Sci-fi book review: Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
Sci-fi book review: Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
Wow. I mean, really, wow! This is one of the most incredible works of science fiction I have ever read. It's funny, witty, suspenseful, clever, and, most of all, so very very human. It has one of the most original concepts in SF since the cyberpunk genre debuted.
Gone-Away World has everything you could possible want in a SF novel: freebooting, trucks, Master Wu's gong fu martial arts school, good guys, ass-kicking ladies & gents, science blunders, military blunders, and mimes.
The story is brilliantly written in a rambling first-person style reminiscent of the great P. G. Wodehouse.
The tremendously interesting concept behind the book is that their scientists have discovered that everything is made of two parts, matter and information. Naturally, they realize that a powerful weapon can be made, and that by deleting the information they can make their enemies Go Away. No mess, no fuss. And naturally, their is a war, the weapon is used, and something goes terribly wrong.
With the information gone, the matter that remains can be reformed into the stuff of nightmares - monsters, etc. After the war, our heroes are hired by the mysterious Corporation to lay a pipeline of stuff called FOX that (somehow, mysteriously) keeps the monsters away.
Who is the Corporation? What is FOX? Find out as our heroes figure out the secrets of the post-war Gone Away world.
Wow. I mean, really, wow! This is one of the most incredible works of science fiction I have ever read. It's funny, witty, suspenseful, clever, and, most of all, so very very human. It has one of the most original concepts in SF since the cyberpunk genre debuted.
Gone-Away World has everything you could possible want in a SF novel: freebooting, trucks, Master Wu's gong fu martial arts school, good guys, ass-kicking ladies & gents, science blunders, military blunders, and mimes.
The story is brilliantly written in a rambling first-person style reminiscent of the great P. G. Wodehouse.
The tremendously interesting concept behind the book is that their scientists have discovered that everything is made of two parts, matter and information. Naturally, they realize that a powerful weapon can be made, and that by deleting the information they can make their enemies Go Away. No mess, no fuss. And naturally, their is a war, the weapon is used, and something goes terribly wrong.
With the information gone, the matter that remains can be reformed into the stuff of nightmares - monsters, etc. After the war, our heroes are hired by the mysterious Corporation to lay a pipeline of stuff called FOX that (somehow, mysteriously) keeps the monsters away.
Who is the Corporation? What is FOX? Find out as our heroes figure out the secrets of the post-war Gone Away world.