Thread does exactly as it says on the tin. 
I'll start off with a book I've just finished,
Light
by M. John Harrison
Harrison is a famous name in SF, though I have to admit that I haven't read anything else by him. This book is apparently his first SF one in thirty years though. It doesn't show. The writing is absolutely fantastic. I've never read anything written quite like it, but his prose style works really well. Still, enough about the writing style.
The story consists of three threads. The first follows a matematical genius, Kearney, who is psycopathic. He and another man (Tate) develop quantum computing, and are the drive behind man's conquest of space, but their work seems to break down the boundaries of physical laws, driving Tate mad. Keating is already mad enough, haunted by an alien presence since childhood, and he commits a number of disturbing murders during the book.
The second thread, set four hundered years in the future, follows Seria Mau, a little girl who volunteered to become hard-wired into a warship, which is composed of alien technology barely understood. The warship (and not her) rebelled and went AWOL, and she/they now operate as mercenaries. Seria Mau is quite amoral, and callously murders a number of passengers.
The third thread follows Ed Chianese, and I ruin nothing of the novel to reveal that he turns out to be the brother of Seria Mau, a ruin of a man who spent his life too close to the edge, and wound up trying to escape it. He winds up running from thugs, and finding refuge in a circus, where the mysterious owner forces him to become a prophet, a painful experience for him. He predicts war.
The ending of these three stories seems mashed together on a small moon near the Kefahuchi Tract, a "singularity without an event horizon", where all the laws of physics seem to be breaking down, and upon which countless older alien races seem to have broken themselves in a fruitless effort to understand it. The last of one of them wants an answer. And maybe Ed Chianese can provide it. We can't tell. They story ends here. Or rather, it begins, as it says.
I'd like to quote a reviewer called Steven Wu, "Light is an intensely unpleasant novel. It opens with a casual, almost offhand murder, and such murders occur with disturbing frequency throughout the novel... The characters are cold and insubstantial; they seem almost alien at times, their motivations obscure, their capacity for human empathy stunted or entirely absent. The bleakness of the novel is emphasized by a surprising (and disturbing) emphasis on extremely frigid sex entirely devoid of any human element; in fact, the sex of Light often feels more exploitative than sharing, more cruel than comfortable."
"The conclusion is an eruption of utter chaos, disparate story elements crashing together in a manner that makes no real sense. You leave this novel no more enlightened than you were at the end of the first chapter."
It seems to be a matter of taste, but the majority of reviewers are delighted with this book, which is a difficult, disturbing story with an open, unsatisfying ending. Read it with caution.
I'll start off with a book I've just finished,
Light
by M. John Harrison
Harrison is a famous name in SF, though I have to admit that I haven't read anything else by him. This book is apparently his first SF one in thirty years though. It doesn't show. The writing is absolutely fantastic. I've never read anything written quite like it, but his prose style works really well. Still, enough about the writing style.
The story consists of three threads. The first follows a matematical genius, Kearney, who is psycopathic. He and another man (Tate) develop quantum computing, and are the drive behind man's conquest of space, but their work seems to break down the boundaries of physical laws, driving Tate mad. Keating is already mad enough, haunted by an alien presence since childhood, and he commits a number of disturbing murders during the book.
The second thread, set four hundered years in the future, follows Seria Mau, a little girl who volunteered to become hard-wired into a warship, which is composed of alien technology barely understood. The warship (and not her) rebelled and went AWOL, and she/they now operate as mercenaries. Seria Mau is quite amoral, and callously murders a number of passengers.
The third thread follows Ed Chianese, and I ruin nothing of the novel to reveal that he turns out to be the brother of Seria Mau, a ruin of a man who spent his life too close to the edge, and wound up trying to escape it. He winds up running from thugs, and finding refuge in a circus, where the mysterious owner forces him to become a prophet, a painful experience for him. He predicts war.
The ending of these three stories seems mashed together on a small moon near the Kefahuchi Tract, a "singularity without an event horizon", where all the laws of physics seem to be breaking down, and upon which countless older alien races seem to have broken themselves in a fruitless effort to understand it. The last of one of them wants an answer. And maybe Ed Chianese can provide it. We can't tell. They story ends here. Or rather, it begins, as it says.
I'd like to quote a reviewer called Steven Wu, "Light is an intensely unpleasant novel. It opens with a casual, almost offhand murder, and such murders occur with disturbing frequency throughout the novel... The characters are cold and insubstantial; they seem almost alien at times, their motivations obscure, their capacity for human empathy stunted or entirely absent. The bleakness of the novel is emphasized by a surprising (and disturbing) emphasis on extremely frigid sex entirely devoid of any human element; in fact, the sex of Light often feels more exploitative than sharing, more cruel than comfortable."
"The conclusion is an eruption of utter chaos, disparate story elements crashing together in a manner that makes no real sense. You leave this novel no more enlightened than you were at the end of the first chapter."
It seems to be a matter of taste, but the majority of reviewers are delighted with this book, which is a difficult, disturbing story with an open, unsatisfying ending. Read it with caution.
Buy on AliExpress.com
