the beginning, rather grim and uncertain, balanced with these aspects is the change that we come to see has occurred in Siri, a sense that he has regained at least part of what he had lost as a child.

It is appropriate on several levels that the ship in Blindsight that the crew travels on is named Theseus, that the novel is a clash between Theseus and Rorschach. Out of the fiery collision between the mythic quest to explore and investigate the mysteries of the natural world, and the modern focus on human behavior in our world, Peter Watts has created something troubling but exhilarating: a sense that we're not yet done, that there is more yet to discover about being human. Hard science fiction at its best, as Watts makes clear, may well have a role in any such discovery. What hard SF does is allow us to ask questions, interrogate and assimilate theories about being human, both via rational examination of data and irrationally, as story, turning the intuitive part of our brain loose on ideas. As Blindsight suggests, that intuitive part may not only be smarter than we think, it may be smarter than we can think.

-- Matt Denault

Getting to Know You

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 17:28:59 -0400

Getting to Know You is only David Marusek's second book, but he is already a veteran of the science fiction wars. Marusek's 2005 novel Counting Heads was the subject of the debut speculative fiction column "Across the Universe" in that bastion of mainstream fiction, The New York Times Book Review; the column both proclaimed Counting Heads to be among the reviewer's "favorite books [of 2005] in any category" and yet wondered, "why does contemporary science fiction have to be so geeky" that it becomes inaccessible to readers of mainstream literature? The question helped renew a battle, waged within the science fiction community since the New Wave movement of the 1960s, over how the "science" and "fiction" components of SF intersect. Some (such as Charles Stross) argued that SF should be more geeky, should focus its efforts on the tech-savvy readers of websites like Slashdot and Boing Boing; others (including John Scalzi) argued that what SF requires are more accessible entry points for readers less familiar with science. Sadly, the first point of the NYT column -- regarding the quality of Marusek's fiction -- was largely forgotten in the discussion. Given all this, I'm happy to say that Getting to Know You, a new collection of the author's short stories, in large part bridges the gaps that its predecessor highlighted: it's equally accessible to SF genrephiles and mainstream readers. The collection's defining characteristic is carefully constructed balance.

The "carefully constructed" qualifier is an important one; the balance Marusek achieves in Getting to Know You is based on variety and focus, not a dull sameness. Of the ten stories in the collection (initially published between 1993 and 2003, largely in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine), five strongly evoke distinct, singular emotions; these stories are quite separate and range from the present day to some unspecified far future. The remaining five stories occur in the same near-future universe as Counting Heads and are deeply multifaceted, ambiguous works. These stories present a future history of North America from 2033 to approximately 2600. Nanotech and biotech, along with cloning, artificial intelligence, wearable ubiquitous computing, human augmentation and environmental terrorism -- all are explored, along with their implications for politics, economics, lifestyles and more. It never gets overwhelming, though, because Marusek doles out progress slowly: each story focuses on just a few advances and implications. Moreover each story is grounded by one or two intensely human characters.

Indeed, the "Counting Heads stories" in Getting to Know You illustrate how Marusek's characterization naturally balances competing literary worldviews. Characterization in genre science fiction is largely predicated on ideas of intention, change and growth; mainstream literary fiction in contrast is often centered around the foolish consistency of people and the borders that constrain their growth. Getting to Know You offers up a third model of what is so often called "the human condition" (and rather vacuously left at that). Marusek uses technology to show that while the outward appearance of people may be consistent and monolithic, inside there is a swirling of ideas and beliefs tightly linked to current circumstances. That swirl is rarely glimpsed because once we are convinced of our beliefs, we rarely reconsider them. If we could examine a person's mind in frozen instants of time, however, we -- and they -- might be surprised at the variance of their thoughts from one moment to the next, and what the logical extensions of those thoughts might be.

So for example Vice President Saul Jaspersen, in "Cabbages and Kale or How We Downsized North America," begins to realize how little he knows himself when confronted by a "proxy" of himself -- a holographic copy of both physical features and inner mental state. When asked his opinion of a Procreation Ban that will limit the right to have children to select licensed citizens,

The president eyed the proxy. "Not so fast, Saul. Proxy, please explain why you'd vote for the ban."

"Gladly. As a Gaiaist, I believe that if we don't limit our specioeffluvium, and I mean quick, the Mother will push us aside and do it for us. And her methods, believe you me, are none too gentle."

The president groaned, and Saul went pale. "But I'm not a Gaiaist!"

"How can you be so sure?" said the proxy. "Mother cherishes all her biomass, even you."

This theme recurs in the other "Counting Heads universe" stories within Getting to Know You. In the title story, a journalist covering a new type of "belt valet" -- today's hand-held PDA perfected, combined with an "imprinting" mechanism to mold the belt's AI to the personality of its wearer -- finds that imprinting may represent the perfection of high technology itself. And that for we imperfect people, perfection will be different than what we think we want it to be. That sentiment is echoed in the Sturgeon Award-winning novella "The Wedding Album," where newlywed Anne and Benjamin are cast in a "sim" -- a holographic recording akin to "Cabbages and Kale"'s proxies -- at the happiest moment of their lives. The story then juxtaposes that perfect moment with the rest of their lives, and, in a science fictional twist, against a backdrop some 450 years of human history and development.

