Brasyl

“Where other writers spend their whole lives creating fantastic imaginary worlds that have their own languages, calendars and social strata,” says Ryun Patterson of Bookgasm, “McDonald has dived headfirst into a culture that’s every bit as fantastic and also awesomely real.”

Speaking of the Quill-nominated Brasyl, Patterson says that Ian McDonald writes,”as if he were raised on the beaches of Rio. Food, language, attitudes – everything comes off as authentic,” then goes on to proclaim the importance within this lush setting of the story itself. “While science-fiction classics of the past have explored what it means to be alien or what it means to be intelligent, Brasyl is a landmark in that [it] unravels what it means to be quantum, and what might necessarily follow if quantum theory holds true. In addition, there are sweet car chases, acres of suspense, huge tracts of conspiracy, knives that cut through anything, epic battles, fight scenes worthy of Yuen Woo-Ping, and plenty of hot sex. Really, what are you waiting for?”

Good question.

Andrew Leonard has just put forward Ian McDonald’s Brasylin Salon.com’s List of Summer Reading Recommendations. Andrew says, “If you liked River of Gods,which performed a similar mash-up of SF tropes with full cultural immersion in India, you will delight in Brasyl. And if you’re a science fiction fan who has never read any Ian McDonald, well, then, clear your calendar.” He goes on to talk about the way that “an age of globalization” has inspired science fiction writers to investigate new-to-them territories in the here and now, concluding, “A similar wave swept through SF in the 1980s, when Japan’s emergent cultural and economic power suddenly became reflected in scores of science fiction novels. But McDonald has more fun than most of the Japanophiles did. I always wanted to visit the future. But after Brasyl, I want to book a ticket to São Paulo also.”

Crooked Timber offers up some interesting thoughts on Ian McDonald’s Brasyl stating that it is “open to question whether the book is trying to present an authentic vision of what Brazil past, current and future might look like,” and further argues ” that the book is best categorized as a utopian novel, albeit one that is remarkably sneaky and indirect.”

I quite enjoyed this analysis, and look forward to the forthcoming promised longer piece. For now, Crooked Timber concludes:

“I suspect that one of the reasons why McDonald wanted to write about Brazil is because it poses questions about the globalization of culture and economics so starkly. The result is that the book has a political resonance that’s very different from the mainstream of American and UK SF. Cory Doctorow likes Brasyl enormously, and I’m not even slightly surprised. Brasyl’s argument has a lot in common with what I’ve described as BoingBoing socialism. On the one hand, Brasyl shows the downside of William Gibson’s famous dictum that ‘the street finds its own uses for things.’ On the other, it turns the phrase into a positive political manifesto. It’s also very well (at times beautifully) written and tells a great story while it’s at it. What more could you be looking for?”

Elizabeth Vail reviews Ian McDonald’s Brasyl for Green Man Review. She calls the novel, “a dazzling, if somewhat warped, story involving three separate but somehow connected narratives that evolve across three different timelines,” and goes on to say that, “With all these ideas, and the steamy neon tropical setting of Brazil, Ian McDonald builds up to a mind-boggling doozy of a multiworld theory… McDonald gives us a Brazil that is enormous but close, filthy but pure, glossily artificial while true to itself.”

She concludes that Brasyl is “a thought-provoking science fiction novel with an evocative sense of setting and textured language. “