Reviews

3 Pyr Titles @ the Library Journal

The Library Journal reviews three more Pyr titles, all recommended:

Kenyon, Kay. Bright of the Sky.
“Reminiscent of the groundbreaking novels of Philip K. Dick, Philip Jose Farmer, and Dan Simmons, her latest volume belongs in most libraries.”

Roberts, Adam. Gradisil.
“A picture of a possible future … that is both chillingly possible and dryly tongue-in-cheek. Fans of sf sagas will appreciate the attention to detail and engaging characters.”

Robson, Justina. Keeping It Real.
“…skillfully builds a seamless connection between sf and fantasy in this fast-paced series opener featuring a strong, action-oriented heroine and a unique world setting.” They go on to recommend the book to fans of both “contemporary culture” and “mature YA.”

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Keeping It Real Keeps Pyr Balanced

Patrick of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist offers his thoughts on Justina Robson’s Keeping It Real, as well as news of a giveaway contest, on the Wotmania blog:

“This is a fun, entertaining and action-packed novel. There’s a lot of humor, and the pace is at times fast and furious. I was using Keeping it Real as my “commute” book, and I was always disappointed when I realized that my stop was next. Indeed, I found myself turning those pages, always eager to see what would happen next.”

Patrick also offers his thoughts on what KIR has to say about our line. He feels its inclusion in the list “demonstrates just how diversified Pyr’s stable of writers and novels will ultimately be. Once again, it’s evident that their desire to publish works that are different from what’s being released by the powerhouses continues to fuel Pyr’s passion for both science fiction and fantasy. And although they made a name for themselves with thought-provoking books by authors such as Ian McDonald, Sean Williams, David Louis Edelman and many others, by publishing novels such as Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself and Justina Robson’s Keeping it Real they show that Pyr is not averse to release more humorous and entertaining books.

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What’s a Macguffin?

Tom Easton of Analog‘s Reference Library column is frustrated that Alan Dean Foster doesn’t reveal the maguffin of Sagramanda until the very end, but concludes that, “No, I won’t tell you what the macguffin is. But I will say it is indeed one that would be valuable to society and to certain businesses, while other businesses might want to suppress it. And despite Foster’s coyness, he is such a deft and evocative writer that Sagramanda is a good read anyway. Enjoy it.”

Easton’s solution – to skip ahead to the end of the book. My mother does this – and sometimes my wife – but it drives me nuts. My own advice: read faster! The end will come sooner that way.

Meanwhile, for those not-in-the-know, a macguffin is a plot device that is used in film and other narrative (particularly mysteries and thrillers) to advance a story but whose nature doesn’t really matter. The term is usually credited to director Alfred Hitchcock, though it may have been coinced by his friend, screenwriter Angus MacPhail.

In a 1966 interview, Hitchcock described the macguffin’s purpose thusly (via Wikipedia):

“It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says, ‘What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?’ And the other answers, ‘Oh that’s a McGuffin.’ The first one asks ‘What’s a McGuffin?’ ‘Well’ the other man says, ‘It’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ The first man says, ‘But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,’ and the other one answers ‘Well, then that’s no McGuffin!’ So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all.”

Update: Neth Space also weighs in with a review of Sagramanda: “Sagramanda becomes a character all its own as we see a microcosm of India – the poor, desperately poor, the rich, the tourist, the huge population, the filth, the decadence, and the contrast of old and new – through the eyes the hunters and hunted. The portrayal of India is fascinating – especially for someone like me who has never been there. As I said about John Burdett in relation to Bangkok 8, I don’t know if Foster gets it right, but it feels like he does…. It’s a fascinating portrayal of near-future India with an average techno-thriller plot holding it together.”

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India’s National Newspaper on the River

Ian McDonald just emailed me to point out this review of River of Gods, and I couldn’t be happier. Ian’s been hailed so much already we’re almost jaded, but this one comes from The Hindu – India’s National Newspaper Online! In this article, “India in the Future,” Pradeep Sebastian begins by admitting that he passed up RoG on numerous occasions, assuming it was “one more lightweight take on India by a foreigner.”

But when he did pick it up, he quickly concluded that RoG was much more:

“Foreign writers have successfully used India as a backdrop for mysteries and thrillers: Barbara Cleverly’s period mysteries (The Palace Tiger), Paul Mann’s thrillers (The Ganja Coast) and one-off thrillers such as Leslie Forbes’ Bombay Ice and Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram. River of Gods surpasses all of them easily to become not just the definitive thriller set in India but the most richly imaginative thriller about India.”

