To Hold Infinity

Infinite Goodness

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Fantastic Reviews has just posted their thoughts on John Meaney’s To Hold Infinity, beginning with some nice words for the Pyr imprint itself. Aaron Hughes calls the novel, “an example of everything Pyr Books is getting right. In only two years, Pyr has become one of the most reliable publishers of high-quality science fiction in the market. Editor Lou Anders consistently produces well-packaged books of real literary merit that are also very entertaining. While it has published plenty of excellent original work, a key to Pyr’s success has been obtaining reprint rights to outstanding British and Australian authors who have been neglected in the U.S.”

They give a little background on the novel – which is a completely stand-alone tale set in the same universe as Meaney’s Nulapeiron Sequence but earlier in the history of that universe, and which was a 1998 British Science Fiction Association Award nominee for Best Novel. Aaron nails the future era of To Hold Infinity as being “not quite post-singularity science fiction, but at least near-singularity,” before concluding that the novel is “an absorbing story peopled with well-developed characters and loaded with interesting speculation about the future. Fans of the Nulapeiron books should not miss it, and I strongly recommend it to new readers as a great introduction to John Meaney.”

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A Bevy of Reviews

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Just back from Boskone to find a flurry of Pyr reviews in the in-box.

The Eternal Night is quite taken with the galactic yarn-spinning of Mike Resnick’s Starship: Pirate:

“Resnick does have a very definite style…If you like your sf to be space opera, if you like your sf gadgets to just work without needing an explanation of how, and if you don’t need to worry about the vast interstellar distances getting in the way of telling the tale – then Resnick is an author you should read.”

Then Ryun Patterson of Bookgasm finds John Meaney’s To Hold Infinity to be a “snapshot of a stunningly well-realized future that grabs hold and doesn’t let go…Meaney’s prose is tight and descriptive, and he avoids many of the pitfalls involved in getting ideas out of his head and into readers’. I’m no scientist, but the technology involved – though far-flung from today’s tech – never becomes so inexplicable that it might as well be magic, with a basis in networking and computer science. …a rather stunning book of ideas and imagination.” Despite liking the inside, Ryun is less than pleased with our cover and (to my amusement) offers this alternative.

The Cultural Gutter isn’t quite sure what to make of Chris Roberson’s
Paragaea: A Planetary Romance, which may stray too close to its pulp roots for their taste, though they note, “I give the book high marks for not compromising on its convictions. Chris Roberson clearly set out to tell an adventure story – a planetary romance, as the subtitle of the book would have it – and he always delivers.” Thanks also for the love they give to this blog!

And finally, I can’t tell you how happy I am to report that Publishers Weekly has given Kay Kenyon’s forthcoming Bright of the Sky a starred review! And here it is, complete with star:

“ At the start of this riveting launch of a new far-future SF series from Kenyon (Tropic of Creation), a disastrous mishap during interstellar space travel catapults pilot Titus Quinn with his wife, Johanna Arlis, and nine-year-old daughter, Sydney, into a parallel universe called the Entire. Titus makes it back to this dimension, his hair turned white, his memory gone, his family presumed dead and his reputation ruined with the corporation that employed him. The corporation (in search of radical space travel methods) sends Titus (in search of Johanna and Sydney) back through the space-time warp. There, he gradually, painfully regains knowledge of its rulers, the cruel, alien Tarig; its subordinate, Chinese-inspired humanoid population, the Chalin; and his daughter’s enslavement. Titus’s transformative odyssey to reclaim Sydney reveals a Tarig plan whose ramifications will be felt far beyond his immediate family. Kenyon’s deft prose, high-stakes suspense and skilled, thorough world building will have readers anxious for the next installment.”

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Love X 3 from the LJ

This from the LIBRARY JOURNAL September 15, 2006 Issue:

Foster, Alan Dean. Sagramanda: A Novel of Near-Future India. Pyr:Prometheus. Oct. 2006. c.290p. ISBN 1-59102-488-9. $25. SF Taneer is an Indian scientist who has stolen a secret project code from a multinational corporation. On the run from both the organization and his unforgiving father, he meets and falls for Dephali, a beautiful woman of India’s untouchable class. Add a farmer-turned-merchant, a Kali-worshipping Frenchwoman, a chief inspector, and a man-eating tiger and the result is a fast-paced urban adventure set in a near-future India of high technology and desperate people. The prolific author of the Pip and Flinx novels (his latest, Trouble Magnet, publishes in November) adds to his considerable body of work with this polished hybrid of page-turning action and taut suspense that belongs in large collections. [For another novel about a future India, see Ian McDonald’s River of Gods.-Ed.] —SF/FANTASY By Jackie Cassada, Asheville Buncombe Lib. Syst., NC

Meaney, John. To Hold Infinity. Pyr: Prometheus. Sept. 2006. c.529p. ISBN 1-59102-489-7. $25. SF When newly widowed biologist Yoshiko Sunadomari travels to the planet Fulgar to reconnect with her estranged son Tetsuo, she discovers that he has run afoul of the Luculenti, the planet’s genetically changed ruling elite, and is now wanted for murder. Yoshiko undertakes a mission to clear Tetsuo’s name, putting herself directly in the path of Rafael Garcia de la Vega, whose nefarious schemes hold the planet in social and political turmoil. The author of the Nulapeiron Sequence (Paradox; Context; Resolution) has crafted a far-reaching vision of a future filled with potentials for both darkness and light, as seen through the eyes of a remarkably gifted and devoted woman. An excellent choice for most sf collections. —SF/FANTASY By Jackie Cassada, Asheville Buncombe Lib. Syst., NC

