Object Dart

If you want Mills and Boon masquerading as space opera, enjoy. Otherwise, forget it.

Catch the Lightning is some of the worst scifi I’ve read in a fair old while. For starters the protagonists says, ad nauseum, “now I know that the [insert verb/noun here] meant [insert meaninglessness]“, which constantly reminds the reader that whatever conundrum the characters are facing will work out just fine in the end. Now that’s fine, we’re all used to stories that are about the journey, not the destination, but… FFS.

And this is a pity, because Asaro is a PhD in physics, and some interesting theorisation has obviously gone into the scifi universe. But this story is so unbelievably weak, and the characters so unbelievably soppy, you just want to slap them.

Avoid.

An enjoyable space opera. Plague is spreading rapidly across the human-inhabited galaxy, so “Sanctity” sends an ambassador to the one world where the plague is not, Grass.

It took awhile to get into this book, but once I was there, it was a fairly routine bit of scifi distinguished mostly by the strong female protagonist.

And that’s about all there is to say! The descriptions of Grass itself are great (a planet covered in a a grass-dominated ecology), and the characters are fun, but otherwise? Meh.

This was probably the best scifi read on my list for a fair while. Hyperion is a cover version of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but turned into a compelling space opera.

“Hyperion” is a world within the human galatic shere of influence, but contains a mysterious complex of temples populated by a pathological killer called “the Shrike”, and it is to Hyperion that our protagonists are travelling. To pass the time they agree to tell their own tales, and these form the bulk of the detail of the novel. It is a very good mechanism, and serves the story well.

My initial thought was that the use of stories would undermine the novel, and result in a disjointed narrative poorly strung together by the pilgrimage the characters are undertaking. I was pleased to find that while the stories are distinct, they also interrelate very subtly and the novel itself hinges off them well.  However, there is a sequel that I’m thinking will fill many of the unresolved gaps in the story itself.

The real strength of Hyperion is Simmons story-telling ability. Each of the tales actually feels like it was written by a different author, and each has its individual appeal. For instance, the tale of the “Wandering Jew” and his daughter is deeply sad, and, well, just plain great. On the other hand the Soldier’s tale is saucy, while being both arousing and disturbing.

All in all? Highly recommended.

I’ve read a number of ‘city scape’ books lately, so I was at first wary of this. It’s hard to compare anything to Shriek: An Afterword after all, with autochthonous landscapes, mystery, and horror.

Perdido St Station is the story of a… “fringe” scientist in a steampunk/fantasy Earth-like cityscape. Actually, if anyone has the actual word for “cityscape” novel, I’d love to hear it. Anyhow, Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is approached by a character who commissions him to perform a near-miracle and restore to him something taken as a punishment. And then we’re off into New Corbuzon, with it’s mutilayered society of xenomorphs, cyborgs, weird natives, urban poor, criminals, and a million other ‘critters’.

Where Mieville’s style differs from other cityscape writers is it’s apparent lack of analogy. What I took from Shriek, and Trial of Flowers, was strong analogies of modern cities, with the “under-city” existing without apparent knowledge of the “normal” people couched in the cityscape. In Shriek the Greycaps have an entire universe unapparent to the humans upon which they feed, and in Trial of Flowers a series of unknowable and terrible Gods are kept at bay by the systematic mistreatment of an underclass of dwarves. In PSS though, the underclass or ‘other’ is essentially on the same level as normal humanity, with the potential tension inherent in difference unexploited by the author. Instead, an alien element is introduced, and it is this that acts as antagonist.

Personally? I prefer the undercity element to drive the tension in the story. There is something about this analogy that I find compelling. Modern cities are very much divided into mainstream and other, and the characterisation and exploitation of this difference in scifi serves the genre well. Since we can’t focus on the Commies anymore, the concept of the terrible and violent unknown within our midst is a powerful motif. It can be as simple as counter-culture and “drop-outs” not participating and agitating against status quo, or as sopisticated as a network of exploitation of the majority for nefarious ends. The possibilities are endless, and highly relevant to a well-established urban population.

This small criticism aside, PSS is a fun read, and recommended.

OK, so you have all the elements. The first hundred colonists being sent to Mars. A planet dripping with resources for a hungry Earth, and ‘red’ environmentalists hanging on at all costs. A love-triangle between the most powerful three, and a murder thrown in for good measure. You’d think this would be the basis for a good novel right?

Nope.

Boring, beyond, belief.

I gave up and left this slow slow snail of a story well behind me. I mean, they even had something like freakin Ninja’s and this was *still* boring, like a long slow pan of the most gorgeous landscape you can imagine. But again, and again, and again. A visual feast, but nothing much else doing.

Robinson has written two sequels to Red Mars, and you can bet your patooty I will not be rushing out to the library to find them.