In Broken Angels we find Kovacs employed in an elite mercenary force fighting in a bloody corporate out on a colony planet. While recovering after a failed strike he is approached by Jan Schneider, a pilot looking for someone to handle the tactical arrangements for an archaeological expedition. Kovacs decides to go along, and after busting the archaeologue Tanya Wardani out of prison camp and getting some corporate backing he assembles a colorful group of soldiers and sets out to explore what could be the most significant Martian artifact uncovered so far.

The Martian connection was mentioned briefly in Altered Carbon – and while you would think that Martians would be quite passé as a sci-fi subject in this century, Morgan still manages to create an interesting “vanished civilization”-scenario. I think it adds some balance to the novel, because no matter how fascinating the complex psyche and ultra-violent rampage of Kovacs might be, it would probably become rather dull quickly without that substance and purpose.

With a strong and complex protagonist, a very well conceived setting and a good yarn, it all adds up to an excellent, “unputdownable” sci-fi thriller. With the two great novels I’ve read so far, Morgan has earned himself a place in my “got to read everything ASAP”-list.

Summarizing the setting of Perdido Street Station is not an easy task. In a perfect world the term fantasy would be sufficient, but since fantasy has come to mean “a story about a youngster from a backwater community who gets involved in something that takes him on a journey where he meets races he only knows from stories (at least one each of “beautiful and wise” and “savage and hideous”) and ultimately saves the whole fairytale/medieval-inspired world from Evil”, I guess it will need a bit more explanation. The setting of New Crobuzon is fascinating. Imagine London from two centuries ago, grown to the size it is today. Then take the technology of the same time, with a bit of thaumaturgy added to put it somewhere beyond regular steampunk, and use the related sciences for a few lengthy discourses. Then top it off with with a good deal of the dystopian corruption, crime and perversions more commonly found in cyberpunk sci-fi, and you’ll have at least a rough estimate of what it looks like.

But there is more to Perdido Street Station than just the rich and imaginative setting. It is a love song to the great melting-pot cities, a foray into the dynamics of cultures co-existing as well as the powers that try to exploit them, a tribute to the free spirit, a story of love and loss, and – when the shit hits the fan – a damned intense horror-thriller.

It is one of the most refreshing works of fantastic fiction I’ve read in a long time, and for a verdict I’ll simply say that I agree with any superlative-filled review excerpts and award nominations you’ll see if you decide to check out Perdido Street Station yourself. Personally I have decided to catch up with China Miéville’s work by getting the follow up, The Scar,at once, and the rest will probably follow soon as well.

Wikipedia entry (China Miéville) | amazon.com | amazon.co.uk

After a miscalculation a spaceship crashes onto the planet Eden, and while figuring out how to repair it its six crewmen (who we get to know only by their roles: the Captain, the Engineer, the Chemist, the Doctor, the Cyberneticist and the Physicist) set out to discover the surroundings. Step by step it leads to an encounter with an alien culture that is, well, very alien. They discover an automated factory that appears to be stuck in a loop, encounter strange vehicles and the creatures that they call “Doublers”. As more discoveries about these Doublers are made, questions arise regarding the health of their society.

Written in a way that is elaborate but still not excessively wordy – perhaps “dense” is the correct term – Eden feels like more of a heavy read than its 260 pages hint about. Much of it is dialog, whenever they encounter something new the involved characters debate their finding, but even if they reach an agreement Lem leaves many loose ends for the reader to speculate about. And I think that is the strongest point of Eden, the way in which Lem both creates an alien world, and skillfully uses it to ask questions and stimulate thoughts about how we would perceive something so utterly alien (with a few reflections about how someone utterly alien would perceive our world as well).

All in all, Stanislaw Lem’s Eden is a good novel that is well worth to be remembered – a classic, but still a bit from something I’d mention as “one of the great…”.

Related links:
Stanislaw Lem, Official site and Wikipedia entry
Eden at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

Altered Carbon

Kovacs has been, by way of what we could call “an offer he can’t refuse”, contracted to investigate the death Laurens Bancroft – one of those who have money. The police have written off the case as suicide, but Bancroft himself insists, contrary to the evidence, that he was murdered. Ah, yes – in the the future crafted by Morgan real death only happens if the “cortical stack” in which the mind is digitized is damaged, and men like Bancroft evade even that risk by remote storage. Still, there is a gap since Bancroft’s last back-up, and Kovacs sets out to find seek truth in a web of corruption and vendetta.

