Book Review: Orbus by Neal Asher

Orbus by Neal Asher is the follow-up to Asher's The Skinner and The Voyage of the Sable Keech, and part of his larger Polity future history (Gridlinked and the subsequent Ian Cormac books, The Technician, Hilldiggers, etc.) It continues where The Voyage of the Sable Keech left off and has a number of recurring characters, but while it's not strictly necessary to have read them to follow what's going on here I'd recommend reading them in order.

Spatterjay is a marginally habitable planet that lies just outside the territory of the the AI-ruled interstellar society known as the Polity, best-known for the virus that pervades its bizarre ecology. Transmitted by the bite of a leech-like creature native to the planet and able to infect almost anything, it gradually transforms its carriers, making them stronger, tougher, and virtually immortal- and, in the case of non-native life like humans, transforming them into monstrous, mutated creatures if they don't get sufficient nutrients from their species' native environment to maintain enough of their natural biological processes enough to prevent the virus's genetic material from supplanting them entirely.

Both the planet's name and its human population, commonly called “Hoopers,” are a legacy of the devastating war between the Polity and the alien Prador, when the infamous war criminal and collaborator “Spatter” Jay Hoop aided the Prador by helping round up millions of human prisoners into concentration camps on Spatterjay. Beyond Spatterjay lays the Graveyard, a vast and mostly uninhabited expanse filled with the burnt-out ruins of worlds ravaged during the war. It is now neutral territory providing a buffer zone between the Polity and the Prador Third Kingdom, inhabited only by a few isolated settlements eking out a living in the ruins and by criminal elements using it as a refuge where the warships of both great powers are forbidden to go.

Jericho Orbus is one of the oldest Hoopers of all- one of the original humans imprisoned by Jay Hoop, and one of the very, very few to actually survive. His sanity shredded by the horror of what he saw and suffered, and of what he had to do to survive, Orbus became brutal even by the standards of Spatterjay's frequently violent culture. He spent centuries sailing the  fearsomely dangerous seas of Spatterjay, eventually becoming  the captain of a crew of other shattered men and women who served as outlets for his all-consuming rage- as masochistic as he was sadistic, and able to survive the punishment he dished out thanks to the superhuman resilience granted by the virus.

This might have gone on indefinitely, were it not for a near encounter with death during the events of The Voyage of the Sable Keech that nearly led to a total takeover of his body by the virus. The psychological and physiological shock of having almost his entire body irrevocably altered by the virus and then returned to something at least resembling human jarred something awake in him, the parts of himself he had to bury to do what he had to do to survive the unimaginable horror of his past- his humanity.

Sniper, an artificially intelligent polity war drone built during the Prador War and since gone freelance, has decided to make himself scarce after receiving a summons from the ruling AIs of the polity, who have some questions for him about his role in recent events on Spatterjay. Lying low, he and his companion Thirteen, a fellow free drone, stow themselves away in the cargo hold of a small freighter, the Gurnard- a freighter captained by none other than Orbus, who has found a new life for himself as he tries to overcome the brutal centuries-long nightmare of Spatterjay. They are caught by the Gurnard's AI- which allows them to remain as passengers and seems oddly sanguine about the discovery of a fugitive war machine hiding in its cargo holds.

Meanwhile Vrell, a rogue Prador infected with the Spatterjay virus and transformed into something even more fearsome than the rest of his kind, has seized control of a Prador dreadnought and is headed to the Graveyard to lie low. The King of the Prador Third Kingdom has taken an interest in a relic of the Prador's past that now resides there, a powerful, monstrous entity that is thought to be mythical by most of his species- and will be at the heart of events driven by something older and more horrifying still. And when Orbus finds himself and his ship recruited for a covert Polity intelligence operation in the region, it becomes apparent to sniper that the sequence of events that led to a superhumanly dangerous man with a burning hatred for the Prador and a rogue war drone with centuries of experience that was literally born to fight them finding themselves together on a freighter bound for the graveyard was not a coincidence

Orbus is an excellent space opera and a great addition to Asher's future history. As usual, Asher's action sequences are top-notch here, and the events of the story provide plenty of scope for them. The central story is interesting, with lots of action and some well-paced and well-executed revelations about the Prador, the Spatterjay virus, and the nature of Orbus' mission into the Graveyard.

