Dark Spires (Anthology) edited by Colin Harvey [Book Review]

Jan 102011

Welcome to another Wessex

Dark Spires is a place based anthology about another Wessex edited by Colin Harvey. I enjoyed reading the anthology; it got a good mixture of speculative fiction in it. A theme is of course Wessex and the love for the land but it is also about the conflict between the urban and the rural. Another issue that is brought up is progress. There are many kinds of progress as we can read between the lines here.

The Preacher by Sarah Singleton is a powerful folkloristic tale about the sea and the craftiness of the populace in Wessex.
Pump House Farm by John Hawkes-Reed is a tale of the value of the land to the people that live there in a dystopian future UK ruled by radical greens. Nice take on the blogger culture.
Cobalt Blue by Adam Colston is a beautiful story about an ordinary boy who is cursed with the power to siphon lifetime from his fellows.
Corpse Flight by Joanne Hall is a great fantasy story about the danes threatening to take over . It has dragons, legends and magical swords and tells the true story of how King Alfred the great defeated the Danes in May 878.
Spindizzy by Colin Harvey is a near future story about a man and his journey. It has a train and a beautiful girl in it and it is all about the journey. Dedicated to the memory of James Blish, 1921-1975, and his Cities in Flight.
Spunkies by Eugene Byrne is a horror/supernatural thriller about a government agent responsible for keeping the supernatural forces of the land quiet.
The Sleeper Stone by Christina Lake is a different take on H. G. Wells and time travel. It is also features a future with a conflict between the Proper men and the Suneaters and maybe about how time might change.
Outside by Guy Haley is a chilling tale about a man under siege.
Last Flight to West Bay & Afterword by Roz Clarke. The story is about Polly and the land. On surface it is a dystopian future where Polly is touring the world pondering the big decision she has to make about it while having flashbacks and being hunted by people opposed to what she stands for.
Milk & Afterword Liz Williams is a fantasy about family issues and succession.
Entropic Angel by Gareth L. Powell is a hopeful tale about a dystopian future where beings called Angels plague the land making machines and electricity fail and how at last the humans finds a way to fight back.

I am very glad I got this opportunity to read this anthology. There are some authors there I want to take a further look at but Gareth L. Powell was the only one I found any releases for this year. He will release a novel I am interested in later this year it is named The Recollection and the story is a space opera that splits on two timelines and has a galaxy-spanning scope. It is due late summer or early fall from Solaris.

Information

Title: Dark Spires
Editor: Colin Harvey
E-book: 695 kb
Paperback: 200 pages
Publisher: Wizard’s Tower, November 2010
Copy: Review copy from the author.

An anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories set in, and written by authors from, Hardy Country, the Wessex region of England.

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Damage Time by Colin Harvey [Book Review]

Books No Responses »

Oct 042010

I picked up Damage Time since I loved Colin Harvey’s debut novel Winter Song so much. And I am more impressed than ever with his craftmanship this is a totally different kind of story.

Damage Time is a classic noir at first glance. Detective Pervez (Pete) Shah is drinking in a bar when gorgeous dame Aurora Debonis enters in need of his help and after a night in his place she disappears and a body is found. It has some of the classic themes of the genre ‘The Setup’, ‘The Fame Fatale’ and ‘The Boss’, but there is so much more to the story and Colin does a good job in making it all come alive.

Much of this story centers on memory reading or memory ripping technology. Pete is an expert at finding subtle clues in memory recordings. He is the best Memory Association Specialist in the NYPD. New kind of criminals use the technology to erase memories of their crimes from their victims and then selling selected parts on the Web. The mind changing technology also made me reflect a great deal on what makes a personality and what makes ones identity because here it gets a bit fluid. It made me think, I like that in a book.

The protagonist Pete is getting a bit long in the tooth for the kind of work he does but he does it well. Being a bit older is something I can relate to and it is also a refreshing change from the usual twenty-something.

I am impressed by the vivid and subtle world building. Colin uses small strokes to paint a big canvas indeed. There is no info dumps in this story.

Pete is a halfway lapsed Muslim, something that still seems to be able to stir up aggression among the people in New York. In his world money converts to calories, what is left of US just got its ass kicked in the Middle East by the Arabic League, the interest on the US national debt is larger than their BNP, a seceded California is behind a huge wall and inside Homo Superior Californius go about their own mysterious affairs (much like they do today?).

