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The BSFA Review 5 THE BSFA REVIEW #5 — Winter 2018 THE ISSUE 5 BSFA WINTER 2018 REVIEW EDITED BY SUSAN OKE page 1 WINTERISSUE 2018 5 THE BSFA REVIEW REVIEWED IN THIS ISSUE... Planetfall and Before Mars Daughter of Eden by Chris Beckett by Emma Newman Reviewed by Dave M. Roberts ... 19 Reviewed by Andy Sawyer ... 4 Thin Air by Richard Morgan All Good Things: The Last SFX Visions Reviewed by Stuart Carter ... 20 by David Langford Reviewed by Dan Hartland ... 6 Killer T by Robert Muchamore Reviewed by Ben Jeapes ... 21 The Iron Tactician by Alastair Reynolds Reviewed by Stuart Carter ... 7 The Doomed City by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Black Helicopters by Caitlin R. Kiernan Reviewed by Stuart Carter ... 22 Reviewed by Duncan Lawie ... 8 The Djinn Falls in Love (& other stories) Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton edited by Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin Reviewed by Stuart Carter ... 9 Reviewed by Dan Hartland ... 23 Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds Reviewed by Ben Jeapes ... 10 Off Rock by Kieran Shea Reviewed by Kate Onyett ... 11 Raising the Stones by Sherri S. Tepper Reviewed by Duncan Lawie ... 12 All Systems Red by Martha Wells Reviewed by Anne F. Wilson ... 13 The Gradual by Christopher Priest Reviewed by Nick Hubble ... 14 Gnomon by Nick Harkaway Reviewed by Paul Graham Raven ... 16 Obelisk by Stephen Baxter Reviewed by L J Hurst ... 18 The Uploaded by Ferrett Steinmetz Reviewed by Rsaal Firoz ... 18 THE BSFA REVIEW #5 – Winter 2018 WINTERISSUE 2018 5 The Master of Time by David Wingrove VIEW FROM Reviewed by Graham Andrews ... 24 THE EDITOR Embers of War by Gareth L. Powell Reviewed by Stuart Carter ... 25 elcome to the Winter edition of BSFA REVIEW. Hope you’re all looking forward The House of Binding Thorns Wto the holidays! In this edition there is a by Aliette de Bodard fair slice of Horror – mainly to commemorate Hal- Reviewed by Nick Hubble ... 27 loween just past. This is leavened by the usual mix of SF and Fantasy from publishers both large and A Peace Divided by Tanya Huff small. Many thanks to all our hardworking review- Reviewed by Sandra Unerman ... 28 ers who, through their unstinting efforts, have turned out a platter of insightful and considered Hidden Sun by Jaine Fenn dishes for your delight. Reviewed by Paul Graham Raven ... 29 The New Year is looming large. What innova- tions and challenges will 2019 bring? I visited the Deep Roots by Ruthanna Emrys Future Starts Here exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Reviewed by Anne F Wilson ... 30 Museum in September, which brought together over 100 objects either newly released or in development Drake: The Burned Man #1 that point towards where society might be headed. by Peter McLean I was particularly interested in the idea of ‘A World Reviewed by Kate Onyett ... 32 Wide Web of Trees’ where living trees are turned into radio antennae capable of communication over long Impyrium by Henry H. Neff distances. The system does not harm the trees but Reviewed by Christopher Owen ... 33 uses them to amplify the signal. When the tree anten- nae are connected, they form a living network. Now Robin Hood Demon’s Bane 1: Mark of that’s an idea that appeals. the Black Arrow and Robin Hood Sticking with the nature theme, one display sug- Demon’s Bane 2: The Two Torcs gested that we should be ‘bathing in good bacteria’. by Debbie Viguié and James R. Tuck healthy. In our modern world, obsessed with cleanli- Reviewed by Alex Bardy ... 34 Our skin is home to beneficial bacteria that keep us hard to survive. An alternative beauty range, ‘Mother Lost Gods by Micha Young nessDirt’, andpackages hygiene, up ‘goodthese bacteria’ microorganisms in bottles! can Is itfind time it Reviewed by David Lascelles ... 35 to consider what ‘clean’ really means? And for those who want to live forever... Well, exper- The Cabin at the End of the World iments encoding the brain patterns of mice (using a by Paul Tremblay process to create a digital model of a neural network) Reviewed by Matt Colborn ... 36 seem to be going well. Failing that, there is the ‘Lon- gevity Multipack’ — supplements developed by Ray Cemetry Girl (Book Three: Haunted) Kurzwell, the author of The Singularity is Near. Kur- by David Bell zwell takes over 100 of these pills a day in an effort to Reviewed by David Lascelles ... 38 extend his life to reach Singularity. Not sure if I fancy that, either. The Ghost in You by Katrina Mountfort Who wants to live forever? A loaded question. Reviewed by Estelle Roberts ... 39 “Experimental and extremely expensive, the potential for life extension also opens up ethical The Hollow Tree by James Brogden and financial issues. The question might not be Reviewed by Dave M. Roberts ... 