More current reading
Starting with the back half of Brian Stableford's "Emortality" series, comprising The Cassandra Complex, Dark Ararat and The Omega Expedition.
Having taken us to the verge of the 31st century in The Fountains of Youth, Stableford then backtracks all the way to the mid-21st for The Cassandra Complex, with a story involving the beginnings of the immortality-research programme... also involving murder, kidnapping, terrorism and the extermination of half a million mice. It's a reasonably neat near-future techno-thriller, but it hinges on the discovery of a fatally flawed recipe for immortality - and also clears up something that was annoying me throughout the first three books. People kept talking about "the Miller effect" and how it was an obstacle to indefinite longevity, but they were never clear on what it was.... Anyway, for reference, biologist Morgan Miller has discovered a (niftily plausible-sounding) way to make organisms renew themselves constantly - the catch being that it rejuvenates brain tissue along with everything else, and to the state it was in before memories and personality have a chance to form. You can be immortal, if you don't mind having the intellect of a mouse....
The same gimmick, in a different way, crops up in Dark Ararat, where it's the cornerstone of the biological system on a newly discovered Earthlike world. Interstellar travel is feasible by the time of this book, given the techniques of life extension and suspended animation available (Stableford has no truck, in this series at least, with FTL travel). Brought out of suspended animation in a spaceship orbiting the planet variously known as Tyre or Ararat, ecologist Matthew Fleury has to unravel the mystery of the planet's ecosystem. And he has to solve the mystery of the expedition's previous ecologist, who was murdered doing the same job. And during the several centuries of travel out to Ararat/Tyre, the ship's crew have got rather tired of looking after the people in suspended animation, and have now set up their own government, and are locked in (mostly bloodless) combat with the ship's original owner, who is still around and knows a trick or two. All this and mysterious alien indigenes too... Matthew Fleury has his work cut out for him.
I remember not much liking this one first time out, but it rather grew on me with a re-read. Despite all the adventures and mysteries and political shenanigans, though, it's still a pretty slow and rather talky book, with the dramatic climax coming as Fleury essentially live-blogs his way across the alien planet, resolving the crises with the healing power of public relations. It's not concerned nearly as much with slam-bang action as it is with the scientific (mostly, biological) concepts on display. And it works a lot better, I think, if you see it as a set-up for the next book....
... which, actually, is true of all the books in the series, because The Omega Expedition takes characters and themes from the five preceding volumes and wraps them all up together (and does it, I have to say, very cleverly and very neatly). One of the advantages of the "emortality" theme is, you can keep characters around for a long, long time. So, The Omega Expedition is narrated by Madoc Tamlin, who was a secondary character in Inherit the Earth and has spent most of the intervening centuries in suspended animation, and it includes characters like Mortimer Gray, Emily Marchant and Mortimer's rental snowmobile from The Fountains of Youth (I'm not going to describe how the snowmobile is important), and Matthew Fleury's daughter from Dark Ararat, and a minor character from Architects of Emortality (and also a close relative of the ginger wig who was the main villain of that book, and if you think I'm going to explain that, think again), and a whole mess of the biological, sociological and philosophical high concepts which have been infusing the whole series. It's the 33rd century, now, and the post-human solar system is a mess of conflicting philosophies.... Back in the 21st century, one Adam Zimmerman (frequently mentioned in the preceding five books) set the tone for the coming millennium by jiggering up the world's financial system and then putting himself into suspended animation until he could be retrieved and made immortal. Now, he's finally being thawed out, and getting his support would be a major PR coup for any one of the post-human factions. What sort of immortality will Zimmerman choose, of the several that are offered him? It's not a simple choice, and it's made even more complex by the emergence of new players in the political game.