As most good stories it takes care of the characters. There is even some romance. The action gets personal and close-up and it still affect me emotionally when I think about it.

Damage Time is a gritty near-future noir involving chilling mind ripping technologies, thrilling action and a memorable hero. Colin Harvey is a new writer to watch. I wonder what he is up to next. I know I want to read it.

Information

This is the second Novel I read by Colin Harvey. He lives in Bristol in the south-west of England with his wife Kate and spaniel Alice. His first fiction was published in 2001, since when he has written novels, short stories and reviews, edited anthologies and judged the Speculative Literature Foundation’s annual Gulliver Travel Research Grant for five years. Colin’s reviews appear regularly at Strange Horizons and he is the feature writer for speculative fiction at Suite101.

Title: Damage Time
Author: Colin Harvey
Genre:
Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: Angry Robot
Copy: Copy from the publisher

Order: Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

It’s 2050 and sea-levels have swamped today’s coastal regions. New York City is protected by tidal barriers and the USA is bankrupt.

Detective Pervez (Pete) Shah serves with the NYPD’s Web Crimes Division as a Memory Association Specialist. When he’s accused of murdering a glamorous woman in a bar, he must find the killer, save himself … and the world.

FILE UNDER: Science Fiction [Future Crime / Memory Specialist / Run for your Life / World in Danger]

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New Science Fiction Books in October 2010 Revisited

Books 1 Response »

Oct 012010

This is my updated pick of books for October. I have taken a look at them and ordered for next month.

Nowadays I also have an Almanac of forthcoming SF Books where you can check even further. The current Almanac goes to 2012.

Let me start with the books I have on order.

On Order

Title: Cryoburn

Series: Miles Vorkosigan book 12
Author: Lois McMaster Bujold
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Baen 19 October 2010

Order from: Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

Miles Vorkosigan is one of those lovable rascals, crippled at birth in a society that used to kill babies like him, he still overcome and surpass the obstacles in his way. Too creative for the armed forces he is appointed Imperial Auditor. He is often a frustration for his leaders and seldom asks for permission. Many times he accomplishes a resolution in an unconventional way that frustrates the people around him. In the The last Vorkosigan Novel Diplomatic Immunity he went on a honeymoon with Ekaterin. I am so embedded with this series that I wouldn’t miss this one for the world.

Miles Vorkosigan is back!

Kibou-daini is a planet obsessed with cheating death. Barrayaran Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan can hardly disapprove—he’s been cheating death his whole life, on the theory that turnabout is fair play. But when a Kibou-daini cryocorp—an immortal company whose job it is to shepherd its all-too-mortal frozen patrons into an unknown future—attempts to expand its franchise into the Barrayaran Empire, Emperor Gregor dispatches his top troubleshooter Miles to check it out.

On Kibou-daini, Miles discovers generational conflict over money and resources is heating up, even as refugees displaced in time skew the meaning of generation past repair. Here he finds a young boy with a passion for pets and a dangerous secret, a Snow White trapped in an icy coffin who burns to re-write her own tale, and a mysterious crone who is the very embodiment of the warning Don’t mess with the secretary. Bribery, corruption, conspiracy, kidnapping—something is rotten on Kibou-daini, and it isn’t due to power outages in the Cryocombs. And Miles is in the middle—of trouble!

Title: Redoubtable

Series: Kris Longknife book 8
Author: Mike Shepherd
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: ACE 26 Oct 2010

Order from: Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

Kris Longknife is a formidable woman with a knack for getting in trouble and getting out. She is one of them Longknifes and if life wasn’t enough complicated being an officer in the navy; the society of humanity dissolve and her grandpa is named King making her a reluctant princess. The Peterwald family with their long standing grudge with the Longknife set up their own little pocket empire and starts to make life for Kris and her family difficult. Lots of humor and fantastic characters. I love this series and the characters in them so this is a must.

Upcoming after this one is Daring in October 2011 and Furious in 2012. The titles are only preliminary expect changes,Redoubtable changed name at least once the last year.

Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife has precise orders: seek out, engage, and destroy pirates, slavers, and drug lords operating beyond the rim of human space-without interfering in Peterwald family affairs. But when slavers kidnap a twelve-year-old girl, Kris’s mission becomes personal. And if destroying the pirate compound flattens some Peterwald interests-well, to hell with politics.

