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Reading:

I just finished this latest novel by Adam Roberts. See the previous entry for a little info on the Roberts. As well as a science fiction author, Roberts is an academic, specialising in science fiction and 19th century literature. I haven’t read his previous two novels, which were well received but didn’t grab me content-wise (and I have sooo much to read, dahhling!) This one, however, sounded fascinating, and that is, indeed!

It’s really late (check the timestamp on the blog entry… I’m writing this before the entry gets stamped, but still…) so I don’t want to write a whole essay. Suffice to say, though, that this is a very very fine hard science fiction novel, one which manages to impart a huge amount of science fact, and speculate convincingly in the areas of quantum physics, relativity and gravity. At the same time it is a disturbingly compelling piece of characterisation.
Written in the first person, Stone is the tale of a psychopath in a society where crime is unheard of. He or she (for the inhabitants of this particular galactic society can change the gender at will) narrates his or her story to a stone in the prison within which s/he is held – it’s easier than interpersonal communication…
Stone is set in a far-future society called the t’T, where all humans are imbued with dotTech (nanotechnology) which makes it almost impossible for them to die, and nearly impossible even to feel pain… Roberts expores the implications of this for his society in great detail. Faster-than-light travel is possible within certain limits, and for most of the humans life involves “Zhip”-ing around the galaxy having adventures, recreational sex, and so on. Ae, our very much flawed protagonist, is a murderer who has been incarcerated inside a star, and she (her default gender is female) is approached, at the start of the novel, by a mysterious voice that offers her freedom if she performs a particular task. That task, horrifyingly, is to murder the inhabitants of an entire planet.
Ae is a wonderful character. She is exceedingly complex in her moral and emotional makeup, and the writing style beautifully reflects this. The increasingly horrific acts of murder are described by her in an often detached fashion, and when describing her childhood she comments explicitly on the feeling that she’s not intentionally guiding her actions at some points… Part of her punishment is to have the dotTech inhabiting her body removed, and her trials and tribulations trying to live without the near-magical nanotech are described in detail. She becomes manic-depressive and, if it were possible, even more insane… Yet the narrative is always gripping and clear. Ae becomes more obsessed with who her “employers” are, and becomes the detective as well as the criminal. Of course she never solves that conundrum, but all is revealed, rather spectacularly, by the end. I found that increasingly, as Ae interrogates her own morals or lack thereof (and she experiences a huge amount of what might by considered remorse), I was particularly disturbed by how much empathy I felt towards the character. Clearly Ae is a sociopath and indeed a psychopath, yet she is also a highly sympathetic and compelling character.

In this novel, Roberts has created a future utopia as full of wonder and contradiction as Iain M Banks’ Culture, as well as one of the most memorably characters one will have the simultaneous pleasure and horror of reading… And it’s radical hard science fiction to the core. Strongly recommended.

Note: “radical” hard science fiction? That’s a term originating, I believe, from Britain’s great science fiction magazine Interzone in the (maybe) late ’80s, in which various science fiction authors including Paul McAuley resolved to try to write a form of hard science fiction which, rather than focus on one world-changing advance or one scientific conundrum, would try to depict a realistic future world where all predictable technologies have an impact (whether communications technology, virtual reality, biotechnology, climate change, nanotech, etc etc)… Radical hard sf is where it’s at. Read Greg Egan, Paul McAuley, Iain M Banks, Ken MacLeod, and more recently add Alastair Reynolds, Charlie Stross, etc etc… The list goes on. I imagine I could include Brian Stableford in that list. These people (a couple of generations there, and Stableford comes from an even earlier generation, but is still writing cutting edge stuff right now) happen to all be British or Australian, and this form of sf seems to be something of a British tendency. There is a strong sense of morality, but it’s a realistic morality with all the shades of grey and contradictions that real life offers up; there’s a strong understanding of politics; and there’s a dedication to a scientific epistemology/ontology of the world… Hurrah, I say.