In all honesty, Altered Carbon is pretty much raw pulp, but it is well written pulp that, as Peter F. Hamilton blurbs, “hits the floor running and then starts to accelerate”. The first person narrative – you can’t write a detective tale any other way, can you? – is the kind that manages to be graphically vivid while keeping the pace up as an intriguing yarn with plenty of twists is unraveled.

I loved Altered Carbon, and I doubt anyone who is appealed by the concept of cyberpunk and gritty noir blended will be disappointed. I am certainly going to grab the sequels as soon as possible.

Related links:
Altered Carbon at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Official Homepage
Richard Morgan at Wikipedia

Set in 2166, some 80 years after the devastating events known as the Gene Wars, Lethe presents the reader with a quite damaged world. Due to the the harsh climate remaining pure humans are forced to live in protected reservations under the control of the League of New Alchemists – an organization controlled by a small group of disembodied, networked brains known as the Heads.

Jenae Kim is doing research for the League together with the dolphins, with whom she can communicate telepathically after changing to an aquatic form known as Altermode. This research leads Jenae to stumble on a piece of significant information – knowledge which forces Jenae to flee outside the reach the heads.

Meanwhile, Daire Morales passes through an unexplored gateway at the mystercial celestial object dubbed Underkohling. What he finds is an Edenic world, populated by a small colony of human children and adolescents.

While it doesn’t make me want to throw superlatives around me, I must say Lethe is a solid, quite skillfully executed work. The characters are well defined and come through vividly. The story is intriguing and well laid out – using the term fast-paced would be an exaggeration, but it flows on well, with enough surprises to keep the interest up – and the future it is set in is well thought out. To put a label on it, I’d call it a dystopy (though with a glimmer of hope) half-way to hard sci-fi. In short, not much to complain about.

Availability suggests that it is out of print by now, but here are direct links to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk for those who want to track down a copy in the Amazon Marketplace.

Under the threat of an all-out nuclear war the latest fashion among the American public is to buy SCOPAS suits – high-tech protective gear supposedly equipped with everything needed to survive the nuclear aftermath. Our protagonist, George Paxton, is a tombstone engraver in a small Massachusetts town. Being a loving family man he is deeply mournful to the fact that he can’t afford such a suit to protect his daughter, until he is given an offer for a free SCOPAS suit on the condition that he signs a special contract – with an agreement Paxton doesn’t put much consideration to with the love for his daughter in mind.

Then the nuclear war, with retaliations and counter-retaliations happens, and Paxton finds himself on a submarine along with the five other survivors of the human race. They find out that they are on the way to a trial – prosecuted by the “unadmitted”, the future generations that never got to be born because of the war. While the other defendants all had active roles in the nuclear proliferation, Paxton is tried as a representative of the bystanders that passively let the arms race happen.

Morrow’s storytelling is quite full of fantastic elements, besides the overall concept of the unadmitted there is also a few passages taking place in 16th century France, featuring no other than Nostradamus himself. In the trial itself the author makes excellent use of the Cold War rhetoric, and speculates on ideas of deterrence contra disarmament. There is also a what probably is described as a certain kind of bizarre over-exaggeration in the way certain scenes are depicted, like a fairy-tale gone horribly bad, but I think it fits quite well with the big picture.

Even though two decades has passed since This is the Way the World Ends was published, I thought it was an excellent piece of speculative fiction. Well worth reading for anyone in need of some food for thought.

While I am on the subject of the author: another novel by James Morrow that I feel is worth mentioning, even though I feel it was too long since I read it to write anything detailed about it, is Towing Jehovah, in which a disgraced sea captain is contracted by the Vatican to tow the corpse of God to the Arctic for preservation. An intriguing speculation, and a great example of a satire where the author manages to get equally into the mindset of both the religious and the atheists.

Related links:
James Morrow on Wikipedia
Author’s homepage
This is the Way the World Ends at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Towing Jehovah at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk