Nawrimo 09 - c'est tout c'est fini

Once again, with scant seconds to go (well, all right - a day) the word count reaches 50,000 words... and so I get my 'winner' badge from the NanoWriMo website. Oh, the relief.



Sadly, unlike last time (can I link to it again? Please?) this one slightly ran out of control... so although I reached the 50k word limit and thus am considered a 'winner' of the NaNoWriMo thing, this victory is marred slightly by the fact that I am only about two-thirds of the way through the plot... so there will be more writing. So, no, you can't read it now. Which I know you're all just gutted about. Yes, you are.

So work must continue. Urgh. Really don't have much enthusiasm for the prospect right now... but who knows, hopefully sometime in the new year I will be able to post the complete manuscript for my latest oeuvre - 'Rain over Xanadu', a trashy bit of science fiction from the people who brought you (here's the link, here it is here it is! Yay!) 'Government Joe Must Die'. This one is rather darker, though, and for sci-fi buffs, it owes more to Alastair Reynolds and Kim Stanley Robinson than... whoever I said GJmD owed a lot to, I forget. Someone slightly more frivolous, probably.

So, that's it for another year... except it isn't. Because I will finish the damn thing. Argh. I leave you with these words from our sponsors:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

Nanowrimo - hacking through the verbiage jungle

Urgh. Okay, so - so far I am managed 2,000 words a day - if I keep this up then I should just about make it to 50k. I seriously doubt that the story will be complete, though, and then what? Don't fancy spending December writing more. That sounds too much like masochism.

Two hours later and they were all rigged up in their best clothes – or at least, their cleanest clothes – collecting up the plates of those around them and taking turns in the kitchen. It had been, they had all agreed, a fine meal, considering. And now, as they sat around and contemplated how much better the human digestion system worked under gravity, their guest of honour rose to make the traditional remarks. The Tigerwinds were, according to the commissar, an ancient and illustrious dynasty on Mars, and their involvement in the politics and administration of Humankind’s oldest colony stretched back beyond living memory. However, the crew had been quick to notice that he was slightly vague on how he came to be sent with a colony ship to Mars.

“If that’s not a punishment posting, I don’t know what is.” Freda had cackled, as they discussed it in the dormitory, with all the excitement of girl scouts on their first night away from home.

But now, the old commissar rose and shone his steely smile at them. The lights in the canteen had been turned down, and each table had a night light placed on it;  under their spell, the man’s blue eyes glinted with all the jolly bonhomie of a shark.

“Ladies and gentlemen – crew and captain of the good ship Wednesday’s Child…” he spread his hands in welcome, “…my friends. I am most grateful for the wonderful welcome to have given me to your humble vessel, and proud to have shared this wonderful meal with you.”

“I have called you friends, and I am delighted that I can do so, so freely. To be as welcoming and civilized as you have been, at the end of an epic journey such as you have taken-“
Chris leaned over to Panab next to him, and murmured, “Steady on, pal, it was only three months-”
“-is a credit to you and to your society. Truly, Ganymede has much to be proud of in this ship and its crew.

“You left your homes behind and embarked on this perilous voyage in the hope of planting the flag of humankind on another world. I can only wonder at your emotions when you discovered, as I’m told you did, halfway between planets, that this goal had already been achieved by my own small team. I am sure, had our positions been reversed, there would have been some amazement, some anger, and a great deal of bewilderment on my own ship if we had discovered you already here. Bewildered, yes, we would have been bewildered – when one’s purpose is suddenly rendered unnecessary, how does one feel, how does one react? I do not envy you your position. But as a friend, I hope I can offer some advice.

“My view of your situation is, I’m afraid to say, an unhappy one. You travelled here hoping to claim a new land for Ganymede, to throw off the yoke placed upon you by the intransigence of your bullying neighbours Europa and Callisto. Yet when you arrive here, others have already claimed the land; and your mission has been thrown open to those whom you hoped to outmanoeuvre, your enemies! So you are caught between a rock, if you’ll pardon the pun, and a hard place. Your mission is compromised, its function redundant, its intention infiltrated by your rivals. Europans and Callistans will arrive here just in time to take the benefits of your hard labour.

