Kim Miller
Endel is the enforcer for a drug lord in Macao, it's 2101 and neural implants and memory chips are ubiquitous. Endel's memory chip is constantly being edited and overwritten so it can't be accessed by law enforcement as evidence. But there's a problem. He keeps having memory flashbacks of things that never happened, of people he doesn't know, and of being somebody else.
There is a constant in these flashbacks, that he has a wife and daughter from whom he is estranged. But he has little to go on apart from these flashes of insight as old memories deep in his brain come to the surface. Then he meets his wife. She is angry and rejecting. He stands across from a school for glimpses of his daughter. He's warned off. But something keeps pulling him back.
As he realises he must get out of the syndicate and find his real self he starts to form a plan. Trouble is, his life is filled with violence and murder and the plan will mean more of the same. He has to work out who he can trust, where he can go, how he can hide.
As his wife becomes more apparent in his memories and his life he must also work out how to keep her safe. And that daughter? It turns out he has two daughters, but the second one has been wiped from his memory. And it's then that he realises that the drug boss is manipulating him so well that he's no more than a tool to be used and and a weapon to be wielded against others.
As the story progresses we see that it's more than a tale of drug dealing. His boss isn't merely running a drug empire, there is something much more sinister, something with the potential to upset the world order. The twists of the plot gather up as many ideologues as gangsters as the danger increases in depth and scope. Memory, it turns out, is a saleable commodity, and can be monetised in so many ways.
The heated confrontation and climactic battle is suddenly way over the top and almost comical as the body enhancement tech of the era is on full display. It's like watching a superhero movie with a cinema full of kids screaming in delight as blood spatters everywhere.
And then it's suddenly over. Endel is gone and somebody else is in his place. And his family? Well, they will have to find a way forward from what has suddenly become a new starting point. It's that Escher staircase again. Which way is up?
Endel is the enforcer for a drug lord in Macao, it's 2101 and neural implants and memory chips are ubiquitous. Endel's memory chip is constantly being edited and overwritten so it can't be accessed by law enforcement as evidence. But there's a problem. He keeps having memory flashbacks of things that never happened, of people he doesn't know, and of being somebody else.
There is a constant in these flashbacks, that he has a wife and daughter from whom he is estranged. But he has little to go on apart from these flashes of insight as old memories deep in his brain come to the surface. Then he meets his wife. She is angry and rejecting. He stands across from a school for glimpses of his daughter. He's warned off. But something keeps pulling him back.
As he realises he must get out of the syndicate and find his real self he starts to form a plan. Trouble is, his life is filled with violence and murder and the plan will mean more of the same. He has to work out who he can trust, where he can go, how he can hide.
As his wife becomes more apparent in his memories and his life he must also work out how to keep her safe. And that daughter? It turns out he has two daughters, but the second one has been wiped from his memory. And it's then that he realises that the drug boss is manipulating him so well that he's no more than a tool to be used and and a weapon to be wielded against others.
As the story progresses we see that it's more than a tale of drug dealing. His boss isn't merely running a drug empire, there is something much more sinister, something with the potential to upset the world order. The twists of the plot gather up as many ideologues as gangsters as the danger increases in depth and scope. Memory, it turns out, is a saleable commodity, and can be monetised in so many ways.
The heated confrontation and climactic battle is suddenly way over the top and almost comical as the body enhancement tech of the era is on full display. It's like watching a superhero movie with a cinema full of kids screaming in delight as blood spatters everywhere.
And then it's suddenly over. Endel is gone and somebody else is in his place. And his family? Well, they will have to find a way forward from what has suddenly become a new starting point. It's that Escher staircase again. Which way is up?
A dark gothic tale of somebody's descent into the psyche. An old family mansion on the edge of town is hated by the townsfolk because of its dark history. Living there are two sisters, age 18 and 28, and their uncle. The rest of the family are dead, all poisoned. Only the younger sister goes outside, and that's twice a week to buy supplies. She is harassed by the locals who taunt her about the death of her family.
Then cousin Charles turns up to visit. He's obviously got his eyes on whatever he can take for himself, the hidden family fortune, the elder sister, perhaps even the house itself. The narrator, the younger sister, sees through him and casts imagined spells to expel him from the house.
The final third of the story beings us to a horrifying climax as everything is about to dissolve around them. The final descent is slow and relentless and deeply unsettling.
A dark gothic tale of somebody's descent into the psyche. An old family mansion on the edge of town is hated by the townsfolk because of its dark history. Living there are two sisters, age 18 and 28, and their uncle. The rest of the family are dead, all poisoned. Only the younger sister goes outside, and that's twice a week to buy supplies. She is harassed by the locals who taunt her about the death of her family.
