Twisty and compelling, brimful of ideas, with Kress’s usual life-sized characters: top-notch work from a major talent—and we...
A far-future alien-contact yarn from the versatile author of Stinger (1998), etc. When humans expanded into space, they found a network of stargates left by vanished aliens—and also ran into the Fallers, xenophobic aliens who immediately declared war and continue to resist all attempts at communication. Starship Zeus deposits an alien-contact team on planet World, whose human-alien inhabitants have a “shared reality” (if you’re out of synch, you get violent headaches). All this is cover for Zeus’s real mission: to investigate the weapons possibilities of the huge alien artifact orbiting the planet (Worlders think it’s a moon). Military physicist Syree Johnson finds that the artifact projects a field that causes heavy elements to become temporarily radioactive. Then, when the Fallers show up, Johnson decides to attempt to tow the artifact back through the stargate—but it's almost certainly too big. Down on the planet, the investigators—geologist Dieter Gruber, xenobiologist Ann Sikorski, fanatic anthropologist David Campbell Allen, and their leader Ahmed Bazargan—strive to understand the Worlders’ “shared reality”: if the Worlders decide they’re unreal, they’ll be utterly ignored. Worlder criminals, they learn, become “unreal” until their debt is paid; indeed, the criminal Enli has been set to spy on them. But what’s the source of the reality/unreality phenomenon? Is there a link with an artifact they’ve detected buried on the planet, or with the thing in orbit, which seems to generate probability waves?
Twisty and compelling, brimful of ideas, with Kress’s usual life-sized characters: top-notch work from a major talent—and we haven’t heard the last of the Fallers.Pub Date: July 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-87406-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
The latest from Barnes (Mother of Storms, 1994, etc.) opens on Mars early in the 22nd century, where Joshua Ali Quare wakes from a long illness with only scattered memories; among his few possessions is an advanced computer containing hundreds of documents, many contradictory, detailing his past lives. Born in 1969, the son of an American communist, Joshua was quickly recruited by the KGB, then infected with a virus that, every 15 years, renders him helpless. When he recovers, ready to assume a new identity, he's ten years younger—but most of his memories are gone. After the collapse of communism, Joshua continued to work for the Organization, whose object had become power and profit rather than ideological conquest; he worked by intimidation and assassination to promote or suppress scientific discoveries. In a later incarnation, he fought in the War of the Memes, where various artificial intelligences and their ``memes,'' copies of computer programs capable of taking over human brains, vied for dominance; eventually, the Earth was converted into the anthill-like Resuna. Joshua barely escaped to Mars. Now, he discovers that his old war buddy Sadi has become a woman—and immortal; not only that, but she's taken over the Organization—and perfected a method of time travel that gives her almost unlimited power to remake the world to her own desires. Meanwhile, a rescue fleet from 300 years in the future heads back for a showdown with the dangerously expansionist Resuna. Grim, sinewy, consistently surprising, and—despite Barnes's habitual, and always irksome, present-tense narration— unforgettable.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85561-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
Ten original tales from Britain, plus a nonfiction piece on recent science-fiction novels, a parochial introduction that should have been rewritten for a wider audience, and an afterword from Michael Moorcock, who also contributes one of the stories. Peter F. Hamilton makes another splendid appearance with ``Starlight Dreamer,'' an eerie and evocative tale where elvenkind are drawn back to a future deindustrialized, depopulated, reforested England, only to conflict with mortals in all too familiar ways. In Robert Holdstock's amusing ``The Charisma Trees,'' archaic magical hazel trees become imbued with human genes that confer charisma, resulting in people vanishing into the remote past. ``Inside Outside,'' David Langford's nonfiction contribution, examines the pitfalls that await mainstream writers venturing into science fiction, with hilarious examples. Elsewhere, Garry Kilworth again parades his familiar obsession with pain; Lisa Tuttle ponders longevity and the morals of the super-rich; and tasteless offerings emanate from Elizabeth Sourbut (penises detach from their owners) and Barrington J. Bayley (anal compulsives navigate through hyperspace). Different. Difficult. And perhaps not altogether worth the effort. It's easy to see—despite Garnett's editorial rant—why readers generally prefer novels.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-575-05147-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Gollancz/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
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