Spin State
I just finished Spin State by Chris Moriarty, which was recommended to me by my friend Y (actually, he called it the best science fiction novel he'd ever read), so of course I had to read it.
Did I really like it? Yes. Did I think it was great? Yes. Best ever? No, but it's in my top three. And for the record, my top three area:
1) Neuromancer
2) A Deepness in the Sky
3) Spin State.
I'm not going to go into detail on a top ten (mainly because I haven't thought that far in advance but I'd probably put Ender'sGame/Xenocide in there somewhere (while trying to avoid the fact that I just found out that Orson Scott Card is Republican apologist), Cryptonomicron, In Conquest Born and maybe something by Charles Stross-although he strikes me as more fantasy than science-fiction. I don't want to hear about Asimov (good ideas, writing is not that exciting to me) or Frank Herbert (Dune is for teenage boys) or Ray Bradbury (okay, I'll give him props for Farenheit 451 because the idea is excellent but the execution is poor). And I may have to put Connie Willis on the list because The Doomsday Book IS science-fiction and I loved it.
However, I'd like to start with Neuromancer because, frankly, Spin State could not exist without it. Neuromancer started the whole "c0llective conscious" idea that is about as close to today's internet as a book could get in 1984-and went way beyond it. It also has an artificial intelligence that yearns for what the AI in Spin State has-a way to jump into a willing body. But I have to put Neuromancer at the top of the list because it was the first science fiction book I read that I thought was COOL. There had been others that were intelligent (Ursula LeGuin) and fun (Bradbury, kind of) and some that were entertaining-but this was the first one that made it punk-from the attitudes of the characters (Case, the cyber-cowboy who was the best at what he did, which required "a contempt of the flesh" to Molly, she of the mirrored glasses that enclosed her eyes and the razors that came out from under her nails. Most science fiction I had read up until that point had clearly been written by some guy who had been the geekiest guy in his school and was going to write a book to show that he could get the girls and be cool-and this book puts all of that stuff to shame. This book has a female character who could rip your heart out (literally), is tough as nails and doesn't care that much about the hero-this is not a romance but it is science fiction noir.
It's a great book and if you like hard science fiction you should go read it.
Did I really like it? Yes. Did I think it was great? Yes. Best ever? No, but it's in my top three. And for the record, my top three area:
1) Neuromancer
2) A Deepness in the Sky
3) Spin State.
I'm not going to go into detail on a top ten (mainly because I haven't thought that far in advance but I'd probably put Ender'sGame/Xenocide in there somewhere (while trying to avoid the fact that I just found out that Orson Scott Card is Republican apologist), Cryptonomicron, In Conquest Born and maybe something by Charles Stross-although he strikes me as more fantasy than science-fiction. I don't want to hear about Asimov (good ideas, writing is not that exciting to me) or Frank Herbert (Dune is for teenage boys) or Ray Bradbury (okay, I'll give him props for Farenheit 451 because the idea is excellent but the execution is poor). And I may have to put Connie Willis on the list because The Doomsday Book IS science-fiction and I loved it.
However, I'd like to start with Neuromancer because, frankly, Spin State could not exist without it. Neuromancer started the whole "c0llective conscious" idea that is about as close to today's internet as a book could get in 1984-and went way beyond it. It also has an artificial intelligence that yearns for what the AI in Spin State has-a way to jump into a willing body. But I have to put Neuromancer at the top of the list because it was the first science fiction book I read that I thought was COOL. There had been others that were intelligent (Ursula LeGuin) and fun (Bradbury, kind of) and some that were entertaining-but this was the first one that made it punk-from the attitudes of the characters (Case, the cyber-cowboy who was the best at what he did, which required "a contempt of the flesh" to Molly, she of the mirrored glasses that enclosed her eyes and the razors that came out from under her nails. Most science fiction I had read up until that point had clearly been written by some guy who had been the geekiest guy in his school and was going to write a book to show that he could get the girls and be cool-and this book puts all of that stuff to shame. This book has a female character who could rip your heart out (literally), is tough as nails and doesn't care that much about the hero-this is not a romance but it is science fiction noir.
It's a great book and if you like hard science fiction you should go read it.
posted by SHbookworm at 1:04 PM
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