Monday, 29th of March, 2004

I know, I’m out of order. I have two previously-read, and very good, books to review before I get up to this one. But who knew, except me? Who cares?¹
Well I can’t resist. Eastern Standard Tribe deserves the following rather unprofessional review:

Fuck. Ing. Awe. Some.

Truly. It’s really really good. I enjoyed the ubiquitous comms (which are mobile phone, handheld computer, net connection, bank card and everything else all rolled into one - Greg Egan had similar ones in everyone’s hands way back when, and I’ve wanted one ever since)…
I like the way so much of the momentum is kept up through conversation, when most idea-driven sf can fall down on the dialogue…
I really enjoyed the dual-stranded plotting: there’s a first-person present tense strand and a third-person past tense one. Even though the present tense narrative deliberately undercuts any suspense from the past tense one (we already know what’s going to happen), the narrative never loses momentum, and the present tense plot moves forward in a satisfyingly odd and unpredictable manner.
Totally recommended for the filesharing/blog generation. An absolute delight.

And as a bonus: now go read a wonderful short story of Cory’s at the Fortean Bureau (”A magazine of speculative fiction): Beat Me Daddy (Eight to the Bar), which has both a musical and an Australian connection of sorts. Post-apocalyptic craziness as only Cory can do it…
(Speaking of short stories, 2/3 of the stories in his excellent A Place So Foreign and Eight More collection can be downloaded for free here. The Jewish superman story is particularly cool…

¹ The reason I’m so strict with myself is that I have a fear that if I just jump to the most recent book, vivid in my memory, then I will no longer have any motivation to review the previous ones, and some poor sod will be left unreviewed in Stumblings. A woeful fate indeed.

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