It was nice to see more about the Prador, a race of crab-like aliens that have been enormously important to the history of the Polity but have usually been peripheral figures, at most, in the events of most of the books. Orbus helps drive home just how disturbingly alien they are. Prador society is staggeringly oppressive, exploitative, and cruel by any sane human's standard. This is not out of malice, but because Prador are highly competitive organisms whose biology- specifically their high fecundity combined with the ability of adult Prador to control their children through pheromones- makes it possible for groups of Prador to work together as a cohesive unit without the sorts of instincts, behaviors, and emotions that human social bonds depend on. There was no selective pressure favoring the evolution of the capacity to feel sympathy or pity or loyalty, so Prador don't feel them. It's nothing personal.

Orbus was a side character in The Voyage of the Sable Keech, and a rather disturbing one, so it's interesting to see him given a larger role as he retries to regain his humanity. He doesn't stand out as much as some of the other characters, but in this case it works. Rather like Asher's portrayal of an autistic boy in The Shadow of the Scorpion, some of the criticisms of Orbus' characterization that I've seen elsewhere were directed at the very aspects of the character that I liked and thought made the character ring true. Orbus is generally fairly subdued, quiet, has a somewhat flat affect, and doesn't stand out as much as those around him-  in other words, he acts the way people trying to put themselves back together in the aftermath of devastating psychological trauma very often act, and that made him quite compelling to me.

I definitely recommend Orbus to fans of Neal Asher's Polity universe, and Asher's work as a whole to any fan of space opera. Frustratingly if you're an American reader, most of his books have seemingly been released in every industrialized country on Earth except the United States, but they're well-worth seeking out. (I strongly recommend The Book Depository if you're an American looking for something from the United Kingdom; they ship free worldwide and I've had nothing but positive experiences dealing with them. Third-party sellers at Amazon.com can also be helpful.) Neal Asher continues to impress.

SF writing and race

Over at the SFWA blog, Nisi Shawl writes on the subject of writing about characters from races and cultures other than your own.  It's a great article and has some excellent ideas for improving one's own knowledge and insight.

The number of aspiring authors who shy away from writing about characters of other races because they believe themselves unable to do so well is strange, since there is probably no genre that spends more time with people or beings unlike the author than science fiction.  Jack McDevitt is not an archaeologist.  Elizabeth Moon is not autistic.  Iain M. Banks is not a machine intelligence.  David Drake is not a psychologically reconditioned rapist.  Neal Asher is not an alien space-faring biomechanical sphereoid with a penchant for strange, cryptic pronouncements.  Dan Simmons is not a Jewish college professor who has spent the last twenty years grappling with his religious beliefs while watching helplessly as his beloved daughter ages backwards into infancy.

Writing about characters of another race or culture is not an insurmountable challenge compared to this.  There is, of course, an added degree of risk if it is done badly, in terms of causing real-world offense or anger, that doesn't apply to portraying the inhuman; Peter Watts need not fear being upbraided by space-going philosophical zombies who thought the aliens in Blindsight were offensive stereotypes.

Anyway, I definitely recommend checking out Shawl's article.  Discussion of racial and cultural diversity in science fiction topic tends to be vague and platitudinous,  so it's great to see more writing about the nuts and bolts of actually doing something about it.

The Shadow of the Scorpion by Neal Asher

Neal Asher has become one of my favorite authors as of late.  This makes for some frustration when you’re living in the United States, where much of his work has not been published, making it necessary to either import or scour eBay and the like.  (Aside from Asher and Stephen Baxter, I almost never import books- I’m too cheap, I prefer to buy domestic editions of books by foreign authors to encourage the publishers to bring more of their stuff to this country, and my vast backlog makes waiting for a domestic release basically a non-issue.) Fortunately, Night Shade Books has been bringing more of Asher’s work to the U.S., first with Prador Moon and now with the prequel to Asher’s Ian Cormac series, Shadow of the Scorpion: A Novel of the Polity.

