By turns imposing, ingenious, whimsical, and wrenching, though too amorphous to fully satisfy.
Another of Banks’s far-future Culture yarns (Inversions, 2000, etc.). In the Masaq’ Orbital artificial habitat (population about 50 billion; run by an artificial intelligence called the Hub) lives the composer, Ziller, a five-legged Chelgrian, and his friend, Kabe Ischloear, the huge, pyramidal Homomdan Ambassador. The two chat like Ivy League professors. A century ago Chel fought a dreadful civil war over its caste system; Ziller was so disgusted he left and never returned, but the Culture admits it fomented the war by political anticaste manipulations. Also in the recent past was the Culture’s war against the expansionist Idirans, won handily by the Culture. As a fighting spaceship, the Hub fought in that war and, to its everlasting anguish, was responsible for many deaths. Back on Chel, life has held no meaning for Major Quilan since he lost his beloved wife in the civil war. When approached by mysterious agents, he accepts a suicide mission to Masaq’ even though the details are withheld. Will Quilan merely attempt to persuade Ziller to return to Chel? Of course not, though readers know that whatever dire plot’s a-brewing cannot succeed, thanks to the godlike powers of the Hub. Matters will culminate as Ziller conducts his latest masterwork and, in a melancholy commemoration, the light of a nova caused by the Hub during the Idiran War reaches Masaq’.
By turns imposing, ingenious, whimsical, and wrenching, though too amorphous to fully satisfy.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7434-2191-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2001
Four short fairy tales with a contemporary edge, and one novella-length tale that brilliantly transforms a story of middle- age angst into a celebration of serendipity and sex. Byatt (Babel Tower, 1996, etc.) uses that parallel world of fairy tales—which closely resembles our own in motive, character, and outcome—to explore the sources of hope and imagination. ``The Glass Coffin'' reworks a traditional quest tale as a tailor seeking employment helps a stranger and, as a reward, is given a glass key and certain mystifying instructions to follow that lead him to a beautiful sleeping princess. In ``Gode's Story,'' a young woman is true, while her feckless sailor lover betrays her, only to find his happiness with a new bride short-lived when he sees her among the Dead riding the ocean waves. ``The Story of the Eldest Princess'' is a witty reworking of the quest tale as well as a low-key analysis of the role of fate, choice, and character as a princess steps out of her preordained role in life to rescue her people. And ``Dragon's Breath'' is a wry morality tale about the unsuspected ``true relations between peace and beauty and terror'' revealed when dragons destroy a village. But Byatt is at her best in the novella, about what happens when Dr. Gillian Perholt, in Turkey to attend a conference on stories, is granted the chance to make three wishes, which all come true. Troubled by visions of her mortality and her husband's desertion, fiftyish Gillian buys a dirty but striking old glass bottle and takes it back to her hotel. When she washes it, a handsome Djinn appears, who gives her the younger body she wishes for, makes love to her as she wishes, and after talk, tales, and travels, grants her her third wish. An intelligent detour with an exemplary guide through Keats's ``magic casements'' to fairy land. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-42008-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
BOOK TO SCREEN
Sprightly and open-ended, with an agreeable dystopian pitch.
An earnest sci-fi adventure about robotic evolution, from newcomer (and nuclear engineer) Marino.
“For the first time in 100,000 years, something other than primates was competing for the title of dominant life form on this planet.” The planet is Earth; the “something other” are Athenas, robots that are becoming more sophisticated every day–more lifelike in a human way, as well as much more capable of understanding and using vast inputs of data. Unknown to each other, a select team of scientists develop the robots, tinkering with their particulars at separate facilities. One of these talents is Eric Lorenz, a nuclear scientist with an aptitude for complex computer work, who also suffers from a disastrous romantic life and the need for a parental figure–both circumstances intimately and affectingly etched by Marino. Though he doesn’t consider the Athenas an immediate threat, Eric realizes that, once ascendant, they may consider humans a nuisance not worth keeping around. But the greater threat comes from outside the hermetic walls of the research facility: humans, be they religious fundamentalists or latter-day Luddites, who have issues accepting robots as equals. Marino keeps the creation and functionality of the robots plausible with a nifty slathering of computerese–“Our processors are Alpha/Risk 8-chip clusters, using a flavor of Linux, with EMRAM and Media Butler style fixed data drives,” notes one Athena–which may snow some readers but will stand the test for the more technologically conversant.
Sprightly and open-ended, with an agreeable dystopian pitch.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2005
ISBN: 0-595-36507-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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