Last week, Atlantis lifted off for the final space shuttle mission ever. The space shuttle program is older than I am, and to be honest, it's overdue for retirement. The Challenger and Columbia tragedies underscored how cantankerous and dangerous this method of low-Earth orbital delivery can be. The numerous delays in the final flights of Discovery and Atlantis emphasized the fragility of the aging shuttle fleet. So we should not be mourning the loss of the space shuttle program, for it served its purpose and had its day: all good things and whatnot. Rather, we should be mourning the lack of a ready replacement. We should be ashamed that the last time someone walked on the moon was in 1972, almost thirty years ago. Since then, humanity has limited itself to skimming the surface of the Earth's atmosphere.

Troika is a compelling, perhaps even chilling novella set in the near future. The decline of the various national space programs has continued until only the new "Second Soviet" state is capable of mounting a crewed expedition to a Big Dumb Object (TVTropes) that appeared in the solar system in 1995. The Russians dub it the Matryoshka, owing to its nested structure of shells resembling the nested dolls of the same name. During its first two "apparitions" when it is close enough for robotic probes to reach it, the Matroyshka yields enough data to send astronomers and physicists scrambling for answers. Yet it remains tantalizingly inscrutable and … alien.

So far this doesn't sound like anything special. But this is Alastair Reynolds. I've only read two of his novels, one so long ago I barely remember it, and the other one was a great mystery set to the tune of a posthuman future. The Matroyshka is more than just another Big Dumb Object, and Troika, like the Matroyshka itself, comprises several nested levels of nuance that make it one of the best stories I've read this year.

It begins with the story's split into two time frames. First we have the escape of Dimitri Ivanov from an asylum outside Zvezdniy Gorodok (Star City). Dimitri was one of the three cosmonauts aboard the expedition to the Matroyshka, and after their return to Earth, all three were quarantined and held at the asylum. Now that he has escaped, he seeks out a discredited astronomer named Nesha Petrova, purely in order to give her an artifact he smuggled away from the Matroyska: proof that Nesha's theories regarding the object's origin and purpose were completely correct, despite the fact that the Second Soviet suppressed them. Half-mad (and he admits he went insane following his visit to the Matroyshka, claiming his insanity is what saved him) and aware that his escape from the asylum is futile, Dimitri tells Nesha (and us) about what really happened on the expedition.

Dimitri is the last member of the crew left alive. The government quarantined them at the asylum because of radiation posioning. Although their exposure was real enough—and lethal in the case of Ivanov's two comrades—the government had other reasons to want them locked away. Their visit to the Matroyshka altered Dimitri, Yakov, and Galenka on a fundamental level in a way that scared the government. It didn't mutate them into hideous alien monsters or give them superhuman powers, but it affected their identities and individuality in a way that the perfect communist state of the Second Soviet Union could not accept.

Even as he unspools a story about an encounter with something beyond human comprehension, Reynolds provides commentary on the flawed concept of a utopian state, especially such a state as embodied by communism. There are some pointed conversations between Dimitri and Galenka regarding the expectations of their superiors, as well as Dimitri's observations that: "I had been a cosmonaut for much longer and I had seen how our superiors punished failings. The best you could hope for was incarceration. The worst was returning to your office to find a loaded revolver and a bottle of vodka." You get the idea that this is in fact the antithesis of the bright and shining beacon of inspiration and hope that most stories, and most histories, make spaceflight out to be. It's dirty, political, and even a bit dreary.

Dimitri is a textbook unreliable narrator, self-confessed to have been insane at one point, if not still insane, so we can't necessarily take his story at face value. But he is convinced that the Second Soviet will fall within his and Nesha's lifetimes, that the Matroyshka is a sign their nation is "on the wrong track" and that humanity must return to the stars. And of course, a nation that prides itself as having achieved the pinnacle of human governance can't very well entertain the notion that it is merely a step along the way to that pinnacle—that it is, in fact, a wrong turn. So they bury Dimitri and bury his speculations, and Nesha's theories, about the Matroyshka's origin, purpose, and meaning.

There's also a deep connection to music, particularly Russian music. This novella's title refers to the piece of the same name by Prokofiev, itself referring to a three-person Russian folk dance. (If you aren't familiar with it, take a listen. I bet you have heard it or variations used elsewhere.) I don't think it's a coincidence that the expedition to the Matroyshka comprises three people. As much as I love Russian composers, Prokofiev included (Tchaikovsky might be my favourite composer of all time), I'm not familiar enough with the history and the culture to be comfortable speculating about the meaning behind Reynolds' choice here. If I had to take a shot in the dark, though, I'd guess that the piece's upbeat tone is supposed to be ironic in the face of the Second Soviet's oppressive actions and the poor state of spaceflight in general. "Troika" is triumphant and hopeful, symbolic of everything that is to come if Dimitri is, indeed, correct in his beliefs.

Then, at the end of Troika, Reynolds hit me with the TWIST. I didn't see it coming. Maybe I should have done; maybe you, if you read this, will recognize the foreshadowing that eluded me and smile knowingly as Reynolds springs the TWIST upon you. I was not so lucky, and the TWIST devastated me. It was clever, consistent, and utterly mind-blowing. Some TWISTs fail so hard they demolish all the hard work of the author (not to mention the investment of the reader). Not so here. No, with this revelation, the entirety of Troika and its themes crystallized, and the novella truly became something special. It leads into an ending that is so sad—and yet so perfect. Troika moved me profoundly, especially at a time like this, when our commitment to spaceflight and space exploration is wavering. Troika is a warning. It is also an amazing story.

Some might argue that the future of spaceflight is better entrusted to robots, who are more suited to the vagaries of vacuum. And that argument has merit. Yet just as the shuttle program has no clear replacement, the elderly Hubble telescope's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is on the chopping block. This is a project into which billions of dollars have already been sunk, money that will have been spent for nothing if the telescope program is cancelled. But I'm more worried about what will happen when the Hubble goes dark with no new-and-improved replacement. I belong to a generation that has never seen a live television broadcast of someone walking on the Moon. Will the next generation be one that never sees a new image taken by a telescope in space? Will we gradually turn away from space, turn away from the majesty and near-infinite wonders that the wider universe makes available? In the twentieth century, we reached out so far. I would hate for it to have been all for nothing.

I didn't want to give this book five stars, but Ian McDonald hacked my brain. I had heard enough about The Dervish House—my first novel by McDonald, incidentally—to be fairly confident I would like it. Yet it is not the sort of novel that inspires love at first sight; rather, it tantalizes, flirts, and seduces its way into your heart. It accomplishes this through McDonald's style, the way he describes the city of Instanbul, invites us into its streets and its politics and the eponymous apartments shared by the main characters, and oh-so-casually exposes those characters' hearts, hopes, and dreams. And as a science-fiction novel, The Dervish House is simultaneously subtle and ostentatious. The trappings that make it science fiction are all laid bare and obvious for the reader to see, but just as essential are McDonald's invocations of Istanbul's rich and diverse history, religion, and politics.

It's true that novels with multiple, convergent storylines sometimes have to work harder to earn my love. Yet I'm a little puzzled by the way others have interpreted McDonald's use of this device: one person remarked that "it may occasionally feel as if you’re reading six novellas that just happen to be set in the same city" while a far more critical reviewer says: "The different characters' path only crossed at the very end in a unconvincingly co-incidental way." (He also disparages how the technology depicted in the novel is "only a few years away", which makes perfect sense for a novel set in 2027—only 16 years from now.) This was not my experience at all; on the contrary, I felt like the various storylines interacted and influenced each other to an admirable degree. I loved seeing Ayşe's friend Selma Özgün reappear as a member of the think tank to which Georgios is invited. I loved that Can's investigation of the tram suicide bomber, along with Necdet's subsequent behaviour, helped Georgios formulate what he saw as the most likely security threat, far-fetched though it may sound. I loved that Leyla, Aso, and Yeşar were hunting for half of a miniature Koran throughout Istanbul even as we, the readers, knew it was lying in Ayşe's antiques shop. I didn't love all of the characters equally—in particular, I found it very difficult to sympathize with Necdet after finding out why he had to come to Istanbul and live with his brother. Yet I couldn't imagine any other way of telling this story.

McDonald uses each character to explore a facet of Istanbul and what makes it such a unique place. Georgios provides a political and historical context, and as an old Greek man who has borne his share of discrimination by the authorities, he represents Istanbul's conflicted relationship with the diverse group of people who call it home. Necdet is McDonald's window into Istanbul's complicated relationship with Islam and the modern-day attempts to administer community-based justice. Adnan and his wife, Ayşe (who I'll confess was probably my favourite) are both dreamers and dealers, and they represent the modern merchants of Turkey: Adnan is the man with the connections, the power broker who buys and sells from both the East and the West, even as he plots to make it big; Ayşe, on the other hand, has her eyes turned towards the past, and she has her own big score to pursue. They are the most class-conscious inhabitants of the dervish house, for Adnan is aware that Ayşe "married down" to be with him, and part of his drive to succeed comes from a determination to achieve upward mobility through profit if not pedigree. Finally, Leyla and Aso give us a glimpse into Instanbul's role in the micro- and nano-revolutions. I'm not so sure how Can fits in, except that his role as the intrepid "Boy Detective" is essential to resolving Necdet's story and tying together the terrorists with Georgios' involvement in the security think tank.