Part of Neal Asher’s Polity future history (Gridlinked, The Skinner, etc.), Shadow of the Scorpion is a story of the early days of future Earth Central Security agent Ian Cormac.  The young Cormac enters the service of the Polity as an infantryman in the aftermath of the Prador War, a cataclysmic conflict between humans and the monstrous Prador that lasted decades, destroyed whole worlds, and took billions of lives.  Fresh out of training, Cormac is assigned to the security forces on the devastated planet of Hagren, a Polity world that suffered ecological devastation and the death of half of its human inhabitants during the war.  Now rebuilding has begun, but the inhabitants are threatened by surviving Prador still lurking in the wreckage of a crashed Prador dreadnought, and by human Separatist terrorists who will commit any atrocity to overthrow the Polity and the artificial intelligences that rule it.

What should have been a relatively simple assignment policing Hagren while its society is rebuilt and civic order restored becomes much more when treason is discovered amongst Cormac’s squad mates, and Cormac is chosen by his superiors for a hazardous mission to infiltrate a local separatist cell.  This sets Cormac on a dangerous journey across the devastated former battlefields of the Prador War, pursuing humans as lethal and pitiless as the Prador themselves.

Interspersed throughout this story, Shadow of the Scorpion also tells of Cormac’s youth in the dark days of the war, and of the mysterious scorpion-shaped AI war drone that haunted his childhood- and that has seemingly reappeared.

I really liked this book.  It provides plenty of the intense action Asher is known for, and continues to explore the setting of Asher’s future history.  On a purely action/adventure level, the book definitely delivers, with Asher’s usual talent for excitement, description, and visceral power brought to the forefront.  It also gave me what were probably the two things I most wanted from Asher: more information about the character Ian Cormac, and a closer look at the society of the Polity itself.

Most of the Polity universe books are set primarily on worlds outside the Polity, or on the Polity’s frontier, or on worlds suffering some crisis, and are shown mostly from the perspective of Earth Central Security personnel or people outside normal society.  The flashback portions of The Shadow of the Scorpion gives us a nice look at Polity’s society on Earth itself, as experienced by average people.  I love the world-building aspect of science fiction, so I enjoyed this a lot.

An important part of the flashbacks revolves around technology to edit or erase your own memories, sought by Cormac’s shell-shocked older brother after returning from a tour of duty as a field medic on the front lines of the Prador War.  Quite plausibly, this is a much-sought service during the war, common enough to support the existence of large clinics dedicated to it, and Asher explores it well.  The book chillingly juxtaposes the psychological devastation of war and the grotesque physical injuries wrought by Prador military technology, with the Polity’s enormously advanced medical science seeking to reassemble shattered minds with same casual efficiency with which it repairs broken bodies.

While there is still plenty of action, this is a more character-based story than is typical for Asher, and fortunately I think the characterization here is stronger than what I’ve seen from him previously.  The portrayal of a newly recruited Ian Cormac several decades younger than the one we first met in Gridlinked is well done- Cormac is still recognizably Cormac, but he displays a previously unseen degree of emotional vulnerability befitting a man who has not yet become desensitized by decades of violence and horror.

The flashback sequences from Cormac’s childhood are also well-done.  Asher’s portrayal of the young Cormac, a bright, introverted, precociously serious-minded child, rang very true to me.  (There’s a brief line suggesting that Cormac has been diagnosed with mild autistic tendencies, and while it’s not the focus of the story, I think Asher’s portrayal is one of the more insightful and understanding fictional portraits of it that I’ve seen.)

The flashback scenes about Cormac’s older brother’s return from the war are also effective, and do a good job of portraying something often unexplored in stories of soldiers returning home.  Mixed with the happiness of seeing your loved one safely home, there is the tension and awkwardness of reuniting with someone you care about who has been profoundly changed, the trepidation of wanting to reach out and reconnect with someone deeply marked by experiences you can never truly understand and not really knowing how.  The portrayal of this is fairly subtle, yet to me unmistakable and quite poignant.

Shadow of the Scorpion is well worth reading for any fan of Neal Asher, action stories, vivid far-future societies, or examinations of some of the questions raised by technologies to reshape the human mind.  I think you’ll get more out of it if you’re already familiar with Ian Cormac and the Polity (Gridlinked would be the place to start there), but it is a self-contained story that stands well on its own.  I highly recommend it, and I hope Nightshade continues to bring this sort of book to the U.S.

