|
Categories
|
|
Top Ten
Science Fiction Novels of 2007 1. Brasyl by Ian McDonald
McDonald's outstanding SF novel channels the vitality of South America's largest
country into an edgy, post-cyberpunk free-for-all. McDonald sets up three
separate characters in different eras—a cynical contemporary reality-TV
producer, a near-future bisexual entrepreneur and a tormented 18th-century
Jesuit agent. He then slams them together with the revelation that their worlds
are strands of an immense quantum multiverse, and each of them is threatened by
the Order, a vast conspiracy devoted to maintaining the status quo until the end
of time. As McDonald weaves together the separate narrative threads, each
character must choose between isolation or cooperation, and also between
accepting things as they are or taking desperate action to make changes
possible. --Amazon.com review 2. The Terror by Dan Simmons
This beautifully written tale injects a note of supernatural horror into the 1840s Franklin expedition and its doomed search for the Northwest Passage. Sir John Franklin, the leader of the expedition and captain of the Erebus, is an aging fool. Francis Crozier, his second in command and captain of the Terror, is a competent sailor, but embittered after years of seeing lesser men with better connections given preferment over him. With their two ships quickly trapped in pack ice, their voyage is a disaster from start to finish. Some men perish from disease, others from the cold, still others from botulism traced to tinned food purchased from the lowest bidder. Madness, mutiny and cannibalism follow. And then there's the monstrous creature from the ice, the thing like a polar bear but many times larger, possessed of a dark and vicious intelligence.--Amazon.com review
Renowned for his compelling future noir
thrillers (Altered Carbon, etc.), Richard K. Morgan here raises tantalizing
questions about the nature of humanity. Thirteen tackles some difficult issues,
including race and identity. Future governments have used genetic manipulation
to create subhumans twisted to fit specialized tasks. Normal people are
intrigued as well as repulsed, but they instinctively dread variation thirteen,
an aggressive, ruthless throwback to a time before civilization. When a thirteen
escapes from exile on Mars and apparently goes on an insane killing spree, Carl
Marsalis, a soul-weary freelance thirteen hit man, is hired to help track him
down. Morgan goes beyond the SF cliché of the genetically enhanced superman to
examine how personality is shaped by nature and experience. Marsalis is more
empathetic than the normal people around him, but they can see him only as an
untrustworthy killer. At the same time, surveying corrupt, fractured normal
society, the novel questions whether the thirteens are just less successful at
hiding their motives. Without slowing down the headlong rush of the action, the
complex, looping plot suggests that all people may be less—or more—than they
seem. Richard Morgan Books 4. Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves
Joey Harker is the type of guy who gets lost
in his own house. But one day, Joey gets really lost. He walks straight out of
his world and into another dimension. Joey's walk between the worlds makes him
prey to two terrible forces—armies of magic and science who will do anything to
harness his power to travel between dimensions. When he sees the evil those
forces are capable of, Joey makes the only possible choice: to join an army of
his own, an army of versions of himself from different dimensions who all share
his amazing power and who are all determined to fight to save the worlds. Master
storyteller Neil Gaiman and Emmy Award-winning science-fiction writer Michael
Reaves team up to create a dazzling tale of magic, science, honor, and the
destiny of one very special boy—and all the others like him.
Neil Gaiman Novels 5. The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
Joe Haldeman has written a provocative novel of a man who stumbles upon the discovery of a lifetime-or many lifetimes. Hugo-winner Joe Haldeman's skillful writing makes this unusually thoughtful and picaresque tale shine. Matt Fuller, a likable underachiever stuck as a lab assistant at a near-future MIT, is startled when the calibrator he built begins disappearing and reappearing, jumping forward in time for progressively longer intervals. Curiosity and some unfortunate accidents send Matt through a series of vividly described, wryly imagined futures where he gradually becomes more adaptable and resourceful as experiences hone his character. The young woman he rescues from a techno-religious dictatorship gives him a chance at a mature relationship, while teaming up with an AI that intends to press on to the end of time forces him to decide what he wants from life. Rather than being a riff on H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, this novel is closer in tone to Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, another charming yarn about a young man who's forced out of a boring rut. Producing prose that feels this effortless must be hard work, but Haldeman (Camouflage) never breaks a sweat. Joe Haldeman Novels
In this Discworld adventure, reprieved confidence trickster Moist von Lipwig, who reorganized the Ankh-Morpork Post Office in 2004's Going Postal, turns his attention to the Royal Mint. It seems that the aristocratic families who run the mint are running it into the ground, and benevolent despot Lord Vetinari thinks Moist can do better. Despite his fondness for money, Moist doesn't want the job, but since he has recently become the guardian of the mint's majority shareholder (an elderly terrier) and snubbing Vetinari's offer would activate an Assassins Guild contract, he reluctantly accepts. Terry Pratchett Novels
Over a decade after the events in A Meeting at Corvallis (2006), Stirling's latest novel of a chaotic near-future U.S., crippled when the mysterious Change rendered most technology nonfunctional, combines vigorous military adventure with cleverly packaged political idealism. When assassins pursue a traveler into Oregon's Willamette Valley, the resulting skirmish propels the heirs of three influential local leaders on a risky continent-crossing mission to Nantucket. Stirling's narrative deftly balances sharply contrasting ideologies—the Mackenzies' proto-Celtic clan system in Oregon against Gen. Lawrence Thurston's strict and principled military democracy in Idaho, the zealotry of the Church Universal and Triumphant versus the pagan Powers venerated by the Mackenzies—though the most difficult cosmological questions are never addressed. Meanwhile, there are hints of otherworldly intervention and time travel on Nantucket, echoing the parallel continuity established in Island in the Sea of Time and its sequels. Despite these fuzzy underpinnings, the thought-provoking and engaging storytelling should please Stirling's many fans. S.M. Stirling Novels
Niven and Lerner offer a lively prequel to
Niven's 1970 classic, Ringworld. It's 2650, some 500 years after the
human colony ship Long Pass was captured by Citizens, those paranoid,
two-headed beings better known as Puppeteers from the Fleet of Worlds. The
Citizens of the Concordance have bred and nurtured successive generations of
human Colonists from the Long Pass's crew and embryo banks, while lying
about their origins, telling stories about an abandoned colony ship adrift in
space. When a team of Colonist explorers led by Citizen Nessus to study
intelligent life on an ice-covered world also uncovers evidence that the
Concordance has lied about the past, they're determined to find the truth.