Title: Hellhole

Series: Hell hole Trilogy book 1
Author: Kevin J. Anderson & Brian Herbert
Hardcover:650 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster 1 Oct 2010

Order from: Amazon US | UK

I am a bit ambivalent about this one. It seems to be the first book in a series so I will give it a try.

Only the most desperate of Constellation colonists would ever dare to make a new home on Hellhole, a planet ravaged by natural disasters. Persistent volcanic eruptions, destructive storms and recent damage inflicted by significant asteroid impact make the planet a dumping ground for undesirables, misfits and charlatans. But its location out on the wild frontiers of the Constellation, among the Deep Zone worlds, makes it the final refuge for those fleeing from the rule of Diadem Michella Duchenet – a tyrant with a sweet face, but a blackened, shrivelled heart. General Adolphus, the military leader who was exiled to the planet when he was defeated in the first abortive revolution against the Diadem, is determined to transform Hellhole into a place of real opportunity for the inhabitants. While the colonists are diligently working to develop the planet, the General is forging secret alliances with the leaders of the other Deep Zone worlds. He dreams of turning his prison into the centre of a new coalition of planets free from the Diadem’s iron grip. Back on the decadent capital planet of Sonjeera, surrounded by corruption and consumed by the plots and feuds of the Old Guard nobles, Diadem Michella is confident that the General has been neutralized. She has no idea of the revolt growing in the Deep Zone …or does she? But what no one knows is this: the planet Hellhole, though damaged and volatile, hides secrets of historic magnitude. Lurking beneath the surface are the remnants of an obliterated alien civilization, detailing an unrecorded past, which, if unearthed, could tear the fragile human civilization apart.

Title: Bones of Empire

Series: Zak Cato book 2
Author: William C. Dietz
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: ACE 5 Oct 2010

Order from: Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

I recently finished book one in this series and it was entertaining ‘military’ science fiction about a future cop.

In a far-distant future, the Uman Empire has conquered and colonized worlds. Once thought invincible, its reign is now fragile as alien subjects and enemies conspire against it.

On holiday in the capital city, cop Jack Cato gets a glimpse of the Emperor-and realizes what he’s looking at is a supposedly dead shape- shifter. His mortal enemy is still alive and once again on the run. And the fate of the Empire-and Cato’s own honor-are at stake…

Title: Damage Time

Author: Colin Harvey
Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Angry Robot 1 Oct 2010

Order from: Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

I enjoyed his previous novel Winter Song very much so this one I picked because I want to read something more of Colin Harvey. This is something different, it is a literary mind boggling murder mystery set on Earth. My review will be out soon. Recommended.

Rock-hard SF Thriller from the author of Winter Song: no-one here gets out alive. It’s 2050 and sea-levels have swamped today’s coastal regions. New York City is protected by tidal barriers and the USA is bankrupt. Detective Pervez (Pete) Shah serves with the NYPD’s Web Crimes Division as a Memory Association Specialist. When he’s accused of murdering a glamorous woman in a bar, he must find the killer, save himself … and the world.

Title: Empress of Eternity

Author: L. E. Modesitt Jr
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Tor October 2010

Order by: Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

After reading Haze recently I want another Modesitt

In the far future, an indestructible and massive canal more than 2,000 miles long spans the mid-continent of Earth. Nothing can mar it, move it, or affect it in any fashion. At its western end, where it meets the sea, is an equally indestructible structure comprising three levels of seemingly empty chambers.

Scientists from three different civilizations, separated in time by hundreds of thousands of years, are investigating the canal. In the most distant of these civilizations, religious rebellion is brewing. A plot is hatched to overthrow the world government of the Vanir, using a weapon that can destroy anything-except the canal. If used at full power it might literally unravel the universe and destroy all life forever. The lives and fates of all three civilizations become intertwined as the forces behind the canal react to the threat, and all three teams of scientists find their lives changed beyond belief.

Older Books in new Releases on Order

Title: Zones of Thought

Omnibus: A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky
Author: Vernor Vinge
Paperback: 800
Publisher: Gollancz 21 Oct 2010

Order from: Amazon UK

I have never read A Fire upon the Deep or A Deepness in the Sky and it is time to rectify that hole in my reading.

