Macleod, Ken

Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge

Average customer rating:

fine collection forecasting technology vs people
...from the Cutting Edge
Great Anthology...a must for SF readers and writers...

Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge

Manufacturer: Pyr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1591024862

Book Description

Science Fiction is the genre that looks at the implications of technology on society, which in this age of exponential technological growth makes it the most relevant branch of literature going. This is only the start, and the close of the 21st century will look absolutely nothing like its inception.

It has been said that science fiction is an ongoing dialogue about the future, and the front line of that dialogue is the short story. The field has a long history of producing famous anthologies to showcase its distinguished short fiction, but it has been several years since there has been a prestigious all-original science fiction anthology series.

Fast Forward is offered in the tradition of Damon Knight's prestigious and influential anthology series, Orbit, and Frederik Pohl's landmark Star SF. Fast Forward marks the start of a new hard science fiction anthology series, dedicated to presenting the vanguard of the genre and charting the undiscovered country that is the future.

Contributors scheduled for the first volume include: Paolo Bacigalupi, Kage Baker, Tony Ballantyne, Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Bear (Sarah B.E. Kindred), A.M. Dellamonica, Paul Di Filippo, Robyn Hitchcock, Louise Marley, Ken MacLeod, Ian McDonald, John Meaney, Larry Niven & Brenda Cooper, Mike Resnick & Nancy Kress, Justina Robson, Pamela Sargent, Mary A. Turzillo, Robert Charles Wilson, Gene Wolfe, George Zebrowski.

Customer Reviews:

fine collection forecasting technology vs people.......2007-03-10

In his introduction to what he plans as being a continual science fiction anthology containing all new stories, Lou Anders explains the premise is "making sense of a changing world" as "the implications of technology on society ... makes it (SF) the most relevant branch of literature". Bias aside, the contributions of nineteen original shorts and two poems (by Robyn Hitchcock) live up to Mr. Anders' prime objective. The tales focus on people struggling with an exponentially changing world that leaves many behind. The contributors are a who's who of Sci Fi or fantasy to include Larry Niven (with Brenda Cooper), Justina Robson, Stephen Baxter and Louise Marley. All the entries are strong with the best being those concentrating on everyday people dealing with commonplace technology like Paul Di Filippo's Wikiworld" and Justina Robson' The Girl Hero's Mirror Says He's Not the One" (in Mappa Mundi world) and those bringing the past into the future such as Tony Ballantyne's "Aristotle OS and Ken McLeod's "Jesus Christ, Reanimator". This is a fun collection that forecasts where technology will take humans including those left behind struggling with yesterday's artifacts.

Harriet Klausner

...from the Cutting Edge.......2007-03-01

Fast Forward 1 once again demonstrates Lou Anders' editing prowess (his Live Without a Net and Futureshocks are also excellent). The tagline identifies the collection as "future fiction from the cutting edge," and almost every story offers up an intriguing view of the future from some of the field's best writers.

Robert Charles Wilson's "YFL 500" opens the anthology with a gripping character tale regarding intellectual property, art, and theft in a post-scarcity world. Paolo Bacigalupi's "Small Offerings" is a chilling tale of sacrifice on an ecologically damned Earth. "Plotters and Shooters," by Kage Baker, is a lighthearted "Lord of the Flies"-esque chronicle of the rise of hackers and geeks as the defenders of mankind in a new age.

Indeed, in a collection of 19 short stories and 2 poems (the latter a refreshing addition courtesy of Robyn Hitchcock), only 4 stories don't seem to belong. Elizabeth Bear's "The Something-Dreaming Game" and Louise Marley's "p dolce," while well-written, deal in concepts already well-traversed throughout the genre. Pamela Sargent's "A Smaller Government," while an entertaining satire, is more of a political fantasy than a work of science fiction. And George Zebrowski's "Settlements" is too trite and rife with tropes to be considered "cutting edge" - a story of mysterious aliens with advanced technology imposing peace on a violent, adolescent humanity.

Where the collection truly shines, though, are in the off-kilter stories. Tony Ballantyne's "Aristotle OS" is a comedic, philosophical view of the world through one of the most pervasive, defining facets of our society: the computer operating system. "Jesus Christ, Reanimator" is Ken MacLeod's rational look at the possible second coming of the Christ - charming in its grounded outlook amidst a momentous religious event. Mary A. Turzillo's "Pride" is the endearing tale of a boy and his sabretooth kitten. Finally, the perfect capstone to the anthology is Paul Di Filippo's "Wikiworld" - one of the most brilliant short stories I've read - an adventure through a foreign but realistic near-future, where political lines are drawn between usergroups and power, prestige, and popularity ebb and flow organically between the real world and the virtual.

While the writing and stories are excellent, it is the variety of worlds and tales that makes the anthology truly compelling. Having enjoyed the majority of the book, I can safely say that Fast Forward holds something for everyone. One can only hope that Fast Forward 2 is future fact.

Great Anthology...a must for SF readers and writers..........2007-02-14

I was able to read the ARC of this book prior to its release, and I was very, very pleased with the selections. I enjoyed 14/21 stories in this, with Robert Charles Wilson's, Paolo Bacigalupi's, Elizabeth Bear's, Louise Marley's, and the Mike Resnick/Nancy Kress piece being my personal faves for their "wow" factor. I recognized some of the stories in this anthology were not to my particular SF taste (and some stories I wished were written a bit differently, but that's me), but most of these pieces had good/fun premises, and it was nice to see a variety of stories in this anthology.

I'd definitely recommend this anthology to anyone reading (or writing) science fiction, and I'm not just saying that because I got the ARC: I think I'll pick up the actual copy myself, when I get the chance. Some of these stories really blew me away, and while I would've bought the anthology solely for Bacigalupi's work, I wouldn't have minded paying for the rest of it either, if that makes sense. In other words, there's something in here for everyone, and there's some really, really good stories here.

Also, an interesting stat that some people won't care about: 9/21 stories are penned by women (though two of those nine are co-written by men). The reason this stat jumps out at me is the fact that I've heard several women complain about how when you pick up an anthology of SF stories, there are few to no women featured. It's something I've noticed myself, so a big shout-out to Lou Anders for both sampling a variety of SF and not limiting anthology slots to the male population of the SF community.

Great anthology. Check it out.

Learning the World: a Scientific Romance

Average customer rating:

3.5 rounded up
Diversity Training
a nice twist
Macleod reinvents the genre!
A very fine sci fi novel of sweeping scope

Learning the World: a Scientific Romance
Ken Macleod
Manufacturer: Tor Science Fiction
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0765351773

Book Description

Humanity has spread to every star within 500 light-years of its half-forgotten origin, coloring the sky with a haze of habitats. Societies rise and fall. Incautious experiments burn fast and fade. On the fringes, less modified humans get on with the job of settling a universe that has, so far, been empty of intelligent life.The ancient starship But the Sky, My Lady! The Sky! is entering orbit around a promising new system after a four hundred year journey. For its long-lived inhabitants, the centuries have been busy. Now a younger generation is eager to settle the system. The ship is a seed-pod ready to burst.Then they detect curious electromagnetic emissions from the system's Earth-like world. As the nature of the signals becomes clear, the choices facing the humans become stark.On Ground, second world from the sun, a young astronomer searches for his system's outermost planet. A moving point of light thrills, then disappoints him. It's only a comet. His physicist colleague Orro takes time off from trying to invent a flying-machine to calculate the comet's trajectory. Something is very odd about that comet's path.They are not the only ones for whom the world has changed."We are not living in the universe we thought we lived in yesterday. We have to start learning the world all over again."