Sebastian concludes that RoG is “a compellingly realised future India.” As the Times of India previously said, “Not bad for a firang who has oodles of imagination and chutzpah.”

(And I was just kidding about being jaded – keep those good reviews coming!)

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Crowing About Pyr

Tomas L. Martin has posted two reviews in the recent edition of SF Crowsnest.

Of Justina Robson’s brilliant near-future thriller, Mappa Mundi,Tomas has this to say:

“Mappa Mundi is an excellent second novel, with great characterisation and an intriguing plot idea. It’s certainly worth reading and Justina Robson is an extremely promising writer but I felt this book strayed a bit too far in its extrapolation to function as a great thriller. As it is, it’s simply a good book.”

Not arguing with a good review – just feel compelled to add that I love the “straying.” For me, the book starts off like any Michael Crichton thriller, but goes in the opposite direction. So much of his work – as well as the Hollywood treatment of SFnal tropes – is about putting genies back in the bottle, while we science fiction types know that that is rarely possible…

Meanwhile, Tomas’s thoughts on my own Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edgeare equally appreciated:

“There are some excellent stories here. In his introduction, Anders mentions that he aspires to produce a similar collection to that of Damon Knight’s prestigious Orbit series that was so influential in its twenty-one volumes. This is heady competition to put onto a new publication but happily it isn’t too difficult to see Fast Forward becoming a similarly established name in original SF anthology history…. Fast Forward 1 has more than enough original and exciting new stories to make it important reading and worthy of more than a couple more editions to follow. Lou Anders has done a good job with this first volume and I hope he continues producing original anthologies if they are as good as this one.”

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3 Pyr Books @ SFRevu

SFRevu has chimed in on three recent and upcoming Pyr novels.

First, my own Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge is given a glowing review from Colleen Cahill, who says that, “this collection has a bit of something for everyone. Anders has gathered a truly outstanding set of science fiction, all with images and worlds that are new, different and exciting. It is safe to say that Fast Forward 1, hopefully the first in several such books, is a worthy successor to the Knight and Pohl series and a book every science fiction fan will want in their collection.”

Next up, Todd Baker has some great things to say about Adam Robert’s out-any-day now hard SF of near-future war in space, Gradisil. Praising the “intricacies of the plot, the richness of character development, and the intriguing scientific extrapolation,” Baker comments that “it is not surprising that it has been shortlisted for the 2007 Arthur C. Clarke award for best new novel.” Also of interest to me personally is Baker’s singling out of this quote from the book, with its accusations about our very modern life:

You know for how much money the EU government sold the latest mobile netlink rights? Bandwidths were going for a billion euros, minimum. . . . Think of the gross! So you tell me–is that the best way of spending humanity’s money, webbing friends, playing games on the bus? A fraction of a single percent of that money, we could have bases on Mars in five years. Destiny–possibility–glorious, but no, we’ll keep frittering our money on games, on cosmetics, on flim-flam, and we’ll turn around in five hundred years and still be right here where we are now.

Finally, Ernest Lilley, who admits to not liking the book as much as he wanted to, still makes Keeping It Real (Quantum Gravity, Book 1) sound pretty darn good in his introduction: “Lila Black used to be a pretty girl, but that was before she had her arms and legs ripped off by an elvish interrogator and delivered back to her human world intel agency more dead than alive. So, in the best tradition of these things, they rebuit her with cyborg battle ready parts and a Mr. Fusion heart. Unfortunately for her they either took away too much or left too much intact, depending on your point of view, because her emotions are all still quite intact, just jumbled up in a ball of revenge, remorse and oh yes…love. Now back in the field to protect an elvish rock star she’s got to come to terms with who she is before she can save her charge, and of course, the world as we know it. Well, maybe not quite as we know it…”

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FF1 on AICN – Most Cool

Ain’t It Cool News has recently launched a book review section, where reviewer Adam Balm plans to “take fandom back to its root” by acting as a pointer to good SF. In his second review, he tackles Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge, which I’m most happy to say he likes. Adam proclaims that “Pyr’s going to be an interesting bird to watch, coming out of nowhere in the last year to fast becoming one of the big names in the industry, no small feat in a field made up of big publishers getting even bigger, as the market is getting smaller,” and goes on to say of FF1 that “probably half the stories here would be fitting entries in a ‘Year’s Best’ anthology.” He calls out stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, Stephen Baxter, Ken MacLeod, Justina Robson, John Meaney, with a special place for Paul Di Filippo’s “Wikiworld” (online here), of which he says, “Without a doubt, THE stand-out story (as has been mentioned at Boing Boing and other reviews) is Paul Di Filippo’s ‘Wikiworld…. Honestly I haven’t had this kind of vertigo after reading a short since Charle’s Stross’s ‘Lobsters’ in 2001, the first entry of what would become his Accelerando magnum opus. I really want to see Di Filippo explore this world he’s created some more. This is too good for just one short.”