The perfectibility of technology is another recurring motif in the "Counting Heads" stories: in "The Wedding Album" the memento is perfected; in "Getting to Know You," the PDA. All five stories also involve the perfection of reproductive technology, and the implications of this on gender relations. At a surface level, the more that technology -- in particular but not limited to reproductive technology -- has equalized the genders in these stories, the more women gain not just equal footing but often an upper-hand on the male characters. But what the later stories in the chronology interject is the niggle that what women may have been doing by relying on laws and legislation is not gaining reproductive control for themselves, but rather transferring authority over their choices from men to the state. Reproductive technology, and technology in general, thus become potential levers of control over women by the state. This can be seen in "A Boy in Cathyland," where a woman struggles to maintain her technology-enabled private utopia. It also appears with more subtlety in "We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy," which deals with the more general perfectibility of society. Another set of newlyweds, Sam and Eleanor, find themselves on top of an already utopian world when Eleanor is nominated for a high-level government job and the couple is granted a rare permit to "retro-conceive" a child. Of course there's a price for these gifts, and when it comes due the story becomes at once among the most horrific and optimistic in the collection.

The story of Sam and Eleanor will be familiar to readers of Counting Heads, as it became the beginning of that novel. If there was a common criticism of Counting Heads by genre reviewers, it was that the novel felt fragmented: a mosaic whose pieces were too separate, connected mainly by an overabundance of technological paste. Getting to Know You, however, succeeds in part because the connections that felt fragmented in the novel here serve to add depth and resonance to separate short stories. It's also apparent that in the novel Marusek tried to integrate aspects such as politics and economics across the entire narrative that here appear as the focus of only one or two stories. In Counting Heads for example we are told that "[Eleanor's] celebrity futures are trading at 9.7 cents," followed by a paragraph-long infodump on the celebrity economy; the version in Getting to Know You reads simply "the People Channel has recently tagged her as a probable celebrity." This tighter focus, combined with less reliance on neologisms (there are few of Counting Heads's mentars, fabplats, etc. to be found), makes the stories in Getting to Know You more accessible to a mainstream reader. And finally, the short form may simply be better than the novel at highlighting the ambiguity that pervades the "Counting Heads" universe.

If the five "Counting Heads stories" in Getting to Know You are ambiguous and multifaceted, the remaining five stories balance out the collection's content in more elemental, emotionally evocative ways. "Yurek Rutz, Yurek Rutz, Yurek Rutz," for example, contributes a vital portion of good-natured humor. It's a metafictional tale centered around a wife's desire to immortalize her husband -- in part through some do-it-yourself cryogenics involving the Alaskan permafrost, in part through the literary efforts of a writer named David Marusek. A different sort of humor is on display in the short-short "My Morning Glory," which Marusek introduces as his only story with "an unalloyed happy ending." The story then proceeds to show just how much an unalloyed farce such a thing would be (it reads like a Stuart Smalley "Daily Affirmation" for the iEverything future). In contrast, the similarly short "The Earth is On the Mend" offers up the most genuine hope to be found in the collection: it's a far-future story about the gradual thawing of the Earth -- and its inhabitants -- following an ice age or nuclear winter.

"VTV" is a near-future story where the media rush to stake out an assassination victim before she is assassinated, in the hope of broadcasting the killing. To reveal what emotion it evokes would spoil the ending, but it felt the most flawed of these stories: the foreshadowing is a bit heavy-handed and it suffers from the near-future curse of already feeling out of date. Partly this stems from its concern with live TV at a time when Tivo has become a verb and YouTube among the top 10 most trafficked websites. Partly, though, it's because while Marusek describes his goal with "VTV"'s musings on filmed violence as "to see just how despicable a picture of humanity [he] could paint," humanity has proven a moving target. That said, it is a hard-hitting story, perhaps the more-so for its heavy handedness. The same can be said for "Listen to Me," where Marusek forsakes the Earth to debunk the romance of space travel. Madness is featured here, the madness of cabin fever projected over a seemingly endless journey.

Endlessness, the drive for immortality and the pitfalls of achieving it: what Marusek is grappling with more directly than in most science fiction are life and death, the primal drivers of story. As with much modern literature, life in these stories is represented by humor -- not laugh-out-loud hilarity, but satire, absurdity, farce. In mainstream literary fiction this humor is often directed at the way people act against life's inexorable movement toward death; here, science fiction allows Marusek to show how people act with immortality in reach, when set against technology's inexorable movement toward the future. Both comfortingly and distressingly, people remain very much people, with the same needs and concerns. The book thus feels true. Science fiction fans will experience the quintessential sense of wonder, awe at the sheer scale of it all. Mainstream readers will be happy to find that the "wow" effect is less caused by the technology itself, and more that the science fictional elements allow character-based moments of wonder and discovery. Despite their inner complexity, people find it very difficult to change; what Marusek suggests is that technological developments may only exacerbate this fact, making any degree of self-realization even more rare and precious. "You are an accurate mapping of a human nervous system that was dysfunctional in certain structures," sim-Anne is told in "The Wedding Album." "The digital architecture current at the time you were created compounded this defect." For readers in or out of the SF genre inclined to see technology as a savior -- or who shy away from imagining the future -- Getting to Know You is a warning shot across the conceptual bow.