The Hugo Award winning A FIRE UPON THE DEEP and its epic companion novel A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY, set in the same universe but 20,000 years earlier, were benchmarks for SF in the last decade of the 20th century. In FIRE ‘Vinge presents a galaxy divided into Zones – regions where different physical constraints allow very different technological and mental possibilities. Earth remains in the “Slowness” zone, where nothing can travel faster than light and minds are fairly limited. The action of the book is in the “Beyond”, where translight travel and other marvels exist, and humans are one of many intelligent species. One human colony has been experimenting to find a path to the “Transcend”, where intelligence and power are so great as to seem godlike. Instead they release the Blight, an evil power, from a billion-year captivity.’ Publisher’s Weekly In DEEPNESS, ‘the story has the same sense of epic vastness despite happening mostly in one isolated solar system. Here there’s a world of intelligent spider creatures who traditionally hibernate through the “Deepest Darkness” of their strange variable sun’s long “off” periods, when even the atmosphere freezes. Now, science offers them an alternative. Meanwhile, attracted by spider radio transmissions, two human starfleets come exploring–merchants hoping for customers and tyrants who want slaves. Their inevitable clash leaves both fleets crippled, with the power in the wrong hands, which leads to a long wait in space until the spiders develop exploitable technology. Over the years Vinge builds palpable tension through multiple storylines and characters.’ Dave Langford

Other Books of Interest

Title: Surface Details

Series: Culture book 9
Author: Iain M. Banks
Hardcover: 640 pages
Publisher: Orbit

Order from: Amazon US | UK | B&N

This is also a book I might order. Banks is a bit on the darks side compared to my comfort zone but we will see.

It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters.

It begins with a murder.

And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.

Lededje Y’breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture.

Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful – and arguably deranged – warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war – brutal, far-reaching – is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it’s about to erupt into reality.

It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the center of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether.

Title: 1635: The Eastern Front

Series: Ring of Fire 9 | 1632
Author: Eric Flint
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Baen 5 Oct 2010
Snippets: Chapter 1-24

Order from: Simon & Schuster | Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

I like the RIng of Fire books but I have so many books to read.

The Thirty Years War continues to ravage 17th century Europe, but a new force is gathering power and influence: the United States of Europe, a new nation led by Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, and the West Virginians from the 20th century led by Mike Stearns who were hurled centuries into the past by a mysterious cosmic accident. While the old entrenched rulers and manipulators continue to plot against this new upstart nation, everyday life goes on in Grantville, even under the shadow of war, as this lost outpost of American freedom and justice must play David against a 17th century Goliath of oppressive feudalism.

Title: Version 43

Author: Philip Palmer
Paperback: 496 pages
Publisher: Orbit 7 Oct 2010

Order from: Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

This one is enticing. I might order this one.

The Exodus Universe.

Your odds of surviving quantum teleportation are, more or less, fifty/fifty. The only ones crazy enough to try it are the desperate, the insane, and those sentenced to exile for their crimes.

Belladonna is home to the survivors of the fifty/fifty– and is therefore a planet run by criminals and thieves. But when a horrific and improbable murder catches the attention of the Galactic Police force, one cyborg cop — Version 43 — is sent to investigate.

Version 43 has been here before and has old friends and older enemies lying in wait. The cop was human once, but now, he is more program than man and will find a way to clean up this planet once and for all.

Title: Lightborn

Author: Tricia Sullivan
Paperback: 464 pages
Publisher: Orbit 7 Oct 2010

Order by: Amazon UK | sfbok

Lightborn, better known as ‘shine’, is a mind-altering technology that has revolutionised the modern world. It is the ultimate in education, self-improvement and entertainment – beamed directly into the brain of anyone who can meet the asking price. But in the city of Los Sombres, renegade shine has attacked the adult population, resulting in social chaos and widespread insanity in everyone past the age of puberty. The only solution has been to turn off the Field and isolate the city. Trapped within the quarantine perimeter, fourteen-year-old Xavier just wants to find the drug that can keep his own physical maturity at bay until the army shuts down the shine. That’s how he meets Roksana, mysteriously impervious to shine and devoted to helping the stricken. As the military invades street by street, Xavier and Roksana discover that there could be hope for Los Sombres – but only if Xavier will allow a lightborn cure to enter his mind. What he doesn’t know is that the shine in question has a mind of its own …

New Releases of Old Books

Title: Fantastic Planet

Author: Stephan Wul
Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: Creation Oneiros 1st English (1st French 1957)

