David Marusek

The blurb is an honest and accurate summary, so I’ll repeat it here: “An epic new science fiction series about family, faith and alien invasion in the wilds of Alaska.”

I under-estimated and miscategorised this book on first impression, thinking this could turn out to be a religion-steered message hidden within a science fiction book, i.e. a “what if” wish-fulfilment fantasy where the Christians turn out to be right. That assumption was based on the narrow minded believer character show more introduced near the start and also some mention of angels and the end of days. What it turned out to be is a good mainstream adventure which includes an obsessed faith character and the poor family he drags around Alaska with him. This man thinks scripture will give him all the answers but that’s a layer of illusion that he accepts and the reader doubts, so we can’t immediately see what’s going on and who is pulling the strings. There are plenty of other characters who aren’t bugbears and do think in mainstream secular ways, which provides the counterpoint to set his family apart from both the average joe and other churchgoing folk.

The reason the story needs that sort of character is because it makes for an interesting story to drop a seemingly alien artefact into this character’s path and see how he dances, what belief interpretation he places upon it. Yes, of course he knows he is right (because he’s mad) but here at last is evidence that the world must accept that he’s right and they’re all wrong. This intervention, this stone plopping into the pond trips a sequence of behaviour which propels the events of the story. If the apocalypse is nigh, the rules and laws no longer matter, do they? It all makes sense to the protagonist but to the rest of us it’s getting crazy.

Interestingly, an alternately-minded individual would think “Aliens! The only possible conclusion!”, using exactly the same erratic object/evidence to validate a conclusion that’s totally different; and thus reveal their own susceptibility to an equally valid/invalid belief system. A paranoid person might be convinced it’s the UN spying on our minds. In other words, as humans, we spot patterns in everything and adapt our behaviour to that pattern. If it fits multiple patterns or theories, people regularly do the wrong thing and settle on one based on their prejudices, then only see what they want to see. When crowds do this, it can become lethal.

The mystery is therefore whether the sudden intrusion into our world is aliens, angels & devils, hallucination or simply secret government stuff that’s dropped off a satellite. Who knows? When a representative of one of the above cultures turns up, we are supposed to wonder if they are the real deal or something quite different that’s just telling people what they want to hear. My shallow reading of psychology flipped my guesses well off the mark. Why, for example, would any external influence’s point of contact with humanity be so flawed? Couldn’t they do better? Even the main character’s lawyer seemed to have so much more about him, so many layers that hadn’t surfaced.

I liked reading about life in a national park in Alaska, land grabbing, seasonally migrating communities and how people living in that state don’t feel secure that their supply lines are at the mercy of their larger neighbour. I also got deeply into the characters and how they interacted (badly) with their opposing views of the world and how we should live. The belief angle was inter-cut with a lot of doubt, so that worked well. Generally, it was well written, gave me insight into another approach with its flaws and benefits, posed some puzzling questions and I liked it, whic was unexpected. I think the story would have read better if it was condensed by about a hundred pages but even that served to convey the feeling of being in a setting where things unfold at their own pace, where there’s more time to enjoy your surroundings and take it all in. The winters are hard, the summers are majestic and life is somehow more real than common urban existence where people don’t really live, just burden themselves with constraints and dream of a day far in the future where they will be able to escape – and briefly live for about two years when their life force is spent. The alternative view, to ignore rules and responsibility, live for now and instead put our trust in the supernatural is a pleasingly alternative way to behave insanely. In both lifestyles, reality catches up.

Altogether, an impressive book that should have been tragic but wasn’t, should have had a solid explanation but didn’t, suggested it would conform to an opinionated stereotype but was confounding enough not to, all puzzles, questions and enigmas dragged through pine-scented snow. show less

I came upon this as a total surprise on NetGalley, but a completely welcome one! I've read two of his other highly acclaimed hard SF novels and I didn't care in the slightest what this one might be about.

Why? Because he's just that good and I trust him completely to tell a great tale.

Now that I've finished this book, I'm not revising my statement. At all.

What should you expect here? Alaska. Deep country. We focus mainly on two sides of an issue with very little in the way of alien first show more contact until much deeper into the tale. That's fine, really, because we're thrown in deep into a family of ultra-conservative and perhaps quite fringe Christians who are so elite that they feel like they're more fundamental than Quakers. With a few notable exceptions as with a satellite cell phone for their online business, they would be, too.

