Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

I've just finished reading a couple of Sean Williams' recent novels, Geodesica: Descent (written with Shane Dix) and the first part of his new Astropolis trilogy Saturn Returns. Both of the books were, as always from Williams, excellent reads. There's an interesting underlying theme to Williams' SF, which I can only describe as an investigation into the post-human condition, wrapped up in the shape of convincing, intelligent post-human space opera. That's a rare thing in SF, where a strand of small "c" conservative humanism often delivers is to static distant futures where nothing is truly different from today (Jack McDevitt's Seeker is a prime example of this - an excellent book and a powerful story of misguided idealism that could easily be set here and now, not thousands of years in the future).

Take the Geodesica books as an example. Most of the viewpoint characters are significantly modified from the human norm - even to the point of being completely alien. They respond to situations in ways we wouldn't, and make choices that we would never consider. As the story evolves a key baseline human (if you can call her that) makes choices to change herself, and ends up becoming something very much of the other. Meanwhile, an engineered guardian discovers how to manipulate hardcoded drives to his own advantage, while another posthuman explores the reasons for his choice in stepping away from the baseline. There's a Darwinian drive to the next in Williams' universes that pushes both the story and the world to change and grow. His worlds may be empty of the alien, but the diversity of his human cultures gives us much that is peculiar.

Astropolis is an ambitious work. Put aside the character who speaks in Numan lyrics, and you find yourself in a far future, millenia down the line. This is an old future that's run down and torn apart, where the transcendent post humans that guided a galaxy-spanning humanity (in all its modified forms) have been murdered. A near-baseline human main character is resurrected on the edge of the galaxy, and heads inward to find out just why he was killed and why. In a mix of space opera and Japanese samurai film he meets up with old compatriots only to discover that a different version of himself has betrayed them all, in different ways - and may be involved with the event that killed the transcendents. Williams has also thrown away the convenience of FTL, leaving us with a universe where events take millenia to unfold, and characters can dial their subjective clock rates up and down. Overclocking, modding - this is a crisply gothic world where the LAN party culture would be at home...

Both novels are excellent reads, that take the wide screen baroque of space opera and give us something that is unique and different, worlds that explore what it means to be human while looking through the eyes of our unfamiliar children.

In honour of International Pixel-Stained Techno-Peasant's Day (which serves to remind people that there is an online marketplace for work, and publishing content for online rates, or even free, doesn't damage the market - it just makes it bigger) here are a handful of book reviews I wrote for SFX, way back when.

( Gywneth Jones, Kairos )

( Kim Newman, The Bloody Red Baron )

( Dan Simmons, Endymion )

These days I regularly have my journalism published online - you'll find all my pieces for The Guardian on their website, along with work at The Register and IT Pro.

It's probably interesting to note that online writing pays better than paper these days, at least for technology journalism. This is not a zero sum game - it's creating a market where there wasn't one before.

Anyway, enjoy.

A good trip for reading, which was surprising considering all the driving I did (around about 1500 miles), and all the meetings we had at both CES and in Silicon Valley...

Transcendent. Stephen Baxter
The final volume of the Destiny's Children sequence wraps up the story in a loop of time. Baxter links the bottlenecked near-future of a warming-threatened world with the far-distant tomorrow of the Commonwealth, a human-dominated galaxy where the Xeelee wars are long over, and a nascent transcendent overmind struggles to break through its own bottleneck. But is sorrow and redemption enough to build a new future? Baxter mixes the stories of two societies pondering their roads to their separate futures, and finds a road for today and tomorrow to finally collaborate. A fine end to a space opera that mixes philosophy and world-shattering revelations.

Carnival. Elizabeth Bear
One correspondence I've yet to see mentioned in reviews of Carnival is Ursula Le Guin. There are echoes of The Left Hand Of Darkness all through this story, a dark tale that explores gender issues and revolutionary politics through a diplomatic visit to a matriarchal world. A fragmented diaspora (the result of a machine-driven winnowing of humanity) has left a depopulated, expansionist Earth struggling to control its many colony worlds. Diplomatic methods conceal subversion and military actions, and two such diplomats arrive on New Amazonia to return stolen art. Separated many years ago, the two men were lovers, and their reunion reveals their true allegiances - and at the same time brings political differences on New Amazonia to a head. Bear juggles plots and counterplots in a Machiavellian skein of shifting alliances, tossing in a long awaited first contact to sweeten the brew. An excellent read, with compelling characters and a story that grabs the reader on page one and doesn't let go...