The current edition of Spectrum SF doesn’t just contain the end to the excellent new Charles Stross novel. The short fiction is also excellent, and I just want to mention two of the other pieces. First of all we have the most recently published story by Melbourne-based doctor and science fiction author Chris Lawson. Called Faster, Higher, Stronger, it focuses on performance enhancers in Olympic sports, and is therefore hardly even science fiction at all. Even though I have (really, literally!) no interest whatsoever in sport, I found the story compelling, gripping and moving. Lawson has a talent for making stories out of esoteric bits of science, and weaving beautiful personal journeys around them. He has a number of admirers in the science fiction field, and is working on a first novel, so I hope that simultaneously with being a fine doctor Chris is going to become a rising star in the field soon.
I should mention that Chris is a lovely email correspondent, and early this year I got to meet him. I stuck his name on the door at a FourPlay gig while we were on the george tour. He was a genuine and great guy, and I’ll have to remember to invite him along again next time we’re in Melbourne ;)

Note: Chris has recently (well July actually) started a weblog dedicated to science fiction called the Frankenstein Journal, and very good it is too. The closest analogy would probably be Charlie’s Diary. It’s not updated that regularly, but is definitely always worth a read.

The second story I want to mention is a novella, I guess, and is by the author of the extraordinary novel I’ve just finished (Stone – see next post), Adam Roberts. Despite the “.com” he is in fact one of the young (and not so young) British science fiction authors who have been at the forefront of the genre for the past 10 or so years at least. Roberts has written two novels previous to Stone, neither of which I’ve read, and various short stories and novellas, some of which I have read.
The current Spectrum SF contains his most recent novella, Imperial Army. Roberts is engaged in a fascinating programme “to write a short story for every sub-genre and premise that SF has made famous; to assemble a collection in which I can try my hand at all the hackneyed old conventions.” Imperial Army is presumably either or both of the military sf story and the first-contact-with-aliens story. It is, it seems to me, high parody of the sortof gung-ho militarism in Heinlein and other US authors of the mid-20th century. It begins with a young man, Sid, masturbating; he discovers that the corporation taking his semen is using it to create an army, and that most of his children, so produced, perish in the huge interstellar war currently being waged by the human Empire. As we follow him through his life, he becomes involved in the conflict himself, and in a sense brainwashed into becoming a loyal soldier in an empire that comes under martial law and suffers a coup… We see that militarism becomes its own end, consuming all other purposes. In the end, as Sid’s commanding general plans the total annihilation of human culture (the populations of entire worlds to be replaced by force-grown brainwashed near-clones), Sid (surreally) experiences a sea change in his sense of loyalty and his morality.
I loved reading this story, and was amused by the dour matter-of-factness in its narration. I must say, though, that I found the style got in the way of the characterisation just a little; I couldn’t quite grasp the why of Sid’s personal changes because his internal life wasn’t really explicated. Nevertheless, the exploration of morality, as seen through the dispassionate description of various cultures (one in particular), makes for high irony and no doubt points to an explanation. A very good, if flawed, story.

Charlie Stross doesn’t just write an excellent weblog. He is of course a fantastic hard science fiction author – at the absolute vanguard of the genre, in my opinion.
I finally got issue #9 of British sf magazine Spectrum SF, which had the concluding segment of Charlie’s new novel, The Atrocity Archive. It was being serialised since issue #7, so finally I could read the whole thing (having held off until I had it all).
The Atrocity Archive could perhaps be best described as “hard science fantasy”. It combines Stross’s love of Lovecraftiana with his (yes, geeky) love of computers and outlandish cutting-edge science. “Lovecraftiana”? For the uninitiated, H.P. Lovecraft created a kind of dark fantasy all his own, complete with Elder Gods and eldritch horrors which have inspired successions of writers to extend his world. Neil Gaiman (another author who keeps a journal) has done some amusing homages, and Stross also enjoys drawing out the high camp lunacy of it all. There are nevertheless some horrifying atrocities described in the novel…

I must admit I was expecting not to enjoy this as much as his action-packed gonzo futurism in the Accelerando sequence that Asimov’s is currently publishing. However, it had me rapt from the start. Lovecraft’s summonings are bizarrely morphed into an extension of computer science and number theory; the Elder Gods, ice giants and whatnot are entities existing in parallel worlds (the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics being assumed true)… It’s all far too silly to be considered hard science fiction, but it’s delightfully rigorous, in high detail. The “Laundry”, where our protagonist works, is a highly secret branch of British Intelligence in charge of keeping knowledge of higher algorithm theory from spreading (which could result in malevolent intrusions from other dimensions) – and it’s described as your standard bureaucratic nightmare, with squabbling office politics and all. The obligatory love story that fuels the plot is both sensitively described and played for laughs, as are the gender politics – and not to mention the real politics, amazingly up-to-date, with mad Islamic terrorists almost setting off Armaggedon…
The funniest bit, in my opinion, is the way that the descriptive language in the first few chapters is full of evil portents and allusions to horror, but continually lets you down as it describes a pager going off in the protagonist’s pocket and so on…

Somehow Stross (I’m trying to call him “Stross” when in review mode, but “Charlie” when in discursive/personal mode, if that makes any sense) has here created something which is both a hugely entertaining diversion and at the same time a complex piece of political and scientific extrapolation – admittedly somewhat more implausible than really hard science fiction.