So there you have it. If McDonald had tried to let one character or even a small ensemble cast carry the entire burden of Istanbul, then The Dervish House would have been a much poorer novel indeed. It's the multiplicity of voices, not to mention their variety, that makes this story a convincing microcosm of the city, lending credence to the idea that Istanbul itself is a microcosm of the world at large. Istanbul is synonymous with the idea of a crossroads city, but instead of merely telling us this, McDonald shows us in a first-class way, distilling the city and its history into a fascinating story. This is why Ayşe became my favourite character, for I was particularly intrigued by her search for a Mellified Man. Along the way, we're exposed not so much to a history of Istanbul as we are to an oral mythology surrounding the Mellified Man and certain tarikats of Islam. The question is never whether Ayşe will succeed in her search but what significance the search has on her own, personal understanding of Istanbul. She begins as the outsider, the sceptic who initially refuses to buy into the hunt for a legendary artifact—inevitably though, she dips her toes in the pond and the legend of the Mellified Man ensares her just as it has so many poor souls. I suppose I empathized with her, because this is much the same process I experienced while reading The Dervish House. It's an enchanting, entrancing novel, and I didn't enjoy it; I helped it take me hostage and use me as a bargaining chip. I went full Stockholm and held a gun to my own head while Ian McDonald negotiated with my parents for a ransom.

Fortunately, Ayşe's obsession proves, like mine, to be temporary but profound. It ends badly for her, at least at first, but her experience changes the way she thinks about antiques and about Istanbul. At first, Ayşe clearly loves the antiques she sells, but we get the sense that she is not truly as connected to them as she thinks. She used to be merely a dealer in antiques; she acquired items through her contacts and from other merchants, but the search for the Mellified Man is different. It is intense, and for some of her sources even personal. So Ayşe emerges with a better understanding of what the antiques she sells mean to some people; she adds to her aesthetic appreciation an appreciation of their emotional value.

The Dervish House is a very romantic novel, really, by which I mean Romantic. Just consider Georgios and his chance to see once again a lover from his youth, Ariana, who inspired him to become politically active—a path that would eventually saddle him with the guilt of betrayal and cause him to lose his tenure as an economics professor. While Georgios is debating whether to contact Ariana during her time in Istanbul, he is also participating in a security-oriented think tank led by his archnemesis. Georgios, an old man, is suddenly finding himself in a confrontation with the most volatile elements of his past. Or consider Adnan and his three friends. Together they are the "Ultralords" of the four classical elements, and they will pull off a scheme that will make them rich. Adnan might be a trader in stocks and commodities, but he is definitely a romantic: he views money and its exchange as a living, breathing organism, and he attributes his own success to the fact that the money "loves" him.

Moreover, McDonald has managed to unify technology (which we tend to associate with science, and thus rationalism) and romanticism here. Take Can's BitBots, a swarm of tiny robots that can assemble themselves into coherent shapes (Monkey, Bird, Rat, Snake) that Can can control remotely: Can wields his BitBots with all the impulsiveness, curiosity, and courage one would expect of a nine-year-old boy. Similarly, the nanotechnology that pervades McDonald's vision of 2027 is the ultimate technology of the romantic, for it allows unprecedented abilities: the enhancement of memory, of the senses, of the ability to experience and feel. And as McDonald demonstrates through Necdet, nanotechnology can even threaten what we believe, what we think, and who we are. This sinister theme lurks beneath the surface of the story.

Nanotechnology is the most obvious science-fiction device that McDonald uses in The Dervish House. He presents it without any fanfare; by 2027 it is just another part of life in Istanbul. Everyone has ceptep phones capable of displaying information directly on the retina, and it is common to sniff vials of nanomachines to enhance temporarily one's memory or concentration. McDonald alludes to the hypothetical apocalyptic endgame of nanotechnology, the so-called "grey goo" through out uncontrollable self-replication. But this is a novel about identity and personal experience, and so McDonald focuses on how nanotechnology affects individuals. With Leyla, Aso, and Yeşar, we see that the ability to store information within the body's cells would be potentially revolutionary: as Leyla puts it in her pitch, we could have perfect recall of what we see, of conversations we have, of every moment of our lives. Yet McDonald juxtaposes this against a terrorist group's attempts to use nanotechnology as a vehicle for ideological coercion. He taps into a very fundamental question: if who we are is partly a product of our experiences, and if we gain the ability to control or alter our memories of those experiences, what becomes of the person we think of as "us"? Whether it's grey goo or a much more subtle effect, nanotechnology has the potential to end humanity as we know it:

What we are engaged in is a massive, unregulated and improvised experiment in reprogramming ourselves. The true end of nanotech is not the transformation of the world, it's the transformation of humanity. We can redefine what it means to be human.

Of course, we have been redefining what it means to be human for as long as we have called ourselves human. However, up until now, most of those redefinitions have been social, ethical, legal. We have reprogrammed humanity through social engineering. Yet just as our increasing familiarity with our genome and genetics opens the door to eugenics, viable nanotechnology would offer a new form of re-engineering, one that is technological and therefore much easier to direct and exploit. A lot of posthuman science fiction uses nanotechnology as a method for humans to transcend the limitations of their present form; in many ways, The Dervish House shows the beginning of our long road toward that posthuman vision of the future.

Although this is what I am taking away from The Dervish House, I don't want to create the impression that McDonald beats us over the head with Big Ideas on nanotechnology. McDonald wields science fiction in the best possible way, as a setting. Nanotechnology just happens to be a part of his Istanbul of 2027 (a part he chose to put there, because that's the "fiction" part of science fiction). It's the entirety of this futuristic Istanbul, and all the characters it enables McDonald to create, that brings The Dervish House to life. Unlike Troika, where there was a discrete moment when I realized I loved it, The Dervish House is more elusive. This is a book whose complexity blooms slowly, perhaps even shyly. It's something that one discovers. I didn't want to give this book five stars; I thought four would suffice. Yet four days after finishing the book, I'm still thinking about it, still turning it over in my head, and with each revolution I feel more confident that this is one of the best books I have read all year.

N.B.: As with my review of A Clash of Kings, I will avoid spoilers for this book but not for previous books.

We had a good thing going back in the beginning of A Game of Thrones. Robert Baratheon was King of Westeros, and while he wasn't a great guy, at least the kingdom was stable. Then he died and it all went to hell. Now we have more kings than castles. Joffrey and Stannis both lay claim to the Iron Throne, and Robb Stark has managed to get himself declared the King in the North and anger both of them in the process—not that Robb has much of the north any more, because Balon Greyjoy, ruler of the Iron Islands, has invaded that while Robb is away fighting Lannisters. Oh, and across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys Targaryen continues to dream about returning to retake Westeros in a blaze of dragon-assisted glory.

So the situation is a mess, an ugly mess, and it only gets worse. And, having lured you into this review with my friendly assurances that I won't spoil anything about this book, I now betray you. (Please imagine me laughing maniacally and twirling my non-existent moustache as you read the next sentence.)

A lot of characters you probably like die in this book.

Of course, everyone who has read A Game of Thrones knows there are no "safe" characters in these books. Martin will kill off anyone, but the body count does rise considerably in A Storm of Swords. A lot of reviews I've read express disappointment in this, especially when the reviewer considers some of those who die the "protagonists" of the series. There is one comment on a review (which does contain spoilers for this book) that captures this attitude quite nicely, and at the risk of skirting spoilers, I will quote from it:

Maybe that's life. Maybe it's "real life" pure and simple and Martin should be lauded as a genius for injecting that grim reality into his fantasy series: life sometimes sucks and on your way to glory, you just die. But that's not what I personally want to get out of something in which I invest countless hours of reading. I want the payoff. I want to see all the struggles and triumphs of the characters mean something. The Starks were the heroes in this world - they were a family and I wanted to see that family come back together again.

I want that too. It's a reasonable want to have, because regardless of the Starks' status as protagonists, they embody attributes of goodness that make us want to see them succeed. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen, and not just because Martin is dedicated to a grim portrayal of the medieval reality. It's not going to happen because that would not make sense given the political situation in Westeros. And it goes all the way back to A Game of Thrones and the death of King Robert.

Robert's death broke the kingdom, and we cannot put it back together again so everything will be just as it was. None of the claimants for the Iron Throne are going to pick up where Robert left off: Joffrey is a mean-spirited boy controlled by the Lannisters; Stannis is rigid and joyless; and Daenerys is inexperienced. Regardless of whichever faction eventually emerges victorious, the new Westeros will be very different from the Westeros as it was under Robert. And in none of these versions of Westeros do I see much place for a reunited Stark family—certainly not after Robb seceded from the Iron Throne. Perhaps if the series ended with Robb successfully cementing his place as King in the North and leaving the southrons to fight amongst themselves for the Iron Throne—but that once again assumes the conceit that the Starks are the protagonists and that theirs is the central story of this series. I'm not prepared to do that. As much as I like the Starks, viewing them as protagonists severely restricts the scope of this series, at least in my opinion.

