Have you ever wondered what it would be like to work for a supervillain? To be one of the behind-the-scenes workers on the Death Star, a maintenance pHave you ever wondered what it would be like to work for a supervillain? To be one of the behind-the-scenes workers on the Death Star, a maintenance person on the Doomsday laser satellite or a janitor in the antagonist's secret moonbase lair?
Well, wonder no more. Natalie Zina Walschot's Hench is the story of one of those people.
Protagonist Anna is a Hench- an employee of one of many of the world's supervillains, in a scenario where super-powered people are common.@@ is a data cruncher for hire, specialising in working for the world's most dangerous super-powered evil-doers. She's a quick draw with a spreadsheet and deadly accurate with a data set, doing the down and dirty Microsoft excel work that keeps the world-threatening weapons and evil plots of her employers going.
As the story begins she is temping, signing on for odd data jobs with the world's worst baddies, and barely scraping a living doing so. Inevitably, Anna's fairly safe, back-office existence isn't something that will last and she meets the pointy end of superpowered violence, where henches are treated like they are disposable. From here, Anna embarks on a journey that might just see her becoming fairly villainous herself...
Much like The Boys, this is a world where superhero collateral damage has been crippling bodies and wrecking lives for decades. Actually, while I didn't get this feeling while I was reading the novel, there are a few commonalities with Garth Ennis's comic series and the recent Amazon adaptation. These similarities don't detract from the story though - if anything The Boys has done some groundwork for novels like this one, making it much easier to drop into the author's super-powered world and understand the civilian-crippling ramifications of supes chucking cars around in built-up areas.
There's almost a progression fantasy element here, as Anna becomes more competent, more trusted by her villainous employer and all-around more dangerous. This presented a bit of a narrative quandary for me, as the sections of the story where Anna is up against it - as a temp who does odd jobs for the worst villains in the world - are more rewarding than the later sections where she is more successful. As the novel
It's a fun read, and well-written. Anna's narrative pulled me through her chapters at breakneck pace, and there's plenty of comedy too. If I was going to sum it up, I would say it's almost The Boys, crossed with a little bit of The Office.
There's a subplot that isn't satisfactorily resolved that I assume will be dealt with in the soon to be released sequel, and the end kind of came up quickly, but this is a fun novel that is well worth your time.
Four henches - whose super-powered injury risk is far above their level of insurance coverage - out of five....more
Really, he has too much talent for one man. I'm starting to think that he's some sort of distributed inteAdrian Tchaikovsky is disgracefully talented.
Really, he has too much talent for one man. I'm starting to think that he's some sort of distributed intelligence, like his sentient swarm of bees in Dogs of War. It wouldn't surprise me if there were fifty identical cloned Adrians, all tapping away at laptops in some underground lab, their linked minds producing some of the most interesting SF of the 21st century. At the rate he publishes, it seems the hive mind is growing and I expect that in a century or so we will all be Adrain and we will be legion.
Anyway, the Tchaive-mind aside, Bear Head is another slam dunk from Tchaikovsky, a funny, entertaining and pacey follow up to his 2017 novel Dogs of War. Several of the characters from that book play central roles in the sequel. (Have you read Dogs of War? You really should. It's a kickass novel, and reading it prior to Bear Head is advisable.)
Most of the action in Bear Head takes place on Mars. Our protagonist there is Jimmy, a bioengineered worker building the Martian future, or at least that's what he is supposed to be doing. In reality he's a demotivated, drug-abusing slacker, more interested in his next hit than laying the foundations for future colonists.
No spoilers, but Honey, the bioform bear from Dogs of War features, as does Bees, the swarm of sentient bees that Tchaikovsky clearly based on his own literary hive mind. HumOS, and a few others play roles too.
The stakes are, of course, high.
Back on Earth a dangerous politician named Thompson - a Trump analogue as mendacious and sociopathic as the tangerine bell-end himself - and his evil machinations are threatening to bring back the worst of the anti-bioform bigotry of the past, along with fascistic mental shackles for normal human beings.
His nasty plans, and the Martian colony, will intersect in ways that will surprise and enthrall you.
This is a great read, and yet another standout novel from one of the great talents of contemporary SF.
I really wish T.R Napper had written Bishop in the early 90s.
Bishop is the sequel Alien 3 should have had. When time travel is a thing, I’ll be startiI really wish T.R Napper had written Bishop in the early 90s.
Bishop is the sequel Alien 3 should have had. When time travel is a thing, I’ll be starting a gofundme to send Napper back to ‘95 to prevent the Alien films from disastrously going off the rails.
Bishop is true to the first three films, fits perfectly into the Alien universe, and gives us a story far, far superior to the ‘97 disaster that was Alien Resurrection.
Napper’s novel is pacey, fun, hits all the right notes and carries many of the hallmarks of his work – diverse and interesting characters, A+ kinetic action scenes, An Aussie in a prominent role, and an unerring ability to keep a reader turning the pages.
As you’d expect from the title, the story concerns the android Bishop, wrecked by the alien queen in Aliens and left for dead in Alien 3. His story continues here, as the colonial marines seek him and the data on the xenomorph that his synthetic brain contains. We follow Aussie marine Kari Lee and… actually, just read the novel. I don’t want to spoil it.
If, like me, you’ve seen Aliens 10+ times (I lay in bed as a child covering my mouth so a facehugger couldn’t get me, so maybe I saw it a little too young), or even if you just love a good action-heavy, plot-driven SF novel every so often, you’re going to love this book. It’s not what I would call a thinky novel, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun, and exactly what I hoped for when I read its blurb.
