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MURDER IN THE SOLID STATE

Name: MURDER IN THE SOLID STATE
Author: Wil McCarthy
ISBN: 0-312-85938-4

by Wil McCarthy ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1996

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McCarthy's third novel and first hardcover is set in a near- future Philadelphia dominated by the Gray Party, which is rapidly turning the US into a police state under the pretext of providing law and order. It's all made possible by an invention that can sniff out explosives, weapons, poisons, and drugs; the machine is now installed everywhere, no matter how inappropriate or intrusive the venue. David Sanger, a young nanotechnology researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, is due to present two papers at a conference—but at a reception he's physically assaulted by the sniffer's litigious inventor, Big Otto, and defends himself. Hours later, Big Otto turns up dead, with David's fingerprints all over the murder weapon. Even worse, someone trashes David's lab. Numerous corpses later, Gray police burst into David's apartment and try to kill him. On the run, David suspects that the head political honcho of the Grays is behind all the shenanigans. To clear himself, he's going to have to find out what's really going on, and he's going to have to go after the Grays. He begins by inventing a nanomachine that will disable those symbols of repression, the ubiquitous sniffers. Unconvincingly plotted, peopled, and paced, with a generally sophomoric feel and approach. Even the nanotechnology offers no thrills.

Pub Date: July 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-312-85938-4

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Tor

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996

Categories:

SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

- BOOK REVIEW
HACKING MATTER
by Wil McCarthy

- BOOK REVIEW
THE COLLAPSIUM
by Wil McCarthy

- BOOK REVIEW
BLOOM
by Wil McCarthy

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THE NIGHT CIRCUS

by Erin Morgenstern ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 2011

Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.

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Self-assured, entertaining debut novel that blends genres and crosses continents in quest of magic.

The world’s not big enough for two wizards, as Tolkien taught us—even if that world is the shiny, modern one of the late 19th century, with its streetcars and electric lights and newfangled horseless carriages. Yet, as first-time novelist Morgenstern imagines it, two wizards there are, if likely possessed of more legerdemain than true conjuring powers, and these two are jealous of their turf. It stands to reason, the laws of the universe working thus, that their children would meet and, rather than continue the feud into a new generation, would instead fall in love. Call it Romeo and Juliet for the Gilded Age, save that Morgenstern has her eye on a different Shakespearean text, The Tempest; says a fellow called Prospero to young magician Celia of the name her mother gave her, “She should have named you Miranda...I suppose she was not clever enough to think of it.” Celia is clever, however, a born magician, and eventually a big hit at the Circus of Dreams, which operates, naturally, only at night and has a slightly sinister air about it. But what would you expect of a yarn one of whose chief setting-things-into-action characters is known as “the man in the grey suit”? Morgenstern treads into Harry Potter territory, but though the chief audience for both Rowling and this tale will probably comprise of teenage girls, there are only superficial genre similarities. True, Celia’s magical powers grow, and the ordinary presto-change-o stuff gains potency—and, happily, surrealistic value. Finally, though, all the magic has deadly consequence, and it is then that the tale begins to take on the contours of a dark thriller, all told in a confident voice that is often quite poetic, as when the man in the grey suit tells us, “There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict.”

Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.