Order from: Amazon US | UK | B&N

Now published for the very first time in English, Stephan Wul’s Fantastic Planet (Oms En Série) is a classic of Science Fiction and the inspiration for the award-winning 1973 animated film La Planète Sauvage (Fantastic Planet). The last surviving humans are taken from Earth to the wild planet Ygam by the traags, a race of blue-skinned, red-eyed giants. Here they become known as oms, used as lowly servants and regarded as savages. But little by little, led by a young man of superior intelligence named Terr, the oms regain their thirst for liberty and rise up against the draags to affirm their humanity in the face of oppression. This deceptively simple story-line is vividly depicted by author Wul with fantastic detail and a stirring mythopoeic resonance. The film Fantastic Planet won the Grand Prix at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival and remains a mind-bendingly entertaining touchstone of counterculture art; at last, English-language readers can enjoy the classic Sci-Fi novel that it was based on.

Related lists

Fantasy Book Critic – I found “The Unidentified” by Rae Mariz there.

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New Science Fiction Books in October 2010

Books No Responses »

Sep 152010

This is my pick of books for October. I have taken a look at them and ordered for next month. I will return at the beginning of October with an updated version.

Nowadays I also have an Almanac of forthcoming SF Books where you can check even further. The current Almanac goes to September next year.

Let me start with the books I have on order.

On Order

Title: Cryoburn

Series: Miles Vorkosigan book 12
Author: Lois McMaster Bujold
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Baen 19 October 2010

Order from: Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

Miles Vorkosigan is back!

Kibou-daini is a planet obsessed with cheating death. Barrayaran Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan can hardly disapprove—he’s been cheating death his whole life, on the theory that turnabout is fair play. But when a Kibou-daini cryocorp—an immortal company whose job it is to shepherd its all-too-mortal frozen patrons into an unknown future—attempts to expand its franchise into the Barrayaran Empire, Emperor Gregor dispatches his top troubleshooter Miles to check it out.

On Kibou-daini, Miles discovers generational conflict over money and resources is heating up, even as refugees displaced in time skew the meaning of generation past repair. Here he finds a young boy with a passion for pets and a dangerous secret, a Snow White trapped in an icy coffin who burns to re-write her own tale, and a mysterious crone who is the very embodiment of the warning Don’t mess with the secretary. Bribery, corruption, conspiracy, kidnapping—something is rotten on Kibou-daini, and it isn’t due to power outages in the Cryocombs. And Miles is in the middle—of trouble!

Title: Redoubtable

Series: Kris Longknife book 8
Author: Mike Shepherd
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: ACE 26 Oct 2010

Order from: Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

Upcoming after this one is Daring in October 2011 and Furious in 2012. The titles are only preliminary expect changes,Redoubtable changed name at least once the last year.

Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife has precise orders: seek out, engage, and destroy pirates, slavers, and drug lords operating beyond the rim of human space-without interfering in Peterwald family affairs. But when slavers kidnap a twelve-year-old girl, Kris’s mission becomes personal. And if destroying the pirate compound flattens some Peterwald interests-well, to hell with politics.

Title: Hellhole

Series: Hell hole Trilogy book 1
Author: Kevin J. Anderson & Brian Herbert
Hardcover:650 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster 1 Oct 2010

Order from: Amazon US | UK

I am a bit ambivalent about this one. It seems to be the first book in a series so I will give it a try.

Only the most desperate of Constellation colonists would ever dare to make a new home on Hellhole, a planet ravaged by natural disasters. Persistent volcanic eruptions, destructive storms and recent damage inflicted by significant asteroid impact make the planet a dumping ground for undesirables, misfits and charlatans. But its location out on the wild frontiers of the Constellation, among the Deep Zone worlds, makes it the final refuge for those fleeing from the rule of Diadem Michella Duchenet – a tyrant with a sweet face, but a blackened, shrivelled heart. General Adolphus, the military leader who was exiled to the planet when he was defeated in the first abortive revolution against the Diadem, is determined to transform Hellhole into a place of real opportunity for the inhabitants. While the colonists are diligently working to develop the planet, the General is forging secret alliances with the leaders of the other Deep Zone worlds. He dreams of turning his prison into the centre of a new coalition of planets free from the Diadem’s iron grip. Back on the decadent capital planet of Sonjeera, surrounded by corruption and consumed by the plots and feuds of the Old Guard nobles, Diadem Michella is confident that the General has been neutralized. She has no idea of the revolt growing in the Deep Zone …or does she? But what no one knows is this: the planet Hellhole, though damaged and volatile, hides secrets of historic magnitude. Lurking beneath the surface are the remnants of an obliterated alien civilization, detailing an unrecorded past, which, if unearthed, could tear the fragile human civilization apart.