Five Xenomorphs/Aliens/Space Beasts out of five.
P.S: I saw Alien Resurrection at the cinema when it came out. I - a 17 year old schoolkid - used money saved from my part-time job to see my favorite franchise murdered in a hail of hot cinematic garbage.
Join my gofundme - napperbackto95 - and you can help right the wrong that was done to that innocent, trusting teen.
P.S.S. The gofundme will be live when time travel is a thing....more
How I imagine Adrian Tchaikovsky's publisher selling his books:
You, The Average Reader are strolling down a darkened street, when The Publisher, an unHow I imagine Adrian Tchaikovsky's publisher selling his books:
You, The Average Reader are strolling down a darkened street, when The Publisher, an unshaven, seedy looking fellow in a trenchcoat and battered fedora steps out from a shadowy doorway. He signals for your attention.
"Hey! You! Psst! You look like someone who can handle a bit of reading. You looking for some serious action?"
The Publisher pulls a copy of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Dogs of War from the satchel he is holding and shoves it out towards you.
"Tchaikovsky. Pharmaceutical grade SF. All the action you could want. Strong stuff mate, hardback first edition.”
You make some excuses while you look around for assistance, claiming you have become jaded, need a break from more kinetic novels, etc. The Publisher nods in vigorous agreement, undeterred by your protests, and puts the novel away.
"Right you are, right you are my friend. I can tell you're a connoisseur. How about something to really get your imagination off, make you think some big thoughts about the universe and your place in it?"
The Publisher sidles closer, and opens the right side of his trenchcoat to reveal a copy of Children of Time.
“This is a real head trip this one. A consciousness expander. A little Watership Down, a bit Rats of Nimh but in space, you dig? Bit of action? Some very cool sequences of spiders evolving? Meditations on the nature of intelligence, inter-species cultural clashes… you’ll be spinning after one of these, my friend!”
You, The Average Reader , make some generic noises about not being fond of spiders. The Publisher is undeterred, and taps his nose knowingly.
"Alright, alright, I see ya, I see what you want. Maybe..." The Publisher glances around before opening the left side of his coat to reveal Children of Ruin "... your tastes run more to smart seafood?"
You wave The Publisher off, claiming to not be interested in talking animals, or smart animals in general. A flash of irritation crossed his face as he puts the book back in his coat. He nods to himself, then reaches behind his back, pulling out something he had stuffed down the back of his trousers. Carefuly, making sure there is no-one else around to see it, he turns a book in the dim streetlight, until you can make out the title: Children of Memory.
“OK, this is the special stuff I keep for veterans like yourself. Real top-shelf, 150-proof, blow-your-socks-off shit. Minimal talking animals. Maximal thinkage. The nature of consciousness. The multiplicity of the self. Questioning the very foundations of what it is to be a cogniscent being!”
You, the Average Reader, look down at the shiny paperback in the Publisher’s hands. It looks great. Cool cover art. Not too thick, but no emaciated novella either. At the back of your mind a tickle starts, the memory of how all Tchaikovsky’s other books have made you feel, that mixture of excitement, anticipation, and awe at his audacious imagination. You speak.
“How much?”
The Publisher breaks into a gap-toothed grin, knowing both a sale and an addict when he sees them.
“For you? RRP is £9.99, but you have an Aussie accent, so that will be $24.90. Cash or Paywave?”
***
P.S: Actual review: There are few SF writers as consistently good as Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Iain M. Banks comes to mind, as does Adam Roberts, but it's an elite field, that of authors who smash out book after brilliant book, each of them entertaining, thoughtful and beautifully written.
As you've probably guessed, I liked Children of Memory. It's a solid follow up to the brilliant Children of Time (one of the best SF works of this century IMHO) and the damn fine novel Children of Ruin.
It's a little more slow-moving that either of the two others in the series, but it's worth it as the story builds and Tchaikovsky develops the ideas that underpin this thinky novel that asks some very interesting questions about sentience, personhood and intelligence.
P.S.S: I bought all the novels mentioned here, and loved every single one. Adrian's publisher has me hooked.
This is a Neal Asher novella, with all the welcome hallmarks of such.
If you've read Asher's work you know what to expect. Cool tech, some impressive fThis is a Neal Asher novella, with all the welcome hallmarks of such.
If you've read Asher's work you know what to expect. Cool tech, some impressive firefights, some very nice 'splosions and his usual consummate worldbuilding. I've read a pile of Asher's books, and he always tells a solid yarn. In The Bosch he packs a hell of a lot into 21,000 words, spinning a compelling story with some very memorable set pieces.
Far in the future, far from Earth, some people have come to Yoon's world. She's been there a long time, so long in fact that she has kind of forgotten who she is, living among the sea creatures of her strange land.
When these people abduct her from the beach, then brutally assault her in the most vicious and calculating way, they kick off a process that will begin with Yoon rediscovering herself, and end with her seeking vengeance in the most terrible manner.
Her assailants have made a grave mistake, as Yoon is more than just a person - she is the founder and avatar of the world she lives on, possessed of enormous power over herself and the planet she calls her own.
And so we follow her on her mission of vengeance.
And what a vengeance it is. The titular Bosch are monstrous creations of hers, creatures of legend on her world, and with them and an off-world companion in tow we go on a tour of Yoon's strange world, catching glimpses of the strange galaxy beyond and the politics she has been drawn into.
