a-cubed.info

Last one today, I promise (for those whose friends-list is filling up with my book blogging). I’m determined to catch up on a Cherryh kick I went through a few months ago but didn’t get around to blogging.

Yet another of her Alliance/Union books, this is one of the Merchanter-based ones, though it also includes the Fleet. It’s a fairly late on in the post-Company Wars era, so still directly linked to the events of Downbelow Station rather than much further down the timeline.

This is the coming-of-age story of a young man whose upbringing has been screwed up royally by his screwed up mother and her complacent self-satisfied family, on a classic Merchanter family trading ship. Conceived in a rape but as we eventually find out one which while the victim didn’t deserve (no one ever does) the victim was hardly a sensible and sane woman to start with.

We get Cherryh’s over-the-shoulder third person trademark on multiple characters in this story and as with a number of her other books she remarkably manageds to make some really screwed up and nasty people really work as main characters. It helps that the main character Joh Bowe Hawkins is as sane and positive a character as he can be given his background. His coming-of-age is the main point of the book, behind which is an explanation of some of what happened to the Earth Company Fleet after Downbelow Station. Wonderfully ethically-grey as much of Cherryh’s writing is, this explores some of the darker sides of the human character and comes out with a message that even the most screwed around can posibly find somewhere to fit in.

A nice addition to the Merchanter set and one of my favourites of that subsqeuence, along with Rimrunners.

The long-awaited (approximately two decades) sequel to Cyteen. This picks up mere months after the events in Cyteen and all takes place over a few months time. Compared to the timescale of Cyteen which follows the death of the first Ariane Emory and the growth to early adulthood of her clone, this is a breakneck pace. There are some retcons in here, such as the xeplanation of the inconsistent numbering of some of the Azi in Cyteen, and the introduction of a few Azi who didn’t appear in the first, giving all the Reseune natural born senior people at least one Azi companion. There’s also an attempt to deal with the outdated computer terminology and the introduction of more advanced computing systems. Other than that the basic set-up remains the same and the storyline continues on where Cyteen left off in both personal and political terms. The mystery of what really happened to Ariane Emory I is revealed, though it’s a little bit of a violation of the law of Chekov’s gun. This is a nice read, but sadly not up to the masterpiece qualities of Cyteen. Then again that was always going to be a hard act to follow and twenty years on even more so. It’s clearly written with scope for another sequel, but whether it will get one is, I think, doubtful. It’s less demanding of one than Cyteen, possibly because  Cherryh has an honesty towards her fans and so leaves things open enough for an interesting further installment without leaving so many juggling balls up in the air it leaves one slightly unsatisfied (as the slightly abrupt ending of Cyteen did for me, being it’s only major flaw, I think) given how long this took to get commissioned. Definitely worth reading if you like Cyteen.

What to say about this Hugo Award Winner? It was a masterpiece at the time and remains a classic of the genre. Some elements of it have not dated well, unfortunately, in particular the terminology surrounding the compters. The constant mention of Tapes is slightly dated even for 1989 and the lack of graphical interfaces likewise. These niggles aside, though the strengths of the book in protraying  a monstrous main character as sympathetic, in two “incarnations” while weaving politics, psychgology, sociology, economics and personal vendettas together is absolutely wonderful. Her trademark alienation is more overt in some ways here as she explains Union’s “Specials” as people with a vision of something int he universe that only they can see, but that is important to humanity for them to articulate in a way that will eventually allow others to comprehend their vision and assimilate it fully. Perhaps even more relevant today as the pace of technological change continues to increase while the social fabric struggles to cope with those changes.

I remember being in one of Cherryh’s GoH programme items at Bucconeer where she was asked about if and when she’d write the sequel to Cyteen (it was clearly crying out for a sequel and written with one in mind). Her response was that she’d write it as soon s a publisher was willing to pay her for it to be written (as a pro, she wrote to contract and it was on offer but no one was picking it up, at least not for what she was willing to accept for it [my subtext]). I found this bizarre at the time that no publisher would pick up the contract for the sequel to a Hugo Winner (by a multiple winner of the Hugo for best novel). Luckily, eventually someone did pick it up.

If you haven’t read this and have even a vague liking for science fiction, go read it now!

Sorry for the flood of posts. I’m trying to catch up on my book blogging for the year as work winds down a bit, so I can try and manage the task I set myself at the start of reviewing all the books I’ve read.