Customer Reviews:

3.5 rounded up.......2007-05-17

MacLeod has received a lot of flack lately for the "quality" of his writing. My take is that he is such a hot commodity right now that he is churning them out as fast as possible without that once-high regard for quality. Once again, all the components are present - technological future, new worlds, first meeting, generational and moral issues. Yet, despite all the promise the result remains unsatisfying.

Let's start with the most important aspect of any book, characterization. In this case there were two groups with the humans carrying such absurd names as Synergy Fusion Smith. At first I thought the young girl whose diary we follow throughout the book was going to dominate but then someone else comes along and after that....you get the drift. Folks fade in, fade out, show up, disappear, frustrating. Not a single character was one I remembered when I finished and that is a shame.

Then there is the enormous "ship" (another "world" thus the title) whole description was confusing in the extreme, lots of meandering, various perspectives, the place did not seem "real". Another problem - the levels of advancement were uneven - they could live forever but their nanotech seemed stillborn.

The aliens were anthrpomorphized as is only natural - bat people with 1940 technology. Their social system uses a similar race as beasts of burdens thus preventing the development of work machines. The tale descends into a moral one with question about intervention, colonization, authority, imposing our values. Predictable ending...oh well, better luck next time.

Diversity Training.......2007-05-10

Here's a well written, short science fiction, first-contact, novel with a nice little twist at the end.

The story shifts between the points of view of the humans and the aliens. The humans are on a multi-generational voyage to discover a new planet. While examining how culture, with a small "c", evolves in this self-contained environment, there is even a look at economics, with everyone, including children, engaged in a lively trade in what financiers call derivative instruments and futures. The aliens (who naturally don't think of themselves as aliens) are a bat-like people who keep large herds of creatures who seem very similar to themselves. Some creatures are used as workers while others are used as food. The winged aliens, who can fly, are at the stage of developing machines to fly in. Although presented in a sympathetic way, in absolute human terms, they seem a bit disgusting in their habits. The alien side of the story focuses on an astronomer and academic who first discovers the approaching human ship.

What makes the writing special is that the back story is revealed not through dry exposition, but through the gradual revelation in the lives of the characters. We start out not quite grasping either of the two cultures involved, but the author manages to reveal just enough about them as he tells his tale to satisfy us, saving his most thought-provoking revelations for the finale.

Although I was entranced by the tale, I was not always certain why the author choose to focus on one character or another when they did not always seem to be essential to the events occurring. And yet, while not always essential players, they gave a flavor to the cultural implications of what was happening.

I also felt that the alien society was too under-developed, in human terms, for the societal actions that were being taken. And yet I suppose that is exactly the point of the author, who seems to be telling us that we should not judge other cultures by our own, and indeed, that what appears to us as somehow inferior may actually be superior. If one is not happy with a message of diversity and tolerance, this may not be a book to read.

If this sounds like a book with a heavy dose of sociology it is, but like much good science fiction, it helps to illuminate our own society.

a nice twist.......2007-04-29

I read the Cassini Division back in 1999 and was not impressed. I felt that Mr. MacLeod was long on talky lectures and short on action. As I couldn't find Stone Canal at the moment, I decided to give him another try with Learning the World, and have been delighted from first page to last.

SF authors who are really good at straight narrative (descriptive) prose are not in large supply, but Mr. Macleod is on the mark with this book. Scene after scene of potentially dull exposition is beautifully written as he paints a detailed, fascinating portrait of an alien society and a greatly changed human society on the verge of discovering it. Stylistic lapses are at a minimum, and if you're looking for a good epic to get lost in, I recommemend Learning the World.

Macleod reinvents the genre!.......2006-12-17

**** spoilers ****

We all know that the old alien invasion cliche really has been done to death. Macleod cleverly turns it on its head though, by making humankind of the far-distant future, more alien than the rather endearing bat people, whose homeland the human pioneers are eyeing up greedily.

This is very clever stuff, which reminded me in places of the grandiose space opera of Iain Banks (high praise indeed). You may find, as did I, that you rush through the "human" chapters in anticipation of savouring the generally more fascinating alien chapters. The seeming paradox of an intelligent and compassionate species still relying on the horrors of slave labour, is skillfully explored through Macleod's splendid characters. Orro, Darvin, Kwarive and even the delightful Trudge Kit drive the plot along at a decent pace that will surely maintain any sci-fi fan's interest. The only downside, IMHO, is that the human politicising felt a tad laboured at times, and the long-awaited face to face contact occurs very late in the book and could have been explored to greater depth. Quibbles aside, this is a very worthwhile read that I enjoyed immensely and have no hesitation in recommending to you!

A very fine sci fi novel of sweeping scope.......2006-08-01

As other reviewers have pointed out, this is a novel of first contact--but what I most appreciated was the way that it takes seriously, as very science fiction novels do, the sheer scale that would be involved in human colonization of the stars. The immense effort, distances and times required to travel from one star to another at sublight speeds; the huge populations that a solar system could support, if all its resources could be drawn on; the transforming effects of fast information processing, nanotechnology and genetic engineering, plausibly extrapolated a few millenia into the future. The most out-there piece of technology, the Cosmogonic Drive, also gives the novel a metaphysical flavor which I quite enjoyed.

MacLeod's aliens are not quite as imaginative as his humans--similar societies have been postulated by other authors, such as Poul Anderson, and they are in many ways more similar to the humans of today than his future humans are. But they are well-realized and interesting, and the first contact story is quite successful. The novel is not really driven by its plot, however; it is a story of ideas.

His construction of a human society is speculative, but it is also very interesting. I enjoyed figuring out how things worked in his world. MacLeod's work is in most ways distinctively his own, but I was still reminded of Iain M. Banks's Culture novels: people who are part of something very much larger than themselves, but who find themselves at the cusp of a hugely important event. I can only suppose that there must be something in the water in Scotland.

Average customer rating:

Mishmashing your way thru the Singularity
Well-imagined, nicely written, but kind of disappointing
Inventive, but doesn't live up to its potential
I agree . .. a mixed bag
His best yet. Don't miss!

Newton's Wake: A Space Opera
Ken Macleod
Manufacturer: Tor Science Fiction
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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Singularity Sky

ASIN: 076534422X
Release Date: 2005-03-01

Book Description

ACROSS THE UNIVERSEIn the aftermath of the Hard Rapture-a cataclysmic war sparked by the explosive evolution of Earth's artificial intelligences into godlike beings-a few remnants of humanity managed to survive. Some even prospered.Lucinda Carlyle, head of an ambitious clan of galactic entrepreneurs, had carved out a profitable niche for herself and her kin by taking control of the Skein, a chain of interstellar gates left behind by the posthumans. But on a world called Eurydice, a remote planet at the farthest rim of the galaxy, Lucinda stumbled upon a forgotten relic of the past that could threaten the Carlyles' way of life.For, in the last instants before the war, a desperate band of scientists had scanned billions of human personalities into digital storage, and sent them into space in the hope of one day resurrecting them to the flesh. Now, armed, dangerous, and very much alive, these revenants have triggered a fateful confrontation that could shatter the balance of power, and even change the nature of reality itself.

Customer Reviews:

Mishmashing your way thru the Singularity.......2007-05-20

This is yet another great idea that got screwed up along the way. Although subitled "A Space Opera" it does not approach the spectacular novels by such authors as Alastair Reynolds or Morgan. It IS like a soap opera with their long-lost twins, amnesia and absurd twists. The outstanding feature of the novel is its uneveness. A plot begins, gets intersting, then disappears until halfway through the book. The story swings wildly between interesting subplots, fluff, crazy politics (North Koreans are the good guys / Americans the bad guys - I guess we all have our priorites), virtual and real worlds and history. In the end it's a mishmash, an overload of characters with conflicting motives and not enough detail on only particular one to hold the reader's attention in the long run.

