Trendovi, hard SF is back?

[S.]

Mozda nekome bude zanimljivo.


Four new tales in science fiction by Elizabeth Sourbut

   * The Algebraist
   * by Iain M. Banks, Orbit, £17.99 ISBN 1841491551

   * Angel Stations
   * by Gary Gibson, Tor £10.99 ISBN 1405034459

   * Exultant
   * by Stephen Baxter, Gollancz, £12.99 ISBN 0575074299

   * Stamping Butterflies
   * by Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Gollancz, £12.99 ISBN 0575076135

SCIENCE fiction is abandoning near-future speculation to head for the stars, transporting us to distant reaches of space and time, revelling in the thrill of exploring ideas.

The one to follow is Iain M. Banks. His latest book, The Algebraist, is enormous fun, and set far, far in the future. The Mercatoria rules a galactic trading empire embracing dozens of species, held together by a network of wormholes. As war looms, Fassin Taak is sent on a mission into the gas giant Nasqueron, where he
tries to coax information out of the indifferent Dwellers, who have been around as a species, and sometimes as individuals, for billions of years. If he succeeds, the whole galaxy may be changed forever.

The Algebraist is as packed with invention and galaxy-spanning action as any of Banks's previous science fiction, though this is not a Culture novel. Full of fantastic ideas, with a wonderfully believable setting in a gas-giant planet, the book is, however, overlong for the story he tells. You may find some of the more poignant moments get lost among the billowing yellow clouds of Nasqueron.

Wormholes also feature in Gary Gibson's debut, Angel Stations. His stations are remnants of a lost civilisation and link Sol system with other star systems, including Kasper, home of the only other intelligent species known to exist. But the wolf-like inhabitants of Kasper are under threat of extinction from a gamma-ray burster - an outcome eagerly anticipated by some humans, who want the planet for themselves. As a first book this is fine, but constant chopping and changing between viewpoints does not make it an easy read.

Stephen Baxter tackles the temporal ramifications of faster-than-light travel in Exultant, the sequel to Coalescent. A long time hence, a motley group of misfits and rejects launches a desperate, underfunded mission into the heart of our galaxy. Their goal is to strike at the super-massive black hole that powers their enemy, the Xeelee.

It is a rite of passage for boy-pilot Pirius Red as he learns how to lead pilots older and more experienced than himself. These include his future self, Pirius Blue, whose use of untested manoeuvres has not only brought him back in time from a future that will now never happen, but has also landed him in a prison colony. Baxter once again offers up stunning cutting-edge physics but, unfortunately, he dramatises it with less-than-convincing characters and dialogue that often reads as though it has been taken from a textbook.

Future near and far collide in Jon Courtenay Grimwood's latest complex work. In Stamping Butterflies he returns to his favourite themes of tortured childhood and uncertain identities. He sets the action partly in north Africa a few years from now and partly among the 2023 components of a fragmented Dyson sphere, where the latest incarnation of Chuang Tzu, emperor to 147 billion humans, awaits a mysterious assassin and dreams of a distant past.

An attempted assassination drives the Earthbound plot in that distant past. Prisoner Zero waits for execution after trying to shoot the president of the United States. His dreams are of the emperor of the far future, though his identity is unclear. Zero's past is rooted in the Marrakech of the 1970s, and intersects the lives of an American pop star and a local street boy. The three stories intertwine tantalisingly, their resolution shocks.

[VelikiBrat]

E to bih voleo da vidim!!!