I think it's fine to be disappointed with A Song of Ice and Fire for failing to meet that expectation. But there's also a bit of caveat emptor going on here: what did you expect, really? Martin goes to great lengths to point out that his world is not like a fairy tale. We see this in the brutal awakening Sansa receives in A Game of Thrones, and again in A Clash of Kings, and again in this book. She's a little slow on the uptake, but she is finally beginning to grasp that she is a chess piece and life is not like a song, that few knights are truly brave and noble and honourable, and that she cannot trust anyone, not even those who claim kinship with her. Martin has never promised us, explicitly or implicitly, that the Starks were going to get a family "happily-ever-after." He has always been upfront about the "grim reality" of Westeros. So while I understand and empathize with those who want something different, I won't criticize Martin for failing to deliver something he never so much as hinted at giving us. As I concluded in my review of A Game of Thrones,

… a lot of people build up an idea about this book in their minds, and when it fails to conform to that idea, they become disillusioned and kick it to the curb.

Martin's grim approach to his fantasy actually makes finding meaning in "the struggles and the triumphs of the characters" possible. A Song of Ice and Fire has a cast of thousands of characters who are all at odds with one another. With those dynamics, telling a traditional fantasy story with the conventional tropes of heroism would be rather hopeless. And so, in order to make the struggles of his characters meaningful, Martin needs more than a single, symbolic death or a crucial moment of self-sacrifice; he needs to inflict upon each character unique and harrowing hardships. Although these trials often share similar themes, their particulars are always different: e.g., Arya and Sansa both receive a cascading series of reality checks in this book, but each receives them in a different way.

Some of the most interesting developments in A Storm of Swords come not from the Starks but from the Lannisters. There is a new sheriff in King's Landing: Tywin Lannister is now the Hand, and he manages to alienate not one, not two, but all three of his children! He treats Tyrion with nothing but loathing and disgust. He undermines Cersei's position as Queen Regent and Joffrey's adviser, plotting instead to remarry her to anyone he needs as an ally. And he and Jaime come to sharp words after Jaime decides to assert himself. All three Lannister siblings suddenly discover that they are not quite as powerful, as clever, as well-positioned as they thought they were. I liked watching Tyrion come to terms with his treatment at Tywin's hands; I loved watching Jaime. Martin adds depth to the Kingslayer, thanks in part to an intriguing chemistry of honour and duty between him and Brienne of Tarth. While that does not make up for what Jaime has previously done, it lets me sympathize with him. In many ways, he has been as much a pawn his entire life as Sansa has been. A Storm of Swords is a rude awakening for him as well—in more ways than others—and there is a glimmer of hope that he will turn down the path of redemption. It is hard to tell, though, with the chaos in King's Landing at the close of this book. (More moustache-twirling here, muwhahahaha.)

At this point, I am having a difficult time deciding who I want to see win the throne. I am still trying to determine whether Littlefinger is just an opportunist or secretly a Chessmaster manipulating all the events from behind the scenes. If you really want to know, though … I wouldn't mind seeing Daenerys on the Iron Throne.

After a disappointing story in A Clash of Kings, Daenerys returns in A Storm of Swords and kicks ass. In A Game of Thrones we watched Daenerys grow from victim and young, scared girl to the leader of a tribe of Dothraki and mother of dragons. Now she is becoming a queen in her own right, not to mention a pretty savvy general. More importantly, Daenerys is the perfect mix of outsider and familiar face that the kingdom of Westeros needs right now. She is a Targaryen, a member of the family that ruled for hundreds of years until Robert's rebellion. So her claim is pretty solid. Unlike her father Aerys, however, she seems to lack the madness that made a continued Targaryen rule problematic. So far her approach to justice has been a lot easier to stomach than Stannis' troubling religious fervour or Joffrey's … well, everything. So I am officially declaring for Team Daenerys, at least for now—I reserve the right to jump ship at the first sign that Jon Snow decides to be King of Awesomeness and name Sam Tarly his Hand.

Speaking of Jon and Sam, A Storm of Swords finally hearkens back to the threat of the Others. I appreciate Martin returning to this plot after putting it on the backburner for A Clash of Kings. The tension created by his portrayal of a diminished and nearly-beaten Night's Watch reminds me of the sense of foreboding that accompanies Robert's dying days in A Game of Thrones: it is going to get worse before it gets better. After all, winter is coming.

It's true enough that Martin is asking a lot of us. With each book, the lines between protagonist and antagonist blur even more, and it seems less and less clear who we should want to see victorious. That demands a certain level of faith from the reader, faith that Martin will present a resolution that, if not the happily-ever-after we are so trained to expect, at least crystallizes the series into a final, definitive state. I can see why this type of demand would give some readers pause. The fact that Martin makes it while continuing to deliver stories replete with intrigue and plots, promises and betrayal, and love and war means that I am willing to wait and see where he takes us next.

My Reviews of A Song of Ice and Fire:
← A Clash of Kings | A Feast for Crows →

Let me begin with a huge disclaimer: I have not read any other books in the Vorkosigan Saga. And it's all Lois McMaster Bujold's fault.

Well, that's not strictly true. It's the fault of her fans for getting Cryoburn nominated for a Hugo Award, which is why I am reading it now. But ultimately it's Bujold's fault for garnering such a huge fanbase. So there. I had intended to start with the first book and work my way through the series at a sedate pace, but circumstances have forced me to do otherwise. I'm sure that my opinion of Cyroburn will be different once I'm more familiar with the world of Miles Vorkosigan (and yes, I know Miles isn't all the books, or even the first book).

Is it Cryoburn or CryoBurn? The copyright page uses the former; Bujold calls it by the latter form. The cover page is no help—for all we know, it's CRYOBURN or cryoburn! I'm going to go ahead and call it Cyroburn, because I'm not a big fan of CamelCase unless it's very very justified. However, I'm not assertive enough to go ahead and change the title in the Goodreads database.

As far as introductions to a series go, Cyroburn worked very well. The single most obvious fact about this book is that Bujold knows how to write. She knows how to remind old fans and education new ones by dropping enough facts about the distant Barrayaran Empire without sitting us down for a three-chapter lecture on the subject. She can refer to previous characters and to past events without leaving a neophyte like me swimming in the seas of confusion. Most importantly, Cyroburn is a fun story, makes me laugh, and makes me love Miles Vorkosigan. From our first meeting, when Bujold shows that he is fallible and capable of being incapacitated, to his last page, where nothing in his life will ever be the same again, Miles kept me riveted. He's a great character, and it's obvious that Bujold loves to write him. He also happens to be one of my favourite types of character. In fact, it's kind of scary how close Miles comes to my idealized "somewhat crazy covert operative in space" template. If I had a nickel for every time an author stole ideas from my before I was even born….

Miles can use a weapon when need be, but there's actually very little of that kind of action in Cryoburn. It's part action-thriller but mostly mystery, and Miles is a sneaky and devious man. Dispatched to Kibou-daini and a conference on cryonics, Miles discovers Emperor Gregor was right to be concerned: one of the cryocorps, as they're called on Kibou, that plans to expand to one of the imperial planets, Komarr, is up to no good. His first clue comes when they offer him a bribe, which Miles uses a way to get his foot in the door and do some surreptitious investigation. I particularly love this passage:

Aida facilitated the conversation onto a series of pleasant, neutral topics, all the while inching nearer, her coat and undercoat loosened to strategically reveal the swell of her breasts beneath her low-cut top. Miles suspected pheromone perfumes, but the message hardly needed the boost; this young lady could be part of his bribe if he wished. Alas, Aida had shown no sign of knowing enough dirt to cultivate, and anyway he didn't need to look every kind of corruptible. There was such a thing as artistic restraint.

I love that Miles mediates the persona he projects so carefully! And, of course, Bujold communicates this is a way that made me snicker aloud. There's just so much joy here, because Bujold knows Miles is wacky and we know he's wacky—even Miles knows he's wacky. Yet the threats he faces are very real, with very real consequences, and that helps add an edge that keeps Cryoburn from sliding into the territory of absurdism. This is a humourous story in many ways, but it also has some serious moments (especially at the end).

The flaws in Cyroburn are gaping, so it is to Bujold's credit that she distracts us enough not to care about them. By which I mean, the story and its pacing are just so damn compelling that I could see what was missing, but I didn't care. I just wanted more Miles and more madness. I was having fun, and that was all that mattered. But now the fun is over, and it's time to pick up the pieces and look at what works—and what doesn't.

The cryocorps are the main antagonists in this book. They are suppressing information that could hurt their industry, despite its potential to impact a massive number of people (most of them frozen). Yet as we learn more about the conspiracy, it's clear it's actually being perpetrated by several top executives at a single cyrocorp—and we only ever get to meet one. Everything else happens offstage, behind a wall of lawyers and exposition. Confrontations go through hired goons. So while Miles is a compelling protagonist, he has no matching number on the other team. In fact, having Miles on our side makes it rather unfair for the bad guys. They don't know what hits them. There is never a single moment of genuine terror, never a moment where I wonder if Miles is going to fail. There are some great setbacks, mix-ups, and threats—but they never really seem serious enough. Miles is fallible and not all-powerful, but the bad guys more than make up for his flaws with their own ineptitude.

