M. John Harrison is quite an old hand at this writing malarkey – depending which website you look at, and how you count them he's got about 20 novels and non-fiction books to his name. Add in omnibus editions, collections, foreign editions, and graphic novels, and you get a substantial list. The Kefahuchi Tract series, of which Empty Space: A Haunting is the 3rd instalment, is his triumphant return to Space Opera – with a proper Harrison slant, of course. The UK Edition was published last summer and has been shortlisted for a BSFA Award meanwhile (the previous book in the series, Nova Swing, won the Arthur C Clarke and the Philip K Dick Awards); the US Edition will be out in March.
Our instruments have limits. Since knowledge of physical reality depends on what we can measure, we will never know all there is to know... Much better to accept that our knowledge of physical reality is necessarily incomplete... (Marcelo Gleister)
The story follows three strands – the first one plays on Earth, in the near-future, follows Anna Waterman, a 60 year-old widow living in East Sussex. Her life is changing, and so are her relationships with her daughter and her therapist. It is unclear how much of the strange things happening, the visitations and illusions happen inside her head, or are real – this strand, even more than the other ones, projects a sense of lostness, delirium, and unreality in parts.
Leaked navigational nanoware or eleven-dimensional imaging code slips up someone's anus at night, and discovers it can run on a protein substrate. In a similar way, ads, memes, diseases and algorithms escape into the wild. The can run on your neurons, they can run inside your cells. They perform a default conversion...
Over Easter I will be enjoying myself at EightSquaredCon in Bradford.
EightSquaredCon is this years' instalment of the annual Eastercon, as the National SF Convention is colloquially known due to the weekend when it takes place.
If you enjoy Science Fiction and its associated genres (and would be reading this if you didn't?), and don't have plans for Easter then I'd recommend that you consider joining the Convention to meet up with like-minded people and meet some of the perpetrators of said genres (I would expect most of the current crop of British SF authors, plus a few from outside our borders, to be in attendance); links to the programme and the membership rates are below.
This is a repost of an old review, originally published on the now-defunct Diversebooks site. I’ve decided to have a go at my pile of “Culture” novels by Iain M. Banks, and decided to start with the first (I know, completely novel idea), Consider Phlebas, even if it’s a bit on the old side meanwhile. The book, like other books by Iain (M) Banks, is named after T.S. Elliot; in this case after a quote from “The Wasteland, IV”: Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
At the start of the book we find the Hero (ok, Protagonist…), Bora Horza Gobuchul (short Horza most of the time) in a sticky situation. He has been impersonating, in his ability as a Changer (see below), the Outworld Minister Egratin, in the Gerontocracy of Sorpen, and failed in his mission. For this (the impersonation, not the failure) he is to die, in a rather ingenious (and very Banks) way. No, I won’t tell you. Main reason for his failure is the Cuture “Special Circumstances” agent Joboal-Rabaroansa Perostek Alseyn Balveda dam T’seif (mercifully usually Perostek or Balveda…), who saw straight through him.
Horza himself is allied with the Idirans, a vaguely humanoid, three-legged, religious race; fighting an all-out war (up to and including blowing up stars and such) with the Culture, a messy conglomerate of humans, post-humans, other races, machines and more. During one encounter of this war the Mind of a ship (think central computer, AI, and then some) abandoned ship, and hid on Schar’s World, one of the designated ‘Planet of the Dead’ (in a nutshell: ex-homeworlds of races that didn’t make it and killed themselves off), protected and isolated by the immaterial Dra’Azon (highly evolved, very powerful, neither side can afford to piss them off!). Horza is the man the Idirans want to go after it.
Under way he signs up on a Privateer, the “Clear Air Turbulence”, has many an adventures (no kidding), and finally, with the rest of the Privateer’s crew, ends of on Schar’s World (or, rather, in the command tunnel labyrinths below it) for the final showdown, which occupies the full final third of the book.
Michel Gagné is a Canadian artist and writer; he is in involved with tv and film animation, but also produces his own work (his website lists 15 books) and works a a publisher. He has won a BAFTA and an Annie Award.
Zed, A Cosmic Tale, is the collection of his 10 comic books of the same name, published over 11 years. The artwork as well as the writing were reviewed and updated to make the flow and feel of the story more consistent for the re-release as a collection.
The story deal with an adorable alien, complete with antennae, named Zed. When he presents his invention, the Energizer, a machine which turns rocks into powerful energy batteries, to the Hierarchy of the Galaxy (Emperors, Kings, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Diplomats, Popes, Ambassadors, Scientists, and Movie Stars) on Xandria, the Hub of the Galaxy, for the annual Nob-L Prize Celebration something goes wrong.
“The Transformist” is a tale about the concept of reality. The story is based in the first description of Frégoli Syndrome by Professor Paul Courbon and Dr. G. Fail in January 17th, 1927. Leopoldo Frégoli (Roma 1867 – Viareggio 1936) was an Italian transformer actor who was famous because he was capable to modify his physical and psychological appearance—specially his face—in a very fast way during his performances, he could play up to sixty characters in one performance. Frégoli wrote in his memoirs in 1936 that “Art is the Life and the Life is the Transformation.” Frégoli Syndrome consists of the conviction that some physical and psychological characteristics go through from one person to another. This syndrome occurs after right frontal lobe lesions secondarily to trauma, neurodegenerative diseases, or a stroke. In the tale some of the philosophical and historical ideas about reality, from Parmenides to Henri Bergson are described. Some of the events of Sarah Bernhardt’s life are included since this actress was part of the delirious ideation of the first patient diagnosed with this syndrome. Physical and psychological characteristics from this patient are described in the tale including his belief in “Mentalism.” The importance of the memory in the perception of reality is emphasized, so Marcel Proust becomes a central figure in the story.
Tricia Sullivan is a US born novelist living in the UK. She has published 7 (or 8, depending which website you believe) novels and a number of pieces of short fiction. She has been nominated for a number of awards, and won the Arthur C Clarke for her novel Dreaming in Smoke; and she was one of the Guests of Honour at this year's national SF convention (aka Eastercon).
Karen 'Cookie' Orbach is a shy bookworm, overweight, and an ex police-psychic. Now her problem with her 'TV allergy' is considered a skill, as it allows her to link with Gossamer, an indigene, semi-solid 'flyer' and act as air reconnaissance in a conflict on another planet. It's a strange kind of war she witnesses – the planet is covered in (consists of?) the 'Grid', which grows out of the 'Well' – it's organic, fractal, ever-changing, and evades human understanding and categorisation. You cannot kill – killing the Golems which the Well makes from dead human soldiers just makes them proliferate further. So, all the troops still in the area are now female, to cut down on heroics.