Not a friendly place -- the future -- but if [Saul] was honest, was it so different from the future that he, himself, had toiled to create?

Is this a perfect collection? No, not quite. For one, while they help to create a better balance of story and emotion here, the non-Counting Heads stories are still more slight and uneven than the material that helped shape Marusek's novel. Readers familiar with Counting Heads may thus feel that there's a dearth of content that feels new and significant in this collection. The other primary weakness stems from the fact that the excellence of these stories is so centrally contained in their balance. There are fewer surprises than you might expect in a ten story collection, and a corresponding lack of immediacy. These stories work best after you've had time to think about them, not while you are reading them.

That said, here at FantasyBookSpot we recently discussed how we know that we've read a great book, and while others championed the desire to immediately re-read a book, I said that wanting time to think about a book after reading it was the surest sign of greatness for me. Note, then, that I finished Getting to Know You three weeks ago, and have spent the intervening time letting the pieces settle and the connections form. To be sure this is not a light book; accessibility aside, it reads best when met halfway. Just, in a sense, as the future is best met halfway. I would recommend this collection to anyone with an interest in the future -- not the future of a millennium from now, but the future of tomorrow, the next time you speak to someone, the next time you think about where you'll be in a year, a decade. Enjoy these stories now, while they still are about the future. Get to know them, because in the future they will be getting to know you.

-- Matt Denault, Matt Denault, Matt Denault

Robotika

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 10:37:25 -0400

Fact: I like robots. Whether they are broken, sadistic, stupid, massive iron giants, or just downright sexy, I am constantly fascinated by humanoid machines. Yes, they fall on metal knees to robotic clichés: either they want to be real with a soul thingy or they are angry and revolt against their makers. Fine, that's fine. I can read through a couple versions of these stories again and again so long as everything else is fresh enough to keep me awake. Our gadget-enthused society (pretty soon cell phones will be able to microwave meals, tazer small dogs, and rewire bank accounts; I promise you, give it five more years and you’ll see) makes it quite easy to foretell a world where robots and humans co-exist.

With all this said, it’d be a no-brainer that I’d enjoy Robotika by Alex Sheikman and Joel Jason O’Chua, a story of discarded cyborgs, genetically-enhanced samurais, and biological experiments in a future far removed from the one we know today. Unfortunately, I didn’t fall as hard for it as I’d have liked.

It’s the future (though the year is unknown), and humans are constantly upgrading their latest stream of robots, tossing the old and outdated wayside. These discarded bots slink away to the edges of the universe where they begin their own existence, forgotten and ultimately uncared for. The Queen’s chief scientist has created a “biological machine” that could finally properly unite cyborgs and humans. Silly science guy, biological machines are for kids. He’s assassinated (rather abruptly) and his creation is stolen away. The Queen puts mute-face Niko to the task of returning the invention, and fast, as she has a meeting soon with some bigwigs and is unable to cancel. Queens, think everything rotates around them. Out Niko goes to steal back what was wrongfully stolen, make some new friends, and never say a goddamn word. Genetically-enhanced soulless ronin sellswords—what are they good for? Absolutely nothing.

Honestly, I learned more about Robotika from its Amazon page than from actually reading the hardcover book. Er, graphic novel. Graphic book? I don't really know what it is. Both the writing and art are so unconnected that it was hard to follow what was happening, why it was happening, and whether or not I was supposed to care. The writing is sparse and so stock that I just wanted to stab every character in the mouth whenever they spoke. Actually, of the three main "heroes"—Niko, Cherokee Geisha, and Bronski—one never says a word, the other talks in an unreadable manner, and the last uses such brainless phrases like "Take a chill pill!" The plot is very ho-hum and not the clearest thing to follow. I believe the two stories within Robotika are only the beginning, but even then I had no idea why anyone was doing what they were doing.

Let's take a moment to address the biggest problem for me with Robotika. That'd be Cherokee Geisha and her speech problem. To show that she's not speaking the same language of everyone else, Sheikman and O'Chua has her words written down, and I mean downwards as such:

T
H
I
S
!

Imagine reading like that for any number of pages. Enjoying yourself yet?

Sheikman’s art, along with O'Chua’s coloring, was a hit or miss with me. Some pages are clearly more detailed than others, and when it comes to futuristic landscapes or smoking deserts, the artwork is spot on. Buildings rise up into the clouds, flying mobiles zooming around them, or vast wastelands stretch out to the horizon, coupled by a pitch-perfect sky. But then a lot of the panels are merely talking heads with no backgrounds at all. Half the time the characters are barely colored in. There are a couple of "cover" shots that are impressive, but other than that I wished they had a more narrative feel to them. Seeing how one panel went to the next became a chore, especially when the action picked up. There are two bonus comics at the end, both drawn differently than the main work, and they are fairly enjoyable. They give some background information and offer complete stories where the others are part of a much larger epic.

Unfortunately, I can't recommend Robotika, especially at the price tag of $19.95. It's a story and world we've seen before (cough The Matrix cough), and there's little reasoning to care about those parading about in this adventure. Sheikman and O'Chua do have some interesting ideas here and there, but not enough to make their silent samurai and renegade robots stand tall above the competition.

