Kim Miller
If this is SF it's on the very soft end of the genre. It's more the probing of one man's mind as he probes the minds of others.
David can read people's minds. It's something he discovered in child hood and quickly learned to keep it secret. He grows up relating to others more by what he sees in their thinking than what they present on the surface, something that make other people think he's a bit strange, or possibly threatening.
in middle age he finds the ability falling from him, and it's like he's cast adrift into the ebb and flow of normal human interraction and he's about to drown. The narrative is not as important in this book as the metaphor of the aging man, losing whatever it is that has defined his view of himself.
Having said that, the story of his life is engaging. The prose is constantly smooth and draws the reader into itself. His life of reading the minds of women to find easy sex partners, his job as a stock broker reading the minds of the successful traders, and his fall into ghost writing term papers for university students, they are all woven into a web of comfort. The book jumps between various moments in his life and there is an outside narrator who appears at times. This might disrupt the flow of the story but Silverberg keeps it unified. It's as if he's building something with Lego bricks and adding in pieces at will rather that starting from the bottom and working upwards. The unified whole is very satisfying.
Two other authors came to mind while reading this. Gary Shteyngart in 'Little Failure' and Philip Roth in 'Portnoy's Complaint'. There seems to be a trope of the 'New York Jew' in authorship and protagonist. Coming from the other side of the world I don't know i'm reading too much into this.
The book closes with David coming to grips with what it's like being a normal human. He doesn't handle it well. However, his young nephew has dropped his cautious view of David and is suddenly talking to him like a family member. 'Welcome to the new you, you loser', says the universe to David.
If this is SF it's on the very soft end of the genre. It's more the probing of one man's mind as he probes the minds of others.
David can read people's minds. It's something he discovered in child hood and quickly learned to keep it secret. He grows up relating to others more by what he sees in their thinking than what they present on the surface, something that make other people think he's a bit strange, or possibly threatening.
in middle age he finds the ability falling from him, and it's like he's cast adrift into the ebb and flow of normal human interraction and he's about to drown. The narrative is not as important in this book as the metaphor of the aging man, losing whatever it is that has defined his view of himself.
Having said that, the story of his life is engaging. The prose is constantly smooth and draws the reader into itself. His life of reading the minds of women to find easy sex partners, his job as a stock broker reading the minds of the successful traders, and his fall into ghost writing term papers for university students, they are all woven into a web of comfort. The book jumps between various moments in his life and there is an outside narrator who appears at times. This might disrupt the flow of the story but Silverberg keeps it unified. It's as if he's building something with Lego bricks and adding in pieces at will rather that starting from the bottom and working upwards. The unified whole is very satisfying.
Two other authors came to mind while reading this. Gary Shteyngart in 'Little Failure' and Philip Roth in 'Portnoy's Complaint'. There seems to be a trope of the 'New York Jew' in authorship and protagonist. Coming from the other side of the world I don't know i'm reading too much into this.
The book closes with David coming to grips with what it's like being a normal human. He doesn't handle it well. However, his young nephew has dropped his cautious view of David and is suddenly talking to him like a family member. 'Welcome to the new you, you loser', says the universe to David.
The second book of Tom Dreyfus, and the sequel to Aurora Rising. In this story people are dying suddenly from something in their head overheating and destroying their brain. The people are unconnected and all over the Glitterband. And the deaths are increasing so the Panoply can plot the rising curve and predict a catastrophe in the near future.
Dreyfus sees a tenuous link, the people are risk takers either in sport or business etc. Is this real or imagined? A very dangerous person offers help, but there's a cost and he's forced into a decision he never thought he'd be making.
Alongside the deaths there is trouble brewing from political/social unrest being fomented by a charismatic member of a once powerful family from the beginnings of the Glitterband. He seems to have inside knowledge of the deaths and spreads the rumour among various habitats in the system. And he also has knowledge of Dreyfus' movements. So Dreyfus starts putting things together.
He looks into the family's history and finds a link to a mysterious decommissioned clinic on an abandoned habitat. Restored computer records show links into the mysterious deaths and the race accelerates.