The other side is with the Rangers who naturally have beef with this complex and disturbing family because they're squatting illegally on Public Park land.

Prepare to get fully invested in this family and the area and the Rangers, because this novel is completely fascinating and complex all on this level. And then add an alien who knows how to manipulate humanity. :) Angels! Or demons. :)

Murder, rape, right-wing nuttery, and an almost Waco situation ensue, while all the while, we're learning and emotionally preparing for a huge fallout to come.

This is only the first book in a series and the setup is delicious. The point isn't even that it is a first contact novel. The real strength is in the way it's written... the fullness of its details, and the complexity of its characters, the way they live, react, and survive as they see the world and the devil bear down on them.

I can honestly say that this is an epic setup and I trust the author to knock it right out of the park with subsequent novels! :) show less

Marusek depicts a very believable near future where strong nanotech has made some big changes to the world, but no Singularity is in sight. Even with huge labor forces composed of clones, artificial intelligences, and nanotechnological terrorism, people are still people and no one is doing weird things with brain interfaces to head off in transhuman directions. (For contrast, look at Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space universe.)

The tale tracks the events surrounding an attempted show more assassination of the woman with control over a fleet of colony starships under construction in Earth orbit and her heir; drawn into the mess are her ex-husband, a colleague from his economic collective, a religious officiary from the board of directors of the woman’s corporation, and a married couple of clone laborers. The story is a page-turner, but it doesn’t reveal the full extent of the opposing conspiracy; I expect we’ll learn more in the sequel, Mind Over Ship. show less

I was caught by the premise and what can I say? I love hi-tech future-Earth stories, especially when they don't automatically deform into the dissolution of society, but rather, they discuss important issues in sometimes humorous, sometimes disturbing, sometimes just plainly WTF.

This one is definitely all of the above.

The entire novel is extremely rich in wonderful world-building ideas in the grand, nearly overwhelming sense that it's all over the place, from nanotech everywhere, to domed show more cities to keep out the nasties (weaponized nanotech), AIs that haven't taken over the world, but instead cohabit with us, humans who have been augmented in both capacity and health that we're pretty much on the same playing field as the AIs, helpful clones everywhere, a grand colonizing expedition set up for a fairly distant star, and an interesting, not generic utopian society.

So where's the story?

Oh, of course things go wrong. In fact, tons of things go wrong for this large cast of characters, from complete disenfranchisement of all the joys this world has to offer, to losing one's head, to learning that the greatest adventure the world has to offer might be a con-job, to living in fear of the omnipresent surveillance.

This book, despite the very strong beginning and focus on poor Sam, isn't, unfortunately, about him. It's easy to get misled by the some of the hype. Instead, this is a book about all the people, and overpopulation, and the kinds of societies that we allow ourselves to create.

Of course, that's not to say that the characters aren't fascinating, even with such a large cast, because they are. But also don't expect a traditional thriller or plots that weave back together again in a grand fashion, because that's not what this novel is really about. Nor is it an easily defined and thematic novel, either.

Instead, it is an extremely rich exploration of imagination and life, full of loss, duty, loneliness, joy, and especially of hope, mostly transcending the base cares and proving that no matter how advanced we become, or how we might eradicate disease or old age, we're still human, for good or ill. And I'm not leaving out the clones.

Hell, even the AIs are only human.

Don't let me mislead you, though, because there's plenty of action and adventure here, too, as well as creepy images of slugs everywhere and babies with adult heads, but there's also some totally wonderful allusions mixed in with some extremely clever prose, too. And in any account, no one should ever discount extremely crisp writing.

If you're looking for futuristic SF in the vein of [b:Stand on Zanzibar|41069|Stand on Zanzibar|John Brunner|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1360613921s/41069.jpg|2184253] or [b:Brave New World|5129|Brave New World|Aldous Huxley|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1433092908s/5129.jpg|3204877], that focuses more on what the world of the future has to say, with lots of extras that paint as interesting a picture as the MCs, then you really can't go wrong with this gem of a novel. show less