Keeping It Real

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 11:35:37 -0500

To sum up Justina Robson's ultra-edgy, explosively musicpunk Keeping it Real with only keywords would look something like this: elves, rock shows, drugs, machines, demons, faeries, sex, Games, assassinations, magic, AI, conspiracies, a whole lot of andalune, and lastly, with capital fs, Futuristic Fun. And there's more to be listed. Being a novel of so many aspects, Robson crafts an adventure that is filled with legend, lore, love, and laughs with a steady hand. It both makes light of itself and takes things very seriously. To call the work anything but a ball of sheer originality would be an insult to pointy-eared elves everywhere.

But let's start with the Quantum Bomb of 2015, the catastrophe that changed everything for everyone. Of it, Robson claims:

The explosion had followed an unknown quantum catastrophe inside the machine. However, it was not the kind of explosion that blew matter to smithereens and laid waste to worlds. Its actions took place in the near-infinitely tiny spaces between one raw energy flicker and the next.

This explosion opens up five other realities previously unknown to Earth folk (Earth is no called Earth though, as it is now referred to as Otopia). Of these new ethereal regions, the most important is Alfheim, home to the elves. Now, these elves hate Otopian lifestyles and the constant comparisons to their film counterparts in such flicks as Lord of the Rings. They also hate any of their own that rebel. Enter Zal, the singing elf leader of the rock/Mode-X band The No Shows. Lila Black has been assigned to guard the rockstar while he's on tour as assassins are popping up left and right. But is there more to Zal than just a rebellious nature?

At first I found Agent Lila Black to be a bit familiar, almost strikingly to another Pyr title's robotic heroine: Cassandra Kresnov from Joel Shepherd's Crossover. But after mulling this over I began to see the differences. Where Cassandra is more of a robot with a yearning to be human, Lila's machinery is only from an unfortunate encounter with an elf on a battlefield. Becoming more of a machine was the only process that could save her life and she took it without a second thought. The part I always find interesting is that while these two heroines both seem to be perfectly built for each and every situation, they are not. Though they have access to indefinite information and enhanced weaponry, they are not perfect. They can still be human and err, making them much more believable and not just some gun-toting super-hottie.

Robson's pacing in the book is perfectly set, and there's a point towards the end of the book when everything happening is so heavy and tension-filled that I was reminded of how everything was only a few chapters back. Back then Zal was singing songs and Lila was making sure that only fans on the guest list were allowed to the special parties. Back then it was all business-related, with faeries giggling during band practice and Lila scouting out recording studios.

When I was a youngling, I read a lot of light fantasy and science fiction: Piers Anthony's Xanth series, Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, anything by Robert Aspirin, and even The Otherworld by Mercedes Lackey, Holly Lisle, and Mark Shepard. Where that book failed to impress on its mixture of the fantastical and the surreal, Keeping It Real shined. But please note that I'm not calling this work light at all. Though it has elves and demon groupies, it does have an underlying gritty feel to it. Unfortunately, it is another book in another series and so I must sit and wait for the next one. Until then, I encourage everyone to check out The No Shows' website, which is a nice tie-in into the novel.

Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:16:33 -0500

There are two things I need to mention up front: one, I generally read anthologies from front cover to back, and two, I never like every story I come across. Thus, I was surprised when I found myself pleasantly enjoying story after story in Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge edited by Lou Anders, an unthemed anthology of science fiction tales from many well-known names in the field. Rather than dwell on the few stories that didn't work for me, I'd like to take a look at the ones that really stood out. Let's call these gems, yes?

In Lou Anders' introduction to Fast Forward I, he references the 1950s Orbit series of anthologies edited by Damon Knight and another later series compiled by Frederik Pohl from 1966 to 1980. Unfortunately, both of these were well before my time and therefore are lost to me in terms of comparison. But what I found most interesting was Anders own take on science fiction: a tool for making sense of a changing world. Surprisingly, for a planned unthemed anthology, this premise appears numerous times in the stories of Fast Forward I, particularly in Justina Robson's "The Girl Hero's Mirror Says He's Not the One," Paolo Bacigalupi's "Small Offering," Stephen Baxter's "No More Stories," and Paul Di Filippo's "Wikiworld." Our world is constantly changing; how are we, as a people, to deal with it? Some of these authors have ideas how…

Fast Forward I opens quietly, with Robert Charles Wilson's "YFL-500" telling the devotional story of Gordo and the love he begins to feel for Iris, a woman whose coded dream gave him the inspiration to paint the acclaimed piece of art YFL-500. Set in the world of the Rationalization, a locality where humans are considered obsolete due to the precision and advances in robotics. This sort of future has been crafted many before, but what I found so eerily captivating about Wilson's take on it was just how calm and subdued humans were with their lives; there were no oppressive robots or evil henchmen or nasty overlords, just them and those considered obsolete living where they could off what little work they could do. Though the ending was a bit predictable after all the set-up, I found Gordo to be a strongly sympathetic character in a world where there was not a lot left but to try and love one another.

Paolo Bacigalupi's "Small Offering" is the most horrifying science fiction short story I've ever read. And for that fact alone you should read it. Dr. Lily Mendoza delivers babies in a future where delivering babies is more complex than ever. To say anymore would really ruin Bacigalupi's genius within, and so I sit here, urging you, you who is sitting there reading this, to pick up Fast Forward I, flip right to his story, and immerse yourself in one amazing, heart-wrenching, psychologically-damaging experiences one can craft with words.