As I approached the end of Cryoburn, I was starting to worry that Bujold would leave me with a sickeningly-happy ending. No one important had died—no one had even been maimed; I would have settled for maimed! Two minor characters, who had been making eyes at each other in the most obvious way, were well on their way to hooking up. As Miles departed Kibou-daini, I worried that Bujold would ruin my happiness by giving it to him. It's not that I dislike happy endings, but I didn't feel like Miles' time on Kibou had changed him that much. He came, he saw, he triumphed—what did it mean to him?

And then in the last few pages, Bujold twisted it around and shattered Miles' life in a very big way. Fans might have been expecting it, I don't know, and newcomers and fans alike might see it in the subtext. I didn't see it coming, but I had been paying enough attention to understand why it was so significant. And with that, Bujold accomplished two things: firstly, she made me want a new Miles Vorkosigan book, a sequel, like right now; secondly, she cemented the events on Kibou as an unforgettable part of the Vorkosigan canon. Any doubts I had about the relevance of these adventures were erased: Cyroburn is a watershed moment for Miles.

I'm reading this book so I can cast an informed vote for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. I ordinarily read books with a critical eye, but in this case, behind all my other questions lurks one more: why does this book deserve the Hugo? Would if I had an answer, but it doesn't. Or at least, not compared to the stiff competition provided by the likes of The Dervish House. Cyroburn confirmed what I had heard from friends, which is that Bujold is a good writer and her Vorkosigan saga is an excellent science-fiction series. I have no doubt on any of these counts, and I will definitely be reading more books in this series. This was a great introductory novel for me, but it definitely left room for my enjoyment of the series to rise even higher.

I really like the feed icon. It's simple, clean, and easy to recognize. I love it so much that when Mozilla decided to remove it from the location bar in Firefox 4, I installed an extension just to get it back. It's awesome, and what it represents is awesome. The idea that anyone with an Internet connection (which is not as many people as we're wont to think) can report on the news is definitely a paradigm shift in how we disseminate information. Just as I'm sceptical that ebooks are going to somehow "kill" the printed book, I'm not joining those who predict blogging will result in journalists and newspapers and "traditional media" going extinct. However, it's also shortsighted to think that nothing is going to change, that blogging and bloggers are just a fad.

In Feed, it's the 2040 American Presidental Election, and Georgia and Shaun Mason are sibling bloggers. Together with their techie, Buffy, they are selected to follow Senator Paul Ryman on the campaign trail. Except that someone keeps trying to kill them. Oh, and there are zombies.

Zombie stories, especially zombie movies, start at something of a disadvantage, I feel. So many of them are essentially the same: take a small group of people, drop them into an urban situation with a horde of walking dead, and watch them fight the zombies and each other as they struggle to survive and deal with the moral implications of shooting those who get bitten. Zombies aren't like spaceships: most stories that feature spaceships don't spend a lot of time remarking that there are spaceships; the spaceships are just there. Since when did that happen with a zombie story? It occasionally happens in urban fantasy series when zombies are part of a larger taxonomy of mythological creatures, but otherwise a "zombie story" is almost always about zombies and about survival. So to succeed, one needs that dose of originality: the zombies have to be different (TVTropes alert), or the plot can't be just about staying alive.

Mira Grant tries to do both here, and she succeeds marvellously at the former but not so much at the latter. I love Grant's zombies, and the reason behind the zombie apocalypse. In a spin on the "you get bitten, you become a zombie" story, Grant adds another stake: everyone is infected with a dormant form of the virus that causes reanimation. So any death results in a fresh zombie, while being bitten activates the virus even if one doesn't die from the wound. Since the transformation isn't instantaneous, either, one might go into "amplification" and become a zombie before other people realize it. As a result, characters in the novel are constantly testing themselves and each other for infection. Society has become paranoid and obsessed with security, both security from zombie attacks and security from those who might be infected and not even know it. Oh, and the virus? Mutated strain of two viruses designed to cure cancer and the common cold, respectively. Yeah.

Feed is, despite what some might claim, still about zombies. Nevertheless, Grant manages to tear herself away from the "OMG zombies, run like hell" plot and attempt to bake an entire political thriller, complete with a conspiracy, hired snipers, and tragedy for our protagonists. Zombies play a major role in the story, from the constant paranoia that one might be in amplification to the precautions one must take every night before going to bed, and they form the backdrop for the political atmosphere in the United States of 2040. And Grant credits the zombie Rising as the primary reason bloggers are now the pre-eminent source of news, with "traditional media" taking a distant second: apparently, bloggers were the first to take reports of zombie attacks seriously and start disseminating the scarily-accurate information provided by classic Romero films. (Finally, a zombie story where people have seen zombie movies!) (TVTropes alert) Georgia, Shaun, and Buffy each belong to a different caste of blogger: Georgia is a Newsie, so she reports the facts with as little editorializing as possible; Shaun is an Irwin, so he pokes zombies with a stick for the thrills and danger of it all; Buffy is a Fictional, so she writes stories and poems and whatnot inspired by the news. Grant has certainly imagined an interesting direction for the blogger–journalism détente to take, assuming the zombies Rise on schedule.

As much as I enjoy Grant's imagining of a blogger-dominated future, I can't help but question the accuracy of her divergence from the present. Sure, bloggers haven't quite trounced "traditional media". But they are not as ignored as Grant seems to be asserting. I'm not sure if any of the presidential candidates took bloggers along with them on the trail in 2008, but I think that's beside the point. The whole point of blogging is that it's decentralized and, very often, unauthorized. I don't begrudge Grant's idea of bloggers following a candidate at his or her behest, but it certainly doesn't seem as revolutionary as she tries to portray it.

Georgia and Shaun are knowledgeable about zombies, but their political credentials seem spotty at best. Georgia is an advocate for Mason's Law, which essentially bans having animals as housepets if they are over 40 pounds in weight (as this is how massive an animal needs to be to turn into a zombie). Aside from that and a few other zombie-related matters of policy, Grant glosses over the political parts of the politics. Instead we hear a lot about how Senator Ryman seems like a nice, honest man, while his two major opponents in the Republican primary are a militant right-wing crazy and a would-be porn star, respectively. In fact, aside from Georgia and Shaun (and maybe Buffy and Emily Ryman), the characterization in Feed is bizarre. Governor Tate feels like a caricature. And why make the only female candidate mentioned into a woman who uses her plastic-surgery-enhanced body to solicit votes by wearing revealing clothing? (And why call her, of all things, Wagman?) If only Grant had as much time on the research and the depth of her politics and political candidates as she did on her virology and zombie lore, then I could call Feed something more than a zombie novel.

(NB: Speaking of research, I feel obligated to point out a factual error that I, being the credulous person that I am, took at face value. At one point Georgia claims that Ireland doesn't have (and has never had) an extradition treaty with the United States. This is not the case. Kudos to Oliver and his review for alerting me to this.)

Too much of Feed consists of exposition or repetitive scenes that are supposed to emphasize how much society has changed. I'm willing to give the exposition a more generous pass than I might do for another book; I realize that, as bloggers, Georgia and Shaun are expected to be somewhat more verbose than one's average narrator. Also, the exposition is heavy but still good, and like I mentioned before, Grant's zombie world really is interesting. I just wish it didn't get so repetitive: Georgia spends too many scenes analyzing the structural security of each building she visits. And the blood tests—oh, the blood tests. They have to test themselves almost every single time they open a door, and every time a military representative gets involved, suddenly it's a big deal that Georgia wears sunglasses and has an "active form" of the zombie virus in her eyes. I love the veracity that Grant adds to the story by describing the various testing procedures necessary in the post-Rising world. Yet the frequency of those descriptions robs Feed of some of the fire and urgency it acquires from Grant's fluid writing and Georgia's excellent voice.

Feed starts slow for me—after a nice action sequence as an opening, we get stranded in suburbia for several chapters, meet the parents, learn more about Georgia and Shaun, etc. I enjoyed the experience, but for the longest time I didn't feel that the story was going anywhere, not even after Georgia and Shaun started following Ryman's campaign. Feed only really kicks into high gear in the last act, when Georgia and Shaun become direct targets of the antagonists, whose identities are still unknown at that time. Suddenly, what was a mystery becomes a thriller and a race against time, and Grant starts killing off some important characters and threatening to kill still more. And although I'd quibble about the resolution itself, the emotional significance of the ending is unquestionable and masterful.

I kind of feel like Feed got bitten by a zombie book and has become a reanimated corpse of itself. This is, alas, one of those cases where the book undermines its own good qualities. There's plenty to enjoy about this book: Georgia and Shaun are fun characters, and as one might expect from fun, zombie-killing characters, there's lots of great dialogue married to tense moments of action—and decision. Yet getting to those moments often feels like a lot of work, and not the fun "this book is making me think about issues" type of work. Feed is worth reading if only for where it finally takes us with its ending—at least, I liked the ending enough that I'm most likely going to read the sequel—but it hasn't really changed my stance on zombies, bloggers, or zombie bloggers.