The Singularity has come and it is known as the Hard Rapture. Machines declared war on manking and took over the Earth a la Terminator style (again the Evil Americans led the way). Humans were either subsumed or perished with only a small number escaping. Lucinda Carlyle, the Scottish speaking (God, that got to be so annoying) swashbuckler bombshell, is allegedly our heroine but she becomes lost in the avalanche of endless characters that pop in and out at the pace of a machine gun.

A final problem is the inability to describe fantastic structures and complex machinery - it remains a mystery even after the telling. The ability to back up ourselves and create virtual universes and worlds opens new questions (that were touched upon) about the nature of reality and authenticity. In the end, the real question is, does it rally matter if we are living in a virtual world? As long as its the only one we know and we can make sense of it, that's all that matters.

Well-imagined, nicely written, but kind of disappointing.......2006-06-25

(or maybe 3.5 stars -- a book I had trouble rating.)

Newton's Wake is is Ken MacLeod's first standalone novel, after seven books that fit into two separate series. It is subtitled A Space Opera, and so it is -- though MacLeod repeats a joke also turned by Jack Vance, in having an actual opera be part of the action. (As with Vance's novel Space Opera.) MacLeod has promised this will be a standalone, and indeed the ending leaves little room for any sequel.

The novel is told through several viewpoints -- as standard with MacLeod. Oddly enough, though, the timeline is basically linear (with arguably a wiggle or two at the end). It seems that several hundred years in the future, after the Hard Rapture, when the Earth's computers achieved consciousness and many of its inhabitants joined the computers in a Singularity event, the remaining humans have spread across the Galaxy, partly by FTL ship, but mostly through a skein of wormholes called Carlyle's Drift. There are four main factions. The Knights of Enlightenment (KE) believe that everyone will be reincarnated at the Omega Point, or something, and they have proof. Thus they eschew backups and reincarnation. The Demokratische Kommunistebund are dedicated Communists, revering for example Kim Jong Il of all people, and they are expert terraformers. America Offline are "farmers", who occupy DK-terraformed worlds and live fairly low-tech lives, as I understand it. And the Carlyles are former Glasgow gangsters who control the wormhole skein. The main character, pretty much, is a young Carlyle named Lucinda. She is leading a team that has found a new planet in the wormhole skein. Surprisingly, this planet is inhabited by humans, people who fled the Hard Rapture but had no idea anyone else had survived. This planet, called Eurydice, has spent centuries believing they are the only surviving humans. They, like the Carlyles, aggressively pursue backups of mind and reincarnation. They also have some surprisingly high tech. And their planet seems to have been formerly occupied by intelligent aliens who underwent their own Singularity, leaving some enigmatic structures behind.

Lucinda gets entangled with some of the political factions on Eurydice. Eventually, the KE show up and are ready to fight for control of this promising new planet. At the same time the main artifact left by the original aliens has become activated, and it has sent out viruses to take over, among other things, an asteroid mining ship from Eurydice. Lucinda manages to escape and return to the Carlyle's base, but she is in disgrace. Her only hope is to recruit some "lightning chasers" -- people fascinated by dangerous tech that may be on the cusp of another Rapture -- and try to recover a teleportation machine from the planet of a pulsar. And back on Eurydice, an impresario decides to resurrect a couple of uploaded singers from the time of the Hard Rapture, and use them as the centerpiece of a provocative opera about the political divide at the heart of Eurydicean history.

MacLeod keeps upping the ante. The issues presented at the outset are all but forgotten at the end of the book. He does provide answers, sometimes surprising, to the questions he raises and the mysteries he poses. The book ends up in a rather surprising place. It's well-imagined, and nicely written in MacLeod's very clever, punny, historically knowing style. But ... though it's worth reading, it's kind of a disappointment. In part, the characters don't really engage the attention. They are clever but don't seem to have much depth, nor to, well, have souls. (One could argue that that could dovetail with some themes of the book, but I don't think that's the intent.) Gobs of people are killed, only some of whom have backups, and the lack of apparent concern by anyone about most of this is distressing. The tech is interesting but after a while I got weary of too many wonders. The action and plot are logical but the way the endpoint keeps moving, though not unreasonable, ends up deflating the reader's (or this reader's) interest.

Inventive, but doesn't live up to its potential.......2006-03-30

MacLeod leaves a lot lying on the table in this excellent post-singularity novel.

Two extremely annoying things - the Scottish brogue is just too much to plough through, even in its limited usage. I can't do the accent in my head, so I can't read it well. I have to think to myself "OK, disnae is 'doesn't" "aw is 'aw'" and so forth. Unnecessary and distracting. MacLeod's editor should not have tolerated this annoyance.

Second, I got lost a couple of times in action sequences. [spoiler follows]At one point, the viewpoint character is driving in a convoy with some allies, directs them up a hill, then she jumps off her vehicle and through a hidden wormhole into another world. How did she know it was there? I felt like I skipped a chapter. Very confusing - and I read a lot of this stuff.[/end spoiler]

MacLeod doesn't satisfy our curiousity or explore the idea of identity. Is a person with artificially constructed memories as real as you or me? Is a person who is backed up, killed, and restored to a new body the same person as before? MacLeod introduces these ideas, but they are really just set-pieces.

If you enjoy the first 50 pages, you'll get through the saggy middle and forgive the other annoyances. I do recommend this novel. It is deftly written and interesting. I didn't have any trouble telling characters or factions apart. Overall, a good effort by MacLeod. I will read him again.

I agree . .. a mixed bag.......2006-01-30

Space opera tale of a universe where human society was almost wiped out by machines it created. In the aftermath, there are several groups vying for control and several bear tongue in cheek names to organizations we would recognize.

Apparently, when the machines had almost destroyed Earth, some human chose to stay and fight and the others, believed to be cowards, fled to another galaxy.

Wormholes, which are sort of like short cut tunnels or teleportation, discover these cowards who have created their own society.

Tension rises when all the vying groups find out there is a technology on this planet which would tip the scales in favor of whoever controls it.

A fair read but disjointed at times. Some character motivations are lacking and even though there are some really cool ideas in this tale, they aren't fully mined.

His best yet. Don't miss!.......2005-07-05

----------------------------------------------------------------
"A": MacLeod's best yet -- gripping far-future space-opera, all the good KenMac stuff with hardly any of the bad. The only serious fault is a murky ending. Must-read now, and a definite reread later. Don't miss.

I don't have much to add to a bunch of rave reviews. Forex:

It was the small hours of the morning before I closed this book, which is probably the
highest praise I can give a novel. I could babble on for a bit about how
well written it is, how inventive, but really, all you need to know is
that this is probably the best book MacLeod has written in years. -- David Kennedy, Google Groups

He's kicking up his heels and having a high old time with this one, bringing in loads of satire to give this transhumanist adventure yarn a whimsical edge we haven't quite seen from him before. -- TM Wagner, sfreviews.net

Newton's Wake is without a doubt Ken MacLeod's finest work to date. It has all the depth, substance and action of his previous novels, while displaying a new level of maturity and artistic growth. -- Adam Volk, SF Site

I am a bit surprised at the number of indifferent to negative reviews posted here. Well, there's no accounting for taste. But, to my taste, this is red-hot stuff. Don't miss.

Happy reading--
Pete Tillman

Average customer rating:

Very imaginative and thought-provoking
The Star Fraction - A somewhat lackluster beginning!
Pretty good cyberpunk
Average at best
Great Sci-Fi Libertarian Socialism

The Star Fraction (Fall Revolution)
Ken Macleod
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0765301563

Amazon.com

A Ken MacLeod book is like a crowded college coffeehouse: noisy, bustling, a little rowdy, and packed with enough wild ideas and competing ideologies to leave you reeling. Star Fraction, MacLeod's 1995 debut, is no exception. As the first installment in the Fall Revolution sequence (followed by The Stone Canal and The Cassini Division), Star Fraction established this Scottish author's formidable talent for mixing complex politics and cyberpunk action into smart, funny stories.