Then cousin Charles turns up to visit. He's obviously got his eyes on whatever he can take for himself, the hidden family fortune, the elder sister, perhaps even the house itself. The narrator, the younger sister, sees through him and casts imagined spells to expel him from the house.
The final third of the story beings us to a horrifying climax as everything is about to dissolve around them. The final descent is slow and relentless and deeply unsettling.
A frozen planet but with mineral resources. The Company, ruled by The Algorithm, wants control, the locals want The Company gone. And born into the dregs of the world are two brothers who spend their lives trying to sort out whether the fierce energy between them is love or hate. It's dark, violent, gritty, dystopian and cyberpunkish, but most of all it's relentless in the telling of the story.
Yorick is awakened from torpor, suspended animation that resembles death. He realises he's on his home planet, Ymir, from which he fled decades ago. Coming back was not part of the plan. He's told he's been brought back to hunt a grendel, an almost invincible monster that lives in the mines, attacking and killing the miners. Yorick has a reputation of being the grendel killer.
In his childhood, he and his brother, Thello, played 'the grendel game', pretending to kill the monster. His relationship with his brother has always been tenuous. The two boys are poles apart in personality, Yorick is wild and tempestuous while Thello is calmer and thoughtful, and they are driven both together and apart by their mother's senseless violence. Yorick plans to leave Ymir but before he can leave he fights with Thello and Yorick's lower jaw is blown off. He's patched up by The Company's medical teams and vows never to return to Ymir.
Once he comes out of torpor he's fitted out by The Company with weapons and told he'll be sent into the mineshafts to find and kill the grendel. And that's where everything comes undone. He finds himself in the centre of a secret uprising against The Company and somehow his brother Thello is involved and in communication with the grendel.
It's a battle for supremacy between the local miners and the militaristic company officers and overseers. The grendel appears to have abilities that nobody knew of and Yorick and Thello are thrown together in what manifests as a battle of conflicting loyalties.
The pace of the story is constantly relentless. Larson manages to keep the stakes high and the steady revelations of what lies under the surface continue right to the end.
A frozen planet but with mineral resources. The Company, ruled by The Algorithm, wants control, the locals want The Company gone. And born into the dregs of the world are two brothers who spend their lives trying to sort out whether the fierce energy between them is love or hate. It's dark, violent, gritty, dystopian and cyberpunkish, but most of all it's relentless in the telling of the story.
Yorick is awakened from torpor, suspended animation that resembles death. He realises he's on his home planet, Ymir, from which he fled decades ago. Coming back was not part of the plan. He's told he's been brought back to hunt a grendel, an almost invincible monster that lives in the mines, attacking and killing the miners. Yorick has a reputation of being the grendel killer.
In his childhood, he and his brother, Thello, played 'the grendel game', pretending to kill the monster. His relationship with his brother has always been tenuous. The two boys are poles apart in personality, Yorick is wild and tempestuous while Thello is calmer and thoughtful, and they are driven both together and apart by their mother's senseless violence. Yorick plans to leave Ymir but before he can leave he fights with Thello and Yorick's lower jaw is blown off. He's patched up by The Company's medical teams and vows never to return to Ymir.
Once he comes out of torpor he's fitted out by The Company with weapons and told he'll be sent into the mineshafts to find and kill the grendel. And that's where everything comes undone. He finds himself in the centre of a secret uprising against The Company and somehow his brother Thello is involved and in communication with the grendel.
It's a battle for supremacy between the local miners and the militaristic company officers and overseers. The grendel appears to have abilities that nobody knew of and Yorick and Thello are thrown together in what manifests as a battle of conflicting loyalties.
The pace of the story is constantly relentless. Larson manages to keep the stakes high and the steady revelations of what lies under the surface continue right to the end.
The iconic story of contact with no contact. Rama passes through the solar system and totally ignores us. The ship Endeavour is sent to investigate and the crew spends several days inside Rama, trying to figure out what the strange craft is. As it approaches the sun and the Endeavour has to depart, they track Rama as it gives close to the sun to gain speed and exits the solar system as anonymously as when it arrived.
By not having aliens, Clarke maintains the sense of mystery and wonderment for the crew. On Earth, however, the diplomacy is going mad. And then it's discovered that the inhabitants of Mercury has sent a nuclear weapon to destroy Rama, not trusting the motives of its builders, forcing decisive action from the Endeavour. The crew of the Endeavour allow the majesty of Rama to captivate them until some unknown propulsion system initiates and Rama starts its shift in orbit.
The concept of Rama illustrates Clarke's comment, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
The iconic story of contact with no contact. Rama passes through the solar system and totally ignores us. The ship Endeavour is sent to investigate and the crew spends several days inside Rama, trying to figure out what the strange craft is. As it approaches the sun and the Endeavour has to depart, they track Rama as it gives close to the sun to gain speed and exits the solar system as anonymously as when it arrived.