My Reviews of the Newsflesh series:
Deadline → (forthcoming)

Last time, on Ben's reviews:

… there's a very palpable, somewhat ironic fear here, because in a way these three are more frightened of the Blitz than the stalwart contemporaries (or "contemps" as the historians call them).… So for a moment, there's a justifiable and interesting suspense. Unfortunately, Willis attempts to sustain that suspense entirely too long…

… all the characters in this book are ninnies … They complain about the retrieval team not showing up and they lie to each other and keep secrets to avoid "worrying" each other unnecessarily.

Slippage is a safety mechanism, then, of the universe, and time travellers shouldn't be able to alter the past. Willis leaves us wondering if this interpretation is true, or if there is something else happening, and I admit I want to know the answer.

… time travel creates a headache for those of us mired in the swamps of linear time, and inevitably, time travel stories demonstrate why it's a good thing we don't have to comprehend paradoxes in real life.

And now, the conclusion to Ben's reviews of Blackout/All Clear:

Time travel to the past inevitably raises the spectre of altering the past, and specifically whether one can change the outcome of events that have "already" happened. This generally depends on the rules the author sets up. Connie Willis doesn't actually explain the rules to us, only hints at them, and determining what "type" of universe our Oxford historians inhabit becomes central to the plot of All Clear. When Mr. Dunworthy joins Polly and Eileen in the past, he has bad news: he fears he has doomed them all, because he altered events on his first trip to the Blitz, when he was only seventeen years old, and now the continuum is trying to repair itself. By killing all the time travellers, and everyone with whom they have had contact. Fortunately for all of our historians, it turns out Mr. Dunworthy is mistaken: they live in a type 1.1 universe instead of type 1.2, and the Novikov self-consistency principle is in effect. Everything that happens has already happened, and they are in a nice and comfortable causality loop.

Now that I have completely spoiled the ending of All Clear (you did take that spoiler warning seriously, didn't you?), it is time to process my feelings. Having finished the book, I have to admit that all the fans of this story are correct: having already read Blackout, reading All Clear is worthwhile. It's a significant investment, but at least I have some closure now. Unfortunately, I didn't feel that way while reading All Clear, particularly during the first half. I remember checking my progress and lamenting, "I still have 300 more pages?" There was some heavy skimming happening at some points too. Blackout/All Clear are definitely a package deal, but it's a package with a long, dull slog in the middle.

Picking up literally where Blackout concludes, All Clear continues its tradition of long and repetitive discussions of how the historians might have altered events. This builds to an egregious climax on December 29, 1940, when Polly, Eileen, and Mike attempt to find John Bartholomew, a historian from their past who has joined the St. Paul's Cathedral Fire Watch for this one night. They want him to take a message back to Oxford for them, but the continuum gets in their way and leads them on a merry chase across London, constantly interfering when they are so close to finding Bartholomew. It gradually becomes clear that these near-misses and coincidences are a result of the continuum's self-consistency and not just exuberance on the part of Willis, and I suppose that is fair enough. Yet there is a vast gulf between justifiable and enjoyable, and All Clear fails to bridge it.

When considered as a whole, Blackout/All Clear is a very clever and well-planned time travel story. It's possible to tell a time travel story in a linear fashion, but I kind of feel like this misses the point. Willis, on the other hand, clearly enjoys and exults in the intricacy time travel affords the structure of her narrative. Characters whose identities were initially unclear—and, indeed, seemingly irrelevant to our main story—turned out to be familiar faces. In hindsight, Willis left plenty of clues scattered for the clever reader to deduce on his or her own, but I am not that smart. (We actually read The Importance of Being Earnest in one of my first-year English classes, and I have it sitting on my shelf, but I honestly didn't remember it enough to recognize the importance of names like Earnest and Lady Bracknell. Shame on me!) Despite my misgivings about her characterization and the conclusion itself, I can't fault Willis for her planning and preparation, and that is one of the two things that saved me from utterly condemning this book. The other reason is that the science-fictional devices are, as always, secondary to the story and its themes.

Blackout/All Clear is about time travel, but it's also, according to Connie Willis,

about Dunkirk and ration books and D-Day and V-1 rockets, about tube shelters and Bletchley Park and gas masks and stirrup pumps and Christmas pantomimes and cows and crossword puzzles and the deception campaign. And mostly the book’s about all the people who “did their bit” to save the world from Hitler–Shakespearean actors and ambulance drivers and vicars and landladies and nurses and WRENs and RAF pilots and Winston Churchill and General Patton and Agatha Christie–heroes all.

Heroism and the question of what makes someone heroic are central to Blackout/All Clear. Mike originally plans to visit Dover as but one of several trips into the past, each of which will allow him to observe "ordinary people" who get swept up in events and become heroes as a result. Even though his trip to Dover is hasty and he is ill-prepared and everything that can go wrong seems to go wrong, he still thinks he has found such a person in Commander Harold. Yet Mike's ideas about heroism evolve quite a bit as he himself is forced to go undercover, change his identity, and participate directly in the British disinformation campaigns. This complements the heroism demonstrated by civilians during the Blitz, when regular people became ambulance drivers and firefighters and planespotters and rescue workers, when even keeping one's cool became an act of heroism. In this way, Blackout/All Clear is Willis' tribute to everyone who lived through the Blitz, through D-Day, through the war itself: they are all heroes, because as her use of time travel makes explicit, every little action affects history.

I wish this alone were enough to make me love this book. It's enough to make me regret that I did not enjoy it more, but even an appreciation for what Willis is saying cannot improve the black and bored mood that descended upon me as I was reading. Although I hate echoing others, I have to agree with several other reviewers—love it or hate it, there seems to be a general consensus that Blackout/All Clear didn't have to be this long. As it stands, the book suffers from a serious risk of losing its plot through diffusion. There are too many scenes that serve well to depict greater historical detail and further Willis' themes but seem completely redundant to the story itself, and noticing this was sufficient to pull me out of the story and make my inner grumpy critic put on his snooty monocle and sneer—mostly at the characters.

I keep coming back to this, but if I were the head of the Oxford Time Travelling Society (or whatever it's called), I wouldn't let Polly, Mike, and Eileen near the net. And I probably wouldn't let Mr. Dunworthy stay in charge, even if he means well. I'm not sure if Willis is just worried that her readers won't get it, but the historians spend a lot of time speculating why their drops won't open, why the retrieval team hasn't arrived, etc. When Colin—Mr. One Man Retrieval Team himself—finally arrives to take them home, I thought the story would, you know, conclude there. He's back, and now they can go home. But no, I was wrong, and we get another thirty pages in which Colin and Eileen explain to Polly (again) why things are happening the way they are (because they've already happened). I had already clued into Willis' predestination plans before the big reveal, but even for those taken unawares, such a lengthy and repetitive explanation seems more patronizing than helpful. I very much dislike it when authors succumb to the temptation to stop and point at their own clever resolutions, and while I don't think this was Willis' intention by any means, I think that's what the conclusion to All Clear becomes.

Causality loops aren't my favourite type of time travel universe; I much prefer the idea that history can be altered (and that the continuum would inexorably collapse if time travel were possible, so we should be thankful it's not). One of the beautiful things about fiction is its diversity, of course, and so I don't have to like Willis' rules in order to appreciate them. My opinion of Blackout/All Clear as a time travel novel has improved, slightly, because of the obvious care that has gone into working out the tangled chronology of its narrative. And my opinion of this as a work of historical fiction, as a tribute to those who lived through the war and the myriad unsung heroes of the everyday, has only increased as well. Willis works carefully to avoid any actual paradoxes in her novel, but she has managed to create one with me: Blackout/All Clear is obviously deserving praise and acclaim, yet it was also one of my worst experiences reading this year. Somewhere within these two massive volumes is a single, worthwhile story, struggling to escape—and it is the glimpse at that story that I find so alluring and so easy to appreciate, even as the surrounding chaff chokes and cloys.

The Invention of Air has a catchy title, but its subtitle better describes the book itself: A story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America. Steven Johnson uses Joseph Priestley as a touchstone for a much larger argument about the relationship among science, religion, and politics and the effects this had on the Enlightenment and the American Revolution. Priestley's role in isolating oxygen and his interactions with Antoine Lavoisier make an appearance in the early half of the book. For the most part, however, this book is not so much a biography of Joseph Priestley as it is an attempt to combat the anti-intellectualism, anti-science atmosphere now insinuating itself into American society, and particularly American politics. As he confesses in his Author's Note, which precedes the book itself, Johnson is concerned by the way we view science as something relegated to a domain of professionals rather than intrinsic to humanity, saying:

If there is an overarching moral to this story, it is that vital fields of intellectual achievement cannot be cordoned off from one another and relegated to the specialists, that politics can and should be usefully informed by the insights of science.

