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frasersimons
More Simon and Baz is never a bad thing, I’ve decided. The fact that it felt like it dragged a bit when things got climatic mostly just underlined to me that this fiction is absolutely at its best, to me, when those two are interacting and figuring one another out. It’s absolutely maddening in the best possible way. It seems like it’s still very open for a sequel and there’s a “2” on the spine, so there is more coming, I’m sure. Which is good, because I demand more.
The structure and just the overall quality of the writing was much improved from the first book, imo. Each of the three books were pretty interesting and it ended on the most interesting one. The second one dragged and featured another damsel in distress along with a plot that was fair less compelling than first and last. But it’s 160 pages so the “drag” didn’t last long at all, anyhow. Some really cool lore was divulged, Stormbringer revealed more of its... character? Definitely will continue to the next book.
Ps: It was still hampered by some pretty overt sexism but I suspect that’s going to be the case in all lit from this time period. If that kind of a thing bothers you a lot, take note. Probably not for you and probably not going to get better considering literally every woman who’s appeared is there in service solely to further characterize a dude; whether it be hero or villain.
Ps: It was still hampered by some pretty overt sexism but I suspect that’s going to be the case in all lit from this time period. If that kind of a thing bothers you a lot, take note. Probably not for you and probably not going to get better considering literally every woman who’s appeared is there in service solely to further characterize a dude; whether it be hero or villain.
In the not so distant future, Trouble calls herself a "crackers", and a damn good one (hackers that go into systems and crack ICE, the usual conceptual idea of "the grid" in cyberpunk). But when a law is passed making it so the government can convict and enforce harsh penalties on such activities, she bails -- On everyone. Her girlfriend Cerise comes home to find her and all her possessions gone, having told her that if this law passed she was out.
“You had to draw lines, and that choice was in itself dangerous; all boundaries had a double edge, were like swords that could always be turned against you in the end.
But you still had to choose.”
3 years later, Cerise is the head of security at a megacorp and Trouble is a syscop for a local cooperative. But when someone starts stirring up shit using Trouble's name and some of her old programs, her life is upended and she strikes out to clear her name. Something that will mean going back to her old life and her old friends.
Right off the bat I loved this book as it is unabashedly a critique on societal problems that still exist. Specifically safe spaces and how they are predominantly policed by unoppressed groups of people. Trouble, Cerise, and all her friends are queer, on the net and in real life and I loved the relationships there and the overt reference to the fact that they all considered each other a family and were the misfits of misfits. Crackers themselves are outlaws but they still discriminate against queer people in the same space.
“Alice in Wonderland, Alice down the rabbit hole, Alice out in Cyberspace, flung along the lines of data, flying across fields of light, the night cities that live only behind her eyes.”
So keeping that in mind, the story is essentially about a queer female being erased, especially online where someone literally takes her name. Whether who does so knew she was not dead or not, as there were rumors around that Trouble was, it brings into question when is it ok to do this; which is never. But the community divides when it becomes apparent Trouble is back and fractures at the exact point of contention: Why isn't it ok that someone uses her name if she's out of the life? Of course this is something that hits close to home, especially with those in the family. It was amazing to see explored in a cyberpunk story. SO. GOOD.
What ensues is a really original and interesting dystopian cyberpunk fiction with a main focus on LGBT+ people in the book, in fact I can only think of maybe 1-2 characters in it's entirety that were straight and these distinctions were made really apparent. It really, really made the story far more interesting and a vehicle for larger questions at play online spaces and technology as a means of control on a populace.
“Maybe that was why it was almost always the underclasses, the women, the people of color, the gay people, the ones who were already stigmatized as being vulnerable, availble, trapped by the body, who took the risk of the wire.”
Less subtle differences within a community are brought up as well, for instance Trouble and Cerise have brain worms that allow one to have waaay more control over their avatars. A group of people in the community attempt to erase those members as they "have a leg up" on everyone else, even though it's a choice to get it done or not. There's "dollie ports" that everyone has to interface with the digital world too. All of it centered around communities and how they function from a more focused viewpoint of just Trouble and her friends, to the larger issues plaguing the online communities that we STILL wrestle with. And this was published in '94.