According to Charlie, Golden Gryphon will be publishing the complete The Atrocity Archive together with a sequel (The Concrete Jungle) in early 2004. Hurrah!

I said I’d replace this “current reading” entry with proper reviews as I finished the various books I’ve been reading. But I’ve decided that, in order to keep a certain sense of continuity, I’ll leave this post here and just add posts for the various books. I wrote:

I finally got The Omega Expedition by Brian Stableford, the final book in his six book future history… I can’t wait to begin them all now, but before then I have a few free-standing books to read.
At the moment I’m reading Adam Roberts‘ new novel Stone. Although I haven’t read the previous two novels by this new British author, I know he is an exciting writer… I’m half-way through Stone, and it’s very good indeed. The protagonist is a psychopath of sorts, a one-in-a-million in a rather homogenised galactic society infused with and transformed by nanotech. The far-future science here is very convincing, and the characterisation is very detailed indeed. Great stuff!

However, I had to take a break from reading Stone, because issue #9 of Spectrum SF finally arrived, and within it, the final section of Charlie Stross’s new short novel The Atrocity Archive. Readers of this blog will know how much I respect Charlie and love his writing. This novel is an insane and hilarious mix of his obsession with Lovecraftiana and computer programming. I am, of course, loving it.

Meanwhile, I found the latest issue (also #9 as it happens) of Grooves mag, an idm-focused mag which began asa zine and has become progressively more professional in both presentation and content. Also received the latest Wire mag in the mail yesterday (the January 2003 issue) and the latest New Scientist, which is always a Christmas/New Year Special Issue at this time of year… Lots of extra reading!
And we shouldn’t forget some great comics, including the Flaming Carrot/Reid Fleming (World’s Toughest Milkman) crossover issue… and at Phantom Zone Bondi Junction’s pre-Christmas sale I found a cheap copy of Jason’s Shhhh (not sure how many “h”s there – published by Fantagraphics) and Dan Clowes’ Twentieth Century Eightball collection. Woohoo! The book by Jason, who is I believe a French comic writer (unless he’s Canadian) has no dialogue at all, but the stories therein are very affecting and delightfully drawn. The Clowes volume collects a whole lot of funny stuff from his Eightball comic, and is amazingly varied in style but consistently hilarious.

In the middle of reading the Ken MacLeod books, I received the latest novel by John Meaney, called Context. I’m sure I reviewed Paradox (of which this is a sequel) when it came out, but it must’ve disappeared because of the disorganised way I used to keep my reviews. Damn!

Anyway, Paradox was set on a world called Nullapeiron, which has a literally stratified society: There are nobles and lower classes, but the world is also divided into many levels, with not even the noble classes living on the surface pretty much. The protagonist, Tom Corcorigan, is a highly intelligent young boy from the (very much) lower classes, and is a very sympathetic character. It’s not exactly hard science fiction, being set in the very far future with a mysterious “mu-space” (a space with fractal geometry) underlying a lot of the “science”… But the world is very complex and beautifully drawn, and the characters interact with it in very interesting ways.

Context follows on from Paradox pretty much directly. As with the previous novel, there is a short story intertwined with the main narrative. In Paradox Tom received a strange storage device from one of the “Pilots”, people who are specially adapted to be able to remain conscious and navigate in mu-space… They are, for some reason, reviled and feared on Nullapeiron. He gradually ingests (reads? experiences?) modules from a story about one of the original Pilots, and learns information vital to his own life. I felt that in Context, although it made some sense to continue it, this device seemed somewhat more artificial. Perhaps this is because the story in the previous novel was adapted from an already-existent story, whereas here it’s clearly written as part of the novel. This might seem contradictory, but the point is that the flash-back narrative (now about the daughter of the first story’s protagonist) reflects Tom’s experience in a too-convenient manner…
Apart from that, there is again a lot of fully-immersive world-building, and I enjoyed the experience of both Nullapeiron and (relatively) near-future Earth… Meaney is a great writer, and nothing’s ever dull or unconvincing… However, somehow the “Blight”, which is the main motivating factor for the characters in this book, is a bit too much of an Evil Overlord kind of villain, and the way it’s linked with the villain in Meaney’s first novel is a bit too convenient again. I got a strange feeling, near the end, that I was reading some epic fantasy novel rather than science fiction… and I don’t really like epic fantasy.
Still, I did like this book, and look forward to the next in the series, which should complete the story of Tom Corcorigan. Meaney tries hard to make his exotic future science seem plausible, and most succeeds. Indeed, it was more the narrative aspects that didn’t quite convince in this novel. Hopefully Resolution will be more convinving.