40 who wants to live forever, but rather, who can afford to?” V&A — Future Starts Here exhibition Sleeping With The Lights On Tell you what — let’s stick with a nebulous afterlife by Darryl Jones and/or the dice-roll of reincarnation, shall we? Reviewed by L J Hurst ... 41 Let’s hear it for 2019! It’s going to be an interesting year! Susan Oke page 3 THE BSFA REVIEW #5 — Winter 2018 much of what “God’s City” actually is, which is one of the most effective elements of the book). Planetfall and Before Mars Planet- by Emma Newman fall is one of the most skilful examples of the way a writer with a full engagement with and under- (Gollancz, 2018) standing of her imaginary world draws the reader Reviewed by Andy Sawyer into it by a wilful refusal to share everything. While parts of the world are described or experienced in lanetfall and Before Mars suspense approaches critical level. This is as much third books of a trilogy. It’s claimed that minute detail, their significance is delayed until the the three novels can be read are as the stand-alone first and P – indeed it’s one of the most effective page-turners parts that may be read in any order rather than I’vea novel read of for suspense a long while, as it is with science clues fiction to the adventure nature of episodes of a serial. As an experiment, when asked some of the events sneaked into Ren’s narrative and to review these books, I did not read the middle revealed as the story unfolds. This is also a future book After Atlas, though I shall: these are two of the which extrapolates neatly from ours—people are most intriguing recent sf novels I have read for a “chipped” and linked to databases and applications while. such as MyPhys take medical care of them—in a In Planetfall, Renata Ghali is part of a colony on an way which many sf futures based upon our digital alien world close to a strange construct, or growth, presents fail to do convincingly. she refers to as “God’s City”. Led by Mack, the In Before Mars, Anna Kubrin has just arrived on “Ringmaster”, the colony has been there for some- thing over 22 years, during which Ren has served a note written by herself warning her not to trust as the colony’s 3-D printer engineer, when a man theMars colony as geologist psychiatrist, and artist though in residence. she can’t She remem finds- in his early twenties is spotted staggering towards ber writing it. The wedding ring she brought is not the colony. Lee Sung-Soo is one of a group separat- hers. Banks, the frontman of the “mersives” that ed in some way (how and why is one of the several are the colony’s main export, is inexplicably rude to enigmatic mysteries Ren is, for her own purposes, her. We are in a future where, some decades before keeping partially hidden from us at this point), and the time of the events taking place, democracy claims to be the sole survivor of a group thought has collapsed and corporations rule (government itself is “GovCorp”). Everyone (almost) is the pos- or founder of the colony, Lee Suh-Mi, who brought thelong-dead. expedition He isto theGod’s grandson City and of who the now “Pathfinder” seems to learned in Planetfall that individuals are chipped be residing within it. Sung’s arrival throws compli- sessorand monitored, of an Artificial but what Personal we discover Assistant; here expandswe have cations into the colony’s relationship with its own greatly upon that. Anna has joined the “corporate” past, and in particular with the imminent ceremo- world, but we learn about campaigns for digital privacy: for her “an old bastion of a bygone age that and which may shed some light on the relationship only the most romantic and naive would wish to theny whichcolonists involves have with God’s their City world. and the Pathfinder defend” (178). What in our time is virtual reality is What exactly these relationships are, and indeed presented here as the “mersives”: you can record what happened after Planetfall, take some time to and play back and be immersed in episodes of your unravel, because Ren has clearly been so damaged life, and Anna, in the early part of the novel, is fre- by events that she cannot face what is going on. quently confused about whether she is in one (there That she is withholding a dark secret from the rest is such a thing as “immersian psychosis”). After she of the colony is obvious, and at one point the reason why she constantly refuses to let anyone into her hers and so is the writing and ink, she wonders if home, when revealed to us via Sung, seems to be shetests painted the paper it and of forgot.the message There andis something finds that in it the IS evidence for this damage.
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