The story is told from two timelines. One is Dreyfus and the investigation. The second is about two boys, twins, who are growing up in the home of the originator of the Glitterband but we are not told when this timeline is happening. The boys are being trained to manipulate quickmatter and how to interfere with the Glitterbands polling system of governance. They are in conflict with each other but joined together in their fight against their parents' control of their lives.
As the story progresses we see how these two boys figure in the current investigation. At about the 76% mark things start rushing towards a disaster as the deaths build up. But as they close in on what seems to be the source of the deaths, they cause an increase in the rate of death. Are they being given a warning?
The crisis builds and Reynolds works his magic of story telling as the action comes from all directions. The book closes in a satisfactory manner as the twists and turns start to unwind and we can see the path he's been leading us down since the beginning.
The second book of Tom Dreyfus, and the sequel to Aurora Rising. In this story people are dying suddenly from something in their head overheating and destroying their brain. The people are unconnected and all over the Glitterband. And the deaths are increasing so the Panoply can plot the rising curve and predict a catastrophe in the near future.
Dreyfus sees a tenuous link, the people are risk takers either in sport or business etc. Is this real or imagined? A very dangerous person offers help, but there's a cost and he's forced into a decision he never thought he'd be making.
Alongside the deaths there is trouble brewing from political/social unrest being fomented by a charismatic member of a once powerful family from the beginnings of the Glitterband. He seems to have inside knowledge of the deaths and spreads the rumour among various habitats in the system. And he also has knowledge of Dreyfus' movements. So Dreyfus starts putting things together.
He looks into the family's history and finds a link to a mysterious decommissioned clinic on an abandoned habitat. Restored computer records show links into the mysterious deaths and the race accelerates.
The story is told from two timelines. One is Dreyfus and the investigation. The second is about two boys, twins, who are growing up in the home of the originator of the Glitterband but we are not told when this timeline is happening. The boys are being trained to manipulate quickmatter and how to interfere with the Glitterbands polling system of governance. They are in conflict with each other but joined together in their fight against their parents' control of their lives.
As the story progresses we see how these two boys figure in the current investigation. At about the 76% mark things start rushing towards a disaster as the deaths build up. But as they close in on what seems to be the source of the deaths, they cause an increase in the rate of death. Are they being given a warning?
The crisis builds and Reynolds works his magic of story telling as the action comes from all directions. The book closes in a satisfactory manner as the twists and turns start to unwind and we can see the path he's been leading us down since the beginning.
Overall a good story with a high stakes sub-plot, but the writing style is up not to it.
A fast paced story about racing mini space ships on a specialised track. Pilots win by shooting down their opponents so there are a lot of dead pilots. The story is rapid fire major events with no time for the characters to really process these events. Final result, actions with consequences but no emotion - he tries to write the emotion elements but hasn't got the chops for it.
Man is a pilot as the money gets him out of a life of poverty. He kills too many others, especially a women he cares about, and calls it off. Years later his son picks up the Dad's racing life. Son is then forced into the Empire's military to fight the Alliance. He gets into a fight and kills two men in the back streets. Abandons his unit and becomes a racer again. Finds himself in the Alliance on a Death Star clone that is about to destroy Earth. Gets attacked by the Empire. Everything goes haywire. Father turns up again to save the day. The Emperor is revealed to have been manipulating both sides. Emperor gets killed. Father gets killed. Son becomes next Emperor.
The sub-plot gets hints in the early stages but by the time it's put into effect at the end it sounds tropey and almost cut and paste from Arkady Martine's A Desolation Called Peace. Also, a giant moon-like space station with a weapon that can destroy a planet. Where have we heard that before?
Overall a good story with a high stakes sub-plot, but the writing style is up not to it.
A fast paced story about racing mini space ships on a specialised track. Pilots win by shooting down their opponents so there are a lot of dead pilots. The story is rapid fire major events with no time for the characters to really process these events. Final result, actions with consequences but no emotion - he tries to write the emotion elements but hasn't got the chops for it.
Man is a pilot as the money gets him out of a life of poverty. He kills too many others, especially a women he cares about, and calls it off. Years later his son picks up the Dad's racing life. Son is then forced into the Empire's military to fight the Alliance. He gets into a fight and kills two men in the back streets. Abandons his unit and becomes a racer again. Finds himself in the Alliance on a Death Star clone that is about to destroy Earth. Gets attacked by the Empire. Everything goes haywire. Father turns up again to save the day. The Emperor is revealed to have been manipulating both sides. Emperor gets killed. Father gets killed. Son becomes next Emperor.
