Review by New York Times Review
SINCE THE AGE of 16, the beautiful, half-Sudanese Briton Hope Arden has been literally unmemorable: Within a minute or two out of her presence, other people forget she exists. Every meeting she has with another person is always the first. Her own parents have forgotten that they ever had two daughters, not just one. In a simpler writer's hands, THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF HOPE (Redhook, $27) would bend around explaining Hope's unusual condition and perhaps finding a cure for it. Fortunately, Claire North - also known as the middle-grade and young adult writer Catherine Webb and the satirical urban fantasy writer Kate Griffin - has established a reputation for tense, dense, science fiction/ fantasy-inflected thrillers that defy facile expectations. (Readers may remember the power of her Campbell Award-winning 2014 novel, "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.") North wastes no energy on the why of Hope, only the psychological and physical logistics of survival within a fluid identity. Having grown up to be a master thief, Hope travels from port to exotic port, eternally a woman of mystery, seeking meaning in her various criminal conquests. These provocative character threads are woven into a cyberpunk-esque plot involving the sinister social app Perfection, which seems to transform its users for the better - until it kills them. The resulting tapestry is simultaneously a tense conspiracy caper, a haunting meditation on loneliness and a brutally cynical examination of modern media. With so many layers to juggle, it would be easy for North to fumble her way into a multifaceted mess. Instead, all the layers float, separate yet supporting one another, in a well-paced, brilliant and balanced whole. A COLLECTION OF post-apocalyptic short fiction, DROWNED WORLDS: Tales From the Anthropocene and Beyond (Solaris, paper, $14.99) was inspired by the J.G. Ballard-esque "romantic haze" of "flooded, inundated ruins of a world laid waste by raising oceans," as the editor Jonathan Strahan explains in its introduction. Thus readers are guided into a continuum of stories about the likely world to come, after melted icecaps and rising seas have decimated coastal cities and perhaps set in motion stranger changes on the societal level. The collection begins with Paul McAuley's "Elves of Antarctica," about a helicopter pilot working for a huge industrial project intended to preserve Antarctica's western ice sheet. This is probably the most scientifically plausible story in the set. It's also one of the most didactic, explaining the altered world in a leisurely way that is perhaps meant to evoke the romantic haze Strahan mentions, though instead it just feels heavy-handed. A number of stories in the first half of the collection, like Ken Liu's "Dispatches From the Cradle: The Hermit - Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts," fall into this territory: lovely yet disengaged travelogues of an environment in flux. This starts to change with Christopher Rowe's "Brownsville Station," the slightly surreal tale of a train that travels along the "linear city" edging the coast between Cancún and Key West. Thereafter the collection gets less plausible but more intriguing and immersive, as in Jeffrey Ford's "What Is," an omniscient-narrated tale of stubborn, damaged people fighting a hopeless battle for survival in drought-destroyed Oklahoma. Nalo Hopkinson's "Inselberg" features a mutant tour bus driver - of a living bus - ferrying entitled tourists through a terrifying and wondrous island landscape of sugar swamps and radioactive seas. By Catherynne M. Valente's closing tale, "The Future Is Blue," readers are far off the path of thinly veiled environmentalist lecture and deep into the strangeness of a world utterly transformed. Here, at last, is the romanticism that Strahan seeks - after a journey from science into the unknown that perhaps intentionally replicates the future to come. Altogether it's haunting, heady stuff. MIRA GRANT'S HIT Newsflesh trilogy was an astonishing take on the tired zombie apocalypse subgenre - precisely because it was barely about the zombie apocalypse at all. It wore other hats: epidemiology thriller, genre-savvy black comedy and a fascinating exploration of the future of (not so) new media. Now the follow-up anthology RISE (Orbit, $25) covers the before and after of the novels, with several short stories set during the Rising, when the zombies first appeared, and others exploring the aftermath of "Blackout," the trilogy's conclusion. This is great for established readers, because it brings into sharp focus what is mostly elided in the core series. In "How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea," an indirect sequel to the trilogy, readers are shown a different paradigm for survival in Australia's environment-first response to the crisis. (The zombie kangaroos are a highlight.) "Countdown" introduces the personalities involved in the creation of the Kellis-Amberlee zombie virus, humanizing the researchers, the test cases and even the anti-establishment protesters who disastrously released the viral strains and thus initiated the apocalypse. All of this makes for a rich expansion on a beloved universe. However, roughly half of the collection is set during the Rising itself, and these weaken the whole. Instead of nuanced examinations of the politics of fear, stories like "The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell" and "San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats" are what Newsflesh wasn't: just zombie stories. They're exciting, horrifying. They're written with the same gripping attention to character and pace, and are just as darkly tongue-in-cheek as the novels (as a story about zombies versus San Diego Comic-Con cosplayers must be). Still, they lack the media analysis and complexity that made the trilogy so refreshing. New readers may come away thinking of this series as merely fun. They would do better to head straight for the trilogy, leaving the vast horde of longtime fans to devour "Rise" in the spirit it's meant. THE EASIEST COMPARISON that comes to mind when reading Malka Older's INFOMOCRACY (Tor/Tom Doherty, $24.99) is to its cyberpunk forebears. There's an obvious line of inheritance here from William Gibson and Neal Stephenson to Older's futuristic world of global information networks and cool, noirish operatives vying for power and survival. Yet there's also an