MacLeod avoids heady political theorizing by always personifying his ideas in believable, often articulately passionate characters. (Or as one character puts it, "In my experience politics is guys with guns ripping me off at roadblocks.") Star Fraction's putative protagonists--a Trotskyite mercenary, a fugitive university researcher, and a fundamentalist-turned-atheist programmer--are on the run after a chance combination of marijuana, experimental memory drugs, and a self-aware firearm threatens to awaken a powerful AI on the nets, much to the dismay of the Men In Black and the orbital-laser-wielding U.S./UN. (As with all MacLeod plots, don't bother asking--it's a long story.)

With its ultrabalkanized UK and convoluted cast of neo-Stalinists, AI-Abolitionists, Christianarchists, femininists, et al., Star Fraction is MacLeod at his best--even at his first. --Paul Hughes

Book Description

The award-winning novel that launched Ken MacLeods SF career, in softcover with a new introduction written especially for the American readerBritain in the 21st century is a Balkanized mess with an absentee-landlord Hanoverian royal family, neighborhoods that pursue their own independent foreign policies, and US/UN technology cops with everyone in their sights. Moh Kohn is a security mercenar unaware that he holds the key to information which could change the world. Janis Taine is a scientist who needs Mohs help hiding from the US/UN. Jordan Brown is a teenaged refugee from an enclave of religious fundamentalists. And a rogue computer program is guiding events to a breathtaking conclusion, with strange and wonderful implications for the human future.

Customer Reviews:

Very imaginative and thought-provoking.......2003-06-21

First of all, I do recommend this book to everybody that enjoys some near-future what-if books that mixes politics, artificial intelligence possibilities, and loads of technology.

The good things about it would first be the ability to really shape a very interesting reality, very well built characters, many thought-provoking discussions, in the political, social and technological fields. In a way the story is very believable (maybe not in 40 years), and very fast paced.

Now the reason why I didn't rate it a 5 stars is that sometimes it becomes too "thick". Too many things happen without much explanation, and the author seems to be looking for that. I remember finishing the first chapter of the book and just thinking to myself "What? What is going on here?". Little by little you start to get used to the acronyms, the political system, and the pace of the book and then it becomes really interesting. Just be ready for this "shock" if you plan on reading it.

For now I'll move into a new book and then go back and read another of his Fall Revolution series books. Now that I know what he is talking about maybe it will be easier to finish the next one.

The Star Fraction - A somewhat lackluster beginning!.......2003-02-02

I believe that I originally found Ken MaCleod's "Cosmonaut Keep" on the bookshelf at a store and found the description for it to be extraordinarily interesting. That being said, I decided to research and find out what the authors first book was. Upon discovering the Fall Revolution Sequence did not have to be read in any particular order, I decided to order and read the Star Fraction before the others, just to put my own sense of order to it.

Upon beginning this book, I found that a sense of order to the book itself was to some extent difficult to discern. Bear in mind that in several sequences I found the author's style to actually be very exciting and captivating, which lends to the idea that his later books will be very exciting. For a huge portion of the book though, I found his writing style to be somewhat cryptic, plodding and convoluted in the set up of the action sequences. This book is replete with varying political and social views that at times will leave your head spinning as to which direction the book is taking you.

Overall, this novel for me was a worthwhile read, just not overly compelling. At some point in time, after some further reflection, I will pick up the next book, "The Stone Canal" and read it. The conclusion to this one just doesn't compel me to do so at this time.

The premise: MINOR SPOILERS

This tome is about a dismal future of the early 2040's after a brief third world war, the US/UN has taken hegemony over a balkanized world. The Fall Revolution Sequence itself is an attempt to put an end to this new world order and reunify fragmented nations.

A key player in the Fall Revolution is an extremely interesting character by the name of Moh Kohn. His father Josh Kohn was the one who wrote many of the revolutionary programs that runs the computers of this society, which play a key part in the society. Moh Kohn himself is a security mercenary, living in a commune who believes in many of the communist ideas. Through chance, he meets with Janis Taine, who is a scientist working on memory enhancing drugs. This meeting is what basically begins the Fall Revolution. {ssintrepid}

Pretty good cyberpunk.......2002-11-10

Fast-paced and a fun read. All of the usual cyberpunk elements are there, with the addition of some complicated socialist politics. Long on action, short on characterization. Several different cultures that aren't explored in depth. Major historic events, any one of which would probably be a book in itself, that seem more like backdrop than real things happening to large numbers of people. (A major change in America happens just like that.) Like a lot of cyberpunk, the treatment of computers and AI is a bit too magical for my taste. But certainly good enough for an action movie - err, book.

Average at best.......2002-06-27

I bought this book partly on the strength of the reviews on this site and the UK sister site (hmmmmmm), and the fact it kept appearing on my recommended list. However it did not live up to my (generally easily satisfied) expectations.
Let's be fair about this, some of the ideas and thought that evidently went into the creation of Star Fraction were impressive. It's the implementation that I've a problem with, and that made this book just another "also-ran".

The plot and character development felt rushed and erratic at times. At a few points I found myself wondering what was going to happen next, and asking myself if I really cared or not. It all felt a bit thin and two dimensional. Perhaps it was me, but I made an assumption that the length and detail at which the politics were explored would have some impact in the end-game. They didn't, unless I missed something blindingly obvious. Or perhaps that was the point - that the politics were irrelevant to the outcome (in which case, why bother with them at all).
I also thought that he failed to capture the 'feel' of north London, even allowing for the fact that it had become something of a splintered entity.

There were parts which reminded me of William Gibson, and a lot of the style was more than a little reminiscent of the great Iain M. Banks. I think that Ken would be better trying to concentrate on a style of his own and attempt to leave behind the large influence of other (and IMO, better) sci-fi authors.
I honestly believe this guy does have some talent, and this will flourish with a little more focus, but then ... what do I know.

So Mr. MacLeod, for your end of book report you get an average grade C, and a "Kenneth is capable of better".

Great Sci-Fi Libertarian Socialism.......2001-12-28

Scottish writer Ken MacLeod has emerged as a key voice in the modern libertarian socialist movement. This book, the first installment in the Fall Revolution series, is a superb political thriller totally saturated with an amazing array of characters from the progressive-left - with a few rads thrown in for good measure.

Average customer rating:

exhilarating thought provoking science fiction thriller

The Execution Channel
Ken Macleod
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Merchants' War: Book Four of the Merchant Princes

ASIN: 0765313324
Release Date: 2007-06-12

Book Description

It's after 9/11. After the bombing. After the Iraq war. After 7/7. After the Iran war. After the nukes. After the flu. After the Straits. After Rosyth. In a world just down the road from our own, on-line bloggers vie with old-line political operatives and new-style police to determine just where reality lies.

James Travis is a British patriot and a French spy. On the day the Big One hits, Travis and his daughter must strive to make sense of the nuclear bombing of Scotland and the political repercussions of a series of terrorist attacks. With the information war in full swing, the only truth they have is what they're able to see with their own eyes. They know that everything else is--or may be--a lie.

Customer Reviews:

exhilarating thought provoking science fiction thriller .......2007-06-12

9/11 and the Iraq war are history. That was followed by the Iran conflict, a biblical proportional flu pandemic that made 1918 look like a minor statistic, and a geometric increase in terrorist attacks. The Neo-Cons proved right that is dead right even if they forced their prophecy to be fulfilled. In spite of the incredible advances in communication, misinformation and disinformation especially from officials have become the norm. In other words, humanity is in jeopardy of extinction as a now battered paranoid West is considering the nuke option and not just towards its long term enemies; former friends threaten one another with no nation trusting any other.