“My friends… we can help. Our colony is young, and needs your help, just as you need us. Mars can be your ally against the rivals who have compromise your mission. We have an established land base, with an established administration which can easily take you under its wing. With your help, our colony can be firmly established beyond all doubt, and Mars and Ganymede united as friends.”

He sat down, to polite applause – but even as he did so, there was a low murmur round the table.
“That cheeky bastard…” Chris murmured, half-admiring.

Phil rose to make some polite answering remarks. Frankly, Panab didn’t really pay much attention – but he did hear Phil turn to his guest and say, “Of course, our rivalry with Europa and Callisto is common knowledge; but sibling rivalry is part of human nature, and a healthy part.” And woe betide the stranger who tries to intervene , the commander didn’t have to add.

Nanowrimo - quota central

Okay, so it's a day late and maybe a dollar short, but I'm getting my quota in now. I figure, all I have to do is write 2,000 words every weekday, and 10,000 words each weekend, and I'll sail past 50,000 with a couple to spare.

So today, I Reached my target of 25,000 words. In fact, I went past that and reached... 25,007. Woohoo.

I went back and re-read 'Government Joe must Die' last night. I wa surprised - I remember it being pretty clunky, but it was actually pretty readable. Okay, the plot is a tad flimsy, but I was pleasantly surprised by how readable it was. This one, though, is taking a long time to get going. The problem is, I know what's going to happen. Last time I really didn't, which made it easier; this time, I have a plotline which I ahve to stick to, and it's taking a long time to play out. I may not even reach the good bits before the end of the month!

“Hey, Panab.”

“Hmm?”

It was Chris, from the acceleration couch next to his. They had been relocated to the briefing room; theirs were the only two couches in here. It felt lonely.

“You think the Martians could’ve sabotaged our route?”

“What?”

“You know, mined it or something. It’d be awfully easy – I mean, we haven’t exactly been silent in our approach, they’ve known we were coming for a month at least.”

Panab pondered this. “It wouldn’t take much, would it,” he agreed sombrely.

“A few pebbles in the upper atmosphere, a low orbit maybe. Crack that heatshield and we’re toast.”

Panab grimaced. “Well, thank you for that happy thought.”

“Sorry.”

A long pause. They were about twenty minutes away from Titan’s upper atmosphere now; the view from the few cameras still pointing forwards showed a distant curve of the planet’s horizon. Panab knew that that horizon line was slowly flattening as they approached – but it was happening too slowly for him to be sure he was seeing it.

The canteen smelled faintly of old meals, of greasy meat and boiled cabbage, of cold coffee and ageing plastic.

“Sorry, buddy.” Chris said eventually. “just this silence makes me nervous.”

Panab turned his head to look at him. “Chris, my old friend,” he said, surprised. “It is out of our hands. If God wills it, we die here. If not, then we continue. We can never know the time or the place. How many times in your life have you, could you have been killed by some careless movement from someone else?”

Chris gave him a look of disbelief, then laughed shakily. “Thanks for those encouraging words, pal.”

Panab shook his head, frustrated. “Sorry, I expressed that badly. But if you are worried because it is now up to fate, or God, or whatever you wish to call Him, well – it has always been so. As God wills it, it will happen. Once you accept that thought, well, you still get scared, but at least now you have a handle to help control it. A handhold on the precipice, if you like.”

Chris considered this. “I never took you for the religious type, buddy.”

Panab laughed. “Well, that’s the way I was brought up. My parents were Moslems of the Ohio Heresy. They left Earth when the Middle Eastern Moslems began their purges, and… stop me if you’ve heard this.”

“No, really, go on. What’s Ohio?”

“It was a town in America. There was… well, that’s beside the point. Anyway, my parents left Earth, stopped on Deimos for a while, but never really settled. When my grandparents died, they inherited some money, and came on out to Ganymede. I think they hoped there’d be religious freedom there, but-“

“There is. “Chris looked confused, his baffled frown looking perhaps offended.

