Book Review: Idoru, Holy Fire, Starlight 1

Off the Shelf
Idoru | Holy Fire | Starlight 1

If you're in love with a computer construct, is it real?

Idoru
By William Gibson
G.P. Putnam's Sons
$24.95/$33.95 Canada
Hardcover, Sept. 1996

Review by Curt Wohleber

n his recent novels, cyberpunk master William Gibson has shied away from the street-smart, tragically hip -- and one-dimensional -- computer cowboys that populated his early books. The closest thing to a real cyberpunk in Gibson's latest, Idoru, is Colin Laney, who's not even all that computer literate. He has a peculiar gift, however, stemming from a rare form of attention-deficit disorder. This gives Laney the almost psychic ability to glean secret information from subtle patterns in vast amounts of computer data.

Slitscan, a media conglomerate that specializes in unearthing celebrity scandals, recruits Laney because of his unique talent. Laney excels at the work, but his basic decency gets in the way. When he attempts to prevent the suicide of a movie star's mistress, he fails disastrously and loses his job in the process. So Laney goes to Japan to work for an ex-con named Blackwell, head of security for the popular musical duo Lo/Rez.

The band's singer, Rez, has announced plans to marry Japanese superstar Rei Toei. But Rei is the ultimate media-created celebrity, an idoru, an entirely computer-generated persona. Blackwell wants Laney to try and figure out what in the world is going on with Rez. Meanwhile, the Seattle chapter of a worldwide Lo/Rez fan club sends 14-year-old Chia Pet McKenzie to Japan to investigate the scandal.

Unfortunately, Idoru sounds more exciting than it actually is. The stakes in this book are remarkably low, and Laney's intriguing ability is put to relatively trivial use. Centering the story around Rez and Rei is a bit like building a thriller around the-rock-star-formerly-known-as-Prince's decision to change his name to an unpronounceable symbol. Menace arrives in the form of some contraband nanotechnology that Russian mobsters will kill for, but that's just a plot device, what Alfred Hitchcock called a "McGuffin."

On the other hand, the engagement of Rez and Rei serves as a potent metaphor for humanity's ever more intimate relationship with technology. Rez himself is a kind of construct, a commercial and cultural entity only distantly related to the flesh-and-blood musician of that name, while the software-created Rei may be the half of the couple who is truly in love.

Idoru is a loosely related sequel to 1993's Virtual Light. Readers disappointed by that novel might still enjoy Idoru, which is less meandering and downbeat. Gibson's distinctively textured writing and bizarre, vivid settings compensate for the weak plot line.

While Idoru isn't as groundbreaking and exciting as Gibson's classic Neuromancer and its sequels, this book offers what those novels conspicuously lacked: realistic, likable characters, humor and moments of genuine poignancy.

While I had problems with Idoru, I think this is Gibson's best book since Count Zero-- Curt

ack to the top.

Holy Fire

Bruce Sterling's near-future novel examines the consequences of artificially extended life spans

Holy Fire
By Bruce Sterling
Bantam Spectra
$22.95
Hardcover, Sept. 1996

Review by L.R.C. Munro

oly Fire is set on Earth exactly 100 years from now. In that time the world has been rebuilt after suffering near destruction from plagues and those who survive have come close to perfecting the art of life extension. The resulting population is a gerontocracy -- a global society run by and for the aged -- where the primary social value is caution and anyone under 90 is excluded from any real endeavors or wealth.

Mia Ziemann is a 94-year-old woman, successful by all the standards of the world but quietly stifling under the social mantle of moderation and long-term planning. Eligible for the most radical life extension possible, Mia undergoes an experimental procedure that makes her physiologically 20 years old again. Suddenly infused with a desire to live life to the fullest, Mia escapes from the caretakers who would keep her cosseted and runs away in search of the ineffable holy fire of the title.

Renaming herself Maya, Sterling's heroine journeys to the rebuilt Europe where she finds the vivid underground -- a collection of young artists, anarchists and intellectuals trying to create a different kind of mind-set for the next generation of posthumans. Through her encounters with new lovers, friends, mentors and enemies, Maya/Mia attempts to come to terms with her new life-enhanced self, while at the same time staying one step ahead of the authorities who would forcibly return her to the life of safety she has come to dread.