I really should have re-read all these books in one lump before now, because The Omega Expedition pulls all the themes and ideas together really very well, and it makes even the lesser entries in the series (like Dark Ararat or Architects of Emortality) take on new depth and significance when you think about the ideas being presented. It's a highly readable book in its own right - Madoc Tamlin making a typically Stableford snarky narrator - but it also works as a capstone for the series as a whole, bringing it to a satisfying conclusion. Adam Zimmerman is the off-stage protagonist of the whole series, and his final decision, in the light of all the discussions about the nature of identity and the meaning of existence in a post-mortal society, is both surprising and, retrospectively, inevitable.
In summary, then: the six books of the "Emortality" series are decent enough reading taken separately, but they fit together into a genuinely impressive whole. Despite the occasional terrorist plot, mass murder, supervolcano eruption and galaxy-eating plague, they're not heavy on action... but the ideas in them are mind-blowing stuff.
Anyway. Passing over Sarah Hapgood's Strange Tales 4 (non-fiction about historical mysteries, some "paranormal", some just mundane things like unsolved murders, all discussed in a few bald paragraphs like stories from the News of the World, caused me no actual pain, excited no particular interest), another good thing I came upon was Who Fears the Devil?, a possibly definitive collection of Manly Wade Wellman's "Silver John" short stories. John (he has no last name) is a wanderer, an ex-Army veteran who now tramps through the backwoods of Appalachia with his silver-stringed guitar - confronting, as he goes, human and supernatural evil in many guises; ghosts, sorcerers, ancient monsters and things from beyond the known world. It all gets a bit H.P. Lovecraft in some ways - except Wellman has a plain and unpretentious prose style, and John himself a warm humanity, that Lovecraft never aspired to. The overt religiosity of some of the stories might be off-putting to some (doesn't bother me much, but then it's my religion, so it probably wouldn't), but, in the main, John isn't so much a plaster saint as an ordinary decent guy, doing his best to get by in a world which includes alarming things like the Ugly Bird, One Other, and the Behinder (which you are never supposed to see, as it's always behind you). I first made John's acquaintance in a little collection called Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum, which includes the story "The Desrick on Yandro", and I'm very glad to meet up with him again.
That's it for now. I recently splurged a massive 83p on a collection of ten "Golden Age" SF and fantasy novels, and I may report back on how much of the gilding has rubbed off. We shall see.
Having taken us to the verge of the 31st century in The Fountains of Youth, Stableford then backtracks all the way to the mid-21st for The Cassandra Complex, with a story involving the beginnings of the immortality-research programme... also involving murder, kidnapping, terrorism and the extermination of half a million mice. It's a reasonably neat near-future techno-thriller, but it hinges on the discovery of a fatally flawed recipe for immortality - and also clears up something that was annoying me throughout the first three books. People kept talking about "the Miller effect" and how it was an obstacle to indefinite longevity, but they were never clear on what it was.... Anyway, for reference, biologist Morgan Miller has discovered a (niftily plausible-sounding) way to make organisms renew themselves constantly - the catch being that it rejuvenates brain tissue along with everything else, and to the state it was in before memories and personality have a chance to form. You can be immortal, if you don't mind having the intellect of a mouse....
The same gimmick, in a different way, crops up in Dark Ararat, where it's the cornerstone of the biological system on a newly discovered Earthlike world. Interstellar travel is feasible by the time of this book, given the techniques of life extension and suspended animation available (Stableford has no truck, in this series at least, with FTL travel). Brought out of suspended animation in a spaceship orbiting the planet variously known as Tyre or Ararat, ecologist Matthew Fleury has to unravel the mystery of the planet's ecosystem. And he has to solve the mystery of the expedition's previous ecologist, who was murdered doing the same job. And during the several centuries of travel out to Ararat/Tyre, the ship's crew have got rather tired of looking after the people in suspended animation, and have now set up their own government, and are locked in (mostly bloodless) combat with the ship's original owner, who is still around and knows a trick or two. All this and mysterious alien indigenes too... Matthew Fleury has his work cut out for him.
