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Books : Light (Gollancz S.F.)
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Light (Gollancz S.F.) by: M. John Harrison List Price: £17.99 Price: £2.50 You Save: £15.49 (86%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Hardcover EAN: 9780575070257 ISBN: 0575070250 Label: Gollancz Manufacturer: Gollancz Number Of Pages: 336 Publication Date: October 31, 2002 Publisher: Gollancz Studio: Gollancz Sales Rank: 461151 Related Items:
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Editorial Review: Amazon.co.uk Review: Light marks that fine writer M John Harrison's first return to the heartland of SF--including spaceships and hair-raising interstellar chases--since his apocalyptic anti-space opera The Centauri Device (1975). The heavy SF action begins in 2400. Space-going humanity is the latest of many civilizations to be baffled by the impenetrable Kefahuchi Tract; that vast stellar region where an unshielded singularity makes physics itself unreliable. Along its accessible fringe, the "Beach", solar systems are littered with crazy, abandoned devices used to probe the Tract since before life began on Earth. A whole dead-end culture is based on beachcombing this rubble of industrial archaeology... 25th-century characters include a woman who's sacrificed almost everything to merge with the AI "mathematics" of a crack military spacecraft; a former daredevil who once surfed black holes but has retreated into a virtual reality tank; the lady proprietor of the Circus of Pathet Lao, with an alien freakshow and a hidden agenda; and a variety of raunchy, smelly, gene-sculpted lowlife, some comic, some menacing. Many are not what they seem. Meanwhile in 1999 London, physicists Kearney and Tate--remembered in 2400 as the fathers of interstellar flight--are getting nowhere. Kearney's personal problems occupy familiar Harrison territory: urban paranoia, a seedily unreliable guru, bad sex, guilty rituals to propitiate a metaphysical-seeming threat called the Shrander--a pursuing image out of nightmare. In the lab, both Kearney and Tate fear the increasing quantum strangeness of their results. The cosmological wonders and hazards of the Beach form a backdrop to space pursuits and violent skirmishes whose duration is measured in nanoseconds, reported in tensely lyrical prose. Eventually everything comes together as it should--even that oppressive 1999 story strand--with revelations, transformation, transcendence, and ultimate hope. Harrison demands your full attention and rewards it richly. --David Langford Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - LightThe majority of the story appears complex as it unfolds, but blossoms into a beautifully written conjunction of the three main story arcs: three characters of different times and places, one the creator of the technology another relies upon, the other hopelessly intertwined with both. The inexplicable and deeply interesting events of the plot somehow follow one another into deeper madness, yet never confuse or put off the reader. The net result is an easy-to-read, intricately composed piece of literary fiction pretending to be sci-fi. Awesome: 8.5/10 Rating:  - Simply beautiful and thought-provokingI have never read a greater feat of imagination since Dune or The Silmarillion. In its own sphere this is an unsurpassed masterpiece - and I am not prone to hyperbole. Rating:  - Impenetrable RubbishPurchased this book on the recommendation of Ian M Banks, looking forward to a quality sci-fi read, bitterly disappointing. From the opening chapter to the closing paragraph this book was a struggle to read. Empty characters which evoke no emotion, empathy or hatred, on the part of the reader and a senseless plot that leaves you empty. Drivel is the best single word to describe it. Rating: - A Radiant read...I'm not surprised that this book has polarized opinions, don't read this if you think it's going to be another formulaic space opera. Light is a book that asks more questions than it answers and certainly isn't from the Clarke or Asimov branch of "science" fiction. Instead you get something a lot like the film Pi, an exploration of madness and obsession mingled with the strangeness that is pure math and quantum theory. Nothing much is explained, it's just left for the reader to piece together in whatever way they want. This is a challenging read, but if you're tired of the same old formula of derivative fiction try this guy out. It is a truly intense book that might not be on everyone else's wavelength but is all the better for ... Read More: Rating: - BrilliantInteresting how this book polarises opinion. I loved it. I fail to see how some reviewers view it as "infantile" or "puerile", referencing the few sex scenes and the character name Billy Anker. Playful and honest, but not puerile. And I can see how the opening is a bit disorientating: it does take a fair while before you can tell what's going on, and even longer before the threads start weaving together. But that's part of the manic pleasure it provides as you're carried along through one atmospheric environment after another. I thought the writing was absolutely extraordinary in places, tight, precise, evocative. Yes, it is a bit overwrought in places, overwritten, too stylish for its own good. But overall, it's stunning. The characters aren't ... Read More: |
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