Williams, Sean. The Blood Debt. Pyr: Prometheus. (Books of the Cataclysm: Two). Oct. 2006. c.476p. ISBN 1-59102-493-5. $25. FANTASY Sal Hrvati’s estranged father has brought a creature from the Void Beneath into the world, and now Sal and his friends embark on a quest to find his errant father. Their journey takes them on a search for magical artifacts on the floor of the great crack in the earth known as the Divide. The second installment in the author’s “Books of the Cataclysm” series (after The Crooked Letter) follows the adventures of three companions who battle the unknown to save their families. Set partly in the modern world and partly in a fantasy environment drawn from archetypal myths and legends, this epic belongs in most fantasy collections. —SF/FANTASY By Jackie Cassada, Asheville Buncombe Lib. Syst., NC

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Infinity and the Infoquake

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SFRevu has just posted a review of John Meaney’s To Hold Infinity. A completely stand-alone novel set in the same universe (but not the same world) as his Nulapeiron Sequence; it could almost be viewed as his Hobbit to the Lord of the Rings. We brought it out after the sequence, in a first hardcover edition that the Jim Burns artwork has always deserved.

SFRevu says, “Meaney delivers a cautionary tale of a future world and augmented humans. Much is taken for granted and not explained, but his world works and his characters come alive. Like other writers, both American and British, he uses Japanese characters, the concept of a warrior culture, and ritual combat to frame a struggle for world or even universal domination.”

Here’s the full wrap-around, cover design by Jacqueline Cooke: (white lines delineating the spine not on the final):

Meanwhile, one wonders if John will write a Silmarillion one day.

In other news, LA Splash has this to say about David Louis Edelman’s Infoquake:

“Infoquake is one of those books that hooks you into the story and makes you never want to put the book down. …find yourself unable to stop thinking about the questions raised by the story. It is a book that describes the ultimate quagmire created when greed competes against decency.”

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New Books by Robson & Meaney Out This Month

This month, we have two new books making their debut (and already spotted on the shelf at a local B&N). Coincidentally, both are tales of technological mind-control, albeit one is a techno-thriller set just around the corner from now and the other takes place in the future on a world far, far away.

Justina Robson’s Mappa Mundi is a novel of hard SF exploring the nature of identity both inherited and engineered, from one of Britain’s most acclaimed new talents. In the near future, when medical nanotechnology has made it possible to map a model of the living human brain, radical psychologist Natalie Armstrong sees her work suddenly become crucial to a cutting-edge military project for creating comprehensive mind-control. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Jude Westhorpe, FBI specialist, is tracking a cold war defector long involved in everything from gene sequencing to mind-mapping. But his investigation has begun to affect matters of national security—throwing Jude and Natalie together as partners in trouble—deep trouble from every direction. This fascinating novel explores the nature of humanity in the near future, when the power and potential of developing technologies demand that we adapt ourselves to their existence—whatever the price.

Publishers Weekly gave Mappa Mundi a starred review, saying, “Robson’s third novel to appear in the U.S. … maintains throat-tightening suspense from its teasingly enigmatic introduction of its major characters to its painful conclusion that evil will succeed if well-meaning people try to achieve good at any cost….Shortlisted for the 2001 Arthur C. Clarke Award, this near-future SF thriller presents convincing characters caught in profound moral dilemmas brought home through exquisite attention to plot details and setting.”

John Meaney’s To Hold Infinity is a stand-alone novel set in the same universe as (but centuries before) his acclaimed Nulapeiron Sequence.

Devastated by her husband’s death, Earth-based biologist Yoshiko Sunadomari journeys to the paradise world of Fulgar to see her estranged son in the hope of bridging the gulf between them. But Tetsuo is in trouble. His expertise in mu-space technology and family links with the mysterious Pilots have ensured his survival — so far. Now he’s in way over his head — unwittingly caught up in a conspiracy of illegal tech-trafficking and corruption, and in the sinister machinations of one of Fulgar’s ruling elite: the charismatic Luculentus, Rafael Garcia de la Vega. When his home is attacked, Tetsuo flees to the planet’s unterraformed wastes, home to society’s outcasts and eco-terrorists.

So Yoshiko arrives on Fulgar to discover Tetsuo gone … and wanted for murder. Ill at ease in this strange, stratified new world seething with social and political unrest but desperate to find her son and clear his name, she embarks on a course of action that will bring her face to face with the awesome, malevolent mind of Rafael.

Connie Willis says of John Meaney’s To Hold Infinity: “Dazzlingly imagined and dazzlingly executed…this is a work of true uniqueness by a true talent. Wow!” Publishers Weekly claims that Meaney “…brings a bright lights/big city sensibility to the normally streetwise milieu of advanced neuro-tech.”

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