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Loading... Only Forwardby Michael Marshall Smith
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. cool concept, didn't work. requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. and even then it's still boring. Stark, the wonderfully quirky and original protagonist/narrator of this story is called in to solve the mystery of the disappearance of a high level exec. The nature of Stark's narration makes this a bumpy and often confusing ride through a number of worlds and realities. Written with good amounts of dry humour. Stark is a troubleshooter/dick who has a specialty in recovery of things that people can't find. In this case he is tasked to find a scientist. However, it is not that simple, really, the City he lives in is very bizarre, indeed, with different parts being completely different and having completely different rules. As in rules of reality, more Cynosure or Wonderland than just the bad neighborhood or slum type of thing. Didn't quite work for me, but is not bad. http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2006/12/only-forward-michael-marshall-smith.html This one has been sitting in my to-be-read pile for years. In fact, it must be at least ten years because the bookshop stamp has a seven digit phone number - and they went out in 1994! I originally picked it up because it was a winner of the Philip K Dick award. This award is given each year for the best annual sci-fi novel that did not go into hard cover publication. (No Dick novel ever went into a hardcover publication in his lifetime which was why the award was created.) And I am kicking myself for waiting so long. Some have compared MMS to Douglas Adams. I can see why - but the analogy doesn't really work for me in this context at least. This book is more like some of Neal Stephenson's novels eg SnowCrash. Stark, the book's narrator, is a sort of a futuristic hard-boiled private eye. He's got contacts everywhere, he's 100% sure of himself at all times, and he seemingly can get any job done no matter how unusual. His speciality is finding lost people - which brings us to this story wherein things don't go quite as they'd been planned. There are two intertwined stories here - the neighbourhoods and Jeamland. Both would support a full novel in their own rights. MMS's handling of these is masterful. I found the ending unexpected and disturbing. This is certainly a great read - and i'll be looking out for his later works. 0.045 seconds to build listing no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0006512666, Paperback)Synopsis: Stark lives in Colour, a neighbourhood whose inhabitants like to be co-ordinated with their surroundings. Then there's Red closeby - if you want to see a tactical nuclear battle recreated as a sales demonstration. Stark has friends in Red, which is just as well because something is about to happen.(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:22 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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On top of all this amazement is a great private detective story, one man hired by a probably dodgy company to find another man in another neighbourhood. A good story but not as memorable as the world. (