Holy Fire is a highly readable book with a great setting, salient ideas and intriguing, if not entirely engaging, characters. Sterling is certainly one of the most interesting of the American idea writers, and whether readers agree with him or not, he packs a lot of substance into the whys and hows of his extrapolations. The most interesting part of Holy Fire is the landscape, not just because it's full of neat stuff (a city rebuilt out of user-friendly fungus; a neurally enhanced dog who hosts a talk show; cloth computers; virtual memory palaces) but also because Sterling goes to the trouble of letting readers know how it came to be that way and whether it's working.

On the other hand, the characters -- including Mia/Maya herself -- come across more as a collection of nifty character traits and annoyingly momentous sound bites than as flesh-and-blood people. Even given that many young intellectuals aspire to have lots of nifty character traits and to pontificate meaningfully at every occasion, readers may find themselves tiring of all the beauty and pretension.

Despite its characterization problems, Holy Fire is a must read for anyone looking for the best in intellectually challenging science fiction.

I enjoyed the read, but often found myself wishing there were a few more ordinary people in Sterling's world. -- LRC

ack to the top.

Starlight 1

The original anthology series makes a comeback...

Starlight 1
Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Tor Books
$13.95/$19.95 Canada
Trade Paperback, Sept. 1996

Review by Clinton Lawrence

tarlight 1 is the first volume in a new original anthology series edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden. The anthology contains 12 stories along with Hayden's introduction.

Hayden writes that, with Starlight 1, he is hoping to create something in the tradition of the great original anthology series of the past, such as Damon Knight's Orbit and Terry Carr's Universe. The stories represent a broad spectrum of current science fiction and fantasy, with a strong preference for stylistically-polished, character-driven fiction, and some inclination toward literary experimentation. The result is a diverse collection of strong, often eclectic, writing on the cutting edge.

This literary mix reinforces the recent trend in science fiction of looking to the past and present for inspiration -- five of the stories are set in the past, and two others are contemporary magical realism. And oddly enough, the story that comes closes to being hard science fiction, Gregory Feeley's "The Weighing of Ayre," is set in the 17th century, during the Anglo-Dutch War. In this story, a young English scientist of Dutch lineage is coerced by the British government to spy on Dutch scientific efforts.

If there's an underlying tone to this anthology, it's one of haunting seriousness and a willingness to deal with controversial themes. Only two of the fantasies -- Andy Duncan's outstanding "Liza and the Crazy Water Man" and Susanna Clarke's "The Ladies of Grace Adieu" -- display much humor. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Michael Swanwick's opening story, "The Dead," tells of a man coerced into working for a company marketing reanimated corpses as a new labor force. Perhaps the grimmest story of all is Carter Scholz's bold "Mengele's Jew," in which Josef Mengele becomes obsessed with trying the famous Schrodinger's Cat experiment on a human subject.

One of the more interesting pieces is perhaps the most experimental in the anthology, John M. Ford's "Erase/Record/Play: A Drama for Print." In this story, a psychiatrist explains to an interviewer about the death camps from which he and his patients have been recently freed, while the patients act out A Midsummer Night's Dream as therapy. It's very surreal and effective, even if there are many questions left unanswered.

For science fiction traditionalists, the best story in the anthology is the last, Maureen F. McHugh's "The Cost to Be Wise." Scholars from Earth visit an unarmed community on a primitive planet, but while there the community is invaded by armed nomads who have come to "trade." The story deftly avoids easy answers and is reminiscent of some of Ursula K. Le Guin's best work.

In his introduction, Hayden calls short fiction the "R&D laboratory in which SF constantly reinvents itself." Starlight 1 lives up to this stated purpose quite effectively.

It's great to have another original anthology series, to go along with Full Spectrum. I just wish we didn't have to wait until 1998 for Starlight 2.-- Clint

ack to the top.

Site Index | Request a Review | Feedback