I’ve just finished the loosely-connected first four novels by Ken MacLeod, referred to collectively as the Fall Revolution. He’s a Scottish author, socialist and libertarian (but not in the American sense of conservative free-marketeers), and there’s a huge amount of politics in his books; there are generally two time-streams, one being near-past/future political stuff, and the other being far-future space-opera in the style of Iain M Banks (of whom he is a long-time friend). There’s a certain seeming virulent anti-Green sentiment in the first novel, The Star Fraction, but it’s partially an expression of the attitude of both left and libertarian sources, and partially one can understand it as not exactly an anti-green sentiment so much as being against those who are against technology, against humanity, etc. There’s plenty I’m not sure I agree with in the first book, but I think that’s the sign of good writing. In any case, it’s stimulating to read such vociferously left-wing and political stuff in hard science-fiction. The fourth book has, in a sense, a “green utopia” as its future setting – MacLeod likes to play with all sorts of points of view within the revolutionary/left/liberal axis, which is part of why he’s such a fantastic author…

Apologies if this extended review reads a bit oddly – I read the four books over some length of time, and I put up little review-lets as I went, so I’m pieceing it all together now…
The second novel, The Stone Canal, is fantastic. FANTASTIC. Still my favourite. Two time-lines, one starting in the late ’70s with socialist and libertarian Uni students having arguments in pubs (and suchlike), the other set in the far-future and involving artificial intelligences (robots and cloned humans and all sorts of bizarreness) in an anarchist society. The political ruminations are fascinating (the central character John Wilde is a very sympathetic character despite claiming to be a purely selfishly-motivated libertarian…), as are the philosophical and scientific speculations. What’s most fascinating is how MacLeod explores different political and philosophical viewpoints in each novel. This one, to me, had the most engaging characters, as well as being the most favourably inclined towards artificial intelligence…

The third one, The Cassini Division, is set in a kind of anarcho-socialist utopia (of sorts), and presents a completely different attitude to technology and artificial intelligence from the previous one, one which I found somewhat troubling, as well as a rather twisted attitude to morality (whereby “good” means “good to us” – whoever “us” might be). But there’s always a sense of the ambiguity of it all, and usually one can enjoy it and be swept along without too much stress from one’s own opinions – especially because MacLeod is thoroughly exploring all sorts of concepts and positions without resolutely coming down on any particular side… I know a lot of people like this novel, but I found it very much the least satisfying. There were some fun technological marvels and plenty of adventure, but the protagonist was such a completely unsympathetic character, I found it difficult going.

The final novel, The Sky Road, competes well with The Stone Canal for best of the lot. This time it’s set in a kind of far-future Green utopia about to make its first steps into space, in which the “tinkers” (computer programmers and theoreticians) are a somewhat outcast minority group, and most people believe in a strange quasi-religion of “Reason” (in which the events of the early 21st century are mythologised). There’s a linked near-future time-line which involves many of the characters from previous books. The morality and politics is nicely muddled up, making for very realistic characterisation and a very realistic near-Armageddon for the near-future world… I enjoyed it very much.

I’ve learnt a huge amount about both socialist and libertarian politics through reading these books, and not a small amount about human nature too. The fact that MacLeod can bounce between different viewpoints so convincingly, and can often make the reader disagree vehemently, is proof that he’s an extraordinary talent. Equal thanks go to acb and Charles Stross for putting me on to MacLeod.

