Review: Memory, Linda Nagata, 2003. 

There is the feel of a fantasy quest and a western in this novel, Nagata’s introduction to the world at the center of Silver.

There are gods, reincarnation of a sort, and destined lovers. It is a world of vast spaces with humans living only around temples. Most of it seems to be desert-like. There is no aviation. Electronic communication is spotty. Rather than horses, the characters travel by motorcycles and trucks, always careful to arrive at a temple by nightfall. Night is when the silver comes up, a nanotechnology that sometimes consumes or transforms what it touches. Only the “kobolds” in the temples keep it at bay – sometimes.

Frankly, I’ve known about this novel for years, but a young protagonist and a synopsis with words I normally associate with fantasy novels didn’t make me want to read it.

However, our narrator Jubilee, a teenager, has a compelling voice and doesn’t have the sort of “pluck” that grates on me.

Review: Silver: Inverted Frontier, Book 2, Linda Nagata, 2019.

A crippled god tries to return to his broken creation. A man pursues, trying to stop him from gaining more power. A young woman looks for her lost love.

This book is quite different than its predecessor, Edges. Much of the action takes place on Verilotus, the artificial world that Lezuri, that god-like castaway picked up by Dragon in the proceeding book, created.

At the climax to Edges, a chase ensued following the Pyrrhic War which wrested control of the Dragon from Lezuri. But not a chase of bodies but of minds encoded as information, “ghosts”, as Lezuri beamed himself from the information systems of outriding vessel to outriding vessel.

Eventually, he took control of one and headed to Verilotus where a fight with a “goddess” left him crippled and that settlement wrecked. It seems the two entities, possessing extremely sophisticated nanotechnology, created a world but disagreed as to its ultimate use.

But Urban, the leader of the Dragon expedition, is in pursuit. As far as he knows, Dragon is still in Lezuri’s hands, and he won’t communicate with it for fear that his incarnation in one of those outriders will be detected.

It’s a return to Linda Nagata’s Nanotech Succession.

Review: “Nahiku West”, Linda Nagata, 2012.

This story seems to take place around the time of the second novel, The Bohr Maker.

Protagonist and narrator Zeke Choy is a Commonwealth Policeman, drafted into that service since he’s a designer of “makers”, the nanotech devices that enable long extended life.

However, the Commonwealth doesn’t allow unlimited modifications to the human form. Some maker modifications are illegal, and the penalty for having them is death.

Humans in this world can record their minds as “ghosts” and send those recording into a constructed body not necessarily identical to the one previously inhabited by the mind. Choy seems to have altered his body when entering police academy. There are also “atriums” in these brains which allow interface with cybernetic devices.

The story opens with a micrometerorite punching a hole in a capsule traveling the tether between the two space settlements of Nahiku East and Nahiku West.

This concludes my retro review series of Linda Nagata’s Nanotech Succession. This one is from September 30, 2012.

As with the earlier books, the link is to the Kindle edition which has been slightly revised from the version I reviewed.

Review: Vast, Linda Nagata, 1998. 

The final novel of Nagata’s Nantoech Succession is somewhat disappointing.

Nagata’s strengths are again on display here. There is her clever combining of information science and theory with a technology of an often organic sort. With the former, we get recorded and edited and copied personalities which operate in a matrix ranging from computers to something approaching a standard issue homo sapiens body. So-called “cells” – automata running in living matter and, sometimes, the dust scattered throughout solar systems to form a vast processing system – are the organic element.

Her language, particularly in the last four pages, can rise to an astringent poignancy, a clear-eyed look at life and man’s place in the cosmos that somehow doesn’t descend into nihilism or a sense of cosmic horror.

Nagata presents her plot and explanations for her mysteries much more forthrightly than in the preceding novel, Deception Well. That includes an opening prologue which brings the reader quickly up to speed. And, yes, we do get the answers to some of the bigger mysteries of the series. Continue reading →

This is the third installment in my retro-reviews of the work of Linda Nagata. This retro review is from September 26, 2012.

Again, the link is to the Kindle edition of the work which has been slightly revised from the edition I reviewed.

Review: Deception Well, Linda Nagata, 1997.

This is the third part of Nagata’s Nanotech Succession, but you can dive right into the series with this book, particularly if you’ve already read Skye Object 3270a which, in some ways, it resembles – though this is a far more complicated and ambitious book.

Like that novella, this is the story of a young boy, here Lot, who lives on Silk, an orbital settlement connected by sky elevator to Deception Well, a world with a very complicated and mysterious ecology.

This story is set earlier so even less is known about Deception Well. It is the destination of a starship manned by a cult centering around Jupiter, a man who has, in Nagata’s most inventive idea in a novel full of invention, a strange biochemical ability to sense and manipulate the emotions of others. The Silkens defeat Jupiter’s attempt to go to Deception Well, a world they fear because it wiped out the original settlers of Silk. Some of the cult members are assimilated into Silken society, and the novel follows one in particular.

Lot, son of Jupiter, has inherited his peculiar charismatic quality. But Nagata doesn’t give us the stereotypical science fiction story of the poor-oppressed-orphan-with-the-strange-talent-who-is-persecuted-but-is-really-the-savior-of-his-people plot. There’s good reason to fear his talent, especially when he begins to foment revolt amongst the “ados” (non-voting citizens less than a 100 years old). And he also begins to suspect, as he questions Silkens and ex-followers of Jupiter, there is more to his father and his past then he knew. There’s also his friend Urban, another not altogether sympathetic character. Peculiarly immune to Lot’s charisma, he likes the potential for power being so close to Lot confers. Continue reading →

A continuation of the retro-review series on Linda Nagata’s Nanotech Succession series. This one is from August 25, 2012.

The link is to the Kindle version of the novel which is slightly revised from the version I reviewed.

Review: Tech-Heaven, Linda Nagata, 1995.

Linda Nagata’s second novel is many things: the second installment in her Nanotech Succession series; the story of Katie Kishida, a woman fiercely committed to resurrecting her husband Tom in cryonic suspension; and a near future novel now interestingly dated in some aspects.

While it is a step backwards in time from the first novel in the series, The Bohr Maker, to an indeterminate time in the early 21st Century, this novel is a noticeable improvement in Nagata’s skill. While the nanotechnology is less sophisticated than in the earlier book, the science is actually more detailed, specifically the challenges of maintaining someone in cryonic suspension and then reviving them. While still maintaining a fine sense of pacing, Nagata breaks up her viewpoint chapters with Kishida with snippets from popular cable tv and internet based entertainment and “Wedged Time” segments which are the dreams of Kishida’s husband Tom while he is a corpsicle.

Katie’s story is infused with an emotional intensity I seldom come across in science fiction. As fits an epic story which will cover thirty years form the time of Tom’s death and suspension to the book’s climax, the novel opens in media res with a 64 year Katie approaching a hidden crypt in an abandoned copper mine where her husband lies. Then the novel backtracks to show the political struggles of Katie with her sister-in-law, a powerful US senator; the attempts on her life; the bitter falling out with former friends over her decision to freeze rather than bury her husband; and, of course, the efforts to fund – and be allowed to use – a cure to revive her husband. And, with the betrayals of family and friends, comes the betrayal of Katie’s heart – the occasional resentments at the duty Tom’s “presence” requires, his hold on her loyalty when she takes a new husband. Continue reading →