The Resurrected Man. Sean Williams
It's not every SF mystery that starts with a quote from Daniel Dennet's introduction to The Mind's I, a collection of the best readings on AI and intelligence. However, Dennet's musings on the philosophical ramifications of a duplicating teleportation device provide the backbone of Williams' story. What does it mean when the killer may be a duplicate of the detective, and when his dismembered and tortured victims are still very much alive? The search for the Twinmaker killer takes us from orbital towers to a future Australia, exploring the society that results from cheap and easy teleportation, and showing what such a tool could mean to a serial killer freed to indulge his fantasies. A fascinating, compelling read, this is a book that breaks new ground and sets the scene for the rest of the author's career.

The Emerald Sea. John Ringo
Oh dear. I should have stopped reading this at the point at which the dragon-carrier crew managed to reinvent fifty years of carrier operations lessons in one afternoon. Post the fall of a post-scarcity civilisation a rag tag bag of re-enactors battles a bad guy armed with people-changing machines fallen straight out of a Jack L. Chalker novel. The result? A mediocre piece of military SF that fails to engage or entertain. The idea was good - a dragon carrier defending merpeople from the bad guy's demon rays (and a kraken) - but even the set-pieces - dragons fighting orca, the merpeople's sea cave nursery - seemed to be there as plot coupons rather than as part of the story. A pity, as Ringo's earlier Posleen war stories had shown some promise.

The Frost-Haired Vixen. John Zakour
The latest Zach Johnson PI pastiche is enjoyable fluff, just like the rest of the series. Zakour's humour is an easy ride, and Zach's trials and tribulations push our hero to a solution. This time, Zach is sent to the North Pole to solve the murder of two elves (yes Virginia, in New Frisco there is a Santana Clausa...). Mutant geeks, super-powers, killer robots and obsequious elves litter the plot, while Zakour scatters enough clues to help the reader work out whodunnit just as Zach finds himself at the wrong end of a laser... An enjoyable light read.

Pushing Ice. Alastair Reynolds
Pushing Ice is Reynolds take on Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. One of Saturn's moons turns out to to be an alien spacecraft - and it's leaving the solar system at speed. Only one ship can explore the moon before it leaves the system, and it's an ice miner that really should be heading home. Things are complicated by corporate politics, a high-speed Chinese mission, the possibility that there's not enough fuel to get home, and the alien vessel/moon's mysterious propulsion scheme. Reynolds manages to deliver his own take on the space opera "big dumb object" trope, exploring the human response to the alien, and the effects of politics and survival on friendship and working relationships. It's a story that mixes the wide screen with the human scale - to great effect. Reynolds' best book to date.

I've been reading a lot of Walter Jon Williams recently, going back to his early novels to trace my way through his writing from the lost colony epic (with a twist in the tale) of Ambassador of Progress to the dark space opera of Dread Empire's Fall.

Most of Williams' writing is tightly focussed on one or two characters - Cowboy and Sarah in Hardwired, Ubu Roy and Beautiful Maria in Angel Station, Drake Majistraal in the Divertimenti. It's a pattern that continues on until we get to his later works, where the screen opens out, and more characters take the stage, owning more of the story. But there was a discontinuity in my reading, a rift between the structures of Metropolitan and The Praxis.

The answer had been sat on my to-be-read bookcase for nearly seven years.

It's in 1999's The Rift where we see Willliams' take his first steps onto a new path, using the classic wide angle of a disaster novel, with a rebounding, spiralling cast of victims and survivors. We get the usual Williams' duality in the main viewpoint voices, two characters trying to survive in a world that's suddenly become hostile, as a boy with a telescope joins forces with an unemployed engineer struggling to find his estranged family. Meanwhile the world falls apart, ripped into shreds by a massive earthquake under the Mississippi valley, the New Madrid fault shrugging itself after nearly two centuries of sleep.

Other storylines ebb and flow in the aftershocks, a stock trader who loses everything, a klansman who rediscovers the concentration camp, an apocalyptic preacher suddenly delivered the answer to his prayers, and a military engineer trying to put it all back together again. Everything spirals round, an eddy in the wild river, while Williams moves to explore the real rift - man's inability to see the other as truly human.