Meanwhile, Concordance Citizens learn that the ruling Conservative policymakers
have mishandled secret contacts with Earth and endangered the Fleet. 9. Halting State by Charles Stross
In this techno-crime thriller, it is the year
2012, and China, India and the European System are struggling for world economic
domination in an infowar, and the U.S. faces bankruptcy over its failing
infrastructure. Sgt. Sue Smith of Edinburgh's finest, London insurance
accountant Elaine Barnaby and hapless secret-ridden programmer Jack Reed peel
back layer after layer of a scheme to siphon vast assets from Hayek Associates,
a firm whose tentacles spread into international economies. The theft is routed
through Avalon Four, a virtual reality world complete with supposedly
robbery-proof banks. As an electronic intelligence agency trains innocent gamers
to do its dirty work, Elaine sets Jack to catch the poacher. Hugo-winner Stross
(Glasshouse) creates a deeply immersive story, writing all three
perspectives in the authoritative second-person style of video game instructions
and gleefully spiking the intrigue with virtual Orcs, dragons and swordplay. The
effortless transformation of today's technological frustrations into tomorrow's
nightmare realities is all too real for comfort. 10. The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod
With an adroit combination of paranoid spy thriller tricks and
SF gadgetry, MacLeod (Learning the World) depicts a near future that may
or may not be our own, when 9/11 and the Iraq war were followed by war with
Iran, a flu pandemic and terrorist attacks, and the West teeters on the brink of
an all-out nuclear exchange. James Travis, a Scottish software engineer whose
hatred for the U.S. has driven him to spy for France, and his daughter, Roisin,
a young peace activist, have both witnessed horrendous acts of terrorism, most
recently the apparent nuclear bombing of an airbase in Scotland. Nothing is what
it seems, however. Government agents use the Internet to spread sophisticated
disinformation, but are still perfectly willing to fall back on torture when
necessary. Meanwhile, the Execution Channel, a rogue media outlet, broadcasts
actual footage of various murders and executions 24-7. --Amazon.com review Also of Interest More Thriller Than SciFi: But Of Spook Country by William Gibson
Spook Country is a stripped-down
thriller that reads like the best DeLillo (or the best Gibson), with the lives
of a half-dozen evocative characters connected by a tightly converging plot and
by the general senses of unease and wonder in our networked, post-9/11 time. Set
in the same high-tech present day as Pattern Recognition, Gibson's fine
ninth novel offers startling insights into our paranoid and often fragmented,
postmodern world. When a mysterious, not yet actual magazine, Node, hires
former indie rocker–turned–journalist Hollis Henry to do a story on a new art
form that exists only in virtual reality, Hollis finds herself investigating
something considerably more dangerous. Compelling characters and crisp action
sequences, plus the author's trademark metaphoric language, help make this one
of Gibson's best.
--amazon.com review New for 2008 The Big God Network by J.C. McGowan
Big God Network (at Amazon.com) (U.K.) (Canada) The Big God Network takes America’s culture wars into cyberspace in globalized science fiction with a sharp sense of humor. In the near future, the Christian right has split the country, resulting in the creation of Pacifica, New America (N’Am) and other new post-American nations. “N’Am” is a Christian theocracy that has banned the teaching of evolution in its classrooms and considers subversive thought to be “information terrorism.” Liberal Pacifica (formerly the West Coast) is overjoyed to be on its own, yet N’Am’s rapture-obsessed president seeks to rewrite post-American history and take back its heathen neighbor to the West. Meanwhile a wealthy UFO cult seeking ET contact has developed the Channel, which fuses radio waves with AI and quantum neurology. This hot tech is sought by bionic Yakuza, AI hit men, ruthless multinationals, and wired Evangelicals with virtual churches. If N’Am seizes the Channel, it could result in global domination by Fundamentalist extremists and the end of Pacifica’s freedom. It is up to the reluctant Franz Sampaio, host of the Transmigrations world-religions Net show, to safeguard the Channel and protect Pacifica, even as uncanny events indicate possible extraterrestrial visitors. The odds are against Franz, who is aided by a diverse crew of Japanese cyberpunks, a netsick Otaku, Pacifican witches, and Gaia worshippers. Set in
near-future California, Bali, Tokyo and cyberspace, The Big God Network
is a heady cocktail of near-future sci-fi and cultural satire. Science Fiction & Fantasy DVDs and Books (main page)
|