Scottish software engineer James Travis blames much of the global insensitivities and atrocities on the United States. He and his daughter, Roisin, recently witnessed the nuclear bombing of a Scottish airbase. Immediately the spin doctors go to work to spread the gospel of lies and twisted truths by accusing terrorists or claiming an internal accident occurred as the government insists no nukes were fired stunning father and daughter who saw otherwise first hand.. Perhaps the only place a person can learn what really occurred is the rogue EXECUTION CHANNEL where alleged clips of sanctioned murders and executions are shown all day every day, but then again could the group behind that outlet be spinning too for the Bush 43 legacy is the end always justifies the mean.

THE EXECUTION CHANNEL is an exhilarating thought provoking science fiction thriller that paints a dismal near future filled with paranoia and atrocities in which the media is used by those in power to tell the "truth" defined as whatever spin they need. The story line is action-packed as the audience will be stunned as much as the Travis duo with what the pair saw vs. the official news accounts. Ken McLeod, extrapolating from real events and technology provides a tense dark pessimistic future legacy.

Harriet Klausner

Cosmonaut Keep (The Engines of Light, Book 1)

Average customer rating:

Good series, but something's always missing.
Never judge a book by its cover
Skillfully interweaves the personal and the political in a tapestry of transcendental posthumanity
Those whom the gods would destroy...
Take It or Leave It

Cosmonaut Keep (The Engines of Light, Book 1)
Ken Macleod
Manufacturer: Tor Science Fiction
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0765340739

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

Like a British--specifically, Scottish--counterpart of Bruce Sterling, Ken MacLeod is an SF author who has thought hard about politics and delights in making unlikely alternatives plausible, grippingly readable, and often downright funny.

Cosmonaut Keep swaps between two timelines whose characters share the ultimate goal of interstellar travel. In an uncertain future on the far world of Mingulay, human colonists live in the title's ancient, alien-built Keep--coexisting with reptilian "saurs," trading with visiting ships piloted by krakens, and hiding their laborious "Great Work" of developing human-guided navigation between the stars.

Meanwhile, alternate chapters present a mid-21st-century Earth whose EU is (to America's horror) Russian-dominated with a big red star in the middle of its flag. Rumors of alien contact abound, and computer whiz kid Matt Cairns finds himself carrying a data disk of unknown origin that offers antigravity and a space drive.

Clearly, the later storyline's Gregor Cairns is Matt's descendant. There are ingenious connections and surprises, with witty resonances between their wild careers, their travels, and their bumpy love lives. The foreground action adventure points to a bigger picture and a master plan known only to the godlike hive-minds who built the "Second Sphere" of interstellar culture, and who regard traditional SF dreams of unlimited human expansion through space as precisely equivalent to floods of e-mail spam polluting the tranquil galactic net.

Cosmonaut Keep opens MacLeod's new SF sequence, Engines of Light. It's highly entertaining and intelligent, promising more good things to come. --David Langford

Book Description

Matt Cairns is a 21st-century outlaw Programmer who takes on the shady jobs no one else will touch. Against his better judgment, he accepts an assignment to crack the Marshall Titov, a top-secret orbital station operated by the European Space Agency. But what Matt will discover there will propel him on an extraordinary and quite unexpected journey.Gregor Cairns is an exobiology student and descendant of one of Terra Nova's first families. Hopelessly infatuated with a lovely young trader's daughter, he is unaware that his research partner, Elizabeth, has fallen in love with him. Together, Gregor and Elizabeth confront the great work his family began three centuries earlier-to rediscover the secret of interstellar travel.Ranging from a gritty near-future Earth to a distant alien world, Cosmonaut Keep is contemporary science fiction at its highest level, a visionary epic filled with daring individuals seeking a place for themselves in a vast, complex, and enigmatic universe.

Customer Reviews:

Good series, but something's always missing........2006-11-10

I think it's called an end. Each book of both series tends to fade away at the end and the last book of both series don't seem to pull it together any better.

That said, the topics are all great reading, the characters all work well, the talent is clearly there. I think it's just a stylistic decision not to wrap the stories up (I didn't say neatly) that leaves me wondering a week or month later if I had actually finished reading them.

Odd. I will still read everything this author puts out there anyway. Maybe I'll develop a taste for the case of the quiet denoument in time. Or out of it.

Never judge a book by its cover.......2006-10-10

This paperback edition of "Cosmonaut Keep" has a beautiful cover. The depiction of a hovering city-sized spaceship is rendered in cool blues and accented with brilliant light shining between dark clouds. In fact, looking back it was the beauty of this cover that first caught my eye in the bookstore, and lent weight to the generic description blurb on the back.

Alas, as they say, you should never judge a book by its cover. "Cosmonaut Keep" is a truly mediocre book. About the best thing I can say about it is that it never crossed the line into being actually bad. I had the strange experience of starting to wish, halfway through, that it would get just a little bit worse so I could conclude it wasn't worth finishing, but it managed to hang in there.

The book is split into two plots separated in time and converging at the end. But neither plot is very interesting. I'm not sure exactly where to lay the blame for this, since I've read books in the past with very simillar plots that managed to be entertaining, and it's undeniable that Macleod is a competent writer. In the end, I think he simply failed to create characters that I felt were real, much less could be sympathetic to. It is almost as if his main emotional attachment was to the neat plot and background story he had created, and not to the people he was showing us.

I also have a quibble with the universe that Macleod has created. It was perfectly acceptable in years past for sci-fi authors to create near-future scenarios where the world was divided between Soviet and American spheres of influence, or where one had conquered the other, and so on. It was a perogative of the Cold War, the same way that spy thrillers were always permitted to summon up a KGB agent at any point where it would help the plot. But those days are long gone, and this book was published in the year 2000. What could possibly excuse an author who pretends that events from 1991 on simply never took place, and that in the future the EU will be under Soviet domination? For me it was unnecesary and annoying, and made it more difficult to do the traditional work of a sci-fi reader; suspending my disbelief.

Skillfully interweaves the personal and the political in a tapestry of transcendental posthumanity.......2006-07-09

Cosmonaut Keep is the first in a new series by Ken MacLeod, who wrote The Stone Canal and The Cassini Division. As in those earlier works, this novel skillfully interweaves the personal and the political in a tapestry of transcendental posthumanity.

MacLeod again uses two narratives spanning an unknown amount of time to tell his story, and this conceit (while a bit confusing at first, at least in this novel) works. The "present" narrative takes place in the near-future, albeit in an alternate world where the EU is part of a larger Communist bloc and where alien technology, specifically a starship and drive, are being discovered. It follows one Matt Cairns as he makes his way from Edinburgh, Scotland to Area 51 in New Mexico to a space station and the future. The "future" narrative takes place on a world called Mingulay, which is inhabited by humans and saurs, intelligent descendents of the terrestrial dinosaurs. (Other forms of intelligent life in the novel include the kraken, superintelligent spacefaring squid, and god-like colonies of microorganisms that inhabit millions of asteroids in the solar system. There we follow one Gregor Cairns in his quest to solve the Great Game---to discover the secrets of interplanetary navigation believed to be possessed by his ancestor, Matt.

If the rest of the series is as fascinating as this volume, then reading it will be a real joy. Once again, MacLeod shows himself as one of the smarter writers in contemporary SF and speculative fiction.