This is a hell of a fun read, something you could knock off in an afternoon over a couple of pots of tea. If you're looking for something fun, pacey and bite-sized you can't go wrong with The Bosch.
Four monstrous bio-tech horrors out of five....more
Robert Charles Wilson is an author who works with stunning concepts. As I LOVE a good concept novel he has quickly become someone whose new works I goRobert Charles Wilson is an author who works with stunning concepts. As I LOVE a good concept novel he has quickly become someone whose new works I gobble up.
Last Year, his story of interdimensional time-tourism/exploitation, set entirely in 19th century America is one of my favorite SF novels of the last two years, and Bios, one of his earlier books, is a very memorable and poignant story of a uniquely hostile world and the people trying to survive on it.
The Affinities is another such concept driven novel, inspired it seems by the question 'What if the tribalism of social media was replicated in the real world, among large groups of similarly minded people'?
Adam Fisk is a young man at a bit of a loose end. His domineering father is about to cut off family support for his university fees, he's in a relationship that is going nowhere, and has no real idea what to do with his life. (His dad is a little bit of a conservative-asshole-father cliche, but hey, those people do exist, in numbers, sadly)
Adam has heard of the Affinities, new groups based on shared mental outlooks that have been variously described as either cults of the next and greatest step for human cooperation.
Adam takes the patented Affinity test, and finds himself eligible to join the most prestigious of the groups- a faction full of motivated movers and shakers known as Tau.
Almost immediately, Adam's life is changed.
His new connections in Tau find him work, a place to live, friends, lovers and a driving purpose in life.
Much like the old Freemason societies were rumored to work - members would always help a fellow Mason - the people of Tau look after each other.
Of course, while these groups are great for their members, their existence threatens both established political power bases and all of the people whose in-affinity precludes them from joining.
Add to this the corporate ownership of the tests that bring people into the Affintites, and a tendency towards militarism and violence in one of Tau's rivals and the story is set for conflict, tension and societal change.
And so it goes.
Wilson knows how to craft a story. He knows how to write a compelling voice. And he knows how to tie it all together, so The Affinities is pacey, engaging read. It's fairly short too, so it isn't going to cut a massive slab out of your reading time.
The story ends a little abruptly for my taste, and with an indeterminate and uncertain ending that will frustrate some, but this is otherwise a solid novel exploring an interesting concept - pure Robert Charles Wilson as I've come to love him. It doesn't threaten Last Year as my favorite of his books, but it's a fine read nonetheless.
Three and a half irritatingly clique-y, "OMG, we are so all on the same page, bro!" social groups out of five....more
If you're an SF fan, particularly if you're an Australian SF, fan you really must read Lotus Blue .
Cat Sparks is a hell of a worldbuilder and her postIf you're an SF fan, particularly if you're an Australian SF, fan you really must read Lotus Blue .
Cat Sparks is a hell of a worldbuilder and her post-apocalyptic Australia drips with atmosphere, tension and great ideas.
Wheeled sailing ships navigate a black sea of glass that was once a city, caravans of hard-bitten traders crawl across the blasted deserts, and the lethal relics of conflicts past both litter and roam the landscape, still taking lives centuries after their creation.
Star is a young woman living on one such caravan, riding its rocking wagons across the endless wastelands between the remaining human settlements. SHe's bored with her life of travel with her medico sister, and has plans to abandon the caravan at its next stop, to seek a life that is more than helping her sister bandaging hurt caravaneers.
While Star wrestles with how and when to abandon her travelling family, at a distant underground city - a relic of the pre-war times - a battered Templar supersoldier is being sent on a mission, his war-wracked and ancient body driving him forward on one final mission.
Another ancient is waiting out her many years at an old communications base, tending to a flock of followers that have gathered around her while wondering if she will ever see her equally old lost lover again.
All of them will find themselves facing a terrible threat of awesome power. An ancient war machine has reawakened, and its malevolent growth will draw all to it, where the future of the dark future could be decided.
This is a real page turner of a novel, with a pace that never slackens and an engine of imaginative ideas that brings to mind the best of dystopian SF. There are scenes of violence and grimness, but they never overwhelm the underlying sense of hope that leavens the bleak bread of Sparks' apocalypse, and makes this novel much more than just another post-apocalyptic SF dirge. Sparks can write, and she pulls the reader along through the story, raising the stakes and keeping the tension high, all the while showing us the wonderfully vivid world she has created.
Grab a copy, and shelve it next to Sean William's Metal Fatigue and T.R Napper's 36 Streets. Lotus Blue fits well among the best of Australian Science Fiction.
Five limping but still deadly supersoldiers out of five....more
36 Streets, winner of an armload of awards, is one of Australian SF's best novels, and it's a real treat to be able T.R Napper is on a hell of a roll.
36 Streets, winner of an armload of awards, is one of Australian SF's best novels, and it's a real treat to be able to explore the Napperverse further in Neon Leviathan.
Like 36 Streets this is Cyberpunk-y as hell, with most of the stories full of heat, sweat, hardscrabble lives and normal people trying to make it in a tough and largely uncaring future.
There's a lovely Aussie feel to many of Napper's stories that really appeals to me, beyond 'hey, that's my town!'. (Although some of the stories are set in Melbourne, and he clearly knows my city well) His characters ring true, in both their humanity and their essential Aussie-ness. Their voices are very distinct, lending each story its own tone. Napper has a gift for a fine turn of phrase too, and allied with his narrative skills, well, it's a pretty strong combination.