Title: Bones of Empire

Series: Legion of the Damned book 2
Author: William C. Dietz
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: ACE 5 Oct 2010

Order from: Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

I recently finished book one in this series and it was entertaining ‘military’ science fiction about a future cop.

In a far-distant future, the Uman Empire has conquered and colonized worlds. Once thought invincible, its reign is now fragile as alien subjects and enemies conspire against it.

On holiday in the capital city, cop Jack Cato gets a glimpse of the Emperor-and realizes what he’s looking at is a supposedly dead shape- shifter. His mortal enemy is still alive and once again on the run. And the fate of the Empire-and Cato’s own honor-are at stake…

Title: Damage Time

Author: Colin Harvey
Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Angry Robot 1 Oct 2010

Order from: Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

I enjoyed his previous novel Winter Song very much so this one I picked because I want to read something more of Colin Harvey. I have started to read this one. I haven’t gotten very far yet but I can tell you it is a very different kind of story.

Rock-hard SF Thriller from the author of Winter Song: no-one here gets out alive. It’s 2050 and sea-levels have swamped today’s coastal regions. New York City is protected by tidal barriers and the USA is bankrupt. Detective Pervez (Pete) Shah serves with the NYPD’s Web Crimes Division as a Memory Association Specialist. When he’s accused of murdering a glamorous woman in a bar, he must find the killer, save himself … and the world.

Title: Empress of Eternity

Author: L. E. Modesitt Jr
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Tor October 2010

Order by: Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

After reading Haze recently I want another Modesitt

In the far future, an indestructible and massive canal more than 2,000 miles long spans the mid-continent of Earth. Nothing can mar it, move it, or affect it in any fashion. At its western end, where it meets the sea, is an equally indestructible structure comprising three levels of seemingly empty chambers.

Scientists from three different civilizations, separated in time by hundreds of thousands of years, are investigating the canal. In the most distant of these civilizations, religious rebellion is brewing. A plot is hatched to overthrow the world government of the Vanir, using a weapon that can destroy anything-except the canal. If used at full power it might literally unravel the universe and destroy all life forever. The lives and fates of all three civilizations become intertwined as the forces behind the canal react to the threat, and all three teams of scientists find their lives changed beyond belief.

Older Books in new Releases on Order

Title: Zones of Thought

Omnibus: A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky
Author: Vernor Vinge
Paperback: 800
Publisher: Gollancz 21 Oct 2010

Order from: Amazon UK

I have never read A Fire upon the Deep or A Deepness in the Sky and it is time to rectify that hole in my reading.

The Hugo Award winning A FIRE UPON THE DEEP and its epic companion novel A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY, set in the same universe but 20,000 years earlier, were benchmarks for SF in the last decade of the 20th century. In FIRE ‘Vinge presents a galaxy divided into Zones – regions where different physical constraints allow very different technological and mental possibilities. Earth remains in the “Slowness” zone, where nothing can travel faster than light and minds are fairly limited. The action of the book is in the “Beyond”, where translight travel and other marvels exist, and humans are one of many intelligent species. One human colony has been experimenting to find a path to the “Transcend”, where intelligence and power are so great as to seem godlike. Instead they release the Blight, an evil power, from a billion-year captivity.’ Publisher’s Weekly In DEEPNESS, ‘the story has the same sense of epic vastness despite happening mostly in one isolated solar system. Here there’s a world of intelligent spider creatures who traditionally hibernate through the “Deepest Darkness” of their strange variable sun’s long “off” periods, when even the atmosphere freezes. Now, science offers them an alternative. Meanwhile, attracted by spider radio transmissions, two human starfleets come exploring–merchants hoping for customers and tyrants who want slaves. Their inevitable clash leaves both fleets crippled, with the power in the wrong hands, which leads to a long wait in space until the spiders develop exploitable technology. Over the years Vinge builds palpable tension through multiple storylines and characters.’ Dave Langford

Other Books of Interest

Title: Surface Details

Series: Culture book 9
Author: Iain M. Banks
Hardcover: 640 pages
Publisher: Orbit

Order from: Amazon US | UK | B&N

This is also a book I might order. Banks is a bit on the darks side compared to my comfort zone but we will see.