I can get behind this theme. Canada, like the United States, is struggling with the role of science in informing politics and political decisions, albeit in not quite the same rhetorical, polarized fashion happening south of our border. I am quite aware that, despite their hyperbole, the Tea Party does not speak for the majority of Americans, and that most Americans are sensible people with a varying degree of respect for the sciences. I am lucky enough to have met American friends on Goodreads and elsewhere online who fall into this category. I cringe, though, when I read newspaper articles and blog posts written by people who view science as a threat to their religion or, more basically, their way of life. I feel sorry for those people, and I kind of worry about America's future. So if Johnson wants to fight this by writing a book (which strikes me as an oddly intellectual way to fight anti-intellectualism, but whatever), more power to him.

Johnson's thesis also agrees with sentiments I've developed over the past few years, sentiments particularly influenced by a Philosophy of Science course. He draws upon Thomas Kuhn, of course, and discusses Priestley's discoveries in hindsight as a type of paradigm shift. In particular, as a writer he has to praise Priestley's choice to tell the story of the discovery of electricity, to be the first person to tell science through the lens of narrative rather than as a logical discourse. I have to agree; both forms have their uses, but I particularly like reading books like The Invention of Air because they are exciting and entertaining as well as educational. I'm fascinated by the history of science, as well as its philosophy. I like learning about the circumstances and coincidences that surround discoveries—for example, Priestley began investigating air because he temporarily lived behind a brewery and noticed that their vats emitted "fixed air" (carbon dioxide). From here, Johnson launches into a description of how, through trial and error more than any real hypothesis, Priestley manages to deduce that there is a component of air essential to respiration, that plants somehow produce or replenish it, and that it is combustible. (Unfortunately, Priestley would continue to subscribe to the theory of phlogiston until his death, even though it was discredited long before he died.)

I don't want to let my enthusiasm for Johnson's aims colour my evaluation of the book too much. As much as I like what Johnson tries to do, the result feels haphazard. The book begins with Priestley's voyage on the Samson to the United States; then it hops back to the young Joseph Priestley joining the Honest Whigs in London and works its way forward roughly chronologically to where the book begins. This should have worked fine, but Johnson spends far too much time talking about what we are about to learn. Every time the name Benjamin Frankling or Thomas Jefferson came out, Johnson could not help but remind us about Priestley's influence on these men. I get it, but could we please get on with Priestley's experiments in his lab?

I also wish we could have learned more about Priestley's life in general, particularly his relationship with Antoine Lavoisier. Johnson mentions, in passing, how Priestley met Lavoisier and influenced him, how Priestley found an improved formula for gunpowder and accidentally shared it with a French spy, who in turn shared it with the head of France's gunpowder committee—yes, Lavoisier. (Sometimes life is a lot better than fiction, eh?) Johnson mentions a lot, in passing, but it's frustrating because most of what we learn is bereft of details. He only occasionally deigns to go deeper into the story, as was the case with Priestley's isolation of oxygen, preferring mostly to skim along the surface. This is a short book, and it feels like a short book.

Mostly well-written but sometimes extremely frustrating, The Invention of Air discusses science and religion in the context of the founding of the United States, and it does so in a genuinely interesting way. Johnson is on the right track with a lot of his arguments and with the perspective he brings to subjects like the Founding Fathers; this book is quite original, just very brief. Joseph Priestley sounds like a fascinating fellow. I just wish I had learned more about him.

Anyone else remember Creatures? I played that game when I was younger … I might still have it around somewhere in a closet. Hmm, maybe I should dig it out. Because The Lifecycle of Software Objects reminded me of Creatures (albeit without the breeding). The digients in Ted Chiang's novella are artificially-intelligent software programs who begin as a genome created by software developers. The genome is just a starting place, however, and more complex traits emerge as the digients learn from human interaction. The digients are all capable of learning human speech, and some can even learn how to read. Yet they all develop distinct personalities, influenced by their owners.

Blue Gamma, the company that creates digients, envisions them as a hugely successful brand of sophisticated digital pet. And they are—successful, that is—for a time. The fad peaks, and the company folds, leaving two of its employees, Derek and Ana, among a small group of hardcore digient owners. These people continue to run their digients full time (instead of "suspending" the digients indefinitely), paying them visits in their Second Life-esque digital environment and interacting with them in the real world through the use of robot bodies. The relationship between the digients and their owners is similar to that between a child and a parent, but there are some notable differences. For instance, digients lack physical bodies and the corresponding hormonal changes; digients do not undergo puberty. Instead, they continue to learn and change indefinitely. Yet attempting to apply a human metric for development, as Derek soon learns, will always be frustrating, because the digients aren't human.

This is a refreshing reminder. I often get frustrated with the way some science fiction portrays artificial intelligence so inconsistently. Take Star Trek: Voyager, for example. The Emergency Medical Hologram, or as everyone calls him, the Doctor, begins the series "integrated into the sickbay systems" (that's from "The Eye of the Needle"). Eventually he acquires some slick 29th-century technology that lets him leave sickbay and even Voyager itself. Every time the Doctor goes on such a mission, there is the risk that his program will be lost—but why? Later in the series ("Living Witness") we see a backup version of the Doctor, so either they started with the capability to backup the Doctor or developed it later down the line. Either way, it seems to me that this is an aspect of artificial intelligence that science fiction often sorely neglects for the sake of storytelling: it's easy to copy a computer program.

The awareness that the digients are nothing more than complex, evolved programs underlies The Lifecycle of Software Objects. Early in the story, as the flagship digients of Blue Gamma undergo their training, one of the executives learns that a digient has picked up a profanity from a trainer. So he orders a rollback, just to be safe. Rollbacks, as the term implies, remove all memories and experiences a digient has had since the date of the rollback, essentially changing them as a person. And one of the major problems Ana and Derek must overcome is that the Second Life-esque environment where the digients live, Data Earth, has become obsolete, isolating the digients from all their friends who move on to a more advanced digital world. The digients need their engine, Neuroblast, ported to this new platform, but the cost is prohibitive. Without the port, however, the digients are confined to a private, sandbox version of Data Earth, one that only their owners visit. It's not really a life; it's a prison sentence, and all because technology has begun moving on without them.

Even if their owners persist in seeing them as more human than they are, the digients hold no such prejudice. Oh, they want freedoms, yes; Derek's two digients, Marco and Polo, yearn to become corporations so that they can have rights under the law. One of the solutions proposed to fund the porting of Neuroblast is to prostitute some of the digients to a cybersex company. The company would train copies of the digients, modifying their reward maps so that they find pleasurable what their owners find pleasurable. It's a little creepy, and Ana and Derek are very uncomfortable with it. Marco, however, decides he wants to do it:

"…I don't think you understand what they want to do."

Marco gives him a look of frustration. "I do. They make me like what they want me like, even if I not like it now."

Derek realizes Marco does understand. "And you don't think that's wrong."

"Why wrong? All things I like now, I like because Blue Gamma made me like. That not wrong."

Marco is very comfortable with the fact that he is a creation of Blue Gamma, and he is just as comfortable with the idea that he is not unique, in the sense that his program can easily be copied and redistributed:

Derek feels himself growing exasperated. "So do you want to be a corporation and make your own decisions, or do you want someone else to make your decisions? Which one is it?"

Marco thinks about that. "Maybe I try both. One copy me become corporation, second copy me work for Binary Desire."

"You don't mind having copies made of you?"

"Polo copy of me. That not wrong."

Chiang's characterization rings true: as singular beings, I think we approach the idea of digital existence with some trepidation. If I can backup my mind elsewhere, and then I suffer an accident in this body, that backup can be downloaded into another body and activated. I will survive, but it won't really be me; it will be a copy of me. Since up until now there has only ever been one of us (or at least, that's the way we perceive it), our brains aren't really equipped to handle that kind of philosophical crisis. To the digients, on the other hand, it is natural. And I think this will be true of any artificial intelligence: it will have to come to terms with its existence as software and the fact that software can be copied.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects takes place over a deceptive period of time. It seems like almost every chapter begins with some form of "another year passes", so despite its length, at least a decade elapses over the course of the story. Initially, Ana and Derek focus on protecting their digients from external threats: people who would copy and exploit their digients, and the isolation brought on by the obsolescence of Data Earth. Yet eventually, they come to realize that this protection is all well and good but also stymies the digients' growth. One day the digients will want autonomy, and part of the progress towards that autonomy involves hard work and pushing the digients to explore their capabilities. I love the closing line: "'Playtime's over, Jax,' she says. 'Time to do your homework.'"

The Lifecycle of Software Objects is in an intriguing story about raising digital life. On one level, it is a fresh look at the tropes of artificial intelligence that are becoming increasingly common in our science fiction. It includes the realities of the contemporary technology sector—the deadlines, the capitalist goals, the replacement of existing platforms with newer, better ones that might not be compatible. Overall, it contains some very smart observations about AI and the development of technology, so colour me impressed. As a novella, it feels almost the perfect length. Chiang's concepts are amazing, but his characterization is definitely Lifecycle's weakest link: too often we are told how Derek and Ana feel instead of seeing it. Although I suspect Chiang could have fleshed out his concepts and their underlying themes enough to turn this into a novel, I appreciate his circumspection and elision. This is a story painted in very broad strokes, tracing two characters whose lives intersect in a myriad of ways, and the digital creations they both hold dear.