Among the 12 stories in this collection there are some real standouts. For my money the story of a gambler being extorted by an inter-dimensional bookie is one of the most memorable - it's a hell of piece of writing and months after reading it it's still vivid in my memory. There's also a very memorable story about rich people's teeth, and a real trip of a VR story largely set in a fearsome mega-tank.
This is cyberpunk, so of course there's vein of bleak running through these stories, but there is also hope and humour too, so they don't feel one-note or endlessly pessimistic like some other visions of the dark future can (hello, Black Mirror!).
In short, this is a real winner of a collection. Get a copy. It's well worth your time.
Five hard-as-nails underworld denizens out of five....more
I shallowly judged him on the covers of his books and pegged him as Military Science Fiction (MilSF) of the cheesier varI was wrong about David Drake.
I shallowly judged him on the covers of his books and pegged him as Military Science Fiction (MilSF) of the cheesier variety.
If you haven't read any cheesy MilSF you've missed out on all sorts of fun dialogue that reads like this:
"Damn the capacitors - overcharge the light-cannon/beam weapon/luminosity-ray!"
"Load a full drum of similies for 'laser' into the multi-barrelled photon blaster!"
"Captain! The hull can't hold up under the relentless barrage of the don't-call-it-a-laser, laser!"
You get the idea. I've largely kept me away from this sub-genre of SF, with a couple of notable exceptions.
David Drake should have been one of those exceptions long before now. This is military tinged SF of the best kind, full of nuance, thoughtfulness and explorations of the nature and impacts of war, intended and otherwise.
There's a lot to love here.
Like Joe Haldeman, another gifted writer of his generation, David Drake is a Vietnam veteran. Both he and Haldeman have to my reader's eye a rare skill in depicting the realities of war in ways with a greater degree of verisimilitude than many other SF writers. The Forever War is the classic example that comes to mind for Haldeman, but other stories of his, such as A Mind of His Own from the collection Infinite Dreams have a poignancy and impact that few mil-sf stories have.
So it is with Drake. Drake's battlefield is a full-spectrum sensory overload of an experience. Soldiers bake in the heat radiating from their weapons, they choke on the chemical tang of spent propellant that wafts through their vehicles and their retinas pulse with the blasts of light that devastating attacks burn into their eyes.
They sit uncomfortably at their posts, itching in armor they dare not remove, deathly bored with surveying expanses of enemy territory that they dare not lose their focus on. Violence, when it comes, is sudden and vicious, death the same, and both pick their targets arbitrarily.
A soldier in Drake's world can be a born warrior, a leader of men and a master of all the military arts... and a random bullet can cut him down just as easily as it fells a first-day greenhorn trooper with no idea. Here art imitates the life that Drake witnessed in Vietnam I suspect.
Even when things do go well, unintended consequences abound. Collateral damage, the destruction of priceless cultural treasures, everything up to and including accidental genocide. Again, art imitates life.
There are a whole heap of stories in here, and honestly, there isn't a bad one. They all have something to say and an interesting and engaging way of saying it. I could go through and summarise them but I think you'll enjoy them more if you go in as I did - with no expectations and no spoilers.
If you're in any way interested in MilSF, or in stories about the experiences of soldiers at war, read this book. I enjoyed Hammer's Slammers waaaaaaay more than I expected to and I'm really looking forward to reading more of Drake's work.
Four and a half overloaded laser cannons (they're going critical, Captain!) out of five....more
Have you ever felt that one of your dreams is more substantial than your everyday reality?
I have a recurring school examination nightmare so regularlyHave you ever felt that one of your dreams is more substantial than your everyday reality?
I have a recurring school examination nightmare so regularly that it feels more memory than dream, so Serge Brussolo's The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome - a tale of dreams and dreamworlds that blur the line between sleep and reality - resonated with me. It helped of course that it's a damned fun novel, a quick and entertaining read with a story that rapidly sucks you into to Brusselo's world.
Protagonist David Sarella is a medium, a person who can descend into his own dreams and bring objects back from them. These objects manifest themselves as living blobs of ectoplasm (AKA - to me anyway - 'ghost snot') that pour forth from the dreamers nose and mouth like strange smoke, forming strange sculptural shapes that are coveted by museums and collectors. Everyone who views these objects sees something slightly different, and the effect of viewing them is entrancing.
These shapes are sold on the art market for huge prices, and their amorphous, alluring nature has made them the only art anyone is interested in - traditional painting, sculpture, etc. are now worthless, seen as completely passe.
For David and other medium-dreamers, entering the dream world is akin to visiting the bottom of the ocean, and the deeper they go, the greater the risks and rewards. Descending into the dream world is no easy thing. To get the best work mediums like David must sleep for days, even weeks, with medical help on hand to keep them alive. Even worse, the dream worlds each dreamer enters are shockingly real, populated with people David cares about, people who seem to suffer when he is away from his dreams for too long.
The more a medium dreams, the more likely he will succumb to the Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome - a desire to spend more and more time in his dreams, until he burns out his ability to dream at all, or dies alone and dehydrated while on a weeks-long dive. David's dream world is one where he is the leader of a heist crew who pull of daring raids on jewellery stores, safes and museums and where he lives a glamorous life of crime and nail-biting police chases. His real life, where his dream sculptures are unappreciated and his daily life is dull, simply can't compare.