Having only ever read Kage Baker's Company novels, I was excited to see a short story of hers in Fast Forward I that was set in a different world. We join Eugene Clifford, a teenage boy on an orbital spaceship above Earth, as he's running around serving to the Shooters. A new recruit, Charles Tead, has arrived though and it's Eugene's job to show him around. It's the Plotters job to find asteroids heading for Earth, plot their courses, and then inform Shooters who will take them out with superb precision. And it's just like high school: Shooters are jocks and jerks; Plotters are kids and twerps. But newbie Charles isn't going to be bullied around, planning to become a Shooter himself instead of a lowly Plotter. And Eugene might just suffer all the consequences. I enjoyed the harshness Baker poured into her Shooters, and Eugene, while mostly cowardly, does make for a decent hero in the end albeit Charles' doings.

Elizabeth Bear's "The Something-Dreaming Game" is based on the choking game that many teenagers and young children play to get a rush without using drugs. Bear's take on the "high" is something more otherworldly: Tara, a young girl with reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome, journeys elsewhere after playing the game where she meets Albert, an alien resembling a large centipede. And Albert needs Tara, needs her help. I enjoyed the absurdity that was the dream world where Tara went after playing the something-dreaming game, and Tara's mother, Jillian, definitely makes you feel for her situation. Bear's writing has always been stylistic, something of her own, and here it really shines. I just hope folks won't try playing "flat liner" (as I knew it when I was younger) in hopes of meeting aliens…

Ken MacLeod's "Jesus Christ, Reanimator" is both a light-hearted look at the blogosphere and the war while also questioning the nature of humanity. A man who is telling all he is Jesus Christ has descended upon the world. Some believe him to be a robot, others an alien. Many think he's just a liar looking for some time in the spotlight. A nameless journalist befriends Jesus after doing some interviews, hoping to find out the truth of the matter. Handled poorly, this type of story could be deemed trite and laughable, but MacLeod pours a lot of characterization into Jesus, making him into an almost cynical-yet-witty sort of person, which makes the ending all the more saddening. I'm not sure if I understood the politics of the story (and if there was something more to it than that, obviously I missed it), but I really enjoyed it regardless.

I will freely admit that I enjoy cat stories, even if the cats in them aren't quite normal felines. In Mary A. Turzillo's "Pride," Kevin is smuggling lab animals out of Franklin Agricultural College to prevent any more experiments from happening. He takes in one deformed cub that he names Jonesy, which he soon comes to learn is a bit too much to handle. This is silly fun, especially Kevin and Sara's "relationship," but has that hint of seriousness that makes it all worth it.

Can Gene Wolfe ever do wrong? I'll say no to that, but others might always disagree. In "The Hour of the Sheep," Tiero is writing a book suggested to him by the President-Protector. The story is not his own, being that of his father's, and he's having some trouble getting the words right. Tiero, the greatest swordsman alive, faulting with a pen! It's the classic story within a story, and though it fuses both aspects of science fiction tropes and epic fantasy staples, it works more than well. Wolfe knows how to weave both stories around one another, all while keeping Tiero the focus.

There's also two pieces of poetry wedged into Fast Forward I, but I'm not really big on poetry and therefore can't offer any kind of opinion on it. But it's there, for those that are interested. I can say this though: Fast Forward I is a great anthology, filled with numerous and diverse stories and is bound to please any fan of science fiction.

Pushing Ice

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 10:30:52 -0500

"Pushing Ice" is a first contact adventure story concerning the crew of the comet mining spaceship, Rockhopper. When Saturn's moon Janus mysteriously leaves its orbit to exit our solar system, the crew of the Rockhopper is tasked with interception and observation of the event. It's soon revealed that Janus is a massive alien artifact speeding home to it's native Spican base some 240 light years from Earth. The crew of the Rockhopper, lead by Captain Bella Lind, become castaways on Janus, but this is mostly the story of Bella's friendship gone awry with her chief engineer, Svetlana. The two women come to lead opposing factions and both take turns as sometimes benevolent and sometimes cruel dictators. Amidst the human conflict is the tension of survial in a inhospitable alien environment with limited energy and resources.

The novel is divided into three basic parts, getting to Janus, surviving on Janus and arriving at the Spican system. Getting to Janus is a gripping adventure with a neat idea- a moon is a huge alien machine, and the routine concept of corporate greed - oops, there's not enough fuel to get the Rockhopper back to Earth. There's some neat ideas about mining comets here, but left unexplained is how mining comet ice is exactly profitable. How does mining comets support a huge space ship with a crew of 145 members? The middle part of the book seemed bogged down by the human conflict, infodumps and techobabble. Thirteen years pass with Bella exiled in solitary confinement, and with little progess made in understanding the Janus technology. In the final third, the pace picks up again, as the castaways arrive in the Spician system, to find they are trapped in a super massive structure, along with other intelligent life, an interglactic zoo of sorts.