“There were still too many people who were afraid of a technology that eluded them, still more who would never have access and resented and feared it in equal measures. Mobilize those groups just once, find a demagogue-and there always were demagogues-and the nets would find themselves destroyed.”
There's not much action and quite a bit of net walking, which is actually done very well and the most interestingly done for me, because I hate net walking stuff usually -- for my taste.
“Power rides her fingers, she moves from datashell to datashell, walking the nets like the ghost of a shadow, her trail vanishing behind her as she goes. She carries power in the dark behind her eyes.”
But the kind of fiction that results from focusing on community dynamics and the work going into making Trouble and Cerise's relationship rich, really resulted in great fiction. It's really apparent when minorities are represented well and the characters aren't cookie-cutter.
“This was what she hated most about the on-line world, the shadows as much as the bright lights of the legal nets: too many men assumed that the nets were exclusively their province, and were startled and angry to find out that it wasn't...rather than ever admit fear, they walked with raised hackles, looking for a fight.”
Combined with the prose, the characters drove this story to a satisfying ending for me but I will say it suffers from some pacing issues. The relationship between them while fleshed out more and more, never also sort of plateaued for me during this pacing pit fall. It was clearly to develop both characters more but it falls flat ultimately because neither actually manage to articulate their inner thoughts. Instead, the banter is what you'd find in a character who's got classic masculinity issues and it's mostly handled through their actions. Like I said, looking back I loved the book but these two small problems bring down the rating for me to 4/5. It was cruising for a perfect score for the first half, though. Would recommend it, the best book I've read from the "older" cyberpunk stuff so far. Especially focusing on issues that remain relevant today and some of the most believable characters in the fiction.
"You know damn well that's not how the wire works, and if you weren't afraid of it, you'd have one yourself. It's the same as the implants, just like the dollie-slots, but it gives me an edge, yeah, because I'm not afraid of it, of what I can do with it.”
“You had to draw lines, and that choice was in itself dangerous; all boundaries had a double edge, were like swords that could always be turned against you in the end.
But you still had to choose.”
3 years later, Cerise is the head of security at a megacorp and Trouble is a syscop for a local cooperative. But when someone starts stirring up shit using Trouble's name and some of her old programs, her life is upended and she strikes out to clear her name. Something that will mean going back to her old life and her old friends.
Right off the bat I loved this book as it is unabashedly a critique on societal problems that still exist. Specifically safe spaces and how they are predominantly policed by unoppressed groups of people. Trouble, Cerise, and all her friends are queer, on the net and in real life and I loved the relationships there and the overt reference to the fact that they all considered each other a family and were the misfits of misfits. Crackers themselves are outlaws but they still discriminate against queer people in the same space.
“Alice in Wonderland, Alice down the rabbit hole, Alice out in Cyberspace, flung along the lines of data, flying across fields of light, the night cities that live only behind her eyes.”
So keeping that in mind, the story is essentially about a queer female being erased, especially online where someone literally takes her name. Whether who does so knew she was not dead or not, as there were rumors around that Trouble was, it brings into question when is it ok to do this; which is never. But the community divides when it becomes apparent Trouble is back and fractures at the exact point of contention: Why isn't it ok that someone uses her name if she's out of the life? Of course this is something that hits close to home, especially with those in the family. It was amazing to see explored in a cyberpunk story. SO. GOOD.
What ensues is a really original and interesting dystopian cyberpunk fiction with a main focus on LGBT+ people in the book, in fact I can only think of maybe 1-2 characters in it's entirety that were straight and these distinctions were made really apparent. It really, really made the story far more interesting and a vehicle for larger questions at play online spaces and technology as a means of control on a populace.
“Maybe that was why it was almost always the underclasses, the women, the people of color, the gay people, the ones who were already stigmatized as being vulnerable, availble, trapped by the body, who took the risk of the wire.”
