Books – Century Rain

Continuing with my reading of my stock of unread Alastair Reynolds books. Century Rain is, I think, his first published novel not in the Revelation Space universe. It’s an interesting mix of a bit of alternate history, detective novel and nanocaust. He seems to be coming up against the singularity problem: how to write interesting fiction that’s accessible to human 1.0 readers about human 2.0+ characters. He falls back on the discovered alien ruins for a major plot macguffin as well. A similar “network” of FTL travel systems that various others have used (Cherryh’s Gates from Morgain, Zahns “Night Train to Rigel” being the two that come straight to my mind but there are plenty of others). As befits a stellar physicist his system has more detail about how it operates (not how it works, but how it’s used) that most of the others.

A story which cracks along at an intense pace for all of its 500 pages combining some compelling human drama along with whiz-bang pyrotechnics and interesting science speculations on the links between the very large and very small scales of physics. The only thing I didn’t like about it was the last sentence which seemed unnecessary and rather against character for that protagonist. I’d have preferred that line to be left as unwritten, though the consideration that led up to it could have been left in. I think that kind of unfinished thought would have also given more weight to the possibility of a “frozen in time” outcome as well. That may have just been me, though.

Current Mood: convalescent

Current Music: Alien Resurrection Soundtrack

Originally published at blog.a-cubed.info

Books – Neonomicon (inc. The Courtyard)

Alan Moore’s contribution to the Cthulhu Mythos. A suitable horrific addition to Lovecraft’s legacy. Like many recent versions this uses the conceit that Lovecraft was writing about something real but presenting it as fiction. There’s always been that element in some of the Cthulhu Mythos but stuff written lately and set in the modern day has often used this. It was part of a Supernatural episode, for example, with one of the characters commenting that he wouldn’t read horror since his “day job” was bad enough.

As one would expect of Alan Moore, both the short, orignally one-off, The Courtyard and the longer sequel Neonomicon are well-told and have wonderful artwork to accompany them. He pulls no punches in the graphic displays and is faithful to the concepts of the Mythos while adding another layer of terror and psychedelia to them. Well worth seeking out if you’re an Alan Moore fan or a Mythos fan, but not for the faint of heart.

Current Mood: convalescent

Current Music: Alioen Resurrection Soundtrack

The Perils of Winter

Medical TMI

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