“Yes, of course there is… but back then, well, there was religious freedom, but there was a lot of stuff to do it was a hardscrabble life. So although they were practising Moslems, many of their practises had to be curtailed just because it wasn’t possible. I mean, praying five times a day when you’re-“

“Woah! Five times a day?! I don’t even eat five times a day.”

Panab frowned a little at that, but carried on. “ – when you’re in a spacesuit, or teleoperating a robot for nine hours straight, it simply isn’t possible.”

Chris chuckled. “Sure, I can just see some big construction rig getting down on its knees in the middle of a building site!”

“Precisely. So, they remained Moslem in their hearts, and hoped to get back to practising their full religion… but, well, to cut a long story short, they brought me up with the theory, but not much practice.”

Chris absorbed this, staring up at the ceiling – which is the only truly comfortable position in a proper acceleration couch.

Suddenly the room shuddered. The ship creaked and groaned alarmingly, popping noises came from all around them. And a thin thunder started somewhere behind their backs, echoing round the ship until it was impossible o tell where it came from.

“Relax, my friend,” Panab said loudly over the increasing noise. “And remember, we have a job to do as soon as we come out of the other side.”

Then, gradually at first, the weight began pressing down on them. It felt like someone was pressing them into sand, burying them alive. Breathing was a great effort. And all around them, the ship thundered and groaned. There were a couple of distant bangs… but they weren’t suddenly engulfed in a fireball, so Panab told himself that it was something none-essential, and concentrated on regulating his breathing.

In the flight plan, the aerobraking manoeuvre was supposed to take just over half an hour. In reality, it seemed an eternity. Panab had just about got used to the noise by the time it began to subside. Gradually, his joints ceased to feel as if they were being put through a mincer, and became merely painful; then, blissfully light once more.

Phil’s face flashed up on one of the screens in front of them. He looked pale and strained, but composed. “Panab, Chris: have you established contact with the probes?”

“Not yet… ah, there it is. Probe 1 now online, probe 2 still not responding… okay, we have probe 2 now. “ Chris sounded as fresh as a daisy, in total control. Panab had to look over at him to see the sweat on his pale face, to see how much he’d been affected. “They’re all nominal, Phil. No sign of a response to our re-entry from the Martians.”

There was no response.

“Phil? Come in please. Anyone on the bridge?”

Finally, Phil’s voice came back on the line. “Chris – you may not see a response. But we’ve got one up here.”

“Bridge?”

Phil was suddenly brisk. “Yep, okay, probe team. We’ll fill you in on the details later. It’s just… the Martian commander has transmitted a brief, voice-only message to us. Hello and welcome to the system, sort of thing. We’ll replay it to the rest of the crew when we’re fully squared away with parking the ship.”

“Roger that, bridge.” Chris said formally. “We’ll continue to monitor the satellite surveillance. Probe team standing by.”

It took a good ten minutes for the post-manoeuvre checks to be sort out. The bangs Panab had heard turned out to be a camera which hadn’t retracted fully and had sheared off, hitting one of the ultra-low frequency antennae and taking it with it.

“Nothing serious, then.” He said with relief.

Freda was down with the EVA team checking out the damage. Her voice sounded intimate in his ear. “No, not at all. The ULF antennae was really only there to be used if we got submersibles into the sea – but even then, we may not even have wanted to talk to the ship in orbit, we may have had some support vehicle much closer. So it’s pretty academic. And the camera was just an inspection system, we can replace that easily. So pretty light damage, in all.”

It's called 'Rain over Xanadu', by the way

I have to say, this time around I'm a bit disappointed by the quality of my writing. Am I always such a lecturer? It isn't flowing, it's sheer hackwork. Hey ho. Bash on - hopefully the next 18,000 words will come a little easier than the last lot.