It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters.

It begins with a murder.

And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.

Lededje Y’breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture.

Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful – and arguably deranged – warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war – brutal, far-reaching – is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it’s about to erupt into reality.

It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the center of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether.

Title: 1635: The Eastern Front

Series: Ring of Fire 9 | 1632
Author: Eric Flint
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Baen 5 Oct 2010
Snippets: Chapter 1-24

Order from: Simon & Schuster | Amazon US | UK | B&N | sfbok

I like the RIng of Fire books but I have so many books to read.

The Thirty Years War continues to ravage 17th century Europe, but a new force is gathering power and influence: the United States of Europe, a new nation led by Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, and the West Virginians from the 20th century led by Mike Stearns who were hurled centuries into the past by a mysterious cosmic accident. While the old entrenched rulers and manipulators continue to plot against this new upstart nation, everyday life goes on in Grantville, even under the shadow of war, as this lost outpost of American freedom and justice must play David against a 17th century Goliath of oppressive feudalism.

Title: Version 43

Author: Philip Palmer
Paperback: 496 pages
Publisher: Orbit 7 Oct 2010

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This one is enticing. I might order this one.

The Exodus Universe.

Your odds of surviving quantum teleportation are, more or less, fifty/fifty. The only ones crazy enough to try it are the desperate, the insane, and those sentenced to exile for their crimes.

Belladonna is home to the survivors of the fifty/fifty– and is therefore a planet run by criminals and thieves. But when a horrific and improbable murder catches the attention of the Galactic Police force, one cyborg cop — Version 43 — is sent to investigate.

Version 43 has been here before and has old friends and older enemies lying in wait. The cop was human once, but now, he is more program than man and will find a way to clean up this planet once and for all.

Title: Lightborn

Author: Tricia Sullivan
Paperback: 464 pages
Publisher: Orbit 7 Oct 2010

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Lightborn, better known as ‘shine’, is a mind-altering technology that has revolutionised the modern world. It is the ultimate in education, self-improvement and entertainment – beamed directly into the brain of anyone who can meet the asking price. But in the city of Los Sombres, renegade shine has attacked the adult population, resulting in social chaos and widespread insanity in everyone past the age of puberty. The only solution has been to turn off the Field and isolate the city. Trapped within the quarantine perimeter, fourteen-year-old Xavier just wants to find the drug that can keep his own physical maturity at bay until the army shuts down the shine. That’s how he meets Roksana, mysteriously impervious to shine and devoted to helping the stricken. As the military invades street by street, Xavier and Roksana discover that there could be hope for Los Sombres – but only if Xavier will allow a lightborn cure to enter his mind. What he doesn’t know is that the shine in question has a mind of its own …

New Releases of Old Books

Title: Fantastic Planet

Author: Stephan Wul
Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: Creation Oneiros 1st English (1st French 1957)

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Now published for the very first time in English, Stephan Wul’s Fantastic Planet (Oms En Série) is a classic of Science Fiction and the inspiration for the award-winning 1973 animated film La Planète Sauvage (Fantastic Planet). The last surviving humans are taken from Earth to the wild planet Ygam by the traags, a race of blue-skinned, red-eyed giants. Here they become known as oms, used as lowly servants and regarded as savages. But little by little, led by a young man of superior intelligence named Terr, the oms regain their thirst for liberty and rise up against the draags to affirm their humanity in the face of oppression. This deceptively simple story-line is vividly depicted by author Wul with fantastic detail and a stirring mythopoeic resonance. The film Fantastic Planet won the Grand Prix at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival and remains a mind-bendingly entertaining touchstone of counterculture art; at last, English-language readers can enjoy the classic Sci-Fi novel that it was based on.

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Winter Song by Colin Harvey [Book Review]

Books 1 Response »

Sep 072010

This is a story about how starship pilot Karl Allman survive reentry on planet Isheimur after his ship is destroyed and how he meets the abandoned colony there, heal some broken bones, hikes across the wilderness, and other twists and turns. Here is my review.

The Author

This is the first Novel I read by Colin Harvey. He lives in Bristol in the south-west of England with his wife Kate and spaniel Alice. His first fiction was published in 2001, since when he has written novels, short stories and reviews, edited anthologies and judged the Speculative Literature Foundation’s annual Gulliver Travel Research Grant for five years. Colin’s reviews appear regularly at Strange Horizons and he is the feature writer for speculative fiction at Suite101.