There's a sense of experimentation here, as Williams steps outside his usual genre, and his usual structures, and tries to do something different. Perhaps it's even freedom - an opening out from tight structures and reader expectations. Whatever it is, it's a brave effort, and a powerful novel that sets the scene for a new direction in Williams' career. Ignore the trappings of the airport disaster novel and see it for what it is: a writer experimenting and delighting in the results of his experiments.

Perhaps the world of SF should be grateful that it wasn't a huge hit, as the lessons learnt went to help with the construction of one of the more considered of the recent re-workings of space opera.

Recommended, for more than just the Walter Jon Williams completists out there.

Here's a quick review of The Game Maker's Apprentice for The Register:

Subtitled "Game Development for Beginners", The Game Maker's Apprentice is just that, a guide to developing your own games using the free Game Maker games development software (available for download here, if you don’t buy the book).

Everything you need to build the games described in the book is on its companion CD, including the Game Maker software and all the images and sounds needed, as well as the final versions of the example games, ready for you to extend with your own levels and actions. There's plenty of installation help in the book, with the first section a quick introduction to Game Maker.

Game Maker is a visual development tool, with drag and drop visual programming for most game elements, and a GML language to extend object actions. Perhaps best thought of as an OO tool for creating games, it uses events and actions to tie objects together.

Read the rest here.

In other news, the cooker is dead, killed by the man who came to fix it. Take out 'til Tuesday then...

David Marusek – Counting Heads
Tor, November 2005, 336 pp, $24.95, ISBN 0-765-31267-9

The rapture of the nerds may be a wonderful thing: if you can afford it. Nanotech, life-extension, everything you want at the touch of a button or the wave of a hand. But what if you’re a have-not in the world of the have-it-alls? Counting Heads is a look at the nanotech revolution from the underneath, from the viewpoint of those just struggling to survive and make it through another day.

Extending his short story "We were out of our minds with joy", and embellishing the world shown in other shorter works, Counting Heads is the story of Samson Harger, a man who has everything and suddenly loses it. Never quite rebuilding his life, he finds himself a pariah, a part of the underclass, in a world tied down by the trappings of the security state, just struggling to make it through each day. Marusek builds an ensemble cast around him: the boy who’s stayed a child for as long as possible to help with demographic research, the clones who aren’t entirely sure if they’re meant for their pre-allotted roles, the wealthy and their employees, and the artificial intelligences that make the world work. Teeming billions fill the world, most struggling to find meaning in their circumscribed lives.

When Samson’s patrician ex-wife and not-quite daughter are in a space plane accident, it’s time for things to change. His wife is dead, and Ellen nothing more than a stolen head. Plot and counter-plot struggle for control of Ellen’s unconscious head. The accident is part of a scheme to control a commercial empire that has become unprofitably altruistic – designing starships to take away the billions and planning the re-terraforming of Earth. There’s more at stake than mere money.

As a rag tag bundle of misfits struggle to find the missing head, Marusek juggles several linked plots, skilfully tying them into a coherent whole. Flashback and machine-eye views expand on the story, adding texture to what could have been a straight-forward caper.

Marusek’s warts-and-all approach to his future mixes skilful world-building with an understanding of the stresses and fractures that distort the fabric of society. This is no utopian future. Underneath his story of a quest for a missing head lies the classic “if this goes on” theme, stretching the fledgling security-industrial complex growing in the West and showing it full blown – along with the corruption and inefficiencies such massive systems always engender.

Perhaps best thought of a mash-up of Kathleen Ann Goonan’s Queen City Jazz with Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, that’s been filtered through the blue-collar SF of William Barton and the social critiques of China Mieville, Counting Heads is a compelling and powerful read. Marusek isn’t afraid of asking hard questions – nor is he afraid to try and find answers.

One of the best SF novels of this (and perhaps any year), Counting Heads gives us a rich mix of social commentary, speculation, and adventure, all garnished with a tiny pinch of hope.

[Originally published in Vector]

Mary Janice Davidson's Undead and Unappreciated brings back Betsy, Queen of The Vampires. Betsy's in a bit of a slump. Her hated stepmother is pregnant, and her father has suddenly revealed that she's got a half sister. Oh, and her half-sister is the daughter of the devil and is destined to rule the Earth. And she's not been invited to the baby shower (even if it is in daylight).