Anyway, I don't do the elegance of Brusselo's world justice here, but suffice to say it's a beautifully realized scenario that he uses to tell a very entertaining story, of an almost burned-out man whose line between reality and dreams is becoming very thin. Brusselo tells a damn fine story, and with a knack for deft description and poetic language that makes him a pleasure to read. If The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome is any indication, then he has an interesting style and would be difficult to assign a genre to - this novel is a little magical realist and a little Scifi, but to my mind not conclusively either.
Some reviewers have pointed out the Sarella's life is an allegory for the life of a novelist like Brusselo - he spends his time pulling objects from his imagination to give to the masses, who consume them without appreciating the labour that has gone into them. This didn't occur to me during my read-through, but I love it and it fits the novel well.
Overall, this book gets a strong recommendation from me. I stayed up late with the The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome, and I can see why Brusselo has the reputation he does in the Francophone world, where his work has been wildly successful.
Four acclaimed sculptures made from congealed ghost-snot out of five....more
It's a real shame that Gore Vidal didn't go all in on Science Fiction, bringing Glocks and mobile phones into his visions of the past.
If he had, I recIt's a real shame that Gore Vidal didn't go all in on Science Fiction, bringing Glocks and mobile phones into his visions of the past.
If he had, I reckon he would have written something like Robert Charles Wilson's Last Year.
This is A-grade stuff, SF/Historical fiction of the first order. I've read plenty of historical fiction and even one - Vidal's 1876 - set in the same year as Wilson's novel, and Last Year captures the vibe of that era perfectly.
Last Year is set in an 1876 where visitors from our time are able to cross both the years and the multiverse to visit the pasts of near identical realities, without impacting our own present. Due to limitations in the tech, the 1800s are the easiest era a portal can be opened to, so throngs of people pony up big bucks to experience the old-timey USA up close and personal in all it's glory and ugliness (mostly, it's ugliness).
As you would expect, this technology has been monopolized and commercialized by rapacious corporate interests, who have used it to make like bandits, charging top dollar to tourists wanting to visit the past, and shipping tonnes of ill-gotten gold back to the present. The corporate behemoth behind the program runs on a five year program. It opens a portal to the past of another timeline, floods it with tourists, ships out the gold then at the half-decade mark closes the portal before the influence it has wreaked on the past makes it so different that no-one wants to visit anymore.
As the story opens, our protagonist, local-born man Jesse Cullum, is standing guard outside the buildings that house the time portal, wearing his treasured possession from the future - a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Ulysses S. Grant is on his way to visit the time portal and speak with the future folk, and as you can probably guess, his visit doesn't go entirely smoothly. Jesse finds himself propelled into the machinations of the time travel company, and paired up with a scandalously liberated 21st century ex-soldier named Elizabeth. Together they will have to navigate the dangers of the past, while dealing with the demands of the company from the future as it prepares to abandon Jesse's reality.
From here, the story is fantastic fun, and it races along like a river in flood.
Wilson's genius is to make the main character a person from 1876, instead of one of the gawking tourists leering at the nineteenth century zoo. Jesse is a great character to follow through the story, his 19th century values and attitudes making him a compelling witness to the both the socially liberal travellers from our time and the ruthlessness of the time portal organisation. Wisely, the action stays in the past, never showing us our own future, which is revealed to Jesse through the stories he overhears from tourists and in the cultural flotsam (and some very dangerous jetsam) from our age that is beginning to alter his. In one memorable scene a dealer in peculiarities tries to sell Jesse a bootleg copy of Stephen King's The Shining, reprinted from a book accidentally left behind by a careless time traveller.
It's fantastic fun, the sort of book that can (and in my case, did) keep you reading into the witching hours.
Buy it and read it. This is Wilson at his exciting best.
Four point five glocks in the hands of 19th century American agitators out of five....more
Light has a bit of a reputation. I've seen it mentioned around the SF scene, and I expected big things, but in the enI did not expect to DNF this one.
Light has a bit of a reputation. I've seen it mentioned around the SF scene, and I expected big things, but in the end the book asked a little too much of me as a reader.
SF readers are used to trusting authors. We trust that mysteries will be revealed, strange languages will be explained, odd cultural quirks will becontextualised. Here though, my trust was stretched, and stretched... and eventually it broke a couple of hundred pages in.
Light is full of mystery, full of unexplained things that have huge influence on the characters and narrative, while being largely unfathomable to the reader.
That's fine if it goes for a reasonable page count, and can even be fine in the long run if the story is compelling and interesting enough to keep stringing you along, but in Light the unexplained catalyst begins to grate against the narrative and the unlikeable characters in a way that for me, killed my enjoyment.
The first character in this book, a mathematical researcher, is being stalked by a mysterious creature called the Shrander. This being has driven him to semi-madness, making him a serial killer. As he kills his way around the world, while also working on some arcane mathematical research, a narrative in the future is unfolding. A starship captain using the arcane mathematics our serial killer was working on, is killing her own way around the galaxy, being a bit of an asshole at every opportunity. Another future person is stuck on a dead end world, where he is addicted to an immersive VR game. He used to be a buccaneering sort, but is now a bit of a loser and falls in with a sort of future carnival where he predicts the future.
Anyway, we bounce around between these stories a bit, spending lots of time with the serial killer who is stalked by the evil presence that seems to be the key to his present and the futures we have been reading. Everyone is bit of a dick, or a loser, or a blend of both. There's an area of space called the Kefahuchi Tract that is referred to a lot in a meaningful way, but it's never really explained.
What is the evil presence? What is this dark key to everything? What is the Tract?