Listening:

I picked up this album while in Auckland NZ, and I must say it’s an amazing find. It was playing in this second-hand record store called the Record Exchange on K Rd (shortening for, er um… Karanghape Rd – it’s a famous strip that intersects the top of Queen St, the other main road in the city… hey, check it out – a road with a website!) Annnyway… So there’s this CD playing, a cool swing-meets-ska type number with biting lyrics. And the songs keep on being great, so I have to ask. There’s this CD with a cracked case, a duo I’ve never heard of, and the CD’s from 1989. But I look on the back of the insert, and there’s a face I can’t help recognizing: Neill Duncan, an amazing multi-instrumentalist who played sax and percussion in the Jews Brothers (New Zealand’s premiere (and indeed probably only) klezmer group) and lives now in Australia, married to the sister of a friend of Ange’s. Hm. Neill is truly amazing, and there he is playing in “The Six Volts”, backing most of the tracks on this album.

So I just had to buy it. It got left in amongst all my purchases in NZ & Melbourne (you just don’t want to know how much Ange & I got. Me in particular. Don’t ask) and I finally pulled it out recently. Fuck me dead, it’s just the most honest and exquisite collection of perfect folk-pop, and despite all this backlog I have to blog it up right away! Think Whitlams (but remember this came out in 1989 – Tim and the rest were perhaps doing the Olive Branch, maybe), think the Clouds (who were maybe recording the gorgeous Cloud Factory EP, just), think folky stuff from the ’60s, think Jacques Brel, think the Squirrel Nut Zippers if you like. All of this comes to mind. This is hugely evocative music, beautifully crafted, compact songs that grab you and make you giggle, or catch your nostalgia-neurons. Stories of small-town life and tragedy (think of Perth’s great Triffids, or Tim & Stevie’s Whitlams again), it’s bowled me over, all in just 10 songs (two “sides”, cute! Probably was released on vinyl too).

I’d tell you to go get it, but I suspect this is one CD that’d be impossible to find, especially in Australia. Just take my word for it. If I can contact them and ascertain it’s out of print, maybe I can do a burn or two, just because people need to hear this lovely unassuming stuff. YAY!!

Addendum: Now I’m home, I’ve found some links. Here we discover that Don McGlashan, one of the duo, is now in the Mutton Birds, a rather better-known NZ indie band. And there was a second album called (wait for it) More Songs from the Front Lawn… A judicious Google search (try songs from the front lawn) will probably turn up some opportunities for purchasing. Bonza mate, as they say in Aussieland.

I’ve been sitting on these two CDs for quite a while, unable to file them away. Finally did so yesterday, so I thought I’d better blog ‘em up! They’re superb.

Multiplex are an electronic duo from the UK (two brothers in fact), who’ve been around for a few years on the net – I remember downloading a couple of mp3s from their always-beautifully-designed website which impressed me whenever that was. Very much idm fare, melodic, nice programming, etc.
Well suddenly this year we’ve seen a whole swathe of releases from them. There’s an album on Toytronic that I don’t have, and there were previous 12″s and an album on Senton Recordings (who have a lovely flash site themselves). Mixt is a remix album that Senton put out a few months ago, and it contains a wonderful selection from some of the cream of electronica – Herrman & Kleine of Morr Music jostle with the delicate and intricate Andrew Coleman (here as Animals on Wheels), Kettel and Kreidler are there as well as Mitchell Akiyama (who I’m sure must have a website but I can’t find one, here at work) putting in a lovely mellow-Mego-like thing. Most surprisingly, Monolake do a fantastic breakbeat mix – almost too fast to be 2step, it’s a surreal feeling to hear Monolake doing drill’n'bass. I like it!
Other highlights include Funckarma (a German duo, also brothers, who I’m just realising how much I love), and the Russian group EU whose album on UK label Pause 2 I’ve just picked up and will be reviewing soon. But really, there’s at most one or two tracks on this CD that I can live without on a listen through, and it’s highly recommended. Also comes with gorgeous artwork by a third brother, in a lovely card sleeve.

The second Multiplex CD I picked up is Iroquois one of Piehead Records‘ limited edition CDR releases for this year. It’s got 10 Multiplex tracks plus 5 remixes. The Multiplex tracks here are very fine indeed, beautifully produced with a great sense of melody which is often missing in electronica. But once again, some amazing remixes, from artists I’ve never heard of what’s more. ISDS’s track starts quite normally before breaking down into something far more granular and bizarre, and Spark (who appear on Mixt as well) and Ob contribute great drill’n'bass-y numbers – hurrah!

Multiplex are described as “soulful machine music”, and although I avoid the term “soulful” (I dislike soul music and what’s more I don’t believe in immortal souls *grin*) I can only agree.

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