Approval was granted swiftly, and suddenly everyone was talking about it. Panab didn't remember them having made an announcement, but Drew stepped up and revelled in his new role as official spokesman of the Steeplechase Committee. This was good, becaues Panab didn't really have that much time to spend on it - he was still being worked hard by Phil in an effort to get as much intelligence on the Martians' activity as possible. It was tiring, wearing work - but at least he had something else to talk to people about. It was funny - he'd gotten so used to people sidling up to him and gently trying to tease clues about surveillance out of him, and now they were doing the same thing to try and get some clues about the steeplechase course! The first time it happened he laughed out loud, just from relief. In fact, it got slightly out of hand: deprived of group entertainment for such a long time, the crew of the Wednesday's Child fell enthusiastically upon Panab and Drew's idea like a pack of starving hyenas. It was strange fro Panab, though; his work with Phil was intensely private and quiet - nobody was allowed on the bridge while they were up there, and with just the two of them working in the darkened room, it was a very intense experience... and then he'd come offshift, and be surrounded by people wanting him to make decisions, or help out with the course, the competitor lists, even choosing the font for the runners' numbers.

In fact, interest in the steeplechase got to such a fever pitch that the steeplechase committee began meeting at night, and even then its first three attempts to choose a course had to be called off because people had gotten out of bed specifically to follow them around the ship and try and find out where the race would be held. In the end, Phil ordered the virtuality kits to be broken out of deep storage so the the committee could walk around a model of the ship and pick the course that way. Breaking out the VR kits was a major undertaking; it hadn't been expected that they'd be needed until quite late in the settlement process, so they were buried underneath everything. At least one spacewalk had to be undertaken just to reach them. This seemed rather melodramatic to Panab, and to many others, and caused some debate about whether the whole steeplechase thing ahd been blown out of all proportion - but Phil was quite firm that it was necessary, and even encouraged the whole process. When he mentioned this to Drew, though, the big engineer laughed.

"Well, sure. He's adding to the theatre of it, the whole media fuss."

"Why?"

Drew punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Because it's taking people's minds off what we're heading into, dumbass! The more fuss there is over the Race, the less they're fussing over evil Martians with ray guns waiting to blow us out of the sky."

"There aren't any evil ray guns, do not be foolish."

Drew adopted a shocked pose. "Woah, man, did I hear that correctly? Was that a top-secret military secret that just fell from your big secret agent mouth?"

Panab hit him, and Drew drifted backwards, laughing. "Dude, you're one hopeless secret agent. Can't even keep a secret - and anyway, where are all your secret gadgets? No invisible spaceship? Does your watch have a laser beam in it? Is there an AI on your shoulder telling you secret stuff? Is that why you have that vacant look on your face the whole time? Oh, no, sorry, that's just your expression."

"Ha ha."

"And, dammit all, where all the hot chicks? If I'm hanging out with a secret agent dude, there should be good-looking ladies practically dripping off me! You're a failure, Khaledi, a failure. More secret squirrel than secret agent. It's all very disappointing. Let's hope you're a better running-mate."

"What? I'm not taking part."

Drew stared at him. "Of course you are, man! Everybody else is, you have to too."

Panab was about to protest, but hesitated. "Everyone? Even Phil?"

Drew nodded. "Yup."

Land of the Headless

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author:	Adam Roberts

Imagine turning over the paper in your Pub Philosophy exam, and seeing the following question:

1. A fundamentalist government may well use severe punishments such as beheading. However, future medical progress may make such punishments less terminal. Discuss.

'Land of the Headless' is Adam Robert's answer. It's also a nice novel following a rather foolish, impetuous man who has his head cut off and then has to deal with becoming part of an underclass in a rather stilted fundamentalist society, but who eventually finds love, escapes, and lives happily ever after. As ever with Mr Roberts, you kind of get the feeling that the plot is almost incidental; but what it lacks in drive, it makes up for in sheer wonder. The characters are typical Roberts creations - stupid, stiff-necked, misunderstood creatures whose paths through life is complicated by their own mistakes, they are all the more human for their so-obvious failings... and that delicious central premise, that beheading is no longer a final judgement but leaves behind a rather embarrassing human residue, is a nice satirical comment on the current rise of fundamentalism in our Age of Technology. I enjoyed it enormously.