World Building

Karl comes from a technologically advanced galactic culture where singularity has happened. It is now split into fractions that sometimes fight. Ayes as he calls them ponder their own unfathomable agendas, Traditionalists, who are against all human modification, battle Formers or Ayes. That part of the story also makes me curious on that part of the world; I would like to read more about it.

The scene for this book is Isheimur a partially terraformed planet colonized by earth standard humans of Icelandic descent. The colonists still expect the Formers that started the terraforming to return one day. But they went broke during the wars that made them leave in the first place. Colin paints an intriguing culture surviving on the last remnants of technology the Formers left behind, socially degraded to Viking levels with clans and chieftains. For the colony’s survival women have been degraded to birthing factories.

There is quite much world building in Winter Song but it never feels disturbing for the narrative. Colin weave it in in the conversations and story telling in a way that feels natural and fluent.

Plot

One protagonist is Karl Allman a starship pilot taking a shortcut on his way home when his sentient ship is ambushed by some unfriendly Traditionals. In the last moment when he ejects from the ship it downloads itself in the nearest storage it can find, Karl’s brain. Protected by some really spiffy nano-gel he/the ship falls out of orbit and on to a mountainside down below.

Where he is found by clan leader Ragnar with broken bones and in a miserable way. Ragnars sees an opportunity to add another potentially strong working hand to the clan so he orders the half outcast Bera to nurture him back to health.

The second protagonist is Bera Sigurdsdottir disgraced unmarried mother to a dead born child she never named the father for. She lives on sufferance with the clan since her parents died and there is a reason she keeps the father of her child secret.

Karl starts out as a raving lunatic, driven by urges from his nanotech he eats everything he can get his hands on including grass and dirt. In his scrambled head the ships sentient mind tries to make sense out of his new flesh and meat dwellings; in fact he is the first to emerge from craziness and to communicate with Bera. Ragnar names him Loki and when he comes too and tell them his name, Bera continues to call the ship for Loki as they continue to switch places.

Karl was on his way home to his pregnant poly-marriage wife who is expecting in a few weeks. So he is motivated to get home and leave. Bera helps him find information on the net that might help him but it will mean a long journey.

Their main antagonist is Ragnar the head of the clan, he doesn’t want them to leave and when they do he he sets out to capture or kill them.

But that’s not enough, the world hides dragons and trolls and other mythical beasts from Icelandic myths and they have to pass through their land to get to their objective. As they do Karl starts to suspect the truth …

Characterization

This is a very character driven story. Colin makes the Icelandic heritage and myths in the Isheimur culture come to life and intrigue. The invasive closeness of the clan during the long winters comes across as shackles about to imprison our protagonists.

Karl is not a superman, he comes across as an ordinary man of his time who only wants to survive and get back home.

I am a character guy and here I am happy. The characters are interesting and beautiful even if their culture is crude. Some are not so nice and might be driven by their errors but they all make sense and add their part to the story.

I am also weak for a little romance but don’t expect head over heels true love from the first page. There are some issues…

My view

Winter Song is close to space opera with the crashed hero on a primitive planet where he finds love and saves the day theme, but it is so much more with real life-like characters, intriguing cultural setting, aliens and some strong moral questions. And it is so much fun to read, you should too.

Information

Title: Winter Song
Author: Colin Harvey
Genre: Hard Science Fiction | Lost Colony
Cover art: Chris Moore
Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Angry Robot Sept 2010 (US) | 1st 2009
Copy: Bought it myself

Excerpt: Sample chapter

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The book is dedicated to Colin’s wife Kate. There is an 18 pages excerpt from Colin’s next book Damage Time at the end of the book.

The planet had fallen off the map. When Karl Altman’s spaceship crashed, he had only one question: “HOW THE HELL DO I GET OUT OF HERE?” Rock-hard sci-fi adventure. No-one here gets out alive. When his spaceship crashes on an unknown and forgotten planet, scientist Karl Altman discovers himself hunted by an ancient race. The descendants of a Viking race have reverted to a savage culture of sacrifice, pillage and violence. When Karl falls in love with an outcast girl, he has only one goal: escape. But escape is a distant dream on this nightmare planet.

FILE UNDER: Science Fiction [Starship Crash / Abandoned Colonists / Alien Slaughter / Hell Planet]