Light (2002)

Think I've read this before - seems familiar. Anyway, I don't know why it won the Tiptree in 2002 but it is an excellent book. ( )

Absorbing and intriguing. I am not entirely clear that the ending has explained everything, but it has tied together the bones of the links in a pattern that is probably more beautiful than true.

It reminded me a little bit of Iain M Banks in style and feel; killing people mixed with high-tech high-concept sf, people doing unpleasant things to each other (sometimes with high-tech equipment, sometimes not) that nevertheless draws you in. ( )

*note to self. Copy from A.

Very rarely does a book transform itself so utterly on a second reading.
The first time I read it I gave up halfway through tired and exhausted failing to understand what was going on.
The second time though, I picked it up and I was hooked from start to finish.
I think I was a lot fresher the second time around.
The thing with Harrison is that you need to read carefully. He writes short books but books in which every word is measured and carefully put in.
I was surprised to find myself taking the same time to read this as some of the heftier epic fantasy volumes. Harrison is able to construct words with mere sentences and a hint of detail.
Attention needs to be paid and only then are his books a rewarding read. ( )

If I was polemically inclined, I would start this post off with saying that Light is Science Fiction for readers with a brain. Since I am not, I would of course never do that, but even so I would like to say that this is one of the more intelligent Sci Fi novels around and that it requires a reader for whom reading is a process of active participation rather than passive consumption to fully enjoy it. I (in case you were wondering) can be either, depending on my current mood and on the book I’m reading, and yes, I enjoyed Light very much, thank you.

Light plays out along three narrative strands that run alongside each other for most of the novel and are brought together only at the very end. At least on the level of plot (of which there is not all that much in the first place), but an even slightly closer look reveals that they are tightly interwoven with each other on the levels of theme and imagery, the most obvious one being probably the repeated mentioning of the Kefahuchi Tract (which gives the trilogy Light is the first part of its name) in each of the three strands. Slightly harder to discern (unless you happen to be a buff at anagram-solving) is the recurring presence of an entity (named “the Shrander” in the present day strand), who during the novel’s finale turns out to have played a central role during events. And there is much, much more, like the gestures of rubbing one’s mouth or face that both Michael Kearney and Ed Chianese use constantly as if they needes to ascertain themselves of their own corporeality. This would make it appear that they in some way have issues with their bodies, maybe even their existence, which ties in with the protagonist of the third strand, Seria Mau Genlicher, who has given up her body to become one with her spaceship and kills humans to create “evidence of herself”. Which in turns contrasts with Kearny’s strand as he is a serial killer, but the bodies he leaves seem to show no evidence pointing towards him at all.

The closer you look, the more interrelations between the seemingly decoherent strands are there to be discovered, there is always another level, another stratum of threads weaving back and forth between them; the effect is almost fractal. This means that the reader has to pay close attention, not just to what is going on in terms of plot but to what is actually written on the page, the words themselves, and also has to do some thinking, if she or he wants to catch even a part of it. This is not gratuitous, not merely self-absorbed puzzle-solving, but Harrison using the means of literary language and literary structure to create something that cannot be conceived of in referential terms.

And I have not even touched on the cultural references this novel is brimming over with, or on my suspicion that each of its three strands may be a pastiche of a different Science Fiction writer (I am really unsure about that part – but Seria Mau Genlicher’s parts seem to owe a lot to Cordwainer Smith, while I was getting some strong Philip K. Dick vibes from Ed Chianese’s strand. I can’t place the Michael Kearney strand with any confidence, though – maybe J.G. Ballard?). There is a wealth of things to discover in this brightly shining novel, and as far as I’m concerned, Light is the best Science Fiction novel since at least Feersum Endjinn, possibly even since Nova.