Light
Out of all the sf books I read in December, Light by M. John Harrison was perhaps the best written. That shouldn't be a surprise. Harrison has a thing for prose. Simple and effective that few authors seem to be able to handle these days. Everything just flows alongthe path he set and that the read can only catch glimpses off between the words. I can't ignore that he strays into the same murky literary ground as Chris Priest and the early books by Iain Banks. Reality is fluid, you don't know what's true and what's illusion. And in the end everything just fits in perfectly.
The protagonist in the now does whatever ne need to in order to escape the vision of a bing he calls Shrander. Any means necessary. The two timelines in space is not too much different. Ed Chianese is a coward who just wants to hide in a virtual reality where he is someone else. The problem is that he owes some people, well almost everyone, things and they all come to him to collect. Seria Mau Genlicher is at the heart of a K-ship -- origin unknown, scavenged by humans somewhere just outside the K-tract. She has been there for so long that she begins to identfy as the ship itself and thinks having flesh is for the weak.
Read it now. Read it. Go on. You know you want to. I myself has just moved Travel Arrangements up to the next book to read.
Monday, 30 December 2002. 00:51
Science fiction 
notes in the margin (0)