In addition to FF1, Adam reviews The Antagonist by Gordon R. Dickson and David W. Wixon, and presents an introductory essay on his reasons for taking up the reviewer’s role along with his opinions on the current state of science fiction. (He sees SF as being at a bit of a crossroads, a fractured field competing with fantasy and slipstream.) Furthermore, Adam finds parallels between my introduction and one John W. Campbell’s wrote for his own 1952 Astounding Science Fiction Anthology which I now need to hunt up.

All in all, I was impressed with the review and hope that AICN keeps Adam Balm long employed, as shortening the gap between media SF and literary SF is a personal crusade of mine. Meanwhile, I love that he describes FF1 as “a kind of time capsule of where hard science fiction is, in the first decade of the second millennium,” though the line that really made me laugh was his description of Justina Robson as “she reminds me of a hard SF Neil Gaiman if Neil Gaiman was even more of a woman. ” Add this to Cheryl Morgan’s comment some time ago that Robson was “William Gibson with chocolate” and you can see just how special Robson is. Finally, on the question of SF’s relevance in 2007, I agree with Adam that “while the world might change, that tool for making sense of that change does not change.”

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SciFi To Die For

1 Comment /

Rick Kleffel offers his enthusiastic preview/review of Ian McDonald’s forthcoming Brasylover on his site, The Agony Column. As he says:

“McDonald is clearly one of our premiere science fiction writers and he’s pretty much staking out the multi-cultural SF niche as his. And even if Brasyl is a bit shorter and more easily grokable than River of Gods, have no fear that it delivers the same sort of combination knockout punch, stunning the reader with the ferocity of the writing and the strangeness of both the culture and the future, and in this case, the past, that McDonald imagines. Line up for it, and plan on seeing it on some genre fiction ballots. You’ll be asked to vote for it, so you might as well experience it sooner rather than later. Come to think of it, the same is true of the future.”

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Sci-Fantasy Hits the Spot.

Fantasy Book Spot has posted a review of Justina Robson’s upcoming sci-fantasy, Keeping It Real (Quantum Gravity, Book 1) which they describe as being “ultra-edgy, explosively musicpunk,” adding “Robson crafts an adventure that is filled with legend, lore, love, and laughs with a steady hand. It both makes light of itself and takes things very seriously. To call the work anything but a ball of sheer originality would be an insult to pointy-eared elves everywhere.”

Their “quick take”: “An entertaining novel that junkets the reader on an adventure brimming with magical races, dangerous entities, and page-turning experiences, Keeping It Real is a blast.”

Meanwhile, SF Signal chimes in with a review of Kay Kenyon’s epic, Bright of the Sky: Book1 of The Entire and the Rose, giving it four stars and proclaiming the book is “a standout novel” and praising it’s “unique setting both physically and societally.” As they say:

MY RATING:

BOTTOM LINE: Bright Of The Sky effortlessly blends science fiction concepts and world-building with fantasy story telling to create a unique and intriguing whole.

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Publishers Weekly Makes the Break

Publishers Weekly has just weighed in on Breakaway, Joel Shepherd’s follow up to Crossover, which introduced us to the synthetic soldier Cassandra Kresnov. After summarizing everything I love about the plot, PW says:

“Beneath the glitz of snazzy weaponry, unstoppable heroes and byzantine political machinations is a very real struggle about the nature of humanity and trust.”

I might add that this review underscores why I think Joel Shepherd’s Cassandra Kresnov series are perfect Pyr books – “snazzy weaponry” and “unstoppable heroes” but also “political machinations” and “very real struggle” and “nature of humanity.”

Who’s to say that books about hot artificial soldiers leaping guns blazing out of flying cars can’t have depth and substance and character? See, as I’ve been saying all along, you can have your cake and blow it up too.

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