The story plays in a post-ecological-apocalypse world. Global warming, the (now global) ozone hole, and general ecological degradation have ravaged earth and the human population. The seas have risen, cancer and new plagues are rampant, and humanity has shrunken. No one knows how many people are left, but it’s a fraction of the masses that used to inhabit (and poison) the earth. The survivors have reverted to a tribal life style, living in small groups, or ‘breeds’, each of them centred around a dog breed, which has been elevated to local totem and spiritual guide status. And for better reason than the humans ever guessed – because the dogs are extraterrestrials, here to help humanity develop and guide us to achieve our final stage of development. It’s all a big experiment, which started millions of years ago. The breed themselves specialize, some focus on herb lore, some on crafts, some on working with the old technology to maintain scientific knowledge, some (special) ones focus on herding – animals and humans, at times. This leads to a lot of trade, a lot of friction, and the occasional war between breeds.
Here's a fact (some) literature snobs would rather ignore: Doris Lessing, Literature-Nobel-Prize winning writer, wrote Science Fiction (or, rather, Space Fiction, as she prefers to call it). And not only that, but she considers it some of her best work... I have to agree – this is some of the best SF I have come across in my (admittedly limited) reading career. The Sirian Experimentsis the 3rd book in her Canopus in Argos: Archive series. The two earlier books – Shikasta and The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five – play in the same universe, but are not linked as a continuous storyline; although I found the counterpoint of Shikasta and the book at hand rather interesting, as they, in parts, depict the same events from different viewpoints. But this aside I would expect that The Sirian Experiments can be read and enjoyed on its own.
I remember, before I myself attempted this genre of space fiction, reading an agreeable tale about a species of intelligent giraffes who travelled by Spaceship from their solar system to ours, to ask if our sun was behaving cruelly to us, as theirs had recently taken to doing to them. I remember saying to myself: Well, at least the writer of this tale is not likely to get industrious letters asking what it is like to be a giraffe in a spaceship.
The book starts with an introduction by the author, responding to critics and criticisms: yes, she has created a cosmology – for these books. Yes, making up new things is what writers do. Yes she is writing SF (space fiction, she calls it). It is an eloquent (and funny) rebuttal of a lot of the (presumably) silly comments and criticisms she appears to have received. Class, and great writing in itself. Nobody tell Margaret Atwood...
What of course I would like to be writing is the story of the Red and White Dwarves and their Remembering Mirror, their space rocket (powered by anti-gravity), their attendant entities Hadron, Pion, Lepton, and Muon, and the Charmed Quarks and the Coloured Quarks. But we can't all be physicists.
Mindstar Rising is/wasPeter F. Hamilton’s first published Novel, he has now 14 books to his name (or quite a few more, depending on how you count books broken in two instalments, omnibus editions etc). This here is the first book in a trilogy, set on a roughly contemporary Earth with a slightly alternative recent history, following the fortunes of a psi-enhanced, demobbed ‘Mindstar’ soldier. And, just to be up front, this is a book which, in large parts, didn’t work for me.
The story plays in an England which has just been returned to proper Conservative rule (under the Monarchy) following the ‘2nd Restoration’, which swept away the clueless, cruel, bungling, socialist/communist PSP Regime. Yes, he nails his colours to his mast from the word go – the good guys are Multinational Entrepreneurs and Individuals who show initiative and use their skills to go up in the world. The bad guys are foreign financiers with perverse sexual tastes, and of course the aforementioned overthrown leftie government. The country has also been through what is, repeatedly, referred to as ‘the energy crisis, the warming, the credit crash’ – there is coastal flooding, which led to refugee populations moving inland, and the climate is quite a bit warmer than it used to be.
The story itself follows Greg Mandel (who gives the series his name), a Mindstar soldier who rises in the (restored) world (here’s the title of the book, then). An insidious attack on the Event Horizon corporation, led by the patriarchal Philip Evans, and his young protégé and heir, Julia Evans, required Greg and his ‘Espersense’ to track the personnel involved on the inside. Things escalate from here, as he gets wrapped up in a battle between the Evanses and one of their foreign financiers, and with the fate of young Julia Evans especially.
Yellow Blue Tibia is a standalone Novel by Adam Roberts (not to be confused with Robert Adams of Horseclans fame…), playing on Soviet History, UFO and Alien Invasion conspiracies, Scientology, and KGB machinations - riotous fun, in most parts. Here is a book I really didn’t want to end whilst reading it… Roberts now has 13 novels to his name; just out is The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo (isn’t that just a must-read?), and coming this year is yet another book, titled By Light Alone. He also writes humorous send-ups of other author’s famous books as A.R.R.R. Roberts, has been nominated for the AC Clarke and the Philip K. Dick Awards, and will surely win something soon if the quality of writing in here is anything to go by.
