Metropolitan

“Plasm is the most perfect transformational agent of the universe, the thing that can alter matter, alter the fundamental nature of all reality, and they used it with no more consciousness of its significance than if they had been children.”



In “Metropolitan” by Walter Jon Williams



The first time I read “Metropolitan” I rediscovered the sheer joy of getting completely lost in a SF book. It is brilliant. Re-reading it after all these years is... I can't even explain it. What I vividly remember was that on my lunch break from work one Summer day in Lisbon instead of sitting with colleagues at lunch I took myself and my book off to Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian’s garden and became so engrossed, and so desperate to read to show more the end, that I was half an hour late back to my desk. But my boss at the time didn't mind. In fact I lent her the book and she was already on chapter 3 the next time I asked whether she had liked it… “Metropolitan” is not exactly slow reading, but unhurried reading for pure pleasure - it’s so joyous I want to shout from the rooftops about it! Down with crappy SF, up with SF novels like this one! SF and so on may even have seen a boost on the back of the TV boom as literacy has been aided by the net and admiration spread the nod and the word.

I think style in SF has decayed over the last thirty years in the written word and that's because people are simply no longer aware of style: so they don't demand it. In these soulless times, soulful reading must go against the grain. So it may be looked down upon. Whoever, however, would skim-read the Bible now? And would young people today skim-read “Metropolitan”? I hope not but I‘m not so sure. Kids nowadays are all for Balls-for-the-Walls SF and they just don’t care about the gems lost in a sea of crap… Or maybe it’s just that I put my craving for well-thought-out SF down to too many “plasm” pints over the years…

SF = Speculative Fiction. show less

This is an entertaining, fast-paced urban fantasy, set in a world covered by an unending city (even the oceans have been almost completely covered by urban pontoons). It's neither clear nor particularly relevant whether this world is some far future Earth or some other planet entirely. There are two rather odd things about the world: (1) the planet is enclosed within a sky-shield which appears to be impervious to all energy except gravity, and (2) the basic energy source is a plasm which runs through the structures of the city and can be harnessed by some individuals. Various chunks of the city are run by independent political units dominated by three groups: people who have access to and know how to use plasm, bureaucrats whose sole show more purpose in life is to wait for those above them in the seniority chain to die so they can move up the ladder, and the profoundly corrupt security forces whose main and usually successful investigative technique is to offer big rewards to anyone who rats out their friends, relatives, enemies, whomever.

The story follows our heroine Aiah, a low level discriminated-against bureaucrat, who comes across a previously unknown well of this energy and decides what to do with it. She is plucky, inventive, and doesn't try to run from responsibility for the outcomes of her actions. The narrative format is straightforward, and the book moves along quickly, building suspense and throwing in a fair share of surprises. show less

Hard to say! I liked a lot about the world and the cultures, especially that the protagonist was a woman of color in a society that has racial dynamics similar to our own. The magical technology was interesting.

But so much of the story revolved around who was being used and who was doing the using. That kind of cynical manipulation doesn't appeal to me in general; and I was particularly uncomfortable watching the protagonist do things that she framed to herself as either manipulating others or being inspired by them, but which looked an awful lot like stupidity and allowing herself to be taken advantage of.

And, by the end of the book, it's still not entirely clear which it was.

I'm not particularly motivated to read the sequel.

Estremamente affiscinante l'idea di fondo, quella della città planetaria retta da una forma di energia sostanzialmente magica, un microscosmo urbano e planetario che ha ben pochi eguali in letteratura. Presupposti a parte però la storia di per sé non è nulla di speciale. Piacevole

A good read but I want my science fiction to be more than that and I am not quite convinced this is. The distopian elements are interesting but ultimately described rather than explored and the "tech" elements are closer to fantasy than science fiction. But it is a good read. 31 March 2016

Estremamente affiscinante l'idea di fondo, quella della città planetaria retta da una forma di energia sostanzialmente magica, un microscosmo urbano e planetario che ha ben pochi eguali in letteratura. Presupposti a parte però la storia di per sé non è nulla di speciale. Piacevole

Political science fiction novel in which the struggle for control over a mysterious substance is the core theme.