Those whom the gods would destroy..........2005-09-08

This is not an easy book to get into, there is an initally confusing split storyline and seemingly bizarre shifts in narrative and time (without the usual chapter markers to ease the readers transitions), but these are all clues to an unfolding and complex drama well worth a few chapters of disorientation.
In the vein of William Gibson's Neuromancer, we are shown a cyberpunk distopia on the verge of a transformative shift or it's own destruction, but peopled by characters both interesting and familier enough to be our guides (rather like Larry Niven's Ring World series); as well as a front row seat to Humanity's awareness of the true nature of the Universe and our relationship to it... and it's not a comfortable revelation either.
As the pieces begin to fall into place, the book becomes a real treat to read and the shifts in place and time fuel the sense of urgency and tension as events lead you to an all too sudden but satisfying ending... thankfully, this is only the first book in what promisies to be a fantastic and challenging trilogy, a must have for my library, to be sure.

Take It or Leave It.......2005-03-22

www.angelfire.com/zine2/fictiononline/myworks.html

Ken MacLeod's work has been praised far and wide. He has been called a nova, a one-man revolution. All of the above didn't make me love Cosmonaut Keep - not enough.

The novel starts far ahead in the future with Gregor Cairns and his friends, including Elizabeth Harkness (the love angle). Gregor is an exobiologist and Elizabeth is his research partner. Humanity once had the secret of interstellar travel. Now it was lost. Gregor and Elizabeth are working to rediscover it.

At about this point, I had a sense of deja vu. Hadn't I come across a similar scenario in another book? My memory provided the answer. It was a book called "The Sky Road", written also by Ken MacLeod (check out my review of that book). In that book also, humanity had lost the secret of interstellar travel and a group of people were trying to rediscover it.

The story jumps about three centuries back in time and we meet Matt Cairns (an ancestor of Gregor) and Jadey, an American girl living as an illegal alien in England. The speaking voice also changes from third person to first person (Matt). The story then moves in alternate chapters about Matt and Gregor. My sense of deja vu peaked. Weren't these self-same plot devices used in The Sky Road? Yes, they were.

Matt is a programmer. During Matt's time, a highly advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is discovered in an asteroid. This discovery is made by Marshall Titov, the exploration station of the European Space Agency. Marshall Titov then gets shrouded in secrecy as the various governments start their power play. Matt and Jadey try to crack this secrecy and they make contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. A part of the secrets Matt discovers are plans for the making of an interstellar drive.

Other important characters in the story are Camilia, Driver and Salasso (a non-human).

Of the two intertwined stories, Matt's is the more interesting of the two. The characters also are better developed in this thread. In my opinion, the book would have been quite interesting at half its present length, dealing only with one storyline. As it stands, it is a middle of the road book that you can take or leave.

Dark Light (The Engines of Light, Book 2)

Average customer rating:

Somewhat disappointing.
Significantly weaker than Cosmonaut Keep
"Like a ripple in a stream"
Motivation is the key...
Excellent Middle-of-Trilogy book

Dark Light (The Engines of Light, Book 2)
Ken MacLeod
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0765344963

Amazon.com

With his sharp, fast-paced, challenging novel Dark Light (sequel to the Prometheus Award-nominated Cosmonaut Keep in the Engines of Light series), Ken MacLeod reaffirms why he is science fiction's hottest new writer at the turn of the millennium.

From the days of the dinosaurs, mysterious aliens have been transporting earthly life forms across the galaxy to the worlds of the Second Sphere. Here, the descendants of humans abducted from the Stone Age and from colonial America coexist with dinosaurs--and with the saurs, their intelligent descendants, who are technologically superior to the humans. This arrangement is disturbed by the arrival of nearly immortal (but far from indestructible) humans from 21st-century Earth--men like Matt Cairns, who have no desire to let the secret of interstellar flight remain in the hands of the inscrutable, almost godlike aliens.

In addition to the Engines of Light series, MacLeod has written the Fall Revolution quartet: The Cassini Division (a Nebula Award and Arthur C. Clarke Award finalist); The Star Fraction (a Prometheus Award winner); The Stone Canal (also a Prometheus Award winner); and The Sky Road (a Hugo Award finalist and recipient of the British SF Association Award). --Cynthia Ward

Book Description

A Tale of Humans In a Universe of Ubiquitous Alien LifeIntelligence, it turns out, is rare-on planetary surfaces. It thrives everywhere else, from the Oort-cloud fringes of star systems to the magma furnaces beneath planetary crusts. And among the most powerful of the galaxy's intelligences, there are profound differences of opinion about how to deal with surface life-forms such as human beings. For, untold light years from Earth, the powers that rule the universe have been, for millennia, plucking humans (and other intelligent beings) from Earth and forcibly resettling them in a number of star systems close to one another, leaving them to develop on their own. A few generations ago, a small cadre of humans from Earth's 21st century arrived in this "Second Sphere" on their own power-the first humans ever to do so. Their descendants have formed the "Cosmonaut" class that dominates Mingulay. Now, two hundred years later, Gregor Cairns and a small group of associates have rediscovered faster-than-light travel and traveled to the star system next door. They're determined to find more of the original, mysteriously long-lived cosmonauts. They want answers. And for those answers, they intend to interrogate the gods.

Customer Reviews:

Somewhat disappointing........2006-11-05

Sequels are always difficult to write: you want to be fresh yet keep your fans satisfied. MacLeod seems to pull a George Lucas, writing the second book of the "Engines of Light" series only to fill the gap from the better "Cosmonaut's Keep" and the finishing "Engine City". I found "Dark Light" a bit of a let down; the plot and meat of the story could have been told in half the space, that other half filled with stoddy, dated political explorations...it took me twice as long to read this book than I would have normally, finding myself putting the book down mid-chapter as I lost interest.
Another complaint: two of the main characters (and most interesting) also disappear inexplicably from the first quarter of the book, just reappear in the denouement. There is only a throwaway line of where they were and their inactivity through this period was completely out of character.
Here's hoping the third and final installment is more of a page-turner.

Significantly weaker than Cosmonaut Keep.......2006-07-15

Matt and Gregor Cairns, with Elizabeth in tow, use their new light drive to travel to the planet Croatan (as in "gone to...") where they get embroiled in the local political scene, along with fellow Cosmonaut Grigor Volkov. They manage to communicate with two "gods," the alien intelligences that live in asteroids and comet nuclei, and discover that all the sentient species (i.e., saurs, krakens, and hominidae) are involved in some Great Game being played between the gods. Upon learning this, Volkov and Cairns return to Croatan to play a Great Game of their own by trying to influence the political future of the various peoples there, ostensibly in preparation for a coming alien war.

All in all, Dark Light makes a pretty disappointing follow-up to Cosmonaut Keep. MacLeod tells the story as a straight-forward narrative, instead of by interweaving multiple plot/timelines. While I appreciate his desire to try something different here, this story simply lacks juice. The new characters, including Stone and Slow-Leg from Croatan's prehistoric ("heathen") sky people and some "Christians" from Rawliston, are nowhere near as compelling as those sketched in Cosmonaut Keep (or in other works by MacLeod). Finally, the plot is simply not that interesting; instead of being a stand-alone work, it seems that Dark Light is merely a transitional novel between books 1 and 3 of the trilogy.

The book is not completely without merit, though. MacLeod's prose is still finely crafted, with many puns and double-entendres scattered throughout. As well, the machinations of Volkov and Matt Cairns are absolutely fascinating to those interested in libertarian, anarchist, socialist, and/or communist politics.

On its own, this is a so-so novel, but after reading the first few pages of its sequel, Engine City, I think that sticking with the trilogy as a whole will be worth it.

"Like a ripple in a stream".......2005-04-06

Charming, well-written, and often funny, this followup to "Cosmonaut Keep" is, umm, lightyears better than its clunky predecessor.

Well plotted, with memorable characters and interesting issues, especially about gender (prepare to be challenged), you'll probably get so wrapped up in the multiple POV tale that maybe you'll even forgive the author's goofball politics.

So flip a Greatful Dead CD onto the old player, turn on your reading light, open the book, and enjoy!