By not having aliens, Clarke maintains the sense of mystery and wonderment for the crew. On Earth, however, the diplomacy is going mad. And then it's discovered that the inhabitants of Mercury has sent a nuclear weapon to destroy Rama, not trusting the motives of its builders, forcing decisive action from the Endeavour. The crew of the Endeavour allow the majesty of Rama to captivate them until some unknown propulsion system initiates and Rama starts its shift in orbit.
The concept of Rama illustrates Clarke's comment, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
A minor player in the control station of an orbiting telescope sees an anomaly. Something heads towards Saturn but it's also slowing down. Nothing slows down out in space except controlled space craft. Then it stops at Saturn. US space control hurries to convert a space station into a ship to go and investigate. The anomaly ship leaves Saturn and the flare from the drive system is picked up all over the world. China wants to investigate and rushes to convert its nearly complete Mars ship to long distance. And so a new space race begins. Two countries, two very different space ships, and the possibility of far future alien tech if they can bring it home.
Hard sci fi meets space adventure meets political thriller. Sandford is a thriller writer and I think this is his first Sci Fi. Ctein (pronouned K'Tine) is a famous photographer and print maker with a science background. He provided the science research and original idea for the book. This is his first novel, his other books are generally about restoring old photographs. The name comes from when his university magazine made a bunch of typesetting errors, got his name badly wrong, and he decided to keep it.
A minor player in the control station of an orbiting telescope sees an anomaly. Something heads towards Saturn but it's also slowing down. Nothing slows down out in space except controlled space craft. Then it stops at Saturn. US space control hurries to convert a space station into a ship to go and investigate. The anomaly ship leaves Saturn and the flare from the drive system is picked up all over the world. China wants to investigate and rushes to convert its nearly complete Mars ship to long distance. And so a new space race begins. Two countries, two very different space ships, and the possibility of far future alien tech if they can bring it home.
Hard sci fi meets space adventure meets political thriller. Sandford is a thriller writer and I think this is his first Sci Fi. Ctein (pronouned K'Tine) is a famous photographer and print maker with a science background. He provided the science research and original idea for the book. This is his first novel, his other books are generally about restoring old photographs. The name comes from when his university magazine made a bunch of typesetting errors, got his name badly wrong, and he decided to keep it.
Two boys meet, one a fast thinking savant and the other a psychopath, and as they grow they start taking over. They take over the two major crime organisations that spread their influence over several planets. And once in charge they spread their power over civic leaders, politicians, police forces. But as much as they are inter-dependent they are also suspicious of each other.
On another planet a writer is chasing down a story of multiple murders and discovers links to some dark story underneath. Out at sea a system of rigs like oil platforms are drawing a strange power source from beneath the ocean floor. It's dangerous work but one of the survivors the writer comes across is anxious to start work there.
This book takes us through the lives of a number of characters separated on different planets, but also, we later learn, separated by decades of time. Around the rig float hundreds, perhaps thousands, of stasis pods, each one holding a person in suspended animation, until they can be retrieved and their illness cured. It's a book of strange things that don't have anything to do with each other until the final chapters. And then it all starts to link up.
Apart from the frustration of Levy's decision to use silly words for certain things, religion becomes godery, computers become putery, monitors become screenery, it's an engaging mystery and an increasingly fast action story.
It also has a high body count. It starts with a fanatical religious community killing perhaps hundreds of people in a religious event, and ends with the main characters all fighting for their lives. Some of them survive. Along the way the brutality is constant as the two protagonists take over. It's not a book for the faint hearted.
Two boys meet, one a fast thinking savant and the other a psychopath, and as they grow they start taking over. They take over the two major crime organisations that spread their influence over several planets. And once in charge they spread their power over civic leaders, politicians, police forces. But as much as they are inter-dependent they are also suspicious of each other.
On another planet a writer is chasing down a story of multiple murders and discovers links to some dark story underneath. Out at sea a system of rigs like oil platforms are drawing a strange power source from beneath the ocean floor. It's dangerous work but one of the survivors the writer comes across is anxious to start work there.
This book takes us through the lives of a number of characters separated on different planets, but also, we later learn, separated by decades of time. Around the rig float hundreds, perhaps thousands, of stasis pods, each one holding a person in suspended animation, until they can be retrieved and their illness cured. It's a book of strange things that don't have anything to do with each other until the final chapters. And then it all starts to link up.
Apart from the frustration of Levy's decision to use silly words for certain things, religion becomes godery, computers become putery, monitors become screenery, it's an engaging mystery and an increasingly fast action story.
It also has a high body count. It starts with a fanatical religious community killing perhaps hundreds of people in a religious event, and ends with the main characters all fighting for their lives. Some of them survive. Along the way the brutality is constant as the two protagonists take over. It's not a book for the faint hearted.