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Loading... Purgatory Mountby Adam Roberts
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An interstellar craft is decelerating after its century-long voyage. Its destination is V538 Aurigae ?, a now-empty planet dominated by one gigantic megastructure, a conical mountain of such height that its summit is high above the atmosphere. The ship's crew of five hope to discover how the long-departed builders made such a colossal thing, and why: a space elevator? a temple? a work of art? Its resemblance to the mountain of purgatory lead the crew to call this world Dante. In our near future, the United States is falling apart. A neurotoxin has interfered with the memory function of many of the population, leaving them reliant on their phones as makeshift memory prostheses. But life goes on. For Ottoline Barragão, a regular kid juggling school and her friends and her beehives in the back garden, things are about to get very dangerous, chased across the north-east by competing groups, each willing to do whatever it takes to get inside Ottoline's private network and recover the secret inside. Purgatory Mount, Adam Roberts's first SF novel for three years, combines wry space opera and a fast-paced thriller in equal measure. It is a novel about memory and atonement, about exploration and passion, and like all of Roberts's novels it's not quite like anything else. No library descriptions found. |
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Wikipedia in English
3
As the novel opens, the interstellar spacecraft Forward is de accelerating as it approaches a far distant planet. Its purpose is the exploration of the planet, which contains a mountain-like structure which extends into space and which could only have been built by sentient beings. The crew wants to learn the purpose of this structure--who built it and why?
There are two varieties of inhabitants of the spacecraft. In charge of the craft are 5 humanistic beings who live thousands of years, and who can control how the passing of time is perceived. They are named after Greek and Roman gods: Pan, Zeus, Dionysus etc. The remaining beings, much more numerous, are much smaller and have life spans of only 40 or so years. They are humanistic, but much, much smaller than than the gods, who refer to them as pygmies, or "pigs," and who serve as a food source for the gods.
After the brief opening on the spacecraft, we move to dystopian near-future America. An epidemic or chemical neuro-toxin has interfered with the memory function of large swathes of the population, and society is disintegrating. The more fortunate are able to have an "interface" with their phones--"a kind of colostomy bag for your long-term memories," as well as instant "google ability" for general knowledge. The government is spying on everyone, and extremely authoritarian. The focus is on a group of 5 teenagers, "The Famous Five," consisting of Otty, Pitt, Gomery, Kathry, and Allie. Together they have created a private communications network that the government wants and will stop at nothing to get. Otty and her friends soon find themselves in grave danger.
As I said, I never found the two parts came together, though my interest was maintained as I was reading each. I couldn't figure out how they meshed, so this was not a successful book for me.
2 stars (