The sub-plot gets hints in the early stages but by the time it's put into effect at the end it sounds tropey and almost cut and paste from Arkady Martine's A Desolation Called Peace. Also, a giant moon-like space station with a weapon that can destroy a planet. Where have we heard that before?
This book really hit my funny bone. It's a satirical take down of Star Trek, based on the premise that in Star Trek they have to kill off one or more cast members early in the episode to heighten tension and those characters are all wearing red shirts. They are minor crew members, often newly introduced, have little bearing on the plot, and are designed to be expendable. Senior officers don't wear red uniforms, so are safe.
The story is set 350 years in the future and a spaceship, the Intrepid, is being sent on lots of dangerous missions to distant planets. They are attacked, or they send out a ground crew which is attacked, and some members return and some are killed. A new crew member sees a strange pattern. Certain senior officers go on away missions and are sometimes injured but never killed. And often when one junior member is killed all the others are safe from that moment.
A few of the crew start to chase up some answers, but the search takes them to an impossible idea. They are playing out a scripted TV show from 2012 in what seems to be a parallel universe. The TV show writes and films the script each week and somehow it travels across time and whatever weirdness is in the way, and impacts their lives. They have to stop the TV show from doing whatever it is they are doing.
The first half of the book is filled with satirical references to the tropes of such TV shows. The second half is suddenly deeply human as they make contact with the cast of the TV show. Characters blend between the two time slots as it meets grief and trauma head on. The story gets rounded out well at the end, although there is a lingering question of what will happen to the Intrepid once the TV show is off the air.
One funny element sticks in my head. It's 'the box'. When somebody on the Intrepid is infected by a body-dissolving virus they are given six hours to find a 'counter virus'. They get out the box, put the bio-sample in it, set the timer to five hours and wait. The box dings, they transfer the data to a tablet and rush it to the captain. He points out the place they have to investigate, the sick man is saved. Nobody knows how the box works. It turns out that when the TV shows writes in bad science or impossible solutions it works for TV but won't work in real life. So somehow 'the box' becomes part of the Intrepid's arsenal. They don't need to know how it works, it just does. Whenever they are faced with an impossible challenge they put the relevant thing in the box and all's good.
This book really hit my funny bone. It's a satirical take down of Star Trek, based on the premise that in Star Trek they have to kill off one or more cast members early in the episode to heighten tension and those characters are all wearing red shirts. They are minor crew members, often newly introduced, have little bearing on the plot, and are designed to be expendable. Senior officers don't wear red uniforms, so are safe.
The story is set 350 years in the future and a spaceship, the Intrepid, is being sent on lots of dangerous missions to distant planets. They are attacked, or they send out a ground crew which is attacked, and some members return and some are killed. A new crew member sees a strange pattern. Certain senior officers go on away missions and are sometimes injured but never killed. And often when one junior member is killed all the others are safe from that moment.
A few of the crew start to chase up some answers, but the search takes them to an impossible idea. They are playing out a scripted TV show from 2012 in what seems to be a parallel universe. The TV show writes and films the script each week and somehow it travels across time and whatever weirdness is in the way, and impacts their lives. They have to stop the TV show from doing whatever it is they are doing.
The first half of the book is filled with satirical references to the tropes of such TV shows. The second half is suddenly deeply human as they make contact with the cast of the TV show. Characters blend between the two time slots as it meets grief and trauma head on. The story gets rounded out well at the end, although there is a lingering question of what will happen to the Intrepid once the TV show is off the air.
One funny element sticks in my head. It's 'the box'. When somebody on the Intrepid is infected by a body-dissolving virus they are given six hours to find a 'counter virus'. They get out the box, put the bio-sample in it, set the timer to five hours and wait. The box dings, they transfer the data to a tablet and rush it to the captain. He points out the place they have to investigate, the sick man is saved. Nobody knows how the box works. It turns out that when the TV shows writes in bad science or impossible solutions it works for TV but won't work in real life. So somehow 'the box' becomes part of the Intrepid's arsenal. They don't need to know how it works, it just does. Whenever they are faced with an impossible challenge they put the relevant thing in the box and all's good.