This is the sequel to Heavy Time and features many of the same characters. It follows them as they reform their group, brought together to try and fly the prototype of the advanced attack ships carried by the carriers of the Earth Fleet. A familiar name from earlier written later-in-internal-chronology book Downbelow Station turns up: Jurgen Graff. The main storyline is just as engaging for me as Heavy Time, with a(n attempted) murder mystery, political shenanigans, interpersonal relationship conflicts and philosophy of sociology all joining the mix. The only weakness to my mind is that there are some continuity issues with the Fleet information from Downbelow Station with regards to Mallory’s status as third-most-senior of the Fleet Captains, despite Keu and Kreshov being listed here as senior in the nascent fleet and still in command at the time of Downbelow Station.

This neepery aside, this is another cracking book, with brilliant pacing and excellent characterisation and plotting.

This is the earliest book (in internal chronology) so far that Cherryh has written in her Alliance/Union (aka Merchanter) future history. Together with its immediate sequel (post to come soon as this is a catch-up post) it’s also the primary “Earth” sub-sequence. This one is set in the asteroid belt where independent miners compete with corporation-run (i.e. corporation-screwed) miners and others to identify rocks worth mining for their metal content. The demand for the contents at this point is principally to provide the raw materials for the carrier fleet which plays such a crucial part in events yet to come, but which those familiar with this universe of course know about. This is an interesting explication of a political situation which has been described from afar (both in time and space) in her earlier books. It’s also about her trademark alienated character coming to terms with their alien surroundings. In this case it’s the character of Decker coming to terms with the loss of his partner, the utter injustice of the situation (he knew it was unjust, he just didn’t realise quite how blatant it was) and his own mental imbalance brought on by the loss of his original partner. It’s a really nice near-space piece, that explores the possible consequences of a solar system partially settled by heavy corporate interests, who’ve gradually chipped away at human rights, to the extent that even paper is banned.

This is one of my favourites of Cherryh’s, mostly due to the wonderful characterisations. The speech patterns of each character is built up with great precision and, along with another of her trademarks (the over-the-shoulder third person view) one really gets to know and care about these characters. The eight deadly words are nowhere in sight here, for me at least.

The third and so far as I know final Zoot Marlowe book starts once more with his return to his home planet. THis time his grandfather persuades him to bring him along for the ride, giving him an even harder time explaining their physical form. But this being a timeless California 80s, the only people who really look deeply into it don’t take it any further. In this installment we meet Whipper Will’s father Iron (middle name Duke), his landlord Max Toodemax and re-encounter Mr Knighten Daise (transformed from his lobster incarnation to a camel this time).

Whipper’s father’s android business, currently producing Melt-O-Mobiles which get extruded by a dispenser and dissolve into smoke instead of requiring to be parked, has some difficulty with their superhero Androids going stale and he wants Whipper back working for him. Connected or not, someone kidnaps Whipper and Zoot’s surfer friends, Whipper’s girlfriend and Zoot’s grandfather Zamp. Zoot follows the trail with his hard-boiled wit and his idekick Surfing Samurai Robot duck sidekick Bill. The fun lasts all the way through the trilogy and I’d be happy if there were more to discover.

So, as mentioned in the review of Surfing Samurai Robots, I was given this book by some friends and tracked down the first one to read in order. Returning to T’toom, Zoot Marlowe finds even his newfound fame on his home planet isn’t enough for him and that trouble being his business, he needs Earth trouble to make his life complete, so he heads bck to Malibu. His arrival coincides with the appearance on the beach of what looks to be a large top hat, following which one of his friends is turned into a stage magician with real magic tricks (indistinguishable from the science of an advanced race, as he hangs a lampshade on).

Once again running into some cracking characters with names like Medium Rare, the Surfing Samurai Robot spritualist (who has had visions of T’toom), Busy Backson and her brother Gone Out, Zoot has a wonderfully surreal adventure that tears along with wit, verve and hard boiled monologuing.

When I lived in St Andrews, qidane and tobyaw gave me a birthday present of a pile of cheap SF. It was a fun present including various decent books (and a number not so decent) that I’d probably never have tried otherwise. One of them was the second book in a trilogy and being the way I am I tracked down number one first. I’m glad I did, and I later got the third in the series as well.

