Kim Miller
I never saw myself falling in love with a robot but Klara won me over. Despite some awkward passages Ishiguro has written an engaging story of an artificial friend. Clara is a robot designed to be the friend of a young child. She is chosen by Rosie and the two form a real bond.
Klara sees Rosie through times of illness, of budding romance, and of the move to adulthood. Through it all Klara's innocence and insight make a beguiling coupling as her inner AI grows and develops. Ishiguro turns the "AI will destroy humanity" them on its head as Klara become the pivot point for Rosie and her family.
The ending of the story is something that we never see coming and it left me with a sense of pain and grief, but Klara remains as she always was, hopeful and satisfied that she was the best friend to Rosie that she could be.
I never saw myself falling in love with a robot but Klara won me over. Despite some awkward passages Ishiguro has written an engaging story of an artificial friend. Clara is a robot designed to be the friend of a young child. She is chosen by Rosie and the two form a real bond.
Klara sees Rosie through times of illness, of budding romance, and of the move to adulthood. Through it all Klara's innocence and insight make a beguiling coupling as her inner AI grows and develops. Ishiguro turns the "AI will destroy humanity" them on its head as Klara become the pivot point for Rosie and her family.
The ending of the story is something that we never see coming and it left me with a sense of pain and grief, but Klara remains as she always was, hopeful and satisfied that she was the best friend to Rosie that she could be.
I never saw myself falling in love with a robot but Klara won me over. Despite some awkward passages Ishguro has written an engaging story of an artificial friend. Clara is a robot designed to be the friend of a young child. She is chosen by Rosie and the two form a real bond.
I never saw myself falling in love with a robot but Klara won me over. Despite some awkward passages Ishguro has written an engaging story of an artificial friend. Clara is a robot designed to be the friend of a young child. She is chosen by Rosie and the two form a real bond.
So there's this guy Vergil. He's nerdy, overweight and unhealthy, and he hacked his university's data system to add in credentials he never earned so he could get a job in a bio lab doing research work. Do we like him? Probably not but Greg Bear writes him in such a way that we start out on his side.
The bio lab finds that he's been doing private stuff after hours. He's experimenting with encoding bio information and DNA onto microchips, wanting to create intelligent nanobots he can inject into people to cure diseases etc. It's not the normal approach to the mad scientist with dangerous intentions that we see, but Bear sneaks him in under our radar.
His boss decides he's got to go - today. But Vergil needs more time in the lab to complete his current experiments because he's getting somewhere. He needs to get his samples past the security guys and out of the lab. He decides to inject them into himself, then find another job in another lab where he can extract them and continue his work.
Does his plan work? Partly. The cells he's manufactured start multiplying in his bloodstream and they kick his system into a more healthy state. His physical condition improves. His eyesight improves. He becomes a fantastic lover. Everything is looking great for him. But he can't get another lab job and he can't control the increase of the 'wonder cells' in his body.
As the novel progresses the cells become a contagion and spread to other people. They cause changes that are far beyond what Vergil imagined. And like everything that a mad scientist in a SF book causes, things accelerate to the unbearable and point to the destruction of humankind.
So there's this guy Vergil. He's nerdy, overweight and unhealthy, and he hacked his university's data system to add in credentials he never earned so he could get a job in a bio lab doing research work. Do we like him? Probably not but Greg Bear writes him in such a way that we start out on his side.
The bio lab finds that he's been doing private stuff after hours. He's experimenting with encoding bio information and DNA onto microchips, wanting to create intelligent nanobots he can inject into people to cure diseases etc. It's not the normal approach to the mad scientist with dangerous intentions that we see, but Bear sneaks him in under our radar.
His boss decides he's got to go - today. But Vergil needs more time in the lab to complete his current experiments because he's getting somewhere. He needs to get his samples past the security guys and out of the lab. He decides to inject them into himself, then find another job in another lab where he can extract them and continue his work.
Does his plan work? Partly. The cells he's manufactured start multiplying in his bloodstream and they kick his system into a more healthy state. His physical condition improves. His eyesight improves. He becomes a fantastic lover. Everything is looking great for him. But he can't get another lab job and he can't control the increase of the 'wonder cells' in his body.