Uh-oh. Jennifer Sharifi is back. This can't be good for the story, and last time she was the antagonist, it wasn't good for the book either.

I'll say this about Nancy Kress: she has a way of surprising me. I did not expect her to kill off Leisha Camden so abruptly in Beggars and Choosers. The stunning events that happen in Beggars Ride, some of which are the result of Jennifer's decisions, were no less shocking. For most of the book, I kept thinking, "That didn't happen. That could not have happened. This must be some kind of trick; there will be a twist at the end, a revelation that everything is all right." But there was no twist, no trick. Kress played it straight for the entire book, delivering in this way a fitting conclusion to her genetic narrative of strife, interdependence, and family conflicts.

The Jennifer Sharifi of Beggars Ride is much different from the Jennifer of Beggars in Spain, whom I likened to a moustache-twirlng villain. Twenty-seven years in prison have mellowed Jennifer, or maybe Kress has just decided to give us a more intimate look beyond Jennifer's careful composure. Whatever the case, we actually get glimpses at Jennifer's feelings instead of just narration about how careful and calculating her mind is. We get to watch her anguish over some of the hard choices she makes, choices she feels are necessary to protect the Sleepless, even if they have a high cost for her personally. There is a vulnerability to Jennifer present that I had never seen before, and that made her so much more compelling.

Beggars Ride follows up on what has become of humanity after Miranda Sharifi and the SuperSleepless rained Change syringes down on the world at the end of Beggars and Choosers. Injection with a syringe furnishes a human body with Cell Cleaner, a nanotechnology that eliminates foreign bacteria and viruses and repairs or destroys damaged cells. It also modifies the human body to make humans able to absorb nutrients from soil or any other organic material through micro-tubules extending up between skin cells. (Kress calls this "autotrophic," but I'm not sure this is strictly correct, since as I understand it, autotrophs absorb inorganic compounds. But it's been a while since I studied chemistry.) These changes are not hereditary, and with Change syringes in scarce supply, more and more children are being born only to grow up unChanged. Various groups, from religious cults to doctors associations, regularly beam messages to the SuperSleepless retreat on the moon, pleading for more Change syringes. And, oh yes, immortality. Because if you give a mouse a cookie….

Beggars in Spain was all about the division between Sleepless and Sleepers, with the latter worried that the former would replace them as a more successful, more productive, "superior" version of humanity. So the Sleepers pushed the Sleepless away, and Beggars and Choosers looks at what has become of Sleeper society since then. Now, in Beggars Ride, Kress reveals that, far from gaining separation and independence from the Sleepless, Sleeper society is now totally dependent on them for more Change syringes. The irony that Miranda's gift to humanity did not, as she so joyously claimed at the end of Beggars and Choosers, make humanity free, is not lost on the reader, or on Miranda herself, for that matter. For all of her technological and neurological expertise, Miranda failed to account for the sociological factors that surrounded her gift of the Change syringes. The Liver/donkey dichotomy Kress depicts in Beggars and Choosers is still present in Beggars Ride, just altered. The key to understanding the present state of the society is to realize something that, while probably obvious in the previous book, was not made explicit until now: everyone has pretty much given up. No one is interested in minding the store, not the donkeys, and certainly not the Livers.

Theoretically, the Livers, who vastly outnumber the donkeys, are supposed to give votes in exchange for material goods and promised services. In return, the donkeys gain power and prestige. The Livers are raised to believe that they are privileged not to work, that education is a chore, and all they should be doing is racing scooters and having sex and complaining when the soy food dispenser breaks. The Change syringes upset this balance, but the separation between the two classes remains: donkeys exist in private, fortified enclaves in the shells of the former great cities of the United States; Livers roam across the country in "tribes," attempting to fend for themselves. And the donkeys could not care less about the Liver population any more, although the legal and electoral relationship between the two classes still remains. If the Livers have been encouraged to engage in lives of epic hedonism, then the donkey enclaves, thanks to the Change syringes, have shifted into a haughty Epicureanism. They have lost all interest in governance or leadership, and those donkeys who do run for office do so pretty much solely for the power those positions bring. Mostly, the donkeys spend their time looking for new thrills and new experiences, because the Cell Cleaner destroys mood-enhancing drugs too quickly to make them effective.

We see this happening through the eyes of Jackson Aranow, a naive donkey doctor, and his sister, Theresa. Jackson is your typical disaffected donkey; he doesn't really care about managing the business he part-owns, nor is his work as a doctor very stimulating or challenging now that Cell Cleaner takes care of almost every ailment. Yet Jackson has not quite succumbed to the nihilistic malaise slowly pervading donkey society; he merely recognizes its approach in the form of his smoking hot ex-wife, Cazie. Cazie is forceful, even domineering at times, but also a little on the crazy side; there is one memorable scene where she drags Jackson up to a party on another floor of his apartment building. At the party, everyone is lying around in the mud, feeding together (sometimes very together, if you catch my drift). And they are taking terms throwing knives at each other; protected by Y-shielding, the targets are in no real danger. The knives are laced with one of two compounds: one that induces pleasure by directly stimulating the brain, and another that induces pain. One doesn't know what one will get, and that's the thrill that Cazie and others who have been dulled by the cleanliness of Cell Cleaner seek.

Jackson flees from that kind of party, a little disgusted and even vaguely ashamed. This scene sticks in my mind because I think it is a turning point in his relationship with Lizzie, Vicki, and the Liver tribe. Cazie's behaviour makes Jackson realize that the donkey way of life is fast becoming more of a sham than any pretensions to aristocracy that the Livers previously had. He can no longer pretend to be ignorant or apathetic, because if he does, then he will soon live in a society he cannot abide. So he cautiously starts to reach out to the only thing he knows is different, the only people who look like they are willing to change—because, aside from engineering a product that can work around Cell Cleaner's effectiveness, the donkeys don't really want to change. They're happy with the status quo, and that will kill them. As Vicki observes, no one wants to take responsibility for what has happened since the Change began; everyone blames Miranda for not continuing to provide Change syringes.

So human society has entered a crisis of faith, a literal one, for some people. Miranda Sharifi took the world by storm by dropping Change syringes, and now she and the SuperSleepless have sequestered themselves again. Kress includes interludes consisting of short messages sent to the SuperSleepless colony on the moon, beseeching Miranda to send more Change syringes. But there is never an answer (for a very good reason, though I won't spoil it here), and we get the impression that, thematically, there can't be an answer. The SuperSleepless have run into the classic god paradox: if you try to do too much, you end up making people dependent on you. This is not necessarily a comment about human nature but rather a consequence of herd mentality: societies prefer the familiar and look to where they know help can be found. And when that help isn't forthcoming, then they turn to insults, wondering why the Miranda has "abandoned" them to let their children suffer.

It's this combination of social change with biological, technologically-induced causes that makes Nancy Kress' books so riveting. She takes a miraculous invention like the Cell Cleaner and then points out that, by fixing "flaws" with our current physiology, it will also deprive us of things we consider good. Kress demonstrates something about science fiction that makes it so compelling for me: every great invention, every new piece of technology, comes with benefits and drawbacks. And we, as a society, seldom understand what the drawbacks are until we have plunged headfirst into reaping the benefits (fossil fuels, anyone?). We are somewhat-clever apes, tinkering with toys that we don't really understand, and sometimes that gets us into trouble. It is a great way to create conflict for a story, exploring all the while a facet of what it means to be human.

This is where Jennifer enters the plot as a villain. So far I've focused on the passive consequences of Cell Cleaner. Jennifer intentionally sets out to pervert our idea of humanity even further, devising a means to alter permanently the paths in one's amygdala. She wants to make people afraid of anything new, reasoning that if she can accomplish this on a wide scale, she will have eliminated any unseen threats to her and the rest of the Sleepless in Sanctuary:

… no one will ever be able to threaten us again, except in those ways we already understand and can counter. We will be in control, if only because there will never again be any unknown devils unleashed against us.

It's totally off-the-rails insane, of course, and other characters make the obvious connection to genocide-through-inaction. Jennifer essentially attempts to engineer stagnation into human society. But she fails, twice over. She allows her disgust for Sleepers motivated by greed to overpower her natural cautiousness. And she fails to realize that life, by definition, resists stagnation. Evolution is change.

And so we come to Theresa Aranow, my favourite character. UnChanged, Theresa's abnormal neurological development has resulted in a mental state quite similar to what Jennifer wants: afraid of the wider world, afraid of change or new experiences. Theresa spends most of her time isolated in the apartment she shares with Jackson, reading and writing about Leisha Camden and collecting quotations from the datanet. Periodically she makes these quixotic attempts to break free from this shell and make some sort of difference. She always meets failure, however, for a variety of reasons: either the experience does not live up to its promise, such as when she visits a convent only to find out they use drugs to "get closer to God"; or, an external force interrupts her, such as when she visits Richard Sharifi's compound in La Solana just as it gets nuked. Theresa is a little bit tragic but also possesses an incredible fortitude that makes her all the more endearing. She shares with Jackson a naivety, but his comes off as annoying or pretentious because it is a wilful ignorance, and casting off that ignorance is Jackson's personal growth in this book. Theresa is naive because she just lacks so much experience, but her personality grows by leaps and bounds.