British and American SF

io9 has an article entitled “Charles Stross Explains Why UK Scif Is More Hopeful Than US Scifi.” The title left me baffled, as if I had seen an article entitled “Stephen Hawking Explains Why Siberia Is Hotter Than the Photosphere of the Sun.”

My impression has long been that British science fiction is darker and more depressing than what’s produced in America. Stephen Baxter is generally quite downbeat, as (to a lesser extent) is Alastair Reynolds. If I had to describe the mood of either author’s works in a single word, it would probably be “bleak.” Peter F. Hamilton is more upbeat, but I still don’t think I’d call him optimistic.

Even more positively portrayed futures usually seem to be used as setting for dark stories. Neal Asher’s Polity universe is very optimistic in most respects-life is very good for the great majority of humanity- but the plots and events are usually pretty dark. Iain M. Bank’s Culture is perhaps the most utopian society in science fiction, but it’s largely there as a backdrop for some of the most depressing stories in science fiction.

I haven’t read Ken MacLeod, but my understanding is that a number of his books portray an anarchosocialist future society in a pretty positive way, so there’s that. Still, darkness seems to be the general trend.

I’m not saying this as a criticism of these authors; I like dark. But I’m wondering: Is my assessment correct, or is there some big strain of optimistic British SF that I’ve missed?

The stigma of imagination

Jake Seliger has an interesting post about remarks made about fantasy by Patrick Kurp, in which Kurp says:

Fantasy feels like a cheat, an evasion, a con game for stunted children. I read to know the world, in particular the human world, even to celebrate it, not to slum in another. Ours feels sufficiently mysterious and wonder-filled, so ghosts, witches, aliens and magic spells come off as kitschy, redundant gimmicks.

I strongly recommend Seliger’s post. He gives an interesting defense of fantasy that is worth reading.

I’m interested not so much in Kurp specifically as in what his remark suggests, because I think it shows an important part of the reason why fantasy and science fiction is so looked down upon, a question that’s been on my mind lately. Calling something childish or the like is, of course, a common attack leveled against fiction that does not take place in the real world as we know it (or its past), as well as a common criticism of people who read such fiction. Why?

I think it largely boils down to this. Children often have vivid imaginations, and so imagination is strongly associated with children in our culture. Children tend to have all sorts of traits that are not appropriate for adults. People often have a need to prove themselves grown up, to others and perhaps to themselves. Thus, use of imagination beyond imagining fairly mundane real-world events is disreputable. As a result, it’s often not enough to simply say, “SF doesn’t interest me,” or even to say that SF is all aesthetically bad; some psychological or moral fault must be ascribed to SF and/or its readers.

It’s worth noting that the small number of speculative works that have gained respectability are usually social/political commentaries, satires, or allegories, e.g. 1984 and Brave New World. (Or the new Battlestar Galactica, for that matter.) Imagination is more excusable when the imaginative elements of a work are only a stand-in for something about the present-day world, merely sugar to help the medicine go down. Some SF fans themselves seem to implicitly accept this, arguing that SF should be respected because of its potential for metaphor or allegory.

Things are likely aggravated by the fact that most modern fantasy, like science fiction, is heavily based on system-building and logical extrapolation: if X were the case (X being “magic is real” or “time-travel is possible” or whatever), what would happen? Logic and systematizing, as I’ve said before, are disfavored personality traits; having a strong interest in them is considered to be mostly the preserve of nerds, weirdoes, and losers. Fantasy is (obviously) not connected to science in the way science fiction is, but it often shares science fiction’s rational approach to a great extent.

That might explain why magical realism is usually considered legit literature: it has imaginative elements, which is iffy, but it doesn’t compound the sin by thinking about the imaginative elements rationally. Weird stuff just happens, and people and the world in general don’t respond realistically. (I’m not saying this as a criticism; different forms of literature engage different aspects of the human mind to different degrees, and that’s perfectly legitimate.)