As the novel progresses the cells become a contagion and spread to other people. They cause changes that are far beyond what Vergil imagined. And like everything that a mad scientist in a SF book causes, things accelerate to the unbearable and point to the destruction of humankind.
Vurt (1993) is Noon's first novel and he started out with a bang. It got the Arthur C. Clarke prize in 1994. The book is a high speed race through the drug fueled underworld of Manchester by a street gang named the Stash Riders. Reading the novel feels like being thrown into a group hallucination where the boundaries of what is real and what is imagined are obliterated.
Scribble is the one telling the story, Beetle is their leader and driver, Brid is Beetle's girlfriend, Mandy is the new member, Twinkle is a local kid who talks herself into the gang, the Thing is a weird living blob who came out of an hallucination, and Desdemona is Scribble's lover (also sister) who has disappeared in that same hallucination in some sort of exchange.
The story takes it's lead from the myth of Orpheus in the underworld as he seeks to rescue his lost wife. Along the way there are allusions to Lewis Caroll, Shakespeare, punk culture, Gibson style cyberpunk, Clockwork Orange vibes, and a whole lot of crazy.
The drug use is based on feathers that users suck on where different colours designate different types of hallucinatory effects. Some are street legal, some are not. Some are cosy comfort and some are pornographic. Some are safe, some can be deadly. Scribble's goal of finding Desdemona means he's looking for the most dangerous, the Curious Yellow. Yeah, movie reference there.
I was impressed with the relentless nature of the story. Scribble's mind is like a V8 engine running in a Mini Minor and is at full throttle all the way. Noon keeps up the pace as Scribble moves in and out of hallucinatory states so that we sometimes have trouble telling the difference. Everything is a race for Scribble, and the book ends by crashing into the final scenes and leaving us a bit stunned.
There are a couple of elements that disturbed me on reading, they are the brother/sister incest and the bestiality with dogs and 'robodogs' - (both people and dogs are sometimes enhanced with mechanistic elements). It took me a while to see these as a part of Noon's references to Greek mythology, where the Gods and heroes are often in incestual relationships and taking the form of various animals to seduce desirable humans. We read the myths without moralising too much, and in Vurt, Noon is confronting us with the same dynamic in a futuristic world.
I had trouble giving stars to this novel. Do I give it more for its sheer audacity and fireworks brilliance? Do I give it less because the characters are often shallow and unlikable and with few redeeming qualities? Do I give it less because of the incest/bestiality? Do I give it more for the talent that is obvious in the consistency of the story? I decided to mark it upwards, 4.5 stars.
Vurt (1993) is Noon's first novel and he started out with a bang. It got the Arthur C. Clarke prize in 1994. The book is a high speed race through the drug fueled underworld of Manchester by a street gang named the Stash Riders. Reading the novel feels like being thrown into a group hallucination where the boundaries of what is real and what is imagined are obliterated.
Scribble is the one telling the story, Beetle is their leader and driver, Brid is Beetle's girlfriend, Mandy is the new member, Twinkle is a local kid who talks herself into the gang, the Thing is a weird living blob who came out of an hallucination, and Desdemona is Scribble's lover (also sister) who has disappeared in that same hallucination in some sort of exchange.
The story takes it's lead from the myth of Orpheus in the underworld as he seeks to rescue his lost wife. Along the way there are allusions to Lewis Caroll, Shakespeare, punk culture, Gibson style cyberpunk, Clockwork Orange vibes, and a whole lot of crazy.
The drug use is based on feathers that users suck on where different colours designate different types of hallucinatory effects. Some are street legal, some are not. Some are cosy comfort and some are pornographic. Some are safe, some can be deadly. Scribble's goal of finding Desdemona means he's looking for the most dangerous, the Curious Yellow. Yeah, movie reference there.
I was impressed with the relentless nature of the story. Scribble's mind is like a V8 engine running in a Mini Minor and is at full throttle all the way. Noon keeps up the pace as Scribble moves in and out of hallucinatory states so that we sometimes have trouble telling the difference. Everything is a race for Scribble, and the book ends by crashing into the final scenes and leaving us a bit stunned.
