The Story: The Algebraisttracks the progress of Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer (a kind of sect that studies the so called Dwellers), in his assigned quest to find some information on the supposed system of galactic wormholes used by said Dwellers. Dwellers are inhabitants of Gas Giants across the galaxy; they live extremely slowly, but to a ripe age of billion of Earth years, and have developed a rather unusual civilization and social structure. To fulfil his task Fassin needs to `dive' into the Gas Giants in a special `Gascraft' that supports him in this harsh environment, and slow his own speed down to the level the Dwellers exist at.
Several other strands intersect with this main story arc, and provide background on the main characters, on the social and political system, and allow for parallel but dependent strands of developments in the story. The main ones are the questionable hunt for Artificial Intelligences by the humans and their allies, as a remainder of a long-ago won war; the threat (and later brutal reality) of an invasion of the local system by a sect (led by a brilliant but despotic leader), who are not part of the main multi-species alliance in the galaxy; and, as the most long term one, the story of Fassin and two childhood friends, linked together by an experience in a forbidden abandoned spaceship, which forever shapes their relationships and lives.
Polity Agent is the 4th (out of 5, so far) book in Neal Asher's Agent Cormac series; which in itself is part of his Polity books (13 novels as this is written). It's by no means a stand-alone novel – you need to have read the previous 3 books in the series, at least (that would be Gridlinked, The Line of Polity, and Brass Man), as the larger story arc carries straight through this book into the 5th in the series, Line War.
Beware that the below contains, by its very nature, spoilers for the earlier books. Go read these first, they are fun!
Polity Agent picks up where Brass Man left off in terms of the overall story arc. The book itself kicks off with a runcible transfer from the future (yes, it's possible. Yes, the energy requirements are such that the price is, in nearly all cases, completely out of question) to evacuate the expedition returning the Maker to its own culture (its ship was destroyed by Dragon a few books back). Something tries to come through the runcible after the survivors, and the gate won't close – the station involved (Celedon), and Jerusalem (yes, Jain tech features greatly) only just about manage to dump the gate into the next sun in time. What we learn is that the Maker civilization thought they understood Jain technology, and used it. What the expedition found was that the Maker civilization has been wiped out by the Jain, and that the space is seeded with Jain nodes. Not a good place to be in, as Agent Cormac (who has lost part of his memory due to the events at the end of Brass Man) comments.
The magazine is freely available for download here - this version contains 3 short stories, plus features/inteviews on Brazilian and Hungarian SF.
The stories are The Death of Mr. Teodorescu by Cristian Mihail Teodorescu (which didn't set my world on fire for some reason), The Wind-Blown Man by Aliette De Bodard (great stuff), and The Ethics of Treason by Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro (still reading, but unusual and thought-provoking so far!)
Go check it out - this looks like an interesting new venture!
Here's a re-post of an old review of Islands in the Net, a pre-fame Cyberpunk classic from Bruce Sterling – interesting for its social setting and overall prescience, some of it overtaken by events (the book was published in 1988), some yet to come, but still believable. A must for your ‘catching up’ reading list for the setting alone.
The setting: The story is set in 2023, as a generic ‘near future’ setting. The world depicted is familiar and believeable – local governments have significantly less power than now, except for some backwaters. Multinational corporations are huge, and are much more influential and powerful on a global scale. Africa is a desperate and poor war zone. Most countries are organized in some kind of UN successor called the ‘Vienna Convention’, which has a global police force with wide ranging permissions. The world has gone through the ‘Abolition’, when nuclear weapons were globally dismantled and all research and manufacturing into nuclear technologies abandoned. Most of the food in the developed countries is ‘Scop’, artificial foodstuffs made from single-cell protein.
Somtow Sucharitkul (also writing as S. P. Somtow, a pseudonym for those thought unable to pronounce Sucharitkul...) is a Thai writer and composer/conductor writing SF, YA Fantasy, Horror and Vampire stories, and of course music. He has, at one point or another, been nominated for most awards covering the above genres, and has won most of them, too. Currently he focuses predominantly on his music.
Fire from the Wine Dark Sea is not a current book, though. It is a collection of his early writing, and was published shortly after his two first novels (Mallworld, and The Light on The Sound). It is fair to say (and I'm sure he would agree) that topic, content, style, but also quality vary greatly throughout this book. As a fan, knowing a lot of his oevre, created after these stories, I found this a highly interesting, and in parts (including, but not limited to the interviews) a very entertaining volume.
Here's a quick run through the contents, to give you an idea of what the book contains:
Fire from the Wine Dark Sea – the title story is, like its name, a Homer allusion, which left me rather indifferent...
The Thirteenth Utopia – a story from the Inquestor Universe/Series, telling the original story of Davaryush on Shtoma. This is not part of the series, not entirely canon, and is reflected in later segments in the series. Nevertheless – in my opinion this alone is worth getting the book for!