All in all, Land of the Headless is not the B-movie gorefest it's title might suggest (sorry Tara), but what they call a 'high-concept' novel - presumably because the plot has been kicked out to leave more room to explore ideas. Another novel which I've been wading through recently also claimed to be 'challenging literary concepts', but Hal Duncan's Vellum is at the other end of the scale. Frankly, I wish I'd paid more attention to that phase about literary concepts when I'd read the blurb on the back, as it might have set some alarm bells ringing. Hal wants his story to transcend time (And maybe space, too); his protagonists are archetypes, replaying the same story in different worlds at different times. Done well - as a series of short stories, perhaps, in a Michael Moorcock style - this could have been an interesting concept. As it is, however, it makes for a choppy read. The scene/story changes happen so quickly it's tiring; flipping between ancient Sumer/twenty first century Bible Belt/the trenches of the Somme/deserted beach hut on the brink of the Apocalypse every paragraph gets dull quickly, and most of the backdrops felt like cliches. That's not to say there aren't some nice set-pieces; but they're not enough. What's worse, the plot doesn't make a great deal of sense - presumably it will be explained in the sequel, but really, I won't be bothering. It was hard enough slogging through the first volume.

NaNoWriMo revisited: Pan and Titan revisited

I've been thinking about NaNoWriMo again.

I was planning to focus on the story of the first colony on Titan, that I alluded to in Government Joe Must Die - the disastrous settlement which collapsed and resulted in the Howl which haunts the Saturn system in GJMD, and which gave rise to Government Joe itself. But I decided that there probably wasn't enough material there to let me reach the magic 50k word count. So I've been thinking about the other real character from my first NaNo novel: the Bantolith.

The Bantolith in GJMD doesn't talk. He manipulates people like automata, and anyone within the boundaries of his domain can never be sure if their actions are the result of free will or the Bantolith's machinations - so subtle are the AI's directives that it's impossible to tell the two apart. But why does it operate so obliquely? How did it come to be so silent, so unknown?

I'm thinking that the two stories - the birth of Government Joe and the creation of the Bantolith - are maybe not so far apart. Perhaps they were both created by similar events - failing colonies which demanded drastic action. And while Government Joe was created by a terrible act of treachery, the Bantolith's silence might have been some sort of self-sacrifice - a last-ditch attempt to save an ailing colony by assuming near-direct control of the people within it.

So what we have then is an interesting contrast. Two failing colonies, a few decades apart: one damned by the treachery of an out-and-out baddie, the other saved by an unselfish act of deliberate self-mutilation.

Air

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author:	Geoff Ryman

Geoff Ryman is an interesting author; his books are often both deeply sentimental and full of hard-science innovation at the same time. The first book of his I read was The Child Garden, and it pulled at my heartstrings so powerfully that I was both exhiliarated and slightly scared when I saw Air on the shelves. It certainly comes highly recommended though - it won the James Tiptree Jr (no, I don't know either), Arthur C Clarke and Sunburst awards, and was shortlisted for the Nebula. That's not bad.

I'm older now, and I'm rather better at seeing the emotional manipulation coming, but Ryman is still a very powerful author. The story of Air is set in a tiny village in the nation of Karzistan, an utterly poverty-stricken backwater that has basically missed out on the entire internet revolution, and now must prepare itself for the next big informational transformation, when information will free itself from wires and computers and become ubiquitous. Most of Chung Mae's fellow villagers assume this will be like a TV in their heads, where they can watch football and soap operas while they go about their daily lives. When they test the system, however, Chung Mae gets a terrifying view into what might actually be in store for all of them, and struggles to educate her fellow villagers, even as her own personal life starts to unravel...

If that sounds unprepossessing as a story line, then don't worry, there's plenty going on - but this isn't one of those future history books documenting the Great Events of the Future. This is about one woman, one village, living on the brink of change and trying to come to terms with it. It's a great and simple story, with charming characters who became deeply important to me as the tale progressed. Ryman seems to belong to a similar school of thought to authors like Adam Roberts and Charles Stross, who see technology as not necessarily good or evil, but a profoundly powerful agent of change in our attempts to live, to understand the world, and to work out how to be human.

