Do I need to introduce William Gibson? Author of Neuromancer (and 12 novels since), winner of about everything which can be won in the field? Yes, he’s moved on from his Cyberpunk days, that’s perfectly ok, and to be expected. And, with The Difference Engine he is/was one of the founding fathers of Steampunk, too. Plus - he’s still putting out utterly compelling material, like the book at hand. The Peripheral is his latest novel (and yes, I’m behind, it’s been a year since he published this), it’s a standalone novel in a rather interesting setting, inasmuch as this plays in a future world (post-apocalyptic does not really cover it. post-dystopian?) which has learned to make connections to the past - each of which splits of another ‘stub’, creates another time line which started the same as the past, but which branches off from the point of contact. So far so Everett-Wheeler-Graham, I guess…
The story starts with Flynne standing in for her war vet brother, flying a paid shift running security in a game (or that’s what she thinks it is), and witnessing a murder in the process. Playing games for money seems to be one of the main ways of earning a living in Flynne’s world - the other alternative seems to be fabbing (think 3D printing, advanced), mostly counterfeit goods or drugs. But the crime she witnessed was real, and not in a game, and someone wants Flynne dead now, urgently. In parallel chapters we follow Wilf Netherton as one of his charges tries to contact the denizens (‘Patchers’) of the floating city in the Pacific Garbage Patch to cut some kind of deal - and the whole operation goes badly belly-up. This leaves Wilf initially out of work, and soon thereafter a target for elimination for reasons he is not entirely sure of - something else is afoot, and not just that deal/project having gone wrong and a number of Patchers killed in the process.
Neal Asher is a British author, splitting his time between his places in Essex and Crete (I guess we’ll have to see what Brexit does about such arrangements!). He has been publishing SF Novels since 2001 - most of them are set in his Polity universe, where humanity has spread over a large amount of space, and is ruled by a centre of (superficially) beneficent AIs. There are humans outside that sphere, there are borderlands with other species, and there are solar systems trying to go their own way, which leads to frequently violent conflict with Separatists. Any similarities with current political arrangements and wrangles might be entirely coincidental.
Infinity Engine is the final book in a trilogy called Transformation, following the path of development of a rogue AI known as Penny Royal. The earlier two books are called Dark Intelligence, and War Factory, and I would consider The Technician, which set up the scenario for the Trilogy, as an near-integral part of it, too. Overall there are now a substantial number of books available in the Polity universe, spread across time and topics (never mind approaches), and split into individual sub-series. Someone's drawn up a time line, and boy does it help. In terms of this series, though, you don’t have to have read all the books. You could start with Dark Intelligence, or you could pick up The Technician first, and thus get some more background (never mind entertainment) before diving into the trilogy proper. But if not everything I mention in this review makes sense then this is because I’m talking about the final book in a trilogy. Also - of course - anything I give away of the story here is per definition a spoiler for the earlier books - caveat!
Infinity Engine has another point setting it apart - a musician called Steve Buick has composed and recorded an album of original music to go with the book; this is available on evokescape.com. I have not heard it, so cannot comment on how much (or at all) this improves the reading of the book at hand.
Here's a little treat for you, and fresh off the press (virtually only, though):
Uncanny Magazine has, in its November/December issue, a story by Karin Tidbeck called The Bone Plain - talking about running away, about finding your own way, or maybe yourself. And about redemption, maybe.
But read for yourself, the story is not very long, but very much worth reading!
Karin Tidbeck is a Swedish writer of Weird Fiction, sometimes, as is the case here, with a hint of Fantasy (or 70s SF art? I could picture the Bone Plain setting as such!), and a new and exciting voice that you should not miss!
Masterworks is a series, now running to 73 titles, which was originally published by Millennium and is now being continued by Gollancz; consisting of classic SF tales which deserve to be kept in print. Philip K. Dick figures quite large in that run – so far this contains 14 (!) novels from his back catalogue.
Dick, who died in 1982, published 44 novels and 121 short stories over the course of his life; a number of which won awards; the one at hand won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1975.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said takes its title from a lute ayre (look it up!) by John Dowland, written in 1596 (yes, you read that right). One of the main characters loves the song, and quotes it in the story. Its lyrics also open each part of the book. The relationship between the song, its lyrics, and the story and underlying meaning and themes of the book would be the work of a PhD thesis, should one be so inclined (me? Not, sorry.)
The story follows Jason Taverner, a genetically modified human (a Six – presumably that's the sequence of attempted modifications) who is a singer and TV star with a 30 million audience at his weekly show. Except that, after being attacked by a lover/protégé, he comes around in a cheap hotel, and, much worse, in a world where no one remembers him, and where he has no records, papers, or database entries. The latter is bad, as this is a police state, set in a USA after a 2nd civil war. The students (and their teachers), who are hold-outs from the war/coup, are still kettled in their campuses, barricaded in, some under terrible circumstances. This is a near-panopticon world, with pol (Police) and nat (National Guard) road blocks, random checks for ID on the road, with bugs attached to people and clothing (and to ID) sending regular blips with the location and who the owner/wearer is with. And if you don't have ID, or get picked up for the wrong reasons you are off to a labour camp, just like that. Essentially this is as close to a repressive panopticon society as you can get without ubiquitous computing.
Sometimes the little throw-away things have the biggest impact on your life, or your project; frequently much more than anything we’ve planned out and worked hard towards - I’m sure we’ve all been there! Sydney Padua, the author of ‘The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage *The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer’ might know this even better than most of us. She undertook to draw a very short comic, historically (mostly) accurate, about Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, and during research stumbled over the eccentric genius of Charles Babbage, and his steam powered computer. And as she found the ending to be ‘awfully grim’ (Lovelace went off the rails like her father before her and died young and quite mad, whilst Babbage died a crabby old man who had never finished any of his marvellous calculating engines) she added an alternative one, set in a better universe. Which, to everybody else and the Internet at large, meant that she was now drawing a comic about how their lives played out if they built the Difference Engine, and went on to a life of fighting crime!
“Hundreds of pages of comics later and it’s becoming a little hard to insist, as I still do, that I am not drawing a comic called The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage”
It's a deceptively simple story about withholding personal information from the authorities who, by default, feel entitled to this, and the consequences and complexities this can have if you attempt to live a 'normal' life in an environment which expects you to share and overshare these things.
It's fascinating, thought provoking, and (at least for me) slightly sad. But go read, and make up your own mind!
The illustration which goes with the story is by very talented Illustrator Daniel Stolle