Similarly, while mystery is often highly rational in orientation, it does not usually imagine things that could not happen today (or in the real past, for historicals.) Mystery is Genre rather than Real Literature, but it is still far more respectable than science fiction or fantasy.

Respectability for fantasy or science fiction is most likely a hopeless cause, at least in the current cultural climate. It has the stigma of childishness and Nerd Cooties at the same time. A genre might be able to get away with one; you won’t get away with both.

Perhaps I'll feel better once I've blown something up

I love the 4^th of July. Growing up, several of my summers revolved principally around the massive horde of illegal fireworks and flammable materials my friend who lived next door possessed, so this is usually a great day for me. Unfortunately, the universe delivered an emotional straight knee directly to my groin earlier this week, so I’m less celebratory than usual. Neither getting a copy of Neal Asher’s Polity Agent from ebay nor spending last night at my local bar getting Phenylethylamine Girl (previously introduced here) to laugh at my goofy childhood anecdotes has been able to lift me out of my bad mood.

On the plus side, I see that Tobias Buckell linked to my Crystal Rain review at Crucial Taunt. Look for the next edition of my column there in a few days, and a new review here as well. Reading Buckell actually helped some poorly organized thoughts I’d been having for a while about race and science fiction to finally congeal, so watch for that too.

New Forgotten Lore column: Neal Asher

My new article on Neal Asher is up at Crucial Taunt. Have a look.

Great endings

Warning: this post has what you might call a thematic spoiler for Jack Vance’s The Book of Dreams, though nothing that would be likely to diminish your enjoyment of that book.

A few days ago, SF Signal had a discussion on the best and worst endings of books. This got me thinking about the subject, because endings are often the aspect of fiction that I find the most interesting. They’re the biggest determinant of a story’s “aftertaste,” for lack of a better term. My own preferences are towards the grim or melancholy side of things, though not exclusively. Some of my own personal favorites:

Poul Anderson, The Night Face- Great buildup, and at the end… Anderson rips your heart out with a single sentence.

Glen Cook, Soldiers Live- Very poignant for me after spending so much time with the Black Company. Like Croaker, I’ll always have the memories.

David Drake, Rolling Hot- The first Drake novel I read, and the one that made me a devoted fan. I can’t recommend this one enough. (It’s included in the Drake collection The Tank Lords.) It was especially effective for me because, atypically for one of Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers stories, one of the principal viewpoint characters isn’t a soldier, but a civilian who gets dragooned into joining the conflict. The whole book is a series of savage muay thai kicks to the emotional groin, and the very end is just devastating.

Jack Vance, The Book of Dreams- The culmination of the five-novel Demon Princes series. Anticlimactic, but that’s the point, and it works wonderfully. You’ve won what you’ve dedicated your life to- leaving you with nothing.

Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man- The climax of the story sort of comes out of nowhere, but the very end manages to be blackly humorous and straightforwardly horrifying and disturbing at the same time.

John C. Wright, The Golden Transcendence- I’m not all death and gloom. This is the last book of the Golden Age trilogy, one of my favorite science fiction series ever. Like The Night Face, but with a very different set of emotions at the end, it has a truly perfect final sentence. With the conclusion of his trilogy, Wright leaves the reader feeling- as he should- exultant.

If novellas count, Neal Asher, The Engineer- Creepy. As. Hell.

While I’m at it, I’ll throw in a movie:

Colossus: The Forbin Project- Great science fiction movie that sees its own grim logic through to the bitter end. (It’s also quite fun, the second time you watch it, to imagine that the movie chronicles the birth of Neal Asher’s Human Polity.)

Those are the ones that first come to mind and have really stuck with me. Anyone else have a list of favorites?

Interview with Neal Asher

Those filthy microbes thought they could stop me, but I am not thwarted so easily. My interview with Neal Asher is now up at FantasyBookSpot. Have a look. You can also check out my review of Asher's The Skinner, or my review/discursive ramblings on Gridlinked. Neal Asher's own blog can be found here.

