Iron Sunrise, the second book in Charles Stross' Timelike Diplomacy series (as it is now known) starts with a bang. A big one. When the planet of Moscow, a happy, democratic, quite enlightened (if slightly backwards) planet is ‘Iron Bombed’ (essentially – the core of its sun was replaced by an iron crystal of equivalent mass, leading to some rather cataclysmic-catastrophic reactions in its suddenly unsupported mantle), the resulting massive radiation and plasma pulse obliterates everything in its way in the star system. This leads to the automatic deployment of its 2nd strike deterrent force – sublight speed bombers equipped with planet busters, neigh impossible to stop, or defend against. These are aimed at Moscow’s local trade competitor, New Dresden, which is 35 light years away from Moscow. And 30 years from the arrival of the bombers when we join the story. How do you evacuate a planet of 3 billion people, even over 30+ years? You do the maths – it transpires, very simply, that you don’t, not with any kind of fleet of ‘normal’ FTL space ships. And, even better, it wasn’t even New Dresden behind the bombing in the first place… This situation brings on the ‘Black Chamber’ UN diplomats from Old Earth, especially Rachel Mansour and her (now) husband Martin Springfield, the protagonists from the first book playing in the ‘Timeline Diplomacy’ universe, Singularity Sky. Their mission? Figure out who bombed Moscow and who is now killing, one after the other, its remaining Ambassadors to other worlds. Stop them. And stop the bombers running on New Dresden. It's quite a brief… But the person who knows what really happened, or who at least has access to the clues, is a displaced evacuee teenager called (ok, calls herself) Wednesday Shadowmist, who gets evacuated from Portal Station 11 (affectionately known to its inhabitants as 'Old Newfoundland Four'), 3.6 light years away from the explosion; a distance which provides enough time to evacuate, but is still way too close to the Iron Sunrise to protect human life within the station from the expanding shock wave …
Here are a few thoughts on Wireless, a collection of short stories by Charles Stross, a book a received from Little, Brown Books for review (thanks).
This is, like every other collection of short stories and novelettes that I've ever read a mixed bag, covering a wide scope of topics, writing styles, and quality of story. Overall it's entertaining if not terribly complex or deep; but then most short stories are written as test balloons, trials, and to play with ideas that didn't warrant full size novels, so that's par for the course, if not better given the case at hand.
The book contains stories written between 98 and 08; all of which (save Palimpset) were published previously, some in electronic form only. Given the above, here is a quick run through the contents:
Stephen Bury is a pseudonym for a co-writing effort by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George. Cobweb is their 2nd book as co-authors, after 'Interface'. The story is written to play in an alternative recent history, although it could just as well fit in with the facts as we know them from the 1st Gulf war, edited as they are when they reach us... It follows two separate strands in the build up to the war. On the one hand we have gutsy Betsy Vendeveter, a low grade analyst in the CIA, who has just stumbled over a connection that nobody else has noticed, and then committed career suicide by actually releasing it, which means she seriously overstepped her boundaries. Especially as her observation, concerning mid-Eastern graduate students, biological weapons, and associated skullduggery torpedoes all the careful work, done over many years, of James Gabor Millikan, US Diplomat to the Near East, and main shaper of US foreign policy in the area. So, from thereon she is shunned, shunted about, and only helped in the most obscure ways – the service wants, no, needs her insights, but cannot be seen to want her.
Ally is the 5th (and penultimate) book in Karen Traviss' excellent Wess'har Wars series, and thus the set-up for the much-anticipated final instalment.
It will be interesting to see how she ties up all the story strands and complications – this book shows how difficult it can be to actually line them all up to even allow for such an attempt. Her main challenge, I guess, is also what makes this series such a great read: with every book the story direction changes, as new levels of argument and complications are introduced. Every time you think you've got the ethical, moral, religious, and ecological arguments and positions the story plays in (and with) nailed down – along comes another instalment, and turns it all on its head again; both through more extreme examples, as well as through demonstration of compromise under constraint, and consequences this has. Whilst this makes for a challenge, as the books keep taking you out of some kind of comfort-"I-know-how-things-tick-here"-zone, it also makes this story arc very very enjoyable as she refuses to trot out the same old 'it sold well earlier' approach. Commendable.
SPOILER WARNING. The following will (well, should) not spoil your enjoyment of this book. But. If you haven't read the earlier books in the series, and are planning to do so (I can only recommend you give it a go, it's worth it) then this will seriously spoil your fun from discovering where things are heading, and all the changes Karen introduces to keep you and me entertained and on our toes. So, if you're planning to start at the beginning, stop reading NOW.
The Stone Canal is the 2nd book in the really rather brilliant Fall Revolution series by the Scottish written Ken MacLeod. This was his 2nd published novel overall (he has 13 novels to his name meanwhile – you see, I'm a bit behind with reading his stuff. My loss!).
This is the follow-up to his dazzling debut The Star Fraction, and, believe it or not, he upped the ante. Before I get going with the book itself a word of warning – this is a review for a book in a series, it will, by its very nature, contain spoilers for the earlier book. If you don't mind then read on, otherwise go & get the first book (The Star Fraction) and read this first. Actually, go and get the entire series (4 books - the other ones are The Cassini Division, and The Sky Road), full stop, it's worth it.
A few words on Robert J Sawyer's Factoring Humanity, an Alien Messages (SETI?) and First Contact story which spins a good if slightly over-egged and unrealistic (even within SF parameters) yarn. It was nominated for the Hugo Award, but didn't win it.
We are not alone. To the contrary – for almost 10 years now humanity has been receiving alien messages from the direction of Alpha Centauri A, roughly every 31h. The first 11 were easily decoded (nothing terribly exciting in there), the other 2832 have resisted every attempt to make sense of them. The only constant is that the number of bits transferred is, for each message, the product of two prime numbers (and no, not always the same ones either), which suggests that these should be interpreted graphically. Heather Davis, of the University of Toronto, is the leading researcher on the topic (although no one knows much…), and an instant celebrity now that the transmissions have ceased to arrive. What do they mean? And why have they stopped? Are the aliens waiting for an answer before resuming?
Iron Sunrise
Stephen Bury is a pseudonym for a co-writing effort by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George. Cobweb is their 2nd book as co-authors, after 'Interface'.
Ally
The Stone Canal