I never found out. Light is beautifully written, and I'm still keen to read more of Harrison's work, but this one simply didn't fly for me. I needed more to be revealed, and maybe characters that aren't so unremittingly awful.
Two mysterious, ghostly entities (That are evil? Good? Pedantic about apostrophes? Who knows?) out of five....more
I'll fight anyone who claims Australia doesn't produce great SF.
Pistols at dawn on hill overlooking Sydney harbour. Flick knives at midnight in a squaI'll fight anyone who claims Australia doesn't produce great SF.
Pistols at dawn on hill overlooking Sydney harbour. Flick knives at midnight in a squalid Melbourne back alley. Box-jellyfish-on-a-stick in a crocodile infested north Queensland swamp. You name the weapon, time and place and I'll be there, holding an oversized cosh (stuffed with the the entire works of Greg Egan) that I will use to strike the final blow.
It won't just be Greg Egan's tomes in the bag either. After reading Metal Fatigue I'll be slipping some Sean Williams into my aussie-scifi cosh too.
Williams is one of Australia's most successful writerly genre exports, with an impressive fifty books to his name, many of them in the Star Wars universe. He's been on the NYT bestseller list, has been nominated for a tonne of awards (including the Philip K. Dick and Locus awards) and has won a few too. As I'm not a Star Wars reader I hadn't encountered him until I saw Metal Fatigue listed on the Australian Literary Heritage Project - a group dedicated to ensuring that important Australian works are preserved and made available now that they are out of print.
I immediately ordered a used hardcover, and after reading it I can attest that Metal Fatigue deserves its spot on the ALHP list, and is a real standout in Australian SF.
If you're a fan of SF (yes!) and love a good post-apocalypse dystopia (double yes!) that is past its technological prime but still haunted by the high-tech demons of the past (hell double yes!!) then you're going to enjoy Williams' novel.
Metal Fatigue is set in the late 21st century, after a nuclear conflict has shattered cvilization. After a messy collapse (and uncontrolled military use of cybernetic enhancements) rogue supersoldiers stalked the wrecked world, killing thousands in berserker rages before they were stopped, and what remains of society now bans any such modifications.
A post-peak civ is a great scenario (used most memorably by Alastair Reynolds in his classic Chasm City) and Williams uses it well. The story is set in the walled American city of Kennedy, a metropolis that rode out the apocalypse behind physical and technological barriers that allowed it to largely avoid the chaos that shattered the rest of civilisation.
Kennedy was set up prior to the collapse as a model sustainable community with its own power sources, cutting edge recycling, and state-of-the-art manufacturing. The lucky few who were living there, and the even fewer allowed in after the collapse, have lived in isolation behind their walls, completely cut off from the world around them. Over the decades they have become insular, and fearful of the outside world, even as civilization has begun to rebuild.
As Williams' story begins, the city is debating whether to open up again, to become part of the recovering world outside, at the same time as a veteran police investigator - Phillip Roads - is pursuing a mysterious data thief who has been pillaging the city's systems and leaving almost no trace behind him.
Roads has his own secrets of course, and as he pursues his elusive prey his past begins to impact on both his job and his safety, and possibly the future of Kennedy too.
Williams tells a great yarn, and both Roads and his city are richly realized. Kennedy is a fascinating place, a crumbling relic of the world before the collapse, with a population who are both proud of their achievements and fearful of change. The smattering of high-tech stuff left over from the old world is super cool too, and the blend of decay and the cutting edge reminded me at times of Neuromancer, which is always a positive sign. The story builds well, and the blend of action and tension is perfect, with explosive actions scenes keeping the pace sprinting along to a pretty satisfying conclusion.
Overall this is a great read and I'm very much looking forward to reading more of Williams' work. Metal Fatigue definitely earns it's place as and Australian SF classic that should be preserved and kept available for readers.
So. After reading this review, I think we can both agree that Aussie Sci-fi rocks, right? Right!!? Say yes. You don't want to be jabbed with a weaponised box jellyfish, then beaned with heavy sack of hardcovers while you're down.
Four post-apocalyptic veteran cops with dark secrets (that must be concealed from anyone getting close to them) out of five....more
I wouldn't usually start a review with an in memorium, but only a month prior to writing this, on the 1st of September 2022, Phillip Mann passed away.I wouldn't usually start a review with an in memorium, but only a month prior to writing this, on the 1st of September 2022, Phillip Mann passed away.
His passing marks the loss of a genuine talent in New Zealand and Antipodean SF, his varied career having encompassed many great books, including the Arthur C. Clarke nominated The Disestablishment of Paradise.
First published in 1987, The Fall of the Families is the second book in the Pawl Paxwax duology, begun in Master of Paxwax, and it continues the thoughtful, sad story begun in the first book.
Pawl Paxwax is the ruler of the Paxwax house, one of numerous great human houses who rule a large part of our galaxy, having ruthlessly crushed and enslaved all the other sentient races they share they galaxy with. In Mann's first book, Pawl rose to power.
Since consolidating his rule against the predations of the other great houses he has found love and happiness, building a new family to replace the toxic one he grew up with. Behind the scenes the remnants of the alien races schemed to bring Pawl to the power he now enjoys, knowing that he is the key to the about the downfall of the human realms.
It's no spoiler (it's in the title) to say that this is the book where that downfall occurs, and it's a doozy. Humanity aren't headed for what I would call a fun time.
As always, Mann tells a story filled with pathos and flawed humanity, something he did to great effect in his classic Wulfsyarn, which was my introduction to his work. Pawl's happiness turned bitterness (and eventual mental dissolution), along with the self-destroying betrayal of his gentle alien friend Odin, bring a real sadness to the story that I found quite affecting.