These are really fun little SF detective books. They’re very lighthearted, riffing heavily on surf culture, Raymod Chandler (and detective noir generally) with a healthy dollop of Dimension of Miracles.

Aliens on the planet T’toom pick up earth radio broadcasts and a young Toomler called Zoot becomes somewhat obsessed with the early radio adaptations of Chandler’s work and decides to head to Earth to become a PI. Landing in Malibu he is befriended by some surfers (mostly teens/twenties with one older guy).  Being basically humanoid, he manages to pass with various tales about toxic waste nose drops and too many drugs.

Meanwhile his new friends have a classic confrontation with beach bikers resulting in a bet about a surfing competition (surfing in this world is done using telepresece robots, not directly). The surfer’s bots get wrecked, all the parts and replacements are unavailable, and there are various other complications running around.

An engaging story that trips along with a cracking pace, wonderful dry wit, hard boiled dialogue. I particualrly like Mel Gilden’s wonderful in-your-face punning names for characters like Whipper Will, Knighten Daise (and his daughter Stormy) and the like.

These have dated well and exist in a sort of timeless parallel timeline with advanced robots but 80s sensibilities. Strongly recommended for comic relief from life’s vicissitudes.

This was  re-read, after I’d read the Science in the City trilogy (Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, Sixty Days and Counting). The first thing that struck me was the repeat of characters between this and both Escape from Kathmandu and the Science in the City trilogy. In fact, this is in some ways a dry run for the trilogy. The politics and the science fit right together, but it’s not quite like the trilogy is a sequel. It’s clear that Robinson made good use of his time at the US Antarctic base as a writer-in-residence. I don’t know all that much about extreme survival, but all the details hang together very well and it has a lot of verisimilitude at the very least. It’s a bit eco-utopian, but then that’s of course one of his ongoing themes.

He’s written better, but there’s lots worse out there.

Robin McKinley does the modern vampire in this one. Neil Gaiman describes it on the cover as “pretty much perfect”. I had this recommended somewhere a few months ago – I can’t remember where now – and since I’d liked McKinley’s Damar books, I decided I’d give it a go. It’s pretty good, but I don’t agree with Gaiman on its perfection. Certainly it’s a cut above most of this sub-genre (and I don’t just mean Twilight and other such teen wangst). In setup I was rather reminded of Kim Harrison’s Hollows. This is a non-masquerade supernatural world, where the beasties have come out if not into the daylight then at least into knowledge. There’s been war – the Voodoo Wars – and humanity has been significantly reduced in size. There are magic users, part-demons, weres (not just wolves, but all sorts of other changelings as well) and vampires. Vamps are regarded as the worst of the bad bunch and most of them, particularly the antagonist of this story, are pretty nasty pieces of work. Mostly people don’t survive an encounter with a vampire, they just tend to die.

This novel has two great things about it. The characterisations of all the major and most of the minor characters is brilliant (it’s one of McKinley’s strengths as a writer). Her take on the “good vampire” is also much better than most and works at the character level. However, the weakness of this book lies in the backdrop. It’s very detailed but it’s all two dimensional. It just doesn’t quite seem to work when one thinks about it. Characters in the defence force against supernatural wrongdoing fear that in 100 ears people will be ruled by vampires completely. There was huge attrition in the Voodoo Wars. None of this seems to really work, though, if one thinks about it a lot. This was published in 2002, so probably written a year or a couple earlier and there’s an Internet-equivalent in there with some interesting elements, though it seems quite dated and text-oriented, a bit like A Fire Upon the Deep, so maybe it was written even earlier than that. Anyway, what troubles me about this is that if many of the big cities have been de-populated, then how has advanced civilisation survived as well as it has? THe “New Arcadia” medium sized city is one of the larger ones left, we’re told, though we’re not actually told where it is, beyond it being the US. It’s somewhere with deciduous trees and real seasons including winter, not just climate, but it could be New England, Pacific NorthWest, Great Lakes. There’s a distinct lack of locality to it which distracted me rather.

I think this would have made a great few books gradually exploring this world in more detail and explaining just how it came about, and how close it went to the lights going out, how they were and are kept on and what the danger is short, medium and long term from vampires and other “Others”. But McKinley doesn’t seem to write series, only one-offs (plus the odd related book).

Still, very recommended for those who like the vampires but not the fang-fucker sub-genre. See also, Charlie Stross‘ forthcoming The Rhesus Chart for his take on vamps.