Interestingly this volume reads rather like a Jennifer Cruisie novel. Betsy gets snark (and a dose of evil), bonds with her devilish kid-sister and finally realises she's in love with the aloof vampire king. All very predictable, of course, but liberally dosed with humour and fun incidents from the life of a vampire who doesn't believe in the rules.

And the Devil? Well, she's got very good taste in shoes.

A fast read (two tube journeys), but fun.

Other recent reading:

The Two Space War, Dave Grossman and Leo Frankowski - Heinleinesque homage to Patrick O'Brien's Jack Aubrey novels. Swashbuckling wooden starships sail 2D space in a retro-future straight out of a collectible card game. Oh, and it's got elves. And dwarves.
Protectorate, Mick Farren - a reread of a tale of alien invasion. Like William Tenn's "The Liberation OF Earth", this one doesn't work out for humanity. An enjoyable inversion of a common trope from an under-rated writer.
Pioneers, Philip Mann - rather depressing eco-catastrophe story set in New Zealand, where a failed starflight programme is the only hope for a sterile humanity.
Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand, Samuel R. Delany - a regular re-read of a wonderful book that I can quite happily say changed my life. If only he'd written the sequel...

Read:

Vernor Vinge Rainbows End.
This is the novel length follow up to the Hugo-winning "Fast Times At Fairmont High", which expands on the short Vinge had published in IEEE Spectrum a couple of years ago. I suspect that this is set to be among the best SF novels of 2006. Vinge uses his home city of San Diego as the background for a meditation on continuing education, life-long learning, and identity. A fascinating book that touches on recurring themes in many of Vinge's work. If you know about my research projects of old (which have remained continuing interests), then you'll not be surprised that I loved a book that expanded on so many of them. There's a lot in it about ubiquitous networks, reputation management, context, digital collaboration, co-presence, affinity hierarchies, and the meaning of identity in a highly networked world - one major character's identity is being spoofed three ways. And it's all wrapped up a cracking SF story.

Charles Stross The Family Trade and The Hidden Family.
Charlie takes on the alternate worlds/alternate history pack with a story that throws a business journalist into a world of feuding families, mercantile economics, and intellectual property trade. Two books that are best thought of as one in two parts. Miriam is a sparky heroine, with a unique take on the opportunities and perils of suddenly finding herself part of a family of world-walking merchant adventurers. An interesting spin on an old theme. The rest of the series will be worth watching.

Jennifer Cruisie Charlie All Night.
An early Cruisie book, this is one of her Riverside books (but set in another town). A radio producer finds herself with an annoying new presenter to train, while her ex-lover tries to make it on his own. The story takes in small town corruption, blackmail and a touch of medical marijuana. A fun, quick read, like all of Cruisie's books.

Reading:
C. J. Cherryh Cloud's Rider.
Neal Stephenson The System Of The World.

Makoto Shinkai's short anime "Voices of a Distant Star" ("Hoshi no Koe") is a bitter-sweet tale of love and separation, enfolded in the trappings of hard SF.

Only 30 minutes long, the story of a couple separated by light years and linked only by occasional text messages is a powerful tale of loneliness. After aliens attack the Solar System, Mikako Nagamine volunteers for the fleet that will take the war to the invaders. It's a story we've seen many times before - the very stuff of military SF. But like Joe Haldeman's Forever War, this story takes another direction. It isn't the boy who goes to the stars, instead it's the girl who leaves the boy behind - and it's her words that echo across the light years.

As the story slowly develops we realise that we're hearing her last words, that she will never come home. The loneliness that pervades the art and the story is the final emptiness of a girl trapped in a space suit, spinning in the void, watching her compatriots die, and knowing that she will never see the boy she left behind. And it's also the loneliness of the abandoned lover, who receives messages, years after they were sent, even though he must know that they are the echoes of a voice long gone.

Wonderful stuff. Highly recommended.

This is excellent visual SF that packs more emotional impact into 30 minutes than sneaks into an entire Hollywood blockbuster.



The short "She And Her Cat" on the DVD is surprisingly evocative. If film were poetry this would be a string of haiku.