I remember not much liking this one first time out, but it rather grew on me with a re-read. Despite all the adventures and mysteries and political shenanigans, though, it's still a pretty slow and rather talky book, with the dramatic climax coming as Fleury essentially live-blogs his way across the alien planet, resolving the crises with the healing power of public relations. It's not concerned nearly as much with slam-bang action as it is with the scientific (mostly, biological) concepts on display. And it works a lot better, I think, if you see it as a set-up for the next book....
... which, actually, is true of all the books in the series, because The Omega Expedition takes characters and themes from the five preceding volumes and wraps them all up together (and does it, I have to say, very cleverly and very neatly). One of the advantages of the "emortality" theme is, you can keep characters around for a long, long time. So, The Omega Expedition is narrated by Madoc Tamlin, who was a secondary character in Inherit the Earth and has spent most of the intervening centuries in suspended animation, and it includes characters like Mortimer Gray, Emily Marchant and Mortimer's rental snowmobile from The Fountains of Youth (I'm not going to describe how the snowmobile is important), and Matthew Fleury's daughter from Dark Ararat, and a minor character from Architects of Emortality (and also a close relative of the ginger wig who was the main villain of that book, and if you think I'm going to explain that, think again), and a whole mess of the biological, sociological and philosophical high concepts which have been infusing the whole series. It's the 33rd century, now, and the post-human solar system is a mess of conflicting philosophies.... Back in the 21st century, one Adam Zimmerman (frequently mentioned in the preceding five books) set the tone for the coming millennium by jiggering up the world's financial system and then putting himself into suspended animation until he could be retrieved and made immortal. Now, he's finally being thawed out, and getting his support would be a major PR coup for any one of the post-human factions. What sort of immortality will Zimmerman choose, of the several that are offered him? It's not a simple choice, and it's made even more complex by the emergence of new players in the political game.
I really should have re-read all these books in one lump before now, because The Omega Expedition pulls all the themes and ideas together really very well, and it makes even the lesser entries in the series (like Dark Ararat or Architects of Emortality) take on new depth and significance when you think about the ideas being presented. It's a highly readable book in its own right - Madoc Tamlin making a typically Stableford snarky narrator - but it also works as a capstone for the series as a whole, bringing it to a satisfying conclusion. Adam Zimmerman is the off-stage protagonist of the whole series, and his final decision, in the light of all the discussions about the nature of identity and the meaning of existence in a post-mortal society, is both surprising and, retrospectively, inevitable.
In summary, then: the six books of the "Emortality" series are decent enough reading taken separately, but they fit together into a genuinely impressive whole. Despite the occasional terrorist plot, mass murder, supervolcano eruption and galaxy-eating plague, they're not heavy on action... but the ideas in them are mind-blowing stuff.
Anyway. Passing over Sarah Hapgood's Strange Tales 4 (non-fiction about historical mysteries, some "paranormal", some just mundane things like unsolved murders, all discussed in a few bald paragraphs like stories from the News of the World, caused me no actual pain, excited no particular interest), another good thing I came upon was Who Fears the Devil?, a possibly definitive collection of Manly Wade Wellman's "Silver John" short stories. John (he has no last name) is a wanderer, an ex-Army veteran who now tramps through the backwoods of Appalachia with his silver-stringed guitar - confronting, as he goes, human and supernatural evil in many guises; ghosts, sorcerers, ancient monsters and things from beyond the known world. It all gets a bit H.P. Lovecraft in some ways - except Wellman has a plain and unpretentious prose style, and John himself a warm humanity, that Lovecraft never aspired to. The overt religiosity of some of the stories might be off-putting to some (doesn't bother me much, but then it's my religion, so it probably wouldn't), but, in the main, John isn't so much a plaster saint as an ordinary decent guy, doing his best to get by in a world which includes alarming things like the Ugly Bird, One Other, and the Behinder (which you are never supposed to see, as it's always behind you). I first made John's acquaintance in a little collection called Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum, which includes the story "The Desrick on Yandro", and I'm very glad to meet up with him again.
That's it for now. I recently splurged a massive 83p on a collection of ten "Golden Age" SF and fantasy novels, and I may report back on how much of the gilding has rubbed off. We shall see.