As a hard SF novel, "Pushing Ice" does not break any new ground. Relativity is explored as eons pass by with the Janus castaways moving into the far flung future, and is handled rather well. The hypothetical femotech for example doesn't suceed quite as well. A flexy is a future version of a P.D.A., but I'm still scratching my head as to what a HUD is. For this reader, the mark of a good Hard SF writer is the clarity of conveying real science, and hypothetical science in digestable form for a non-scientific audience. Mr. Reynolds at times is sucessful in the necessary clarity, but more often he is not. His previous novel, "Century Rain" was a very enjoyable alt-time travel adventure thriller with some fun ideas and likeable charactors. Here the charactors seem more roughly drawn as grey-shaded almost-heroes, or disposable and mostly interchangeable secondary charactors. As a space opera, "Pushing Ice" is successful in part, I did look forward to finding out how the novel would end, but I did feel somewhat disappointed at the conclusion. The last few action-packed chapters race long filled with the best and oddly mostly, unexplored ideas in the book. It almost feels like there's more to the story that is untold. It just starts getting interesting, then it ends too quickly. Throughtout the tale, the social dynamics of the castaways and the civilization they build is roughly sketched in sacrifice to the dueling female leads. And why exactly do the castaways keep one or the other of these bickering women in power decade after decade? Haven't they heard of elections?

The Swarm

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 06:57:14 -0500

There's nothing like reading a big, fat thriller novel every now and then. It's a specialised genre, with its own rules, and for me the pleasure comes not so much from any literary quality, but from the fast-paced action and laughable plot. Sometimes, over the top can be just right.

Frank Schatzing has followed the rules: he's taken some stock science fiction concepts unknown to the broader community, a large dose of science from magazine articles, thrown in some action, novel threats and a ticking clock. The Swarm has apparently been a successful seller in its original German and in translation.

I can't see why. Perhaps it captured some of the zeitgeist at the right time. But for me the intriguing story promised in the book's blurb was smothered by layer upon layer of bloat. The book would have been so much more enjoyable if it was half the size. Perhaps Schatzing was being paid by the word? Or the pound.

Schatzing can write some decent action scenes, and has some fun ideas, but the book is weighed down
by screeds of exposition, half-baked theorising, debates with straw men and authorial eco-haranging. I don't have a problem with any of these in moderation. And I certainly don't care about dodgy science or plot holes when I'm reading a pulp thriller. These books aren't supposed to make sense.

Normally if you're slumming in the thriller genre you look for a fat book, but if the thrill/page ratio drops, you just want to start skipping pages. Length isn't the problem, so much as the pace. The book needed some serious editing to make it move faster.

I don't need to tell you much about the book's plot. If you've read John Wyndham's book The Kraken Wakes, then you'll have a pretty good idea. Imagine a rewrite or sequel by a wannabe Michael Crichton.

Wyndham's novel featured a threat to the human race from beneath the sea, and I'm surprised that The Swarm didn't mention it, the author instead limiting his numerous submarine suspense references to cinema.

The Swarm is abysmal in every sense of the word, but I'm not giving it a zero because I found some mild entertainment from the creatures Schatzing created.

Crossover

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 11:07:34 -0400

The three Cassandra Kresnov books (Crossover, Breakaway, and Killswitch) have already seen print in Australia, but thanks to Pyr, a new science fiction and fantasy imprint from Prometheus Books, they are garnering new life in the United States.

Crossover introduces readers to Cassandra Kresnov, also nicknamed Sandy, who is an android, and one of the most deadly types—a GI, a literally killing machine. She, of course, appears to look nothing more than a regular human woman (except she's quite attractive), but the truth is she is extremely strong, has accelerated reflexes, and is almost far too smart for her own good. She used to fight for the League, a rebellious faction of sorts that take their plight out against the Federation. I say "used to fight" for a reason; Cassandra began to have doubts about her actions, something those that created her never even expected an android to have the capability to do. But they made her too smart, too human. And she defected.

Cassandra takes refuge in Tanusha, a city resembling a mix of the new and the old, where she hopes to find a job, maybe a boyfriend, and a new way of life. A quiet life, one without all the killing and bloodshed and fear. Things seem to be looking up for her until a government agency moves in and kidnaps her, thoughts of immoral experiments at the forefront of their minds. Who will save her now?

Shepherd takes on, for a first novel, a number of interesting subjects. There's political warfare, governmental corruption, and the ethics concerning the treatment of androids. As cliché as the notion of the League fighting the Federation (where has that shown up before?), the people fighting these struggles are so real that the reader can only believe what they are experiencing. Add the fact that Shepherd isn't afraid to populate his cities with multiethnic characters and we have one very realistic world set in a future of flying cars, super dangerous GIs, and more.

While I felt that the story started out a little slow, once Cassandra gets kidnapped things really pick up. Despite a couple of issues I had with Shepherd's writing style, the story flows from there on with little to no slowdown. The world in Crossover is futuristic, and yet, at the same time, a throwback to older days. From the cover alone I imagined a city similar to that found in Ghost in the Shell and I was not disappointed by what I experienced. Though both contain robotic folks and a high-speed world, Crossover is different enough to not be seen as a simple copy of something that's already been done.

Some of the most fascinating scenes in Crossover are those without much "action"; Cassandra going over things in her head after being put back together from the dissection experiements performed by the government agency that kidnapped her, a courtroom drama where she lets her sarcasms spew out of her, the moment when she connects with characters and begins to form that clicky connection humans call friendship.