Motivation is the key..........2004-04-15

Matt Cairns, Gregor Cairns and the rest of the crew of the Bright Star have left Mingulay and visited their nearest star system, right next door. But they all have different reasons for going. Not everybody is doing it for the trade.
This second book in a the series is about motivation. What IS Matt after? What are Volkov's plans? What do the saur's want? What are the motivations of the krakens and, more importantly, what do the gods want?
And what happens when Matt decides to go and ask the gods themselves?

Excellent Middle-of-Trilogy book.......2003-12-24

This book was in many ways superior to Cosmonaut Keep, the first in the trilogy. While the first book had good characters, world building and wild speculation, it used an irritating technique to keep key information from the reader. Of course, it was obvious to most of us that one of the main characters was the ancestor of another, and what might likely happen as a result. I was left waiting around for the two plot lines to converge long after I guessed.

Dark Light dispenses with the two-track plotting and the concealment of information. It throws in several new worlds and societies, a great big wodge of fascinating political specualtion, and more good character development. It also ends with enough of a kick to keep you going to the next book. Well worth the time, with 50 per cent less frustration.

The Sky Road (Fall Revolution)
Average customer rating:

This is my favorite novel, and i read a *&!%-load.

Reading Fiction, Lesson One: Start at the begging of the series.

Would Have Been Better off as a Fantasy

Just OK

Yuck!

The Sky Road (Fall Revolution)
Ken Macleod
Manufacturer: Tor Science Fiction
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0812577590

Amazon.com

In the series that started with The Star Fraction, Ken MacLeod has created a future history whose genesis was an argument about anarchism between a group of left-wing students in the '70s. The destruction and renaissance of civilization, here and elsewhere in the human galaxy, turns on this argument. In the fourth book, MacLeod productively fills in some of the gaps. This is the story of Myra, Trot-turned-entrepreneur, whose nuclear deterrence-for-hire is central to the event known by some as the Fall and others as the Deliverance. It is also the story of young Clovis, part-time worker in the yard where the first space-ship in centuries is being built, part-time scholar trying to find out what Myra the Deliverer was really like.

MacLeod's readers are used to his quirky and intelligent take on the world of power politics and his charmingly cynical gift for engaging and engaged protagonists. What this book also has is a profound sense of the beauty of a simpler and stiller world; MacLeod's real gift is his capacity to see all sides of a question, even when he is sure of the answer. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk

Book Description

Centuries after the catastrophic Deliverance, humanity is again reaching into space. And Clovis, a young scholar working in the spaceship-construction yard, could make the difference between success and failure. For his mysterious new lover, Merrial, has seduced him into the idea of extrapolating the ship's future from the dark archives of the past.A past in which, centuries before, Myra Godwin faced the end of a different space age--her rockets redundant, her people rebellious, and her borders defenseless against the Sino-Soviet Union. As Myra appealed to the crumbling West for help, she found history turning on her own strange past--and on the terrible decisions she faces now.The Sky Road is a fireworks display, a bravura performance, and the most amazing novel yet by one of the powerful new voices in science fiction.

Customer Reviews:

This is my favorite novel, and i read a *&!%-load........2006-09-27

This is the most mind-opening book I've ever read. I frequently impose MacLeods questions on other people because the book poses questions of philosophy on such a level that forming an opinion on some sends the reader into the most interesting paths of cognition.

For instance: (the responses to this always very) Let's say I can plug my head into this computer, and download every memory, every single feeling and second UP UNTIL this very second. Let's say I do that, and then I open the window of my 7th story apartment and take a running leap onto a taxi below. When I die, and the computer brings the three-minuite-old me back, is it really still me? More importantly, When I'm flying to my death, am I thinking "Well, I'm sure glad I made that backup". Personally, I think i'd just be thinking "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!", but then what's the point of making a backup?

I mean, exploring principles of high-technology and how it can completely smash political barriers in ways that we're so used to not thinking of that we completely don't see them; this is what the book does. It's a study of political-techno-biological relations in different stages of a world. Ironically, the 'past' section of the story less resembles the present than the 'centuries-in-the-future' sections.

Truly, the characters are merely vessels for carrying a greater message and simply acting out the functions of the story, they don't seem to have personal depth - but that isn't a fault of macleod; failing to delve into expressing a character's personality traits through action and dialogues. There's fair amounts of that, although the reader fails to connect at times because the fact is simply this: Macleod's characters are representations of external circumstance. The book's main message is that we really are products of our circumstance, and we do and think what's in front of us.

That's why it ends like it does, and clovis never does understand maya's story. It's outside of his societally-conformant way of thinking: history only makes sense in it's own context BECAUSE we only understand ourselves in our own history's context. The entrancement of the book comes from truly questioning how much we really can understand as we're stuck in the frame of mind that we've grown into. The true genius of the book is the mind-popping questions of new political-technological systems that are actually believable when considering the possibilities of the futures that the book presents. What effect would immortality have on a society? What effects would nano-technology instant fabrication have on a capatalist society? If the cost of production was zero, would anarcho-communism come into effect? Would the very greed principle guiding humanity dissolve if we were immortal? If we truly had all the time we needed to live out whichever life we choosed 800 times, The world changes inevitably.

Ultimately, it is usually those who ask such questions whom see a bigger picture in every aspect of any situation. As legs will grow musclar if forced to run, a mind will be more receptive and open to unfamiliar ideas if a mind is used to fathoming the completely unfamiliar.

I read the cassini division too, and found it equally (maybe a bit less) thought-provoking and generally 'neat'. I haven't read any others in the series, and i tried to read 'Dark Light' from the 'Engines of Light' series but couldn't dig it..

Reading Fiction, Lesson One: Start at the begging of the series........2005-11-29

I couldn't help but to leave this small piece of advice for those complaining about obscure references and an overwhelmed feeling due to plot points they failed to grasp (or indeed, viewed as inconsequential rambling on Mr Mcleods part).

If the fourth book in a series is the first you read, then OF COURSE you're not going to have a clue with regards to obscure references and knowing-winks-and-nods to past events and characters.

For the love of god, read the series and put the book into some form of context before slapping a 2 star rating on it. You're putting off more patient prospective-readers who may well take the time and effort to become properly versed in the back story before leaping in for the final lap and then moaning that they don't know what's going on...

An excellent book and a wonderful series, the more positive elements of the other reviews here are all spot on... Not to be missed if you are a fan of Hamilton or Reynolds... Or like myself, have strong leftist/socialist tendencies and a love of sci-fi.

Would Have Been Better off as a Fantasy.......2005-03-22

www.angelfire.com/zine2/fictiononline/myworks.html

The story is set in a far future - so far in fact that it could be a story about another planet and another culture or it could even be a fantasy. The story has two parts. The protagonists of the first part are Clovis colha Gree (male) and Merrial (female).

The story starts with the meeting of the two protagonists at a festival. Merrial seems to be out to get Clovis. It may not all be love or even sexual attraction. She may have a hidden agenda.

The society depicted is quite confusing. Way, way back in the past, humankind, led by Myra Godwin, had reached for stars. It had ended in a catastrophic destruction at the hands of the Sino-Soviet Union. In spite of this catastrophic end, the western world remembers Myra as the Deliverer. If this is not confusing enough, get a bite into this: the world is once again reaching out for the stars. Space ships are being built, but computer programmers are called tinkers and are shunned by the society.

Clovis colha Gree is also a student of history and his topic is the life of the Deliverer. Merrial coaxes him into finding the secret files of Myra Godwin and looking into them, hoping that the new space age would benefit from her experiences.

Clovis delves into these secret files, and the story jumps from the present (of the narrative) to the past -- to the time of Myra Godwin. And then Myra Godwin's story starts to unfold.