My top ten of 2007

Read in 2007, that is, not necessarily published in 2007. I acquire books more rapidly than I can read them and always have a large backlog waiting to be read. As a result, my top ten for 2007 includes very few books actually published in 2007. My top ten, in no particular order:

Galactic North by Alastair Reynolds- Collects the short stories set in Reynolds’ Revelation Space universe. Great hard science fiction/ space opera with a touch of horror.

The Draco Tavern by Larry Niven- A rather strange book of connected short (often very short) stories that form a sort of episodic novel. Full of interesting alien races, technologies, and ideas, with speculations on topics from religion to artifical intelligence to cosmogony. Essential for Niven fans, or anyone who likes science fiction that gets you thinking.

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester- Fully deserving of its classic status. Exciting, strange, and wonderfully inventive.

Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson - I read this book's predecessor, Gardens of the Moon, on the strength of various reviews. I liked it, but didn't see why Erikson was so huge. Then I read the sequel, Deadhouse Gates, and was utterly blown away. It's just stunning in every respect- action, imagination, emotional impact.

Coalescent by Stephen Baxter – One of the creepiest and most disturbing science fiction novels I've read in a long time.

Pandora's Star/ Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton – One continuous story, so I’m cheating a bit and counting this as one rather than choose between them. Lots of excitement, and some interesting speculations on subjects like the social effects of immortality and personality downloads.

Orion Shall Rise by Poul Anderson - My all-time favorite post-apocalyptic novel, by my all-time favorite author.

The Wreck of the River of Stars by Michael Flynn - An absolutely stunning work- hard science fiction combined with wonderfully drawn characters and tremendous emotional power. Utterly heartbreaking.

The Line of Polity by Neal Asher- Had to buy it as an import because the geniuses at Tor decided to release books 1 and 3 of Asher’s Ian Cormac series in America without publishing this one, which is book 2. But it was well worth it! Asher demonstrates himself to be a master of space opera here, with intense action, a fascinating future society, and one of my favorite alien characters, the bizarre and enigmatic Dragon. I can only hope that Tor gives this book a proper release in the United States soon.

Chindi by Jack McDevitt- A wide-ranging story about an expedition sent out in search of an enigmatic alien civilization. Full of enjoyable characters, intriguing mysteries, and the thrill of discovery.

New stuff

I’m back! It feels good, too. I’ve been busy- recovering from my hospitalization, seeking more work, getting my exercise routine up and running again, and getting some computer problems dealt with. Now, back to business.

Something I stumbled upon while searching Amazon.com- an upcoming Neal Asher book entitled Shadow of the Scorpion that is apparently a prequel to the Ian Cormac series, featuring Ian Cormac as a young man in the aftermath of the Prador War. It’s listed as being published by Night Shade Books, though it’s not on their site yet.. I’ll definitely be looking forward to this one.

This is very neat - via Geoffrey Plauche comes news of the Libertarian SF Forum. It’s always nice when two of my nerdly interests combine. If, like me, you always find yourself finishing a new science fiction book and thinking, “You know, that was cool, but there weren’t enough privately owned arbitration firms,” check it out. This could be great if it takes off.

Alastair Reynolds has an interview up at Physics World. Sadly, there is still nothing from him on the all-important subject of labor relations.

The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction

I discovered The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction quite by chance while browsing at a local bookstore. I’d never heard of Solaris, but the cover’s promise of new stories by Neal Asher, Peter F. Hamilton, and Stephen Baxter caught my eye. So, I thought, why not?

Happily, that decision paid off, because this is an excellent collection, bringing together a wide variety of stories. My favorites were:

“The Bowdler Strain” by James Lovegrove- Havoc ensues when a mind-altering “logovirus” that makes its victims unable to swear escapes from a government lab and spreads across Britain. Very funny.

“Personal Jesus” by Paul Di Fillipo- Humanity has found a technology that allows direct two-way communication with God, and now everyone carries a personal “godPod” that dispenses advice. Society has become near-utopian. But just what does God want from us? Starts off humorous, then gets… well, I don’t want to give it away. Great use of a very bizarre premise.

“If At First” by Peter F. Hamilton- Amusing story about the uses and abuses of time travel. Very similar to a scheme I once came up with for misusing time travel, actually.

