http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2046702.html[return][return]Justin Richards seems to be on form these days; this is another tie-in e-book, intended as ahttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2046702.html[return][return]Justin Richards seems to be on form these days; this is another tie-in e-book, intended as a prequel to The Snowmen (though as far as I could tell it was not available outside UKania until after the broadcast), a tale of Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax battling a smoke monster with the assistance of a small boy as viewpoint character. It is a pastiche of Victorian children's stories with a nod to Leon Garfield (though his Devil-in-the-Fog was set a hundred years earlier), spooky and enjoyable. When we first met Vastra and Jenny, fandom cried out en masse for spinoff stories about them, and I think this and James Goss's piece for last year's Brilliant Book shows that fandom was right....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1917683.html[return][return]Rule 34 ticked a lot of my boxes, dealing with the relationships between small state-like enhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1917683.html[return][return]Rule 34 ticked a lot of my boxes, dealing with the relationships between small state-like entities (in this case, a near-future Scotland and a fictional Central Asian republic) and also with the relationships between law enforcement, social networks and artificial intelligence, as well as quite deliberately referencing Ian Rankin's excellent Rebus novels. My only serious stylistic quibble is that the second person voice, which was appropriate for Halting State, the game-centred previous novel in this sequence, seems a bit more forced here. But otherwise it's an effective mix of techno-horror and black humour, and I enjoyed it more than any of the other books on the shortlist....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1914980.html[return][return][return][return]Another of this year's much-discussed shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Awahttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1914980.html[return][return][return][return]Another of this year's much-discussed shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, this time set in a near-future America where a relatively affordable immortality treatment abolishes death by aging (though disease, accident and homicide remain). Our narrator spends very little time pondering the immense psychological and philosophical consequences, and much more watching those around him die of disease, accident or homicide; he becomes a paid killer, first of voluntary suicides and then of those the state deems worthy of death; he is obsessed with a woman who he eventually finds in melodramatic circumstances. I was disappointed that having taken up the medical development which is key to the situation, the plot then did not go much beyond the techno-thriller format....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1915393.html[return][return]Really failed to impress me. Bear is regarded as one of the hardest of hard sf writers, but http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1915393.html[return][return]Really failed to impress me. Bear is regarded as one of the hardest of hard sf writers, but even so he has managed to create characters I actually cared about in other books of his that I have read. Perhaps I was wrong to try and read this during my travels at godawful hours of the morning last week, but I found little to recommend in this novel....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1911090.html[return][return][return]All strength to Sheri S. Tepper! She will turn 83 this summer (she was born seven mohttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1911090.html[return][return][return]All strength to Sheri S. Tepper! She will turn 83 this summer (she was born seven months after Philip K. Dick, three months before Ursula Le Guin) and keeps on turning out works dancing on the borderline of fantasy and science fiction, with deathly earnest political purpose. Her works repeatedly test Clarke's Third Law to destruction, which is why it is appropriate enough that this latest novel has been nominated for this year's Arthur C. Clarke Award.[return][return]I don't think it will win. There is a brilliant concept behind it all of the future of humanity in a world where environmental catastrophe will swallow the land, and some impressive description and also misdirection of the reader as to where the focus of the plot really is. But I'm afraid there is also too much infodumping in the early chapters. Still the overall vision is daring - how will the first post-human children be born? - and well executed after the early glitches. And it is good to see a writer who I think has not received her due appearing on the shortlist even at this late stage of her career....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1900869.html[return][return]A fascinating read. Embassytown is an interface between humans and several different types ohttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1900869.html[return][return]A fascinating read. Embassytown is an interface between humans and several different types of aliens; the human ambassadors who deal with them are identical twins, bred and conditioned to function as effectively a single personality with two bodies; this alone is a fantastic sfnal concept which has never quite been done like this. Lots of playing around with and about language, the meaning of humanity, and some sex as well; also we have the inevitable Mi�villean revolution and subsequent battle against the forces of reaction (very weirdly and vividly conceived).[return][return]I'm sorry to say, therefore, that I actually didn't like it all that much. I found the characters more baffling than engaging, and felt that while the setting was superbly realised, this was not as true of the story....more
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