It is a story within story. The story of Clovis and Merrial is told in first person, Clovis being the narrator. The story of Myra Godwin is in third person. The times are not very well realized. The characters are not very interesting. The story has overtones of myths when talking about the Deliverer, and this is well handled. This and the fact that computers and computer technology is referred in magical terms like "demons" and "invoking", prompted me to the earlier comment that the setting could as well be a fantasy.

Just OK.......2003-05-08

This book was ok. It was interesting to read, but there was nothing particularly special about it.

I never really felt much concern over what was going to happen with the characters or the story. I wanted to find out what happened, but I didn't have any strong feelings about the characters or what I thought should happen.

I've seen other reviews here that seem to indicate that this is part of a series. If that is the case, then perhaps I missed something in an earlier book that would have made this more enjoyable. I will probably investigate this and try to read any earlier books because I do think MacLeod writes well. Hopefully, in one of his other books I will find the spark that I think was lacking in this one.

Yuck!.......2003-02-18

This book was my first exposure to Macleod and I'm sorry I bought it. If this book did not have a cover and I was asked what genre it belonged to, I would have said "romance". It is sappy and slow with very transparent characters and ultimately not believable.

The writing is not good. Structurally, instead of developing characters through their actions, stereotypical people whose motives are dictated by their job title are used as walk-ons. And much of what should be told with action and dialogue is told through narrative. The specifics are not stellar, either. Here is an example: "The thought...appeared like a screensaver on the surface of her mind, whenever her mind went blank." And another (that I assume echoes romance novels): "She pulled away the curtain to reveal a large and reassuringly solid-looking bed...We faced each other naked, like the Man and the Woman in the Garden in the story."

Product Description

Hardcover version of ISBN# 0061020559

Engine City (The Engines of Light, Book 3)

Average customer rating:

A Satisfying Ending
Disappointing conclusion to a flawed trilogy
Not a strong finish....
Incoherent, confused, disappointing
An unusual ending for an unusual species

Engine City (The Engines of Light, Book 3)
Ken Macleod
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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Dark Light (The Engines of Light, Book 2)
Cosmonaut Keep (The Engines of Light, Book 1)
Newton's Wake: A Space Opera
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The Sky Road

ASIN: 0765344211
Release Date: 2003-12-30

Book Description

WHO OWNS THE STARS?For ten thousand years Nova Babylonia has been the greatest city of the Second Sphere, an interstellar civilization of human and other beings who have been secretly removed, throughout history, from Earth. Now humans from the far reaches of the Sphere have come, to offer immortality-and to urge them to build defenses against the alien invasion they know is coming.As humans and aliens compete and conspire, the wheels of history will lathe all the players into shapes new and surprising. The alien invasion will reach New Babylon at last-led by the most alien figure of all.

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The concluding volume of the acclaimed Engines of Light sequence, from one of the hottest new authors in modern SF.

Customer Reviews:

A Satisfying Ending.......2007-01-14

This is one book I thoroughly enjoyed. Each chapter was packed with new ideas and unexpected plot lines that drived the story forward; and despite the rich content, the pacing was executed just right. I have to admit I was afraid that the series might end badly, especially after reading the second book in the trilogy (Dark Light). Alas, my fears were unfounded, and Ken Macleod delivered briliantly!

The series had made a lot of use of, and reference to, popular alien culture - from "grays" to flying saucers. However, it was thankfully *not* about that particular popular culture, despite the superficial resemblance. It is about human potential, about inner drives - both human and extraterrestrial, about change, about history repeating itself, and about the wide unknown universe.

All in all, it was an interesting and fun journey through a universe filled with conscious asteroids, saurs (alien grays), kraken starships, utopian societies, future-historic events, and the down-to-earth familiar characters that shaped this future history.

The Engines of Light is the first work I've read from Mr. Macleod, and I should say it makes me look forward to reading his other novels.

Disappointing conclusion to a flawed trilogy.......2006-07-18

Reading the preface to this, the third volume in The Engines of Light trilogy, buoyed me after I completed the lackluster second volume, Dark Light. This novel seemed like the redemption of the trilogy (in the same fashion as Star Wars III). Alas, my optimistic assessment of the novel began to unravel as I was a quarter of the way in.

The "octopod" aliens whose future invasion was central to developments in Dark Light have arrived. These octopods, called Multis, Multipliers, or Spiders, are fractal in nature; a roughly human-sized representative of the species comprises smaller, self-similar individuals. These smaller Spiders can break off and grow into adults themselves or even be introduced into the system of a human in order to work nanoscale improvements (such as instant healing and immortality).

The reception that awaits the Multis is mixed, as should be expected by anyone who read Dark Light. Matt Cairns and his people adapt to the Multis and vice-versa, while the people of Nova Babylonia (who have undergone a revolution and fragmented into separate nation-states) responded to the alien arrival with nuclear weapons in space. The aliens make it through the defenses anyway, with the help of the Bright Star Cultures (the descendants of Cairns and other cosmonauts), the krakens and saurs panic and disappear, someone nukes New Babylon (Volkov? The gods?), and the ultimate crime, theicide, is committed.

If that all sounds confusing, that is because this novel, and the trilogy as a whole, WAS confusing. Reading it was like watching a firework launching into a beautiful trajectory only to come apart into thousands of different shards, and thinking to oneself, "I have to pick up those pieces."

In truth, the novel was fun to read (more fun than Dark Light) but the entire arc of the story, such as it was, became far too convoluted to resolve adequately. The ending was less a disappointment and more a head-scratcher; I did not understand what MacLeod had been trying to say with the trilogy.

That said, I must give kudos to MacLeod for creating in the Multis some of the more, well, alien aliens that I have encountered in SF. Perhaps MacLeod could do something in future works to explore the culture and history of the Multis. That would be fascinating.

Not a strong finish...........2004-02-27

Ken MacLoeds books are usually a complex but ultimately satisfying read. The first two books of this trilogy fitted into that description but this third book, Engine City, missed the mark. I found myself skipping through pages which is something I usually never do. It seemed like this was a very disjointed finish to a story that had started out really well in books one and two.

I look forward to his next work...although may not a trilogy.

Incoherent, confused, disappointing.......2004-01-30

Trilogies are hard. The most common pattern is a good start, a good to weak middle, and a weak ending. Macleod doesn't do that well.

The first book of this trilogy was an improvement on his previous writing, putting him almost at the same level at the earlier (weaker) books of Iain M Banks. By the second book he's slipped into the middle tier of writers, the third book sometimes reads like a satire of the first two. He seems desperate to find a way out of the story and finally just gives up.

Macleod shows signs of promise. He needs an editor, more discipline, and more practice. Stay away from the trilogies for a while.

As for you readers -- skip this book and skip the series.

An unusual ending for an unusual species.......2003-08-16

In retrospect, I suspect I should *not* have been surprised by the ending of the book; in a sense, the ending--and the coda which follows it--were set up in the very first book in the trilogy, "Cosmonaut Keep." The central theme of this book appears to be irony, from first page to last.

MacLeod has created a bizarre universe, populated with many different creatures, including saurs, krakens, selkies, and, perhaps the most alien of all, the eight-legged Multipliers. There's a lot of intriguing ideas jammed in here.

Unfortunately, all those ideas, in a book this short, mean that a lot of characters get short shrift. Likewise, the book isn't long enough to stand on its own; why certain characters behave the way they do doesn't really make sense unless you've read the previous two books. Thus, the series ends leaving a lot of questions (not the least of which is why the book is written in the present tense when, and only when, Matt Cairns is the viewpoint character).

All in all, though, if you've read the first two books, you'll probably want to read this one just to see how it ends. If you haven't, start with "Cosmonaut Keep" and "Dark Light" before reading this one.

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