A sort of companion volume to Shirley's fine alien-contact yarn, A Splendid Chaos (1988), with many of the ideas recurring or undergoing redevelopment. California's a battleground in this near- future US riven by civil war. Investigators from the Alternative Media Channel, led by the intuitive Quinn, are seeking Black Betty, a so-called revolutionary who actually advocates a return to sanity and peace; instead, they get caught up in the fighting. Meanwhile, at a secret military base in the mountains, Colonel Derrick and an alien Zetan named Jaron are forcing p.r. man Farraday to fake a report demonstrating the Zetans' staunch defense of Earth against the hostile, disembodied alien Meta—the exact opposite of the truth. Derrick captures Quinn's group, planning to use them as live cannon fodder in the p.r. setup. Quinn and several of the others, however, are able to mentally contact a Meta, Seeking One, via the ubiquitous IAMton psi-particles to which Derrick and Jaron are blind; and Farraday links up with Ceph, a weird, talented creature of fused human, octopus, and Zetan genes and devoted ally of the godlike Meta. Thrills and spills, with plenty of encouragement for armchair UFO-conspiracy enthusiasts. The drawback is that Shirley's more concerned with putting across his own private theology than getting the narrative details to mesh.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-929480-44-9
Page Count: 283
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1996
Lovely: a fairy tale for grown-ups, both partaking in and departing from a rich literary tradition.
A lyrical, allusive (and elusive) voyage into the mists of British folklore by renowned novelist Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go, 2005, etc.).
There be giants buried beneath the earth—and also the ancient kings of Britain, Arthur among them. Ishiguro’s tale opens not on such a declaration but instead on a hushed tone; an old man has been remembering days gone by, and the images he conjures, punctuated by visions of a woman with flowing red hair, may be truthful or a troubling dream. Axl dare not ask his neighbors, fellow residents of a hillside and bogside burrow, for help remembering, “[f]or in this community, the past was rarely discussed.” With his wife, who bears the suggestive if un-Arthurian name Beatrice, the old man sets off on a quest in search of the past and of people forgotten. As it unfolds, Axl finds himself in the company of such stalwarts as a warrior named Wistan, who is himself given to saying such things as “[t]he trees and moorland here, the sky itself seem to tug at some lost memory,” and eventually Sir Gawain himself. The premise of a nation made up of amnesiac people longing for meaning is beguiling, and while it opens itself to heavy-handed treatment, Ishiguro is a master of subtlety; as with Never Let Me Go, he allows a detail to slip out here, another there, until we are finally aware of the facts of the matter, horrible though they may be. By the time the she-dragon named Querig enters the picture, the reader will already well know that we’re in Tolkien-ish territory—but Tolkien by way of P.D. James, with deep studies in character and allegory layered onto the narrative. And heaps of poetry, too, even as forgetfulness resolves as a species of PTSD: “I was but a young knight then….Did you not all grow old in a time of peace? So leave us to go our way without insults at our back.”
Lovely: a fairy tale for grown-ups, both partaking in and departing from a rich literary tradition.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-307-27103-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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PERSPECTIVES
PROFILES
A weirdly credible adventure revolving around moral philosophy and entomology, told in the first person. The hero, a youth in his late teens, a citizen of Terra, one of the member governments of the Federation of Planets, enlists as an interstellar soldier. His adventures not only include fantastic journeys through space, combats with horrifying insect enemies, and a range of bewildering maneuvers, they also extend to the battle front of his mind in which ultimately he justifies the moral validity of war as an instinctual preservation of the species. Somewhat pretentious in style and proposed scope, often slightly confusing to the non-aficionado, this should, nevertheless, find readers among the devotees of Robert Heinlein's impressively long list of science fiction titles.
Pub Date: Nov. 5, 1959
ISBN: 0441014100
Page Count: 279
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1959
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