Thursday 28 September 2017

Stories Of Your Life And Others

Stories Of Your Life And Others, Ted Chiang


Though I had minor reservations about the film #Arrival, there was good enough about it to make me track down this volume of short stories by its author, Ted Chiang. As well as the source of Arrival - which is pleasingly similar and different to its adaptation - the tales take in the construction of the Tower of Babylon to reach Heaven, a steampunk tale grounded in performationist biology, and a faux-documentary on a technology that masks the ability to perceive human beauty so that users don't judge people by their appearance. Quite a spread, and all rather unique and enjoyable - I'll definitely be digging deeper into Chiang's back-catalogue.

Saturday 23 September 2017

Marcher

Marcher, Chris Beckett


An early title from Chris Beckett. It posts an alternative present in which immigration officers actually police the transit of people from alternative universes. Fuelled by an inexplicable drug called "slip", people pass through the novel's present day to either seek a better life, escape their crimes or to promulgate violent religions from their own universes. Starts well, has lots of interesting ideas, but its narrative doesn't really work on the end, and it kind-of fizzles out. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's an expanded version of a short story that did work, but I just don't think Beckett knew where he was going with it when he started. Still, not a terrible read at all.

Uncanny Valley

Uncanny Valley, Greg Egan


More novella than novel, this is the first Greg Egan I've read in a while. His Orthogonal series was just too tedious to stick with. However, this is him back on form with a kind of "whodunnit" set in his memory uploading future. Except that the detective is the uploaded personality, and he's trying to find out what, and why, his recently-deceased original left out of his memories. Very enjoyable, if over all too quickly.

#book #sciencefiction #gregegan #kindle

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Vinegar Girl

Vinegar Girl, Anne Tyler


It's been a very long time since my last Anne Tyler. This one is part of a series of books by contemporary authors that retell Shakespeare plays - specifically The Taming Of The Shrew here. I rather liked this, though it does that trick whereby at some critical point it flashforwards to its conclusion, thus kind-of avoiding some narrative thorniness / gymnastics. I'm not au fait with the original, so this might be the same there, but it detracts a little from what's an otherwise amusing, if slightly implausible, yarn.