Less subtle differences within a community are brought up as well, for instance Trouble and Cerise have brain worms that allow one to have waaay more control over their avatars. A group of people in the community attempt to erase those members as they "have a leg up" on everyone else, even though it's a choice to get it done or not. There's "dollie ports" that everyone has to interface with the digital world too. All of it centered around communities and how they function from a more focused viewpoint of just Trouble and her friends, to the larger issues plaguing the online communities that we STILL wrestle with. And this was published in '94.
“There were still too many people who were afraid of a technology that eluded them, still more who would never have access and resented and feared it in equal measures. Mobilize those groups just once, find a demagogue-and there always were demagogues-and the nets would find themselves destroyed.”
There's not much action and quite a bit of net walking, which is actually done very well and the most interestingly done for me, because I hate net walking stuff usually -- for my taste.
“Power rides her fingers, she moves from datashell to datashell, walking the nets like the ghost of a shadow, her trail vanishing behind her as she goes. She carries power in the dark behind her eyes.”
But the kind of fiction that results from focusing on community dynamics and the work going into making Trouble and Cerise's relationship rich, really resulted in great fiction. It's really apparent when minorities are represented well and the characters aren't cookie-cutter.
“This was what she hated most about the on-line world, the shadows as much as the bright lights of the legal nets: too many men assumed that the nets were exclusively their province, and were startled and angry to find out that it wasn't...rather than ever admit fear, they walked with raised hackles, looking for a fight.”
Combined with the prose, the characters drove this story to a satisfying ending for me but I will say it suffers from some pacing issues. The relationship between them while fleshed out more and more, never also sort of plateaued for me during this pacing pit fall. It was clearly to develop both characters more but it falls flat ultimately because neither actually manage to articulate their inner thoughts. Instead, the banter is what you'd find in a character who's got classic masculinity issues and it's mostly handled through their actions. Like I said, looking back I loved the book but these two small problems bring down the rating for me to 4/5. It was cruising for a perfect score for the first half, though. Would recommend it, the best book I've read from the "older" cyberpunk stuff so far. Especially focusing on issues that remain relevant today and some of the most believable characters in the fiction.
"You know damn well that's not how the wire works, and if you weren't afraid of it, you'd have one yourself. It's the same as the implants, just like the dollie-slots, but it gives me an edge, yeah, because I'm not afraid of it, of what I can do with it.”
River of Gods was ahead of its time and, to be honest, completely slipped under my radar when reading articles and academia in, and related to, the genre.
Ian McDonald's well realized fiction taking place in India during 2047 is staggering for a few reasons. For one, it subverts a lot of the genre expectations from cyberpunk. Especially since there's so much nihilism in some places of the book it could be first wave, there is also a lot of hope synonymous with post works, mostly.
Throughout this epic story, there are 10 main characters, which at first seemed a little daunting. As the story progresses though, I didn't have any problems following along and actually really enjoyed such huge questions being posed to me through multiple perspectives. Counter-balanced with not so big questions, like Parvati's struggles that seem small but are her whole world being given as much agency as her husband, the Krishna cop who hunts rouge aeais (A.I's) and becomes more artificial in his human interactions on a daily basis, alienating the love of his life.
I loved that these things were brought into focus even as the story grew to a crescendo (referenced multiple times within the book having a nice meta level I enjoyed) with the start of the book taking long inhalations of fiction for each character that become short, small breaths until the fiction finally shudders and stops altogether. With each chapter growing shorter and shorter until the last part of the book is just one, with each separation between the characters also getting shorter and shorter. It was really effective for me and in a lot of ways I enjoyed it as much as the semi-same writing techniques used in Cloud Atlas, one of my most favorite books of all time, actually.
Small events in each person's daily life slowly unravel into a much grander plot that puts these individuals lives in a completely different context by the end. What starts as the slice of life in India and Thailand and Australia, and other places somewhat slowly but without deliberation weaves these people in and out of their own peripheral. Some never meeting at all but all causing ripples that will alter the other individuals in the story.
There is Parvati country bumpkin uprooted to the city but feeling unfilled ultimately, because her husband Mr. Nandha is also consumed but not for her, but for his work. His duty as a Krishna cop is kind of like a paladin, hunting A.I's that threaten to evolve past humanity's understanding. Vishram Ray is pulled from what he loves in life, delivering comedy routines, to run one of the most powerful energy companies in India when his father retires unusually. Shaheen Badoor Khan is an adviser of India's prime minister, but holds a secret wherein he falls in love with Tal.
Tal is probably my most favorite character in the whole book, as they are a new gender, simply labelled as pronouns of Yt and wonderfully realized. I was worried that perhaps this was just to appeal to people in a throw off way but instead I think Tal receives the most care and detail, and contributes so much to the story. Tal is a "nute" and is rewired in every conceivable way to be sexless, aside from the sub dermal instrumentation used to modify ytself. Tal has to experience emotion as anyone else but has the option to control the reaction to these emotions. And exploring what it means to be human through Tal is one of the best things the book as to offer.
Shiv and Yogendra are the sort of like bad-boy, yakuza, type characters who end up doing most of the action sequences. Their storyline was alright, I can see why there needed to be action but ultimately it left me a little meh, I guess?
Najia Askarzadah is a Swedish-Afghan who is trying to catch a break at reporting and sort of entices a lot of the drama within India unintentionally, her story coincides with Tal's eventually and it was ultimately good simply because of the contextualization that occurs between the two once they interact.
Lisa Durnau and Thomas Lull are scientists that were once on the same life path that careen radically apart until the events in the book take place to careen them together haphazardly, I liked their stories but ultimately somewhat felt they were there to lend credence to things with technical terms, most of the time. I think it's needed but looking back it would have been nice to have had more screen time on Lisa as Lull gets a lot of it and doesn't use it to that much great effect until the end. Which, is a good pay off, don't get me wrong. But throughout I was like...just give me more chapters with Ajmer!
Ajmer Rao is my second favorite character in this book after Tal and is endearing and sweet and easy to love. I don't want to give too much away but her story is that she is seeking her parents and has this sort of weird peripheral prophet like gift, wherein she just "knows" things sometimes.
In the end the story ended in a great place, which was a roller coaster ride for me. I was like oh oh oh, this is how I would end it and actually got a little annoyed as it progressed that this wasn't going to be the ending. And felt that it wasn't doing that to pay fanfare to nihilistic readers in the genre, but then managed to exceed my expectations in the deviation anyways. Which, is pretty incredible I think. The author truly knows their craft, in my opinion.
This hits all the check marks for me, the human condition, larger questions at play, inclusive and diverse content. Stupendous world building, great prose, and a well loved and realized foreign culture in the future. There is literally like 15 pages of terms he uses all pretty much colloquial to India and it reads so well! Spirituality and religion takes aim against technology, how it shapes and molds us even as we engineer it. How technology could surpass us and yet represent humanity and personify it better then we often do. There's a new gender, treated well (from my lens, hopefully I am correct). lots of cool tech, and cyberpunk doing what it does best with really good extrapolating. For a 2006 especially, this is a staggering achievement.
There is a lot predicted in this text with the relationship between US and India, for example. It's a big book and daunting in some ways, even pretty dense in some area but it becomes a lot easier to read and is worthwhile as you do so. Anyways~
I really enjoyed it and am giving it 5/5
Ian McDonald's well realized fiction taking place in India during 2047 is staggering for a few reasons. For one, it subverts a lot of the genre expectations from cyberpunk. Especially since there's so much nihilism in some places of the book it could be first wave, there is also a lot of hope synonymous with post works, mostly.
Throughout this epic story, there are 10 main characters, which at first seemed a little daunting. As the story progresses though, I didn't have any problems following along and actually really enjoyed such huge questions being posed to me through multiple perspectives. Counter-balanced with not so big questions, like Parvati's struggles that seem small but are her whole world being given as much agency as her husband, the Krishna cop who hunts rouge aeais (A.I's) and becomes more artificial in his human interactions on a daily basis, alienating the love of his life.
