re:mote voices: literature

Title: Headlong
Author: Simon Ings
Publisher: Voyager

Headlong is the fourth novel by British writer Simon Ings, and probably his most accessible to date. His first and third novels were the hard-cyber Hotwire and Hot Head - with a common violently high-tech world. The novel between those was The City Of The Iron Fish, a strange story set within a bubble of reality.

For Headlong, Simon returns to the world of Hotwire/head, but less violently. Common is the fact that the main character has been a hot head - Christopher Yale was hotwired to serious sensory enhancing mechanics. Also common is that when Chris returns from the moon he must give up the soft/hardware residing in his head under order of The Hague. It is feared by the appropriate authorities in the seat of European government that post-humans could easily corrupt computer networks causing the creation of detrimental AIs.

On return to earth Chris and Joanne, who have been happily living on the moon are forcibly stripped of everything that made them post-human. This causes them both great discomfort as stripping senses from anyone would. They both deal with the withdrawal in a different fashion - but this causes problems between them and they separate. The main focus of the story is Chris and we are treated to his attempts to survive. Having established this, Chris' discomfort is increased with the news that his estranged wife has been found dead with a large hole in her head.

While Ings' previous work has been fast paced, it has sometimes led to confusion. By contrast, while this becomes something of a detective story, it remains easily paced. More a study in coping as Yale tries to deal with his condition and the death of his wife. For this we flash back to their meeting, their separation - fleshing out the character and his departed half. This also allows us to see other present characters in past light. Also it charts hopes and dreams and how they relate to our relationship with technology. Technology being a key element in what makes Ings writing work - here it is more subliminal than before, where it took over your mind.

However if like me you actually rather enjoyed that colossal headfuck of Hothead/wire then don't despair. This is an enjoyable novel - full of tech and exotic drugs. Well charactered and well written. But the last part still contains enough of a punch to supply that mad rush of disbelief. A more mature piece certainly, but no less enjoyable for all that.

RVWR: PTR
March 1999

Title: Nanotech
Editor: Jack Dann/Gardner Dozois
Publisher:

Nanotech is a collection of short stories by some of science-fiction's best deliverers of nano-stories. Collected here as demonstration of how well the ideas involved can be used, and nano is one of SF's great source ideas. Contained in this volume are nine stories and one poem - those by Bear, Egan, Goonan, Kress, McDonald, De Fillipo, and Marusek being the ones to watch.

Greg Bear - Blood Music - University friends meet after a number of years and it becomes clear that one of them has gone further than they ever thought. One has been working on nanotech - making a lot of progress, he has scared the company he is working for. They want him to stop and start to destroy his work - desperate to continue his work he injects himself with his experimental machines. This story being the discussion between the two regarding the ramifications of what has been done. This is an enjoyable story which has since been converted into a novel due to the reception it gained. This is the first short story I have read by Bear, but having just picked up the novel of this story it will be his third I have read.

With a couple of the others here, this is only the second time I have read any of their work, the first time being in another collection (Mammoth Collection of Best SF, which I have as yet still to finish reviewing). Nancy Kress is the first of these with her story Margin Of Error which deals with the competition between two sisters to join the space race. One sister is cooperative and unaware of the other's ruthlessness - until she if forced out of the program and her sister takes all the credit for her work. But the ambitious sister in the end is not as smart or vigilant as she thinks - leading to her downfall at her sister's hand. This is a short but poignant story and nicely done.

Axoimatic was the title story from Australian author Greg Egan's first collection of short stories and has been chosen here to represent his work here. Egan is an author I have a lot of respect for and is possibly the man responsible for really making me stop and take notice of the short story as an incredibly valuable resource. The story here is on one hand that of a man who has lost his wife in a boched bank robbery and the emotions he goes through. On the other we have the technology capable of changing the way he thinks and the way he feels - is this really the answer to all his problems?

The next story is provided by an author who is new to me Michael F. Flynn and his Remembered Kisses is similar in plot to Axiomatic. Again a man has lost his wife, but this time to a car accident. While the story is capable and shows the lengths to which a grief stricken nano-engineer may go, it ultimately fails to thrill me. The core idea of what the machines do is smart and it definitely contains a defining line with the scene where the scientist explains that nano-tech just isn't possible and is in turn asked if this is the case how does DNA do it?

Ian McDonald's Recording Angel is similar to Bear's Blood in that I am pretty sure there is a novelisation of this story. Here we have a journalist investigating a strange phenomena that has arrived from space. The Chaga creeps out from its initial landing point consuming everything in its path - dissolving and reasembling according to its own rules. A nice story - full of ideas and paradoxes - engagingly different.

While I have seen Kathleen Ann Goonan's first novel on the shelves of my local bookshop, I avoided it, thanks to the very Gibson quote that is supposed to make me buy it. In some ways this is cynicism towards marketing techniques and in others it is the experience of having read work that has had the same type of quote and failed to impress. But having read this story, I am perfectly prepared to reconsider - I enjoyed Sunflowers a lot and would rate it as a discovery and possibly the best story of the collection. Again we have a man who is searching for his lost love in nanotech. But here we have a different type of depth and texturing - nano-terrorist attacks, nano-therapy, nano-dealers - integration and corruption. On top of that this is a story with concrete characters.

Having left Earth to leave behind its overly restrictive laws, the local agents have to go in search of a scientist when he stops communicating in Stephen Baxter's The Logic Pool. They find him dead amongst his work - the story then revolves around the reactions of the three investigators to what they find. Competently written and enjoyable enough - though it does not really stand out for me.

Paul Di Filippo seems to continue the secondary theme of this collection with what must be the fourth story about a man losing his wife and the effect nano has on the outcome. This time she has not died, merely left him, and he is trying to find out the truth, and in doing so moves deeper into alien territory. As sections of Africa join together, united by the use of nano - transforming the environment into a rude awakening. Blinded by human thoughts for too long - potential and promise are alien thoughts that provide a long needed wake up call. Subtle and smart writing provide an enjoyable read.

Like Kress, the first time I read a story by David Marusek was in the Mammoth Collection. With We Were Out Of Our Minds With Joy we are offered the longest story of the book. For the most part this is a story of a relationship and its ups and downs in a modern world. But that world is one that is full of technology and the way it affects that relationship - longevity, daily computer interface, the production of child allocation. As with much of the best SF this is primarily about people and the tech catches you on the rebound.

RVWR: PTR
March 1999