The prominent theme of Crossover is what makes a human, well, human, and what better way to explore this than through the mind of a lifelike android. It's been explored countless times in myriad mediums. What makes Shepherd's take different? His characters, especially Cassandra, they are what's worth reading for. Check out Crossover; it's a fun sci-fi thriller that is brimming with ideas and questions. Very enjoyable.

Tumbling After

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 09:45:32 -0400

Paul Witcover's first novel Waking Beauty was published in 1997, his second novel, Tumbling After, was published in 2005. Needless to say he likes to take his time between publications. But to be honest, we, the readers are better off for it. When news of a Witcover book getting published is announced it’s almost a certainty that it is going to be of the highest of quality. The downside of his low output is that his name isn't mentioned as often as it should be in conversations about those writers who are expanding the boundaries of what Fantasy could be.

Tumbling After is not only a meticulously crafted tale but a gorgeously written one as well. There are two main story threads throughout the book. One tells the tale of twins Jack and Jilly and how they spend one summer at the beach with their older sister, Ellen, and there young pot smoking uncle who has designed a role playing game to compete with Dungeons & Dragons called Mutes & Norms. As is common with twins, Jack & Jilly have a close and at times near telepathic relationship. After having a near fatal swimming accident in the ocean Jack appears to have awakened in himself the ability to manipulate the present. More specifically he appears to have opened up alternate presents that he can bring up and enter into during times of duress. Subtle things will be altered in the "present" he is in, but all of his memories from all of the timelines are still in him. The second tale tells us about Kestrel, an arie, and the other races that are included in his pentad; a delph, a boggle, a mander and a merm. The five races were created after The Viral Wars and are united against a common enemy, the norms. We learn of their mandatory quest into the wastelands to search out roving bands of norms and gather information.

His absence from that crowd had been a kind of presence in the minds of those who’d missed him, just as the presence of the mornings vanished throng is sensible to him now in the starkness of their absence, the silence and stillness of the square broken by the desultory barking of a dog, the grinding if a carriage wheel over the cobblestones from somewhere behind him, the cooing of pigeons as they search for spilled food, the brilliantly colored strips of paper rustling upon the door like the fluttering wings of impaled butterflies.

Peppered throughout the narrative are sufficient clues to indicate that the two separate threads are in fact linked. The link in fact is established early so part of the reading experience comes from waiting for the inevitable convergence of the two story lines. Both Jack & Jilly's and Kestrel's worlds are superbly rendered and are presented with enough detail to really flesh them out and bring into doubt the assumption that Kestrel's is the "fantasy" and Jack's is the "real".

Jack & Jilly’s relationship is impeccably rendered. The nuances of the close relationship that they share are fully explored and developed and in the case of some of the “alternate” worlds that are created taken to its farthest extreme. The closeness of twins often comes at the detriment of creating solid relationships with others; there is a distance that they feel towards others that is readily underscored by the link felt with the sibling. This poses a striking dichotomy of personalities, who they are with each other is often far different then who they are with others and even just when others are around. Others will sometimes feel a level of animosity towards the twins sometimes out of jealousy and other times because outsiders just don’t understand the relationship. The full spectrum of these relationships and personalities are explored adding new levels of depth when compared side by side with Kestrel’s world and how they all relate to the role playing game Mutes & Norms.

Ellen’s age won her the leadership of Jack and Jilly’s play group, and the pleasures she took in her position of authority was enhanced by the many opportunities it afforded for petty revenge, that stubbed toe not forgotten for one minute, nor any of the thousand and one other slights she kept sharpened on the whetstone of memory for just such occasions, an arsenal of knives that were all blade, wounding her as she held them…which only made her grip them tighter, with a martyrs’ zeal, as if the shedding of her own blood blessed her with the moral right to make others bleed.

The final chapter of the book was daring, brave and one moment was downright shocking, which says a lot since I just recently read the Phineas Poe trilogy. This probably proves the rule that less is more. From early on I had guesses as to how the book was going to end and I'm happy to report that I was completely wrong on all my guesses. Witcover really leaped into the abyss with the final chapter, he took a chance, gambled everything and won big, coming away from the table with a better book in the process for not taking any of the safe paths.

Tumbling After is a quality example of the new breed of fantasy, the one that is going past the established boundaries of the conventional in a concerted effort to break down the borders. It shows that all things are possible, that fantasy doesn't have to fit a certain mold or for that matter any mold. By rights anything SHOULD be possible in fantasy though far too often we see redundancies by authors unwilling to take chances and create something new. Tumbling After reaffirms my faith in the genre.

-Brian Lindenmuth

Forbidden Cargo

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 23:53:22 -0400

Forbidden Cargo is a compelling political saga about two Imagofas from Mars. Twenty-one embryos were bio-engineered producing the next step in human evolution; they are called Imagofas. There are those on Earth who believe they are a threat to human existence. They will stop at nothing to destroy them and their creators.

Creid Xerkler is determined to save Sashimu and Thesni from the Council. With time running out, his wife’s determination to capture them, and his former employer’s resolve to kill them, he asks the Cadet for assistance. Will it be enough? Or will two innocent lives be destroyed due to a political power game?