“A Distillation of Grace” by Adam Roberts- The story of a strange sect in the distant future, carrying out an elaborate breeding program to create the “Unique,” who will be the combined genetic essence of God’s holiest followers. For the sake of this holy cause, the wills of individuals are a minor concern…

“Last Contact” by Stephen Baxter- Brings together two of the things Baxter does best: cosmological speculation and being depressing as hell. The first story I can remember reading that deals with the idea of the “Big Rip.” Baxter is often more emotionally effective than people give him credit for, and he shows that here.

“The Accord” by Keith Brooke- I can’t really describe what this is about, or what makes it interesting, without massive spoilers. It’s an example of a surprise twist ending done right, in which the ending is a surprise but still flows naturally from what came before, and makes you see everything that happened before in a new way.

In addition, there are also fine stories by Jeffrey Thomas, Neal Asher, Jay Lake and Greg van Eekhout, Mary A. Turzillo, Simon Ings, and Eric Brown. There isn’t reall any unifying theme or mood, although “creepy” would be a good description of a good number of stories. (Though by no means all, so don’t let that put you off if that’s not your thing.)

There are some clunkers. The weakest entry is definitely “Four Ladies of the Apocalypse” by Brian Aldiss. There’s very little plot, the writing style struck me as badly overdone, and I get the impression that the author was trying to make some sort of profound point and botching it. I also didn’t care for “Third Person” by Tony Ballantyne (the titular drug is an interesting idea, but the setting didn’t make much sense), “Cages” by Ian Watson, or “Jellyfish” by Mike Resnick and David Gerrold. The misses are badly outnumbered by the hits, however.

I’d definitely recommend The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction to any science fiction fan. Lots of great stories, and it’s a great way to find new authors. You can check out what else Solaris has to offer at their website.

This and that

The Libertarian Futurist Society now has its own blog. It's always nice to see two of my obscure interests combined.

Here's something neat I found while perusing the archives of Neal Asher's blog: a timeline for the Polity universe. Beware of a small spoiler for The Skinner.

Finally, completely unrelated to science fiction, but too awesome to disregard, I give you: the greatest comic strip in the history of man. And even more here. (Hat tip: Hit and Run.)

Review of "The Skinner" by Neal Asher

I've got a review of Neal Asher's The Skinner up as my debut review for Fantasy Book Spot. Have a look.

Gridlinked by Neal Asher

Today I'll be examining Gridlinked (Tor Science Fiction) by Neal Asher, a British author who has only been published in America within the last few years, though he has been writing for some time now. The book is the beginning of a series set in Asher's "Polity" future history.

The setting is a futuristic A.I.-ruled human society called the Polity. Travel throughout the Polity is accomplished principally through teleportation devices called "runcibles," which can turn people into energy and instantly transmit them across light-years. When a runcible on the remote world of Samarkand is sabotaged, destroying the settlement there, Earth Central Security agent Ian Cormac is sent on the Polity spacecraft Hubris to investigate. Meanwhile, a ruthless terrorist leader from his last case is gunning for him, and mysterious, inhuman beings are at work.

Characters

Ian Cormac: Cormac is a long-serving agent of Earth Central Security. He has been rendered all but emotionless by the 30 years he has spent gridlinked- joined by brain implants with the Polity's computer network and the A.I.'s he works with. This is considered very dangerous- remaining gridlinked for longer than 20 years is highly discouraged. He is encouraged to give up his gridlink after he blows an undercover investigation because of it- he is so emotionally undemonstrative that he is mistaken for an android by the Separatists he was infiltrating.

Cormac is fairly robotic at the beginning- he has very little emotion, and is continuously frustrated by the fact that people are not as reliable or efficient as machines. It's interesting to see him try to adjust to losing his link- for instance, he has to get used to actually talking when he wants information, instead of simply downloading it into his brain. Getting used to relating to people normally is also a challenge for him at first, though he improves as time passes.

Arian Pelter: A ruthless terrorist and Separatist leader, obsessed with getting revenge against Cormac for killing his sister. Utterly ruthless and driven

Mister Crane: A homicidal two-and-a-half meter tall android under Pelter's command. When not tearing people apart with his bare hands, he likes to examine the various toys and knickknacks he carries around in his coat.