Through Theresa's thoughts and actions, Kress shapes her final, somewhat optimistic message to us regarding human behaviour, genetics, and neurochemistry. One of the philosophical crucibles of posthumanism is the question of biological determinism: to what extent is our behaviour determined by our bodies, by our brain chemistry? This is central to all of the far-reaching inquiries of the posthumanists, from mind-uploading to immortality. Or, as Kress explains:

A medical solution would of course be simpler, easier, faster. Just take a neuropharm. With the right neuropharm, you could become less fearful, more fearful, more lusty, more hopeful, less angry, more lethargic … anything. But Theresa and her disciples weren't using neuropharms. So the question wasn't, as Jackson had always assumed, how neurochemically driven were humans? The question was, why were they ever driven by anything but neurochemicals? Why—and how—could men and women choose against their own fear, lust, hope, anger, inertia? Because clearly they could choose that. Theresa was doing so, right in front of his eyes. So not—isn't man just a bunch of chemicals? Rather—how could man ever be anything else?

It is easy to become lost in the events of global consequence in Beggars Ride and the larger social commentary at work there. As the above passage demonstrates, however, there is a much deeper level present, one where Kress introduces us to some very intriguing questions about selfhood and behaviour. This is what science fiction does, and my only regret is that it takes until the final book of this trilogy for Kress to achieve this zenith. I didn't, and still don't, like Beggars in Spain. I was worried, in fact, that this series would turn out to be another Clockwork Earth: a very disappointing first book followed by two mediocre sequels. But I had more faith in Nancy Kress, and she did not let me down. Beggars Ride is an excellent work in its own right and a fitting culmination to a series that, while not without flaws and pitfalls, presents a thoughtful look at the social consequences of directing our evolution.


My Reviews of the Sleepless trilogy:
← Beggars and Choosers

After I finished Pandora's Star, I ordered this sequel online and began it soon after it arrived at my doorstep. This is significant, because while I do not adhere religiously to the general order of my to-read list, I try to follow it in good faith. I couldn't wait over a year to read Judas Unchained, so despite my general moratorium on buying books, I made an exception. And I'm glad I did. Judas Unchained is off the frelling chain!

As with my review for Pandora's Star, I'll try to keep this one essentially spoiler free. Both books are quite long, so I hope my reviews will help you decide whether they are worth the considerable investment of time. And that's all I'm going to say about the length.

Judas Unchained picks up where Pandora's Star left off, but the stakes are higher and the story much more intense. In the last book, MorningLightMountain successfully forced the evacuation of twenty-three Commonwealth worlds, now known as the Lost23. Now it's bootstrapping further into the Commonwealth and attacks forty-eight more planets. Though the Commonwealth just barely fends off a full defeat by the Prime forces, all but one of the worlds have to be evacuated as a result (so they're nicknamed the Second47). Ozzie's still searching along the Silfen paths for their "adult form," which he hopes will have Answers. And Paula Myo, who has spent 130 years pursuing the Guardians of Self-hood, is confronting the fact that their sworn enemy, the Starflyer, seems to be a real threat to the Commonwealth.

As I said in my review, I loved the revelation that the Starflyer is a real entity and not just a wacko conspiracy theory. Now the problem has become one of establishing a web of trust, since there is no way to know who works for the Starflyer. I was totally convinced one person (not saying who) would turn out to be a Starflyer agent, but I was wrong. That's what I like about these books. There are plenty of predictable elements (such as the identity of the Starflyer agent within Paula's old team), but just when you think you have everything figured out, Hamilton works in a little twist.

The Starflyer subplot, which actually kind of becomes the main plot in the second part of the book, is the most interesting part of the story, for me. We know MorningLightMountain is thinking nothing but bad thoughts about humanity, and we know it has to be stopped. Until much later in the book, we don't know anything about the Starflyer's motives, except that they are malicious, or its origins and nature. So I am disappointed with how Paula and Justine are so totally sidelined in this book. The former remains involved for the entire story, but we don't spend much time hovering over her shoulder, as it were, and for the last part of the book she is literally incapacitated by her sense of justice. Justine, on the other hand, while the target of an assassination attempt, seems to drop out of the book entirely by the time the climax comes round. That's a shame, because I loved Justine.

Of the remaining characters whose viewpoints the narrator follows, Mellanie would have to be my favourite. I love how Hamilton manages to portray these conflicting sides to her personality. All at once she's both a spoiled first-lifer brat who craves attention and notoriety, a keen reporter who wants to climb to the top (and isn't afraid of using her body to do it), a scared young woman who feels out of her depth, and a compassionate person trying to do the right thing. Her actions aren't always consistent, because sometimes one or another side seems to win out, and she'll be trying to save herself or do something heroic. For the most part, however, I think we see a solid trajectory from her role as insecure eye-candy in the beginning of Pandora's Star to the self-assured way she handles herself as she helps Ozzie commandeer the Charybdis. The romance between her and Orion is rather predictable, and honestly, it didn't do anything for me. But I guess it is a sensible way for Hamilton to tie up two loose ends at once.

Ozzie was also an interesting character, but he gets very self-righteous, especially toward the end. Hamilton touches on a moral dilemma that's actually more complicated than it seems: whether humanity should wipe out the Primes altogether. Everyone seems to agree that this is a last resort, but because they don't have the capability to re-establish the barrier around Dyson Alpha, Nigel eventually persuades the Commonwealth's War Cabinet to authorize genocide. Ozzie disagrees and, coincidentally, develops a cockamamie scheme to re-establish the barrier! So he steals a starship, initiating what might be the most boring hyperspace chase sequence in all of science fiction.

Before I explain that, let me first talk about the moral dilemma of committing genocide. Unfortunately, the villains in this book are entirely one-dimensional. I don't see how it could be otherwise with the way Hamilton has created the conflict between humanity and aliens who are just so alien that they don't regard any other life as having the right to exist. Nevertheless, it means that there is no room for negotiation or compromise, and there's really no way to sympathize with or pity MorningLightMountain. So on one level, genocide makes sense. Indeed, another reviewer makes a convincing case that containment is just a longer, slower death. I happen to disagree, for I do not share his pessimistic outlook on the Bose motile's mission to change MorningLightMountain from within. And ultimately, there may not be a practical difference between killing MorningLightMountain outright and imprisoning it for the next millions of years, but there is a moral difference. It's about demonstrating a respect for the diversity of life and maintaining that diversity, even if it means keeping that diversity contained. Besides, every species has an expiration date, even if it's measured in the billions of years. The only possible escape from corporeal stagnation that Hamilton offers is the vague notion of "transcendence," and who knows—maybe MorningLightMountain can achieve that inside the barrier!

And now back to my boredom. When I said that Judas Unchained is more intense than Pandora's Star, I meant it in two sense: the stakes are higher, and the action is more condensed. The previous book spent a lot of time developing side plots, and it was not clear until closer to the end how the Primes and the Starflyer would manifest as antagonists. In contrast, we know from the beginning of Judas Unchained that the Primes are going to kick humanity's ass, and the Starflyer is both real and incredibly difficult to fight. As a result, the narrative is a lot more focused on these two plots—though I did enjoy the occasional shout-out to minor events from the previous book, such as the inclusion of Lionwalker Eyre.

Unfortunately, both of the plots seem to slow down and drag during the climax. It's odd. There's an interstellar wormhole train pursuit, with an intense race to get to Far Away and prevent the Starflyer from escaping. But it seems to last forever. This is not a consequence of the book's length but of the way Hamilton structures the action sequences—I'm not sure if I would go as far as calling them padded, because the sequences themselves are short and sweet. However, the events that elapse between the Guardians and Sheldon's group deciding to work together and the climactic moment on Far Away are … convoluted.

Don't get me wrong, I quite enjoyed Judas Unchained—albeit not as much as I enjoyed Pandora's Star. There were several moments throughout the book where I giggled or otherwise reflected upon how awesome it felt to be reading something like this. Hamilton has the ability to make me excited about reading a story in the way that few books or authors do. And she does what good science-fiction authors should do, which is use science fiction to tell an interesting story (sometimes the authors tend to get hung-up on the "science fiction" thing and forget they're telling stories). With Hamilton, there's no worldbuilding, just his world, which we learn about as we experience it. So I'm looking forward to returning to the Commonwealth with his Void series, and to reading more of his books in general.

I'll be honest (or shall we say, realistic?) and admit that these books aren't going to enchant every reader of science-fiction. Without falling into the trap of the fallacies of "hard" and "soft" science fiction, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained definitely embrace the "technobabble" aspects and tropes of the genre, and not everyone enjoys that. More importantly, there are a lot of characters, and even for an author as skilled as Hamilton, it's difficult to round them out sufficiently. Despite my focus of them in the reviews, I'd definitely characterize these books as more plot-driven than character-driven. So Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained aren't for everyone, but if you do like action-packed science-fiction stories about interstellar conflicts, weird alien mentalities, and wormhole-hopping, then you've got a winner here.