Rebecca K. Rowe deftly depicts the political games that transpire within government institutions and science. She has created a future where science has the ability to improve the human condition, but ignorance and fear may eradicate it. Forbidden Cargo is a fast-paced, evocative tale of trust, hope, and betrayal.

The theme of otherness is tackled in this futuristic tale of propaganda, panic, and evolution. The Imagofas are despised and to be eliminated because they are different. In a future when the religions have united and territorial wars are over, the DNA differences found in Sashimu and Thesni bring the ancient terror and loathing of others back.

The characters are fully developed and add to this story of otherness and politics. Sashimu and Thesni’s plight captured my imagination and heart. They touched me profoundly with their humanity despite their genetic differences as Imagofas. The prose throughout Forbidden Cargo is powerful and gripping. Rebecca K. Rowe paints the future with concise words and descriptions.

The Clan Corporate

Sun, 27 Aug 2006 13:29:10 -0400

The Clan Corporate by Charles Stross, the third book in the Merchant Princes series, continues to follow journalist Miriam Beckstein. In the previous installments, Miriam discovered she actually belonged to a family of "world-walkers," a clan of sorts that lived in a parallel world and all had the ability to travel between other realms. Each world is both similar and different than the next, some more dangerous and others quite primitive. On Miriam's "home" world, her mother is being held hostage with hopes that Miriam will force herself into a marriage that would unite the Clan with a politically-advanced family. But Miriam's ex-boyfriend, Mike Fleming, a DEA agent with attitude, is hired to infiltrate these other worlds on the orders of Homeland Security. What Fleming discovers is truly horrifying; the Clan has planted nuclear weapons on our own world…

The Clan Corporate opens veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery sloooooooooooowly, almost to the point that I wanted to skip ahead just to get to some action scenes. There's a lot of scene setting and heaven help you if you didn’t read The Family Trade or The Hidden Family. The book is split between Miriam and Mike Fleming; Miriam, at times, is a bit too stupid to be believable, but otherwise it's her being annoyed at her confinement to the "home" world. She wants to travel back, to escape. A lot of the time it felt like she was just following orders and going through the motions, a bit too passive. After two books, I'd have liked to see more growth in her. I found Fleming, magically and conveniently an ex-lover of Miriam's, to be much more interesting. He's active, curious, and certainly no idiot.

A couple characters are simply typecasted as evildoers, and others are such snooty snobs that I could imagine seeing all the way up their upturned noses. Much of The Clan Corporate's first chapters involving Miriam are so heavily laden with proper etiquette rituals that reading became more of a chore than a joy. We learn very little about the New Britain business family that we already knew from previous books. It's a shame as Stross has a plethora of material and characters to work with, but seems content to let things happen as they are with no strong defense to back up actions and results.

As a staple in this series, the book ends on a cliffhanger but a darn good one. The next entry from Stross promises to be triple—no quadruple—the action and excitement that The Clan Corporate was not. So stay tuned for at least that one!

The Berserker Throne

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:43:23 -0400

I had heard from a little Internet birdie that The Berserker Throne was as good as any place to dive into Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker series, and so when I found a free copy online at Baen’s Free Library I decided to give it a chance. And, well, I’m glad that I did.

Chen Shizuoka stages a prankish demonstration during the Holiday of Life festival in the name of the recently exiled Prince Harivarman. Unfortunately, moments after the demonstration goes through without a hitch, the Empress of the Eight Worlds is assassinated. Meanwhile, Anne Blenheim, the newest commander to the Fortress where the Prince is being held, clearly sees him as a conspirator in the atrocious events. Not to mention that Beatrix, the Prince’s wife he never actually divorced to marry the Empress, is back and a bit scorned. But during one of his time-passing archeological digs in some old houses, he discovers an abandoned yet operable berserker, a sort of android that has been plaguing their kind for many years. Now he has a choice; use the information inside the berserker to destroy the rest of them or bully his way back into power?

The Berserker Throne is fast-paced, opening with the Holiday of Life festival and within a few pages, having Chen chased through the streets by unseen forces, enlisted into the Templars, and being transplanted off the planet. The writing is crisp and clean, with strong descriptions and a substantial amount of historical details. Clearly, as this book is somewhere toward the middle of the series, a lot might need explaining but it never felt like too much at once. Saberhagen has a way of presenting a future that is both ahead of the times and a bit archaic; it’s a refreshing take on the space opera genre, and he even manages to throw in some fantasy bits along the lines of royalty and Templar soldiers/knights.

Chapters are divided between Chen, Harivarman, Anne Blenheim, and several other characters, making the reading a fun if disjointed affair. Saberhagen’s two strongest characters—the exiled Prince Harivarman and stern Commander Blenheim—are wonderfully deep, and when together in a scene, dripping with emotion. Chen is a typical youngster, lost in the world and running away from everything, but he does what he’s meant to do—stir up trouble and act confused. Later on, several characters introduced in the beginning of The Berserker Throne come out to play bigger, more important roles. It was a nice surprise.

I haven’t read any other books in this series, but after enjoying The Berserker Throne so thoroughly, I think I’ll have to put them on my list of future reading. There are deadly robots, spaceships, betrayal, and much more. Check it out online for free, and if you really like it, there are plenty of other books in the series to keep you busy.