inescapable "West Wing" vibe to the book. This probably owes to the fact that Older is herself a global player, with impressive bona fides in the field of international affairs. This lends the story a political authenticity that's unusual in the field of cyberpunk, and very welcome. The time is somewhere in the 2060s, 20 years after the powerful search engine Information (think Google on meth) has helped the world achieve Thomas Jefferson's optimal condition for democracy: a citizenry that is not just well informed but perpetually informed, and more connected than ever thanks to ubiquitous translation software. Today's varied political systems have been replaced with a nearly global microdemocracy, resulting in a world without borders or wars. Sovereign states have dissolved into centenals - aggregations of 100,000 like-minded souls. These centenals vote every 10 years for one of the dozens of political parties to achieve a supermajority, which will then rule the world. The story follows several rising players in this transformed political landscape, each pursuing his or her own agenda - some to abolish microdemocracy, some to maintain the new status quo, some to establish dominance for new powers. And lurking under all of the political jockeying is the danger of a return to the ugliest of the old ways: election sabotage. Popularity trumping the public good. War. The big picture of this story is exciting, intriguing; microdemocracy (probably better known as e-democracy) isn't a new concept, but it hasn't often been tackled so head-on in modern science fiction. The microcosmic questions remain frustratingly unanswered - What's day-to-day life like for people on the local level? How do all these thousands of conflicting centenals get anything done? - but it's clear that the minutiae of the future isn't the point. Futurists and politics geeks will love this unreservedly. N.K. JEMISIN'S new novel, "The Obelisk Gate," will be published in August.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 19, 2016]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Older's sparkling debut, the first full-length novel from the novella-focused Tor.com imprint, serves as both a callback to classic futurist adventure tales by the likes of Brunner and Bester and a current examination of the power of information. In the (slightly implausible) future, most of the world is part of a massive democracy divided into "centenals" of 100,000 people. Governments are global and overlapping, and each centenal decides which government to belong to. A worldwide organization known as Information manages elections and attempts to keep governments' campaign promises in check; the governments themselves range from corporate ones such as PhilipMorris to more traditional ones with names like Liberty and Policy1st. Ken, a Brazilian of Japanese descent who works for the Policy1st government, is attempting to research non-Policy1st centenals that might be willing to change governments in the upcoming election. After he learns of a potential conspiracy involving the election, he ends up working with (and falling for) Information agent Mishima. Older creates a fascinating future world and populates it with a wide variety of characters with believable and interesting motivations. She also throws in some great action scenes and nifty technology. This intriguing thought experiment is perfectly timed to leave readers pondering the meaning of voting and representative government in the run-up to the 2016 elections. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
There's an election coming up, and campaign operatives such as Ken are traveling the globe to drum up support for their party. Government isn't local in the near future. The world is divided into centenals of 100,000 people, and parties vie for their votes, hoping to win the Supermajority. Many of the parties are wholly owned corporate entities, but some, like Ken's idealistic Policy1st party, campaign on issues. Ken crosses paths with Mishima, an agent working for Information (this future realm's version of the Internet that also watches over the elections), and Domaine, a man aiming to bring down the election process. As the vote gets closer, it's clear that many will do anything in their power to get the outcome they desire. VERDICT First-time author Older's universe is fascinating, with its -believable if cynical view of how politics might evolve in the information age. The pace is brisk with enough action for fans of political thrillers, but with plenty of -futuristic touches for sf lovers.-MM © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A debut sci-fi author suggests that the electoral process could be even scarier, more convoluted, and more subject to factual distortions than it currently is. In the future, the entire world signs on to the "micro-democracy" form of government. Each population of 100,000 people, or "centenal," votes every 10 years for a government in their area; the one who wins the most centenals gains the Supermajority. Elections and voting are operated and monitored by Information, the organization that also runs the Internet, the phone, and all broadcasting systems. Heritage has held the Supermajority for decades, but the outcome for them seems less certain as the election looms. Both Mishima, an expert troubleshooter for Information, and Ken, an ambitious campaigner for the up-and-coming Policy1st government, hear rumors that the powerful Liberty government might be trying to start a war. Anarchist Domaine, in a loud but essentially ineffectual way, argues for the downfall of the current political system. When an act of sabotage brings down Information on Election Day, who's to blame, and what is their ultimate goal? The romance between Mishima and Ken feels somewhat undeveloped, but it's counterbalanced by the larger themes Older is exploring. The author brings a considerable amount of experience and scholarly knowledge to bear hereshe has traveled all over the world as an expert in disaster management and is pursuing a graduate degree in the sociology of disaster response. The result is a frighteningly relevant exploration of how the flow of information (small i, both true and false) can manipulate public opinionin particular, how fear and the desperate desire for safety can become such strong factors in swaying the vote. Some aspects of the story may risk dating, but on the whole, timely and perhaps timeless. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
