Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Mind candy comes in many forms, but it's never particularly demanding - for all that it gives you a good fun read.

Take James D. MacDonald's The Apocalypse Door for example. There's a simple formula here: set a secret agent Knight Templar against a bunch of inter-dimensional mushrooms (that just may really be from Hell), throw in "the fun nun with the gun", stick them all in Newark NJ, and you've got a story that mixes the TV-friendly spy thriller stylings of Alias with the Rennes-Le-Chateau musings of The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail and a teensy pinch of Lovecraftian horror. It's a melange that shouldn't really work, but MacDonald approaches it with a panache and flair that makes this book one of the most enjoyable fantasy thrillers around.

To paraphrase Raymond Chandler: "Down these mean streets a warrior monk must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished or afraid..."

Peter Crossman is that monk, assigned to mentor a new recruit into the ranks of the thirty and three, the inner circle of the Knights Templar. The Knight's are the Church's last line of defence against the darkness that is forever trying to engulf the world. When a UN peacekeeping team disappears in Lebanon, the resulting chain of events sends Crossman to a warehouse in Newark - where things aren't quite what they seem. Something big is happening, really big, and when a third of the heavens turn to blood, Crossman knows that more than a few missing men are at stake. The Apocalypse Door is swinging open and it's up to him to make sure that it stays closed. And what's the link with Crossman's past as a CIA agent?

A fun, edge of the seat read. Cinematic in scope, the constant action pulls you through the story. Sure, there's not much characterisation - or for that matter, character development - but that's not really the point here. MacDonald is spinning a good old fashioned adventure yarn, just cloaking it in the trappings of SF, horror and fantasy. It's a return match for Crossman, who originally appeared in short stories written for various themed short story collections.

The Apocalypse Door is pulp fiction in its purest form, ideal for blotting out that interminable commute or a chunk of that long plane journey. Just don't expect a long read - the print is large, and it's only 254 pages - and expect to be left waiting for the next book in the obvious series!

"Piglet's Big Movie" is undoubtedly the finest film ever made about six mentally challenged stuffed animals. Sure it's slight, but also as cute as the curly tail on its tender protagonist.

(From The Washington Post, via Google News)

It's difficult turning a standalone novel into a series - especially when that novel is a fix-up of Analog-style puzzle stories like Wil McCarthy's The Collapsium, which ends with the hero finally building his engineer's utopia. Luckily McCarthy's come up with the only reasonable solution in The Wellstone: looking at what life's going to be like for the next generation.

It's difficult being the immortal child of immortals in a post-scarcity solar system. What can you do when no one is going to move on and let you grow up? Crown Prince Bascal, heir to the Tongan-controlled Queendom of Sol, and a group of his friends have been exiled to summer camp. It's not just any old summer camp - this is an artificial world on the edge of the solar system. So how do they escape? And how can they rebel? A brief foray via matter transmitter to Denver leads to an abortive riot, and a more restrictive regime. Using the ubiquitous wellstone they fashion a solar sail, and launch a log cabin into space, and find themselves en route to disaster...

Framed by episodes set a thousand or so years later, in a ruined solar system, McCarthy's story is incomplete - in fact we're due at least one sequel - so don't expect conclusions, though we are left with an interesting response to the childrens' rebellion. However, what he does do well is explore the frustrations of immortal children. Their parents have it all, so what is left for them? For Bascal, "Still Not King" is going to be his life's motto, and all he can do is kick and scream. His rebellion may be unfocused, but he's got a legitimate greviance.

While the characters may be thinly drawn - just scraps of rage in teenage form, McCarthy is most interested in the eponymous Wellstone (a technique for creating programmable artificial materials at an atomic level, for which he actually owns a patent). Its ubiquity in the Queendom of Sol is its strength and its weakness. Bascal's men know the material inside out, and find ways around their various predicaments using it, along with the other tool at the heart of the Queendom, the matter replicating fax.

McCarthy has written a good old fashioned hard SF novel - but it's a novel that's more than a technical problem in search of a solution, it's also a novel about profound social change and how we can respond to it. Now to wait for the sequel.