Third in Calder's sometimes fascinating but, latterly, disgusting trilogy about the robot-vampire plague of Meta; strange to say, the publishers quote Kirkus's remark ``a thoroughly unpleasant piece of business'' (on Dead Boys, p. 30) with approval. Still, the nastiness—ahem, ``post-cyberpunk''—continues as Iggy Zwalch, now called Dagon, the sexless, fanged-angel Elohim, completes his trip through space and time and returns to Earth. Somewhere, there's a Reality Bomb. It may or may not have been implanted in Dagon by Dr. Toxophilous, the Cartier toymaker who created the first dead-girl vampire automata. It may or may not explode after Dagon has lived a thousand years—and he may or may not already have lived this long, thanks to his extended space-time jaunt. The bomb, if it ever explodes, will create a universe where Meta is impossible. Perhaps, then, Dagon may awaken as Iggy and reflect that, metaphorically at least, it was all a dream. Obsessive, murky, horrid; the only thing missing is the government health warning.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15103-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1996
The body count is high, the gadgetry pure genius, the sex scenes deliriously overwrought, and the worn cynicism thoroughly...
A cyberwarrior from another planet is reborn on Earth to do a rich man’s bidding and is none too happy about it. Takeshi Kovacs is a hard-case kid from the colony-planet Harlan’s World (guess which two ethnic groups comprised the majority of its settlers) recently decommissioned from the Envoys—overtrained, amoral shock troops that enforce the laws of the galaxy laid down by the United Nations—and more recently turned to a life of crime. A police raid leaves him and his accomplice/girlfriend dead, but that’s not an immediate problem, since in the 25th century the dead are simply taken to clinics where their “stack” (a small metal tube embedded in the spine that contains a backup of their personality, memory, DNA, etc.) is then loaded into a new “sleeve,” or body. Resleeved and woken on Earth, Kovacs finds himself summoned to the Bay Area home of Laurens Bancroft, a filthy-rich member of the class known as “Meths” (for Methuselah) because they could afford to be continuously resleeved over the centuries. Bancroft thinks that when someone shot him in the head the other day and ruined that sleeve, somebody was trying to murder him, though the local cops think he was just trying to kill himself and doesn’t remember because his stack hadn’t been backed up yet. His only choice being to return to Harland’s World, Kovacs is sent off to find his new boss’s killer. The way ahead is quickly littered with the bodies of the unsavory types he comes across and with enough juicy future-detail to make any veteran SF scribe jealous.
The body count is high, the gadgetry pure genius, the sex scenes deliriously overwrought, and the worn cynicism thoroughly distasteful: a welcome return to cyberpunk’s badass roots.Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45768-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2002
Speculative fiction at its most transfixing.
After their high-risk expedition disintegrates, it’s every scientist for herself in this wonderfully creepy blend of horror and science fiction. This is the first volume of the Southern Reach trilogy from VanderMeer (Finch, 2009, etc.); subsequent volumes are scheduled for publication in June and September 2014.
The Southern Reach is the secret government agency that dispatches expeditions across the border to monitor Area X, an ominous coastal no man’s land since an unspecified event 30 years before. This latest expedition, the 12th, is all-female, consisting of a psychologist, an anthropologist, a surveyor and a biologist (the narrator). Names are taboo. Their leader, the psychologist, has hypnotic powers. They have no communication devices, but they do have firearms, which they will use; some earlier expeditions also ended bloodily. Close to base camp is "the tower," a mostly underground structure that acts as tunnel, which they descend. On its walls are grim biblical admonitions, raised letters made of fungi. The biologist incautiously inhales tiny spores which, she will discover later, fill her with brightness, a form of ESP. Tension between the women increases when the anthropologist goes missing; they will discover her dead in the tower, discharging green ash. Next, the psychologist disappears. Leaving the hostile, ex-military surveyor behind, the biologist makes her way to the other interesting structure, the lighthouse, which she climbs in dread. VanderMeer is an expert fearmonger, but his strongest suit, what makes his novel a standout, is his depiction of the biologist. Like any scientist, she has an overriding need to classify, to know. This has been her lifelong passion. Her solitary explorations created problems in her marriage; her husband, a medic, returned from the previous expedition a zombie. What killed the anthropologist? The biologist’s samples reveal human brain tissue. Some organism is trying to colonize and absorb the humans with whom it comes in contact. Experiencing “the severe temptation of the unknown,” she must re-enter the tower to confront the Crawler, her name for the graffiti writer.
Speculative fiction at its most transfixing.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-374-10409-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
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