There are a couple of elements that disturbed me on reading, they are the brother/sister incest and the bestiality with dogs and 'robodogs' - (both people and dogs are sometimes enhanced with mechanistic elements). It took me a while to see these as a part of Noon's references to Greek mythology, where the Gods and heroes are often in incestual relationships and taking the form of various animals to seduce desirable humans. We read the myths without moralising too much, and in Vurt, Noon is confronting us with the same dynamic in a futuristic world.
I had trouble giving stars to this novel. Do I give it more for its sheer audacity and fireworks brilliance? Do I give it less because the characters are often shallow and unlikable and with few redeeming qualities? Do I give it less because of the incest/bestiality? Do I give it more for the talent that is obvious in the consistency of the story? I decided to mark it upwards, 4.5 stars.
A dystopian story of Melbourne between about 2040 and 2060. Rising sea levels brought on by climate change have flooded the lower parts of the city and are creeping higher. People are separated into two social strata, the Sweet are the higher ground dwellers with employment, power, and influence, and the Swill are those living amid the flood waters. Tall towers have been built for them, and meagre food and services are provided by the government increasingly stretched by the demand.
The Conway family start out as Sweet but with the death of the father are cast down into the Fringe, not quite Swill but with no employment and rejected by their old world. They meet Jimmy Kovacs, the nearby tower boss and protection racketeer. He takes a shine to the widow and her two young sons. The bulk of the novel is the story of these four.
One son is smart and gets elevated for training by the government. The other is a numbers savant and is sought out by black marketeers. Jimmy holds together a whole tower of Swill by strength of personality and mob boss mentality, and extends his influence into the lives of the two growing boys to keep them safe. A crisis occurs soon after the half way point that threatens the whole city and because of their involvement looks as if it will drag them all down with it.
Each chapter of the novel is written first person from the POV of one or other of the characters. This means taking note of the chapter title as it can be confusing. The author gives us deep insight into the thinking of each one as sometimes the same event is covered by two or three characters and we see the variance of understanding of each person. Turner shows that he has great skill in writing interpersonal relationships as this technique could easily become a mess of head-hopping. He knows how and when to pit people against each other, and he knows how to bring them together.
There was an early trope that annoyed me where somebody says, "I've written a novel ..." and it looked as if the book was to be a 'novel within a novel' thing. Luckily Turner's skill as an author and commenter on human life rose above it. In the early pages I had a three star rating in mind for that initial clumsiness but that rose to 4.5 by the end.
A dystopian story of Melbourne between about 2040 and 2060. Rising sea levels brought on by climate change have flooded the lower parts of the city and are creeping higher. People are separated into two social strata, the Sweet are the higher ground dwellers with employment, power, and influence, and the Swill are those living amid the flood waters. Tall towers have been built for them, and meagre food and services are provided by the government increasingly stretched by the demand.
The Conway family start out as Sweet but with the death of the father are cast down into the Fringe, not quite Swill but with no employment and rejected by their old world. They meet Jimmy Kovacs, the nearby tower boss and protection racketeer. He takes a shine to the widow and her two young sons. The bulk of the novel is the story of these four.
One son is smart and gets elevated for training by the government. The other is a numbers savant and is sought out by black marketeers. Jimmy holds together a whole tower of Swill by strength of personality and mob boss mentality, and extends his influence into the lives of the two growing boys to keep them safe. A crisis occurs soon after the half way point that threatens the whole city and because of their involvement looks as if it will drag them all down with it.
Each chapter of the novel is written first person from the POV of one or other of the characters. This means taking note of the chapter title as it can be confusing. The author gives us deep insight into the thinking of each one as sometimes the same event is covered by two or three characters and we see the variance of understanding of each person. Turner shows that he has great skill in writing interpersonal relationships as this technique could easily become a mess of head-hopping. He knows how and when to pit people against each other, and he knows how to bring them together.
There was an early trope that annoyed me where somebody says, "I've written a novel ..." and it looked as if the book was to be a 'novel within a novel' thing. Luckily Turner's skill as an author and commenter on human life rose above it. In the early pages I had a three star rating in mind for that initial clumsiness but that rose to 4.5 by the end.