Yellow Blue Tibia (I won’t tell you what the title is supposed to be – it’s a rather terrible, and apparently rather incorrect pun) kicks off when Stalin, just after the end of the Great Patriotic War, and just before Communism inevitable takes over the world, brings together a group of Soviet SF writers to create a believable outside enemy, with a realistic sequence of events indicating a slow invasions by these aliens, to serve as a focal point for the now-united Communist world to face off against instead of drowning in internal conflict. And so the writers, scared for their lives, set off to create ‘Radiation Aliens’, and describe attacks on Long Island (they got the name of the island Manhattan stands on wrong), on an American rocket ship, and on an installation in the Ukraine, irradiating central Europe. And all of a sudden the whole effort is pulled, and they are told to forget all about it if they value their lives, and to get on with said lives. And then the story picks up when Konstantin Skvorecky, one of those SF writers and now a washed up alcoholic keeping himself afloat (so to speak) by the odd translation job, learns that his story, successfully forgotten, is now becoming real, and that the KGB (and Scientology…) have a rather major interest in this, and in him.
We were Hierophants of a hidden futurity, the pens that scribbled what they understood not.
Surface Detail is Ian M Bank's 9th instalment in the Culture series, and a marked improvement on the previous book in the sequence (Matter). It's a story about the consequences of the Culture getting an intervention wrong – but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The story starts with a death. Lededje Y'breq is an Indented Intagliate – tattooed from the molecular level upwards, and a lifelong possession of Joiler Veppers, the most powerful man in the Sichultian Enablement. Except that Lededje is on the run, and has just been cornered by her owner in the Opera House in Ubruater. When she is caught she is murdered by Veppers.
Vatueil, former Captain of Mount, is now a conscript Sapper. When he happens across a subterranean channel, supplying water to the enemy's castle, and stumbles across a gas trap, he is the only one in his troop with the presence of mind to walk through the cloud, and emerge on the other, enemy side. He joins the enemy, is questioned, and then killed.
Yime Nsokyi lives in Irwal on the Orbital Dinyol-hei. When the Orbital is attacked, apparently be an equivalent-tech enemy, she joins the fight as part of the Emergency Militia, the last-ditch Orbital defence. At some point she notices that she's the last one firing, and soon thereafter she gets killed by the attackers.
See a pattern? This book is all about dying, and about virtual afterlifes. All the three protagonists, which you meet (and then lose, after a few pages) at the beginning of the story come, eventually, back into the book later on. Some even (only?) died in simulations. And when I say afterlifes I mean the positive, all-is possible virtualities as well as their dark mirror, the (virtual) Hells. Actually, this story is mainly about the Hells.
Lord of the Shadows is the third and final instalment in the Second Sons Trilogy by Jennifer Fallon; I found it to be the best of the lot (I'd actually suggests that this should have been a longer series, given how the quality improves from The Lion of Senet to The Eye of the Labyrinth to this one!) – the Trilogy ends on a High.
Dirk, now Lord of the Shadows, is still playing out his Masterplan on how to destroy the Shadowdancers whilst apparently betraying everyone and everything; meanwhile everyone else seems to be hell-bent on destroying him – for good reason, it appears? As things come to several climaxes the cast really starts dieing off…
Ok, first things first. This is by far the best book in the Trilogy, so, given the increasing quality of the books Jennifer Fallon should have kept going, and made is, ooh, 5 books minimum. Anyway, this IS enjoyable. There, I said it. So, where are we? Dirk has joined the Shadowdancers, was made Lord of the Shadows and the right-hand man of the High Priestess, and, on the death of the Lord of the Sun (through a crossbow bolt meant for Dirk…), is made his successor, Lord of the Sun, Leader of the Church of the Sun. Quite a career, at 19 years of age. Marquel, Acrobat, Whore, Shadowdancer, meanwhile, has killed everyone in her way to become Kirshow’s lover, but now, with Dirk (who despises her) at her side, sets her sights higher than the Regent of Dhevyn, and kills Belagren, the High Priestess of the Shadowdancers. Dirk’s information on the secrets he found in the ruins of Omaxin make her the new High Priestess, Voice of the Goddess, and lover of the Lion of Senet. Now all she needs is to conceive a child from him, and kill all other aspirants to the throne, and she’ll be Queen Mother. What a future!
Surface Detail 