If we were to construct a Venn Diagram of genres that populate this book it would include Fantasy, Steampunk, SF, Grunge, Weird, and a whole lot of descriptive stuff like Squalid, Dysfunctional, Abusive, and Weird again. The story is well put together, but these themes of disgust drag the whole thing down into the mire.
The book starts with a traveler entering a city. The traveler is not detailed but the city is. It's filthy, stinking of sewerage, squalid, worn down and worn out, and there's no escape from these putrescences. (Also, the author uses lots of words like this. Some of them sound made up but aren't.)
We meet the main character, Isaac, a scientist working in his backstreet lab doing some mysterious stuff. A Garuda, a half bird half man creature tracks him down. He wants to fly again but his wings have been cut off. So the journey to finding flight begins. Along the way there are other fantasmagorical creatures, aliens but not interplanerary aliens, just inhabitants of different continents on this weird world. One with a scarab head, one who seems made of water, others augmented with machinery in place of limbs, and zoo keeps surprising us.
Isaac sees the flight solution to involve his idea of a 'crisis engine'. Throw someone off a building and it puts them in crisis. If he can harness that 'crisis energy' he can feed it back to the falling man to power flight. Easy peasy.
Not so fast, Isaac, First you have to find out what this strange caterpillar with grow into. And then you have to find out how to capture the winged monster that sucks life from people. And then you have to work out how to save the city when it releases others of its kind. And then you have to work out how to stop that monster AI that built itself on the junk heap from taking over your crisis engine. And then you have to escape the twin forces of the city militia and the drug dealer you've inadvertently wronged. Oh, and don't forget you lover is caught up in all this.
OK, that's enough of the story. What happens towards the end is that the author throws the whole cast of characters into a series of moral dilemmas. The whole 'these are the good guys' theme gets turned on its head. It's as if the rotten stinking mess of the city has risen up to pollute the motivations and actions of the characters, and nobody gets off easy. We walk away, as do they, thinking, "Well, that was a punch in the guts."
If we were to construct a Venn Diagram of genres that populate this book it would include Fantasy, Steampunk, SF, Grunge, Weird, and a whole lot of descriptive stuff like Squalid, Dysfunctional, Abusive, and Weird again. The story is well put together, but these themes of disgust drag the whole thing down into the mire.
The book starts with a traveler entering a city. The traveler is not detailed but the city is. It's filthy, stinking of sewerage, squalid, worn down and worn out, and there's no escape from these putrescences. (Also, the author uses lots of words like this. Some of them sound made up but aren't.)
We meet the main character, Isaac, a scientist working in his backstreet lab doing some mysterious stuff. A Garuda, a half bird half man creature tracks him down. He wants to fly again but his wings have been cut off. So the journey to finding flight begins. Along the way there are other fantasmagorical creatures, aliens but not interplanerary aliens, just inhabitants of different continents on this weird world. One with a scarab head, one who seems made of water, others augmented with machinery in place of limbs, and zoo keeps surprising us.
Isaac sees the flight solution to involve his idea of a 'crisis engine'. Throw someone off a building and it puts them in crisis. If he can harness that 'crisis energy' he can feed it back to the falling man to power flight. Easy peasy.
Not so fast, Isaac, First you have to find out what this strange caterpillar with grow into. And then you have to find out how to capture the winged monster that sucks life from people. And then you have to work out how to save the city when it releases others of its kind. And then you have to work out how to stop that monster AI that built itself on the junk heap from taking over your crisis engine. And then you have to escape the twin forces of the city militia and the drug dealer you've inadvertently wronged. Oh, and don't forget you lover is caught up in all this.
OK, that's enough of the story. What happens towards the end is that the author throws the whole cast of characters into a series of moral dilemmas. The whole 'these are the good guys' theme gets turned on its head. It's as if the rotten stinking mess of the city has risen up to pollute the motivations and actions of the characters, and nobody gets off easy. We walk away, as do they, thinking, "Well, that was a punch in the guts."