Mann's gift for the alien is evident here too, with the many species inhabiting his narrative coming alive in his telling as they did in the first part of this story.
The actual downfall occurs over a fairly short section of the book, with the greater part of the story showing the lead-up and the strange and beautiful worlds of Mann's imagination. As I'm a sucker for intricate worldbuilding this was fine with me, and I loved the journey Mann takes his readers on.
If you're a fan of Mann's work, or intricate SF worlds in general, you'll want to read this one. It isn't quite on the same level as The Disestablishment of Paradise, which IMHO is a modern classic, but it's a fine book nonetheless.
So vale, Phillip Mann. Thank you for all the great books, and for so kindly responding to this reader's letter when I wrote you in 2021. You will be missed.
Four sad alien empaths (forced to go against their kind and gentle nature) out of five....more
Are you looking for a bite sized collection of short stories that will keep you engaged and entertained?
Look no further than Charlie Jane Ander's Six Are you looking for a bite sized collection of short stories that will keep you engaged and entertained?
Look no further than Charlie Jane Ander's Six Months, Three Days, Five Others, a collection that contains one of the best short stories I've read this year. While all the stories within are engaging and fun, three in particular stuck in my memory:
The title story (and one of my top picks of 2022) Six Months, Three Days is brilliant. The underlying premise is genius - a woman who can see all possible futures meets up with a man who can also see the future, but only the one true version of it that he believes cannot be altered. Both of them know they will be together for six months and then go through a messy breakup, but both of them still want to date for the experiences they know they will have together. What follows is a fantastic story of a unique relationship both animated and poisoned by their respective knowledge of the grim future in store for them. This story alone is worth buying Anders' book for.
The Cartography of Sudden Death stood out for me too. It's a breakneck story in a world dominated for centuries by an oppressive empire, and Anders uses this setting to tell an action packed and interesting tale of time-hopping.
Clover is also a stand-out story, with almost the tone of a fable. A couple are given a cat by a mysterious man, and told the cat will bring them nine years of luck. Nine years later the strange man returns and gifts them another cat to take care of, and their run of luck comes to and end. The two cats fight, the couple's relationship is strained, and the new feline turns out to be far more than just a house cat. It's a delightful story of magic, kindness and a relationship on the edge of ending. Apparently it is connected to Anders' first novel, but I enjoyed it despite not having read her book.
The other stories in the collection are good too, and are full of interesting ideas well told even if they don't quite have the heft and impact of the three I've mentioned here. Considering the brevity of this collection - you could knock it off in an afternoon - it's a genuine case of all thriller, no filler.
Overall, Charlie Jane Anders is a talented writer to watch, and Six Months, Three Days, Five Others showcases her gift for fresh, compelling spec-fic stories.
Four and a half finger-food-sized morsels of fun out of five....more
Ancient alien tech that can wipe out entire civilizations, space battles, land battles, air battles, battles on the sea... Neal Asher's novels aren't Ancient alien tech that can wipe out entire civilizations, space battles, land battles, air battles, battles on the sea... Neal Asher's novels aren't short of action sequences - did I mention there's the occasional battle or two?
In short, if you're up for big scale SF that knows how to bring the action there's a lot to enjoy about your average Asher novel.
A knack for the kinetic, allied with a strong storytelling instincts make him as close to a sure bet as you'll get.
I've read something like seven of his novels so far, and there hasn't been one that wasn't memorably entertaining. The Cormac novels are probably the high water mark, but they set a pretty high tough bar to beat.
The Technician continues on from the events in the previous novels, particularly the liberation of the backwater planet Masada by the Polity that happens during The Line of Polity.
The Polity, the AI led human civilization that spreads out across many worlds from its home on Earth, has been struggling with the emergence of Jain tech - an intricate snare of a technology whose insidious destructiveness makes it an existential threat to any who find it.
On Masada, the remnants of an ancient race - the Atheter - live on in the form of dumb animals known as Gabbleducks. Millions of years earlier, faced with the destruction of their society by Jain tech the Atheter voluntarily devolved, destroying every trace of their civilization and stripping their own minds of all higher thinking functions.
Masada is home to many strange species. Gabbleducks roam the landscape spouting nonsense. Odd burrowing molluscs grind everything in the soil to near dust. Huge, terrifying centipede-like hooders that tear their prey to pieces while still alive, striking fear into everyone on the planet.
One particular hooder is very different to its mindless fellows- it has been making sculptures from its victims, and in the case of one such unfortunate - the priest Jeremiah Tombs it has stripped him down and rebuilt him, doing something very odd to his mind in the process.
Tombs has been changed, and the changes in his own mind are the harbinger of events that will threaten the existence of the Polity and throw light on what happened to Atheter society. Of course these events will happen only if he should live beyond the next week or so, and Tombs is a man with many enemies who very much want to see him dead.
With a deadly insectoid war drone from the long past Prador War and the once insane AI Pennyroyal monitoring him Tombs is sent to a distant island to recover. When the new structures in his mind become active both his enemies and his protectors will have their work cut out for them.
And so another breakneck, action-packed Neil Asher plot is set up.
It's a hell of a lot of fun, and it just races along, building to a (literally) world-shaking conclusion.
Asher's novels really are a solid bet if you're looking for a fun, entertaining, and action-packed read, and the Technician is no exception.
