Once again, a highly impressive must-read.
Second part of an alien-contact trilogy (The Three-Body Problem, 2014) from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.
In the previous book, the inhabitants of Trisolaris, a planet with three suns, discovered that their planet was doomed and that Earth offered a suitable refuge. So, determined to capture Earth and exterminate humanity, the Trisolarans embarked on a 400-year-long interstellar voyage and also sent sophons (enormously sophisticated computers constructed inside the curled-up dimensions of fundamental particles) to spy on humanity and impose an unbreakable block on scientific advance. On Earth, the Earth-Trisolaris Organization formed to help the invaders, despite knowing the inevitable outcome. Humanity’s lone advantage is that Trisolarans are incapable of lying or dissimulation and so cannot understand deceit or subterfuge. This time, with the Trisolarans a few years into their voyage, physicist Ye Wenjie (whose reminiscences drove much of the action in the last book) visits astronomer-turned-sociologist Luo Ji, urging him to develop her ideas on cosmic sociology. The Planetary Defense Council, meanwhile, in order to combat the powerful escapist movement (they want to build starships and flee so that at least some humans will survive), announces the Wallfacer Project. Four selected individuals will be accorded the power to command any resource in order to develop plans to defend Earth, while the details will remain hidden in the thoughts of each Wallfacer, where even the sophons can't reach. To combat this, the ETO creates Wallbreakers, dedicated to deducing and thwarting the plans of the Wallfacers. The chosen Wallfacers are soldier Frederick Tyler, diplomat Manuel Rey Diaz, neuroscientist Bill Hines, and—Luo Ji. Luo has no idea why he was chosen, but, nonetheless, the Trisolarans seem determined to kill him. The plot’s development centers on Liu’s dark and rather gloomy but highly persuasive philosophy, with dazzling ideas and an unsettling, nonlinear, almost nonnarrative structure that demands patience but offers huge rewards.
Once again, a highly impressive must-read.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7708-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A hardcover debut from the author of numerous fantasy paperbacks (The Soulsmith trilogy, etc.). During a hurricane in Ireland, resident American writer Kevin Mauney is visited by a selkie (a were-seal), who conveys an urgent message requesting his presence in Aztlan Free Zone, Mexico. In Aztlan, meanwhile, Cherokee diplomat and native dancer Thunderbird O'Connor stumbles upon a dying man, skinned alive and abandoned on the beach. Also in Aztlan, Carolyn Mauney-Griffith, Kevin's biologist sister, investigates a baffling mass beaching of dolphins, who seem to have been attacked by killer whales. As Kevin hotfoots it to Aztlan, Thunderbird is assaulted by were-orcas clad in human skins, while Cary drowns—then, impossibly, returns to life. What's going on? Well, it transpires that rebellious young were-orcas have decided to attack humanity by first exterminating its allies, the dolphins; the latter's magicians have thought up a plan, involving the three humans, to combat the evil whales. Some readers—the younger and more credulous section of the audience—may find the snappy, briny antics here exhilarating; the far-fetched multiplicity of were-things will strike many others as just plain daft.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-13716-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
Fifteen tales, including one unpublished entry, from 198494, by fantasist Goldstein (Summer King, Winter Fool, p. 349, etc.). One group of stories draw upon the author's Jewish heritage: a family ghost from the Holocaust; Elijah at a Passover seder; a Hansel and Gretel variant; and—the unpublished yarn—a real-life 17th-century would-be messiah's puzzling self-destruction. A second group are set in the imaginary, oddly elusive country of Amaz, where magic works and news is circulated through packs of fortune- telling cards. Goldstein also includes the story prototype of her novel Tourists. The remainder evince somewhat more varied themes and range from photographs that predict the future, Cinderella's marriage, Demeter and Persephone, aliens intent on destroying the world, and a tribe of mysterious, magical travelers, to Sir Walter Raleigh's search for El Dorado, artistic perceptions, and a young woman transcending her regimented, push-button existence. The backdrops never appear vivid or distinctive enough to enable the reader to distinguish among the often adroit plot twists and carefully limned characters; the upshot is an agreeable but blandly amorphous blur.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-85790-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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