Science fiction and Industrial Design. more hanging around at the intersection.

Following on from ogling the pretty pictures of sf architecture, here's an article on how the sequel to the famous anime movie Ghost in the Shell has actual Nissan concept cars in it. Clearly there's a lot of mutual admiration going on here, and as anime becomes more internationally popular maybe ID can tag along for the ride. What an interesting celebrity subculture that would be: I look forward to the day when Hello! magazine has their first animator/industrial designer special issue.

'Bob's loft-style apartment in central Detroit is a testament to the new too-busy-to-even-do-grunge aesthetic. Functional, neo-modernist strip lighting provides a brightly lit interior, and the floors have the interestingly crunchy texture of blue-foam shavings... everywhere the perfume of freshly-cut MDF floats in the air...

Meanwhile, is it me or does this concept car look very much like a stretched Mini?

NanoWriMo revisited: About the Bantolith

Back in November, when I was writing Government Joe must Die,
one of the parts which caused me most frustration was the little
episode on the Bantolith. I wanted the Bantolith to not speak, yet
still run his little domain with perfect ease, using nonverbal cues to
communicate his orders and wishes to the people on the station. The
descriptions I used left me deeply unsatisfied - his communications, by
opening doors, shining lifts, discouragingly cold blasts of air, seemed
very crude. But I couldn't quite put my finger on why, or how I could
do it better. Tonight I was suddenly struck with why this was such a
difficult problem. I wanted the Bantolith to manoeuvre people by
non-verbal methods, by misdirection and subliminal cues, by appealing
to them at a basically subconscious level. That's a difficult thing to
write about in a book, especially when you favour dialogue over
description. Essentially what you're writing is, almost by definition,
of the conscious rather than the subconscious. I wanted the Bantolith
to use the sort of tricks that that guy Derren Brown used on TV, the
sort of pseudo-magic which we don't even notice, where cues are fed to
us in the background, only to impel us at some later point, in what
appears to be a free-willed action. That's a tricky thing to write
about - how do you talk about the was the Bantolith operates, when the
cues happen a long way back from the actions, and they're things you
probably - no, not probably, absolutely definitely - did not notice in the first place? They are fundamentally disjointed. That's really gonna screw up your narrative.



I guess the only way to cope is by post-hoc explanation, but I really, really hate doing that.



I'm starting to understand, too, how much potential richness there
could be in that little caricature of a universe I dreamt up. Titan in
particular could easily have a gothic richness to it - ancient,
powerful, immensely wealthy, the fat spider loitering at the edges of
the web of Saturnine moons. There's a lot of potential there for
digging into some rich seams of history, as well as money and power.
And the cold, closed asceticism of the Triumvirates, rich in their own
way but always overshadowed by the golden disc of Titan. The
Triumvirates could be very interesting, socially. Socio-politically.

Fragment

The Garden of Martyrs could more accurately be called a cloister, rather than a garden - barely more than a wide, curved walkway, overlooked by the tourists' glassed-in route through the palace, it is one of the emperor's least favourite places. He gives the statues an ill-favoured glance as he strides through.
"You know there weren't even any real martyrs, don't you."
"Majesty." The Chancellor's response is minimal, hoping to cut off the emperor's usual rant before it can start. Above them, the wall of martyrs stands unheeding. Each figure is nine feet tall; their bronze chests are out-thrust, their chiselled features and business suits rendered in bold, planar slabs, in a style which in a previous era would have been more suited to Hollywood cartoons or Soviet propaganda. The arrows sticking out from their chests form a formidable fence, jutting up and out over the two mens' heads.

Accelerando

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author:	Charles Stross

It's not often that I know the exact date when a book will be published in paperback, but with Accelerando, I had a good excuse. I'd bought it already. And had it SNATCHED FROM ME at Geneva AIRPORT, after I'd spent an entertaining hour on a plane, chortling over how good the first three chapters were.