Four horrific, insectoid alien monsters (with interesting backstories) out of five. ...more
It's both a great weakness and great strength of short story collections that they usually contain stories from a multitude of settings. Each story haIt's both a great weakness and great strength of short story collections that they usually contain stories from a multitude of settings. Each story has to establish the location, the feel, the tone of the world being explored, which can be great when each one does so well, and draining for the reader when they don't. If the author elects, however, to set each story in the same place or world, then the sense of place in the stories can be built slowly (and eventually taken as a given), at the risk of the reader tiring of the same locale.
Vermilion Sands is among the latter, and its fascinating setting is a strong thread between a series of stories that begin with masterly skill before eventually stumbling a little in the parching desert heat.
When they're good, though, the stories here are very, very good. Ballard was a writer of quite extraordinary imagination, and his works such as The Drowned World and The Island are stunningly inventive. Flashes of that genius can be spotted in this collection.
The first story in the collection - The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D is a genuine pearl, a short story that exemplifies the best in the form and will sticks in your memory for years. After reading it, and the two following stories, I was telling all my friends to put Vermilion Sands on their reading lists, that this was classic Ballard at his best. The second story - where florist with a shop full of singing plants meets a woman whose voice sets them into a melodic frenzy - is almost equally rewarding, and both perfectly establish the strangeness and enticingly down-at-heel decadence of Vermilion Sands.
And it is a hell of a setting. Vermilion Sands is a Palm Springs-style holiday town, once the place to be seen for the rich and famous, that sits aside a great lake of sand, whose sandy tides and barbed sand rays wash against the town's endless beaches. The sand lake is a treacherous thing, full of reefs and dangers, sailed by wheeled yachts that seek it's mysteries. The fact that the lake is sand rather than water is never questioned, its strangeness just part of the odd, almost magical realism of the nearby town.
And it is very odd. Sonic sculptures play eerie music through echoing mansions, the keening of strange musical plants floats across the desert, houses that twist and grow and adapt according the moods and character of their owners lie abandoned to the creeping sands. Into this setting Ballard brings a cast of flawed characters, some running from problems, others washed up in a decaying holiday town and pinned to the spot by ennui, others struggling with art, love and obsession.
The first three stories, balance the fantastic and the personal in fascinating ways, and then... things get a little samey. A mysterious but wounded woman arrives in Vermilion Sands and attracts the attention of (an invariably) male protagonist. Some oddness happens, and the woman leaves/absconds/abandons the man who has become her lover.
The setting never tires, and nor does Ballard's inventiveness, but the mystery woman device does, and the stories suffer a little for it. By the final story I was starting to tire a little, leaning a little on the memories of the earlier stories to get me through.
Overall though, this is a fantastic collection, one that is worthy of a read, even only if you read the first half. If you aren't up for even that, do yourself a favor and read The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D. It's a masterclass of a short story.
3.5 Mysterious women (who simply must flee town at the first opportunity) out of five.
P.S. As a stand-alone story The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D gets the full five mysterious women out of five. ...more
The afterlife exists! There is life after death! You can pick up a phone and call your deceased relatives for a chat!
Oh, one thing though, the afterliThe afterlife exists! There is life after death! You can pick up a phone and call your deceased relatives for a chat!
Oh, one thing though, the afterlife has been colonised by the British Empire and (providing you have a ticket) your personal heaven will most likely look like a celestial office job in the English colonial bureaucracy :)
That's the very interesting (and slightly horrifying) setup that underlies Hannu Rajiniemi's Summerland, a novel overflowing with great ideas and engaging tension.
The action is set in the 1930s, decades after the discovery of the afterlife and the end of a first world war that was turbocharged by the terrifying spectral technologies that the new spirit science has unleashed. Britain and the Soviet Union are now engaged in a cold war, the British running agents in this world and the next, while the Soviets have elevated Lenin into a sort of post-human god in the afterlife, an entity whose essence is composed of multitudes of Russian souls.
On the front lines of this war of espionage and skulduggery is Rachel White, an agent for what is known as the Winter Palace - Britain's corporeal spy agency, the flip side of the Summer Palace in the afterlife. Rachel is in charge of interrogating and protecting a valuable Soviet defector, and she has both the Communist regime and the sexism of the British establishment public schoolboy network (I imagined a 1930s Boris Johnson as a secret agent) working against her. As the story progresses she will be forced to challenge both, with very interesting results.
Her journey is a hell of a ride, the action going from London to the afterlife to Civil War Spain.
You may have encountered Rajaniemi before via his brilliant SF work The Quantum Thief, itself a riot of imaginative storytelling that sucked me in from page one. So it is here. Summerland reads like a very deft mixture of SF and John LeCarre, and that blend really works very well.
Rajaniemi keeps the action and the tension coming, and he builds a completely convincing alternative 1930s London, where death isn't a big deal, providing you have a ticket to the British afterlife. He paints a world where mothers continue to henpeck their children from beyond the grave, where company owners run their empires from death, and where medical science has completely stalled as a result (why prolong life if people can simply cross over and call you on an ecto-phone ten minutes later?).
It's a lot of fun to read, and my only real criticism is that it ends a little quickly for my liking. I would happily have spent more time in Rajaniemi's world, but he is clearly an exponent of the showbiz axiom of leaving his audience wanting more.
Overall, I Loved Summerland, and I'm very much looking forward to reading more set in this fascinating, convincing new universe.
Four-and-a-half "Are you eating properly? Wear that scarf I knitted you or you'll catch your death!" phone calls from beyond the grave (out of five)....more
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