John Stanton: An experienced mercenary in Pelter's service. Stanton isn't a good man by any means, but he still has a few remnant bits of conscience, and working for a man like Pelter gives them quite a workout.

Dragon: A bizarre alien organism/machine of unknown origin, consisting of four linked kilometer-wide spheres. Decades ago, Ian Cormac encountered this enigmatic being on the Polity world of Aster Colora, just before it vanished in a cataclysmic explosion. Now, Cormac sees traces of Dragon on Samarkand. Before it vanished, Dragon claimed to have been watching humanity for millennia. But what is its true nature?

Comments

Gridlinked is very solid enjoyable space opera/action story. I found the setting interesting (more on that in a bit), with some interesting locations. The story moves at a nice, quick pace, and made me want to keep reading. In particular, the central mystery of Dragon's true nature and intentions kept me interested in what would happen next. The action scenes are exciting and well done, though not for the squeamish. I liked the characters quite a bit- Ian Cormac is a likable hero who has an interesting psychological challenge to deal with, the psychological and moral progression of John Stanton is well done, and Pelter is very good as a villain.

I have two complaints. First, I wish more had been done with Cormac's adjustment to living without his gridlink. There's a lot of potential in the idea, and I don't think the book fully exploited the possibilities. Second, the ending seemed a bit rushed. These are only minor problems, however, and they don't detract significantly from the book.

Gridlinked is one of the few works of science fiction I can recall that really deals with the implications of a "convert people to energy" style-teleporter- namely, the fact that the mass of an entire human body yields a lot of energy, and that this energy could be incredibly destructive if turned lose. I'm kind of surprised that Star Trek, to the best of my recollection, never did anything with this, considering how many episodes revolved around transporter malfunctions. (Though Trek was seldom very good about thinking through the implications of its own technology.)

I loved the mysterious Dragon. Plenty of science fiction stories have had enigmatic ancient aliens, but Dragon is just so damn creepy. The biblical allusions in his dialogue, his strange mixture of flesh and machine, the bizarre reptilian servitors- it creates quite an atmosphere. Excellent character.

The story touches a bit on some of the possibilities of human alteration. Several characters make use of electronic brain implants to enhance their thought processes or help them link to machines. The aging process has been defeated, though some people choose to look old to project more authority or gravitas. (An idea that also comes up in David Drake's Cross the Stars.) Some people have been genetically engineered to live in heavy gravity or in deep space, and many people undergo extensive cosmetic alterations.

As I mentioned above, the Polity is ruled by artificial intelligences. I rather like the way Asher addresses the idea- it is portrayed as neither a cure-all for social ills, nor as some sort of oppressive dystopian nightmare. The A.I.s seem to do a reasonably good job of it- the Polity has a very high standard of living and appears to be fairly free; people can travel anywhere they want in the Polity without restriction, and free enterprise seems to be thriving. This does not greatly affect the plot, but some social effects are briefly touched upon- it is mentioned, for instance that certain humans, including Cormac, have all sorts of wild, larger-than-life legends attributed to them by a public desperate for proof that humans can still control their own destiny. The people of the Polity do not seem to object to their masters- it is mentioned, late in the book, that most people take it for granted that humans are not fit to rule.

The obvious comparison, of course is the Culture universe of Iain M. Banks. The Polity, while portrayed as attractive, is a good deal less utopian then the Culture, where the A.I.s (or "Minds") do pretty much all the work while humans live in total leisure. (By the way, what's the deal with British space opera authors and these vague names? I half-expect Alistair Reynolds or Peter F. Hamilton to come out with novels about "The Society" or "The Regime." I kid, I kid.) The only other A.I.-ruled society in recent print SF that comes immediately to mind (I'm missing some, I'm sure) is the Consensus from David Drake's Northworld trilogy, and in those books it's just a minor background detail, albeit an effective and atmospheric one.

I would highly recommend Gridlinked (Tor Science Fiction) for anyone who likes action-oriented science fiction or interesting future societies, and I look forward to reading more from Asher. Fortunately, his books are becoming more readily available in the United States.

For more information about Neal Asher, you can check out his website and his blog at The Skinner.