So when I finally got my hands on another copy, it had a lot to live up to. This is Charles Stross' third novel; Singularity Sky was a fantastic debut, with one of the most entertaining and novel descriptions of space warfare ever (as well as all sorts of other weirdness). Iron Sunrise, his second, was spoiled a little for me because it seemed to threaten to become a cheesy series. But this is Accelerando, and it's fantastic, just amazingly brilliant. It pushed pretty much all my buttons - it had bafflingly incomprehensible aliens, barely comprehensible technology, dialogue snappier than the West Wing on speed, and a sarcastic cat. What more could anyone want?

Stross' ambition only becomes clear as the story unfolds - nothing less than a family saga and history of humanity, a bastard lovechild of Catherine Cookson and Brian Aldiss. Part of that little group of exciting Scottish sf writers, whose ranks include Iain Banks and Ken McLeod, Stross' style is sharp and snappy, and I absolutely adore his descriptions of technology going far too fast for people to follow.

I do think his characters would benefit from a bit more depth, though - perhaps some of the inexplicability applied to the aliens and the AI might have been better applied to the people - and to be honest I found the ending something of an anti-climax; it's hard to chronicle such a vast span and still end on something more dramatic, without it becoming a cliffhanger. So I forgive him for ending with a lack of 'bang'. But there's plenty of 'gosh-wow' moments here, and I can heartily recommend it for anyone who likes to lose themselves in a fast-moving, fast-talking vision of a World Gone Mad.

Gradisil

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author:	Adam Roberts

First off, let's be clear - Adam Roberts writes high-concept sf, so most of you can go back to you daily lives now - sorry! In the past, he's written about a universe where it was possible to fly to the moon in a biplane, and a world where gravity operates at ninety degrees... Gradisil is a story of do-it-yourself homesteaders living in tin cans in Low Earth Orbit, struggling to remain free of the bickering nations of the Earth beneath them. His style is meditative, with sparse dialogue (no scriptwriters in these people's lives). His characters are deeply flawed, and very human. His scientific conceits are sometimes pretty far-out and sometimes fascinatingly practical, but I think there's a deeper level where the relationship between his characters and their surroundings rings true. And I love it.

What's sad is that Adam will always be a niche author, because he embodies all the qualities which people assume science fiction doesn't have - fully developed characters, human-centred bittersweet stories, a deliciously innovative literary style - while still building his stories around crazy scientific and technological ideas. The best comparison I can make is with Stanislaw Lem, who died a few weeks back (very sad) - some of you might have come across 'Solaris'. If you haven't... it's the sort of style you might get if Kafka and Solzhenitsyn ganged up on Isaac Asimov, stole his wallet and headed for Vegas. That's my best attempt.

What makes Adam stand apart for me, though, is his characters. They're not the emotionless, super-rational cardboard cutouts that often crop up in the genre. They are always deeply human: they're emotional and passionate, often giving to uttering non-sequiturs, or doing stupid things and not regretting them until much later. They're making their way as best they can, in a world where baffling, unfair, Kafka-esque things happen to them. And the worlds in which they live are both the same as ours, but different - physically, they might be completely different (flying to the moon in a biplane?), but on a human level, they're still populated by people making selfish, stupid, emotional, deeply familiar decisions.

I don't know how Adam approaches his work; I've never read any interviews, or seen anything about him. But one theme I see coming out of his books is the idea of our relationship with technology being difficult, almost abusive - technology mindlessly making things more complicated while we struggle to live our lives in a way we can still understand. It's not about consumerism, or corporate evil. It's not about any sort of conscious will at all. It's just about how we get ourselves into a mess, and then have to live with it. And whereas with most books things can be neatly squared away at the end, Adam's stories never seem to fit into our neat, shrink-wrapped preconceptions. That, for me, is his greatest skill and his great triumph.

I'm still only halfway through reading this. I know the ending will be sad, or at best bittersweet - that's Adam's style. But it'll be great: I am utterly, totally confident that he won't let me down. Two things I am sure of; I'll be ambushed by weirdness a few more times before the end of the book; and I will feel these characters for every moment of it. I can't wait