I loved that these things were brought into focus even as the story grew to a crescendo (referenced multiple times within the book having a nice meta level I enjoyed) with the start of the book taking long inhalations of fiction for each character that become short, small breaths until the fiction finally shudders and stops altogether. With each chapter growing shorter and shorter until the last part of the book is just one, with each separation between the characters also getting shorter and shorter. It was really effective for me and in a lot of ways I enjoyed it as much as the semi-same writing techniques used in Cloud Atlas, one of my most favorite books of all time, actually.
Small events in each person's daily life slowly unravel into a much grander plot that puts these individuals lives in a completely different context by the end. What starts as the slice of life in India and Thailand and Australia, and other places somewhat slowly but without deliberation weaves these people in and out of their own peripheral. Some never meeting at all but all causing ripples that will alter the other individuals in the story.
There is Parvati country bumpkin uprooted to the city but feeling unfilled ultimately, because her husband Mr. Nandha is also consumed but not for her, but for his work. His duty as a Krishna cop is kind of like a paladin, hunting A.I's that threaten to evolve past humanity's understanding. Vishram Ray is pulled from what he loves in life, delivering comedy routines, to run one of the most powerful energy companies in India when his father retires unusually. Shaheen Badoor Khan is an adviser of India's prime minister, but holds a secret wherein he falls in love with Tal.
Tal is probably my most favorite character in the whole book, as they are a new gender, simply labelled as pronouns of Yt and wonderfully realized. I was worried that perhaps this was just to appeal to people in a throw off way but instead I think Tal receives the most care and detail, and contributes so much to the story. Tal is a "nute" and is rewired in every conceivable way to be sexless, aside from the sub dermal instrumentation used to modify ytself. Tal has to experience emotion as anyone else but has the option to control the reaction to these emotions. And exploring what it means to be human through Tal is one of the best things the book as to offer.
Shiv and Yogendra are the sort of like bad-boy, yakuza, type characters who end up doing most of the action sequences. Their storyline was alright, I can see why there needed to be action but ultimately it left me a little meh, I guess?
Najia Askarzadah is a Swedish-Afghan who is trying to catch a break at reporting and sort of entices a lot of the drama within India unintentionally, her story coincides with Tal's eventually and it was ultimately good simply because of the contextualization that occurs between the two once they interact.
Lisa Durnau and Thomas Lull are scientists that were once on the same life path that careen radically apart until the events in the book take place to careen them together haphazardly, I liked their stories but ultimately somewhat felt they were there to lend credence to things with technical terms, most of the time. I think it's needed but looking back it would have been nice to have had more screen time on Lisa as Lull gets a lot of it and doesn't use it to that much great effect until the end. Which, is a good pay off, don't get me wrong. But throughout I was like...just give me more chapters with Ajmer!
Ajmer Rao is my second favorite character in this book after Tal and is endearing and sweet and easy to love. I don't want to give too much away but her story is that she is seeking her parents and has this sort of weird peripheral prophet like gift, wherein she just "knows" things sometimes.
In the end the story ended in a great place, which was a roller coaster ride for me. I was like oh oh oh, this is how I would end it and actually got a little annoyed as it progressed that this wasn't going to be the ending. And felt that it wasn't doing that to pay fanfare to nihilistic readers in the genre, but then managed to exceed my expectations in the deviation anyways. Which, is pretty incredible I think. The author truly knows their craft, in my opinion.
This hits all the check marks for me, the human condition, larger questions at play, inclusive and diverse content. Stupendous world building, great prose, and a well loved and realized foreign culture in the future. There is literally like 15 pages of terms he uses all pretty much colloquial to India and it reads so well! Spirituality and religion takes aim against technology, how it shapes and molds us even as we engineer it. How technology could surpass us and yet represent humanity and personify it better then we often do. There's a new gender, treated well (from my lens, hopefully I am correct). lots of cool tech, and cyberpunk doing what it does best with really good extrapolating. For a 2006 especially, this is a staggering achievement.
There is a lot predicted in this text with the relationship between US and India, for example. It's a big book and daunting in some ways, even pretty dense in some area but it becomes a lot easier to read and is worthwhile as you do so. Anyways~
I really enjoyed it and am giving it 5/5
