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The Stone Canal, Ken McLeod
Yes, people who keep recommending him to me, I finally got around to reading one of his books. And yeah, I see what you mean.
The Stone Canal is part of a trilogy, and I don't think it's the first book, but that didn't get in the way of my enjoyment of it. It begins and ends in a distant future where humans and robots live on the Planet of Free Market Yay, and death is a relatively minor inconvenience because of cloning technology, flashing back, in what I found to be the most interesting scenes, to Scotland in the 1970s where the main characters debate and eventually put into practice the beliefs that will shape their future. What begins as an argument in a pub between two friends, one an anarcho-individualist and the other a Trot, becomes a struggle between anarchism-of-a-sort and capitalism-of-a-sort, to the point where I couldn't come up with substantive differences between the two.
I also couldn't get a handle on McLeod's politics any more than I could grok those of his protagonist, Wilde. Which says something about McLeod's writing—if he shares the views his characters espouse, he also does an equally good job of debunking them. Anarcho-capitalism is functional in the book only because death is impermanent and other planets exist to colonize, which is a fairly good take-down of the philosophy, if you ask me.
Overall, it's a lovely mix between hard sci-fi and political sci-fi, which, as you can imagine, is the sort of thing that makes me happy in my geek places. I was thoroughly absorbed in it up until the ending, where [spoilers for this book and Miéville's Iron Council] the Singularity happens, or something like it, at which point the writing goes all weird. China Miéville claimed that he gave Iron Council the horrific downer of an ending that he did because, as a revolutionary, he felt ill-equipped to write The Revolution in a way that would do it justice. (I don't really believe him; I think he just likes writing really depressing endings.) But anyway, there's something about depicting The Revolution (not a revolution, mind you, but the big one that would fix things), or the Rapture if you're a fundamentalist Christian, or the Singularity if you're an SF geek, that is inherently problematic. As in I wasn't sure if he was typing with both hands. [/spoilers]
But yes, now I want to read more by him. What do you guys recommend?
New Amsterdam, Elizabeth Bear
There's been some controversy about Bear lately, but I've been so into reading New Amsterdam that of course I haven't been following it. You can tell me later. Anyway, it's a series of steampunk novellas about a vampire detective, a forensic sorceress, and their various friends and lovers. The first story takes place on a zeppelin, so if that doesn't make you want to read the book I don't know what will.
Bear does a tremendous amount of things right (I did mention the zeppelin, yes?). This is the first vampire novel since Sunshine that I've read that's actually good—her vampires don't bloody well sparkle. And also, they're impotent. Three cheers for tradition and realism. Her writing is engrossing—period and witty and evocative. I am a sucker for "cozy murder mystery set against the backdrop of impending war" (see also: Farthing by Jo Walton). The last story has a cameo by a certain historical personage that made me squee out loud on the subway.
Where it falls down is in its structure. It was originally published as a series of novellas, and it doesn't quite work as a novel. We get repeated descriptions of characters we've already met, and it feels episodic. That's okay until the last few stories, where [spoiler] first, a series of monumentally life-changing events threaten to give the book a bit of a genre shift and permanently change the lives of the characters, and then we are hit with a wallop of Teh Angst in the last few pages, which would be fine if there were some sort of big plot arc. But there isn't, so it's jarring. [/spoiler] Other than that, completely awesome.
Am currently reading Whipping Girl by Julia Serano, which is fantastic so far.
Yes, people who keep recommending him to me, I finally got around to reading one of his books. And yeah, I see what you mean.
The Stone Canal is part of a trilogy, and I don't think it's the first book, but that didn't get in the way of my enjoyment of it. It begins and ends in a distant future where humans and robots live on the Planet of Free Market Yay, and death is a relatively minor inconvenience because of cloning technology, flashing back, in what I found to be the most interesting scenes, to Scotland in the 1970s where the main characters debate and eventually put into practice the beliefs that will shape their future. What begins as an argument in a pub between two friends, one an anarcho-individualist and the other a Trot, becomes a struggle between anarchism-of-a-sort and capitalism-of-a-sort, to the point where I couldn't come up with substantive differences between the two.
I also couldn't get a handle on McLeod's politics any more than I could grok those of his protagonist, Wilde. Which says something about McLeod's writing—if he shares the views his characters espouse, he also does an equally good job of debunking them. Anarcho-capitalism is functional in the book only because death is impermanent and other planets exist to colonize, which is a fairly good take-down of the philosophy, if you ask me.
Overall, it's a lovely mix between hard sci-fi and political sci-fi, which, as you can imagine, is the sort of thing that makes me happy in my geek places. I was thoroughly absorbed in it up until the ending, where [spoilers for this book and Miéville's Iron Council] the Singularity happens, or something like it, at which point the writing goes all weird. China Miéville claimed that he gave Iron Council the horrific downer of an ending that he did because, as a revolutionary, he felt ill-equipped to write The Revolution in a way that would do it justice. (I don't really believe him; I think he just likes writing really depressing endings.) But anyway, there's something about depicting The Revolution (not a revolution, mind you, but the big one that would fix things), or the Rapture if you're a fundamentalist Christian, or the Singularity if you're an SF geek, that is inherently problematic. As in I wasn't sure if he was typing with both hands. [/spoilers]
But yes, now I want to read more by him. What do you guys recommend?
New Amsterdam, Elizabeth Bear
There's been some controversy about Bear lately, but I've been so into reading New Amsterdam that of course I haven't been following it. You can tell me later. Anyway, it's a series of steampunk novellas about a vampire detective, a forensic sorceress, and their various friends and lovers. The first story takes place on a zeppelin, so if that doesn't make you want to read the book I don't know what will.
Bear does a tremendous amount of things right (I did mention the zeppelin, yes?). This is the first vampire novel since Sunshine that I've read that's actually good—her vampires don't bloody well sparkle. And also, they're impotent. Three cheers for tradition and realism. Her writing is engrossing—period and witty and evocative. I am a sucker for "cozy murder mystery set against the backdrop of impending war" (see also: Farthing by Jo Walton). The last story has a cameo by a certain historical personage that made me squee out loud on the subway.
Where it falls down is in its structure. It was originally published as a series of novellas, and it doesn't quite work as a novel. We get repeated descriptions of characters we've already met, and it feels episodic. That's okay until the last few stories, where [spoiler] first, a series of monumentally life-changing events threaten to give the book a bit of a genre shift and permanently change the lives of the characters, and then we are hit with a wallop of Teh Angst in the last few pages, which would be fine if there were some sort of big plot arc. But there isn't, so it's jarring. [/spoiler] Other than that, completely awesome.
Am currently reading Whipping Girl by Julia Serano, which is fantastic so far.