Changes

The problem with the book is that it is something more than ""''A"" '' book, or tries to be, and so for me ends up being something less than one. Oh, it's clever and challenging and exuberant and all of that… but it falls over its own cleverness and ends up being annoying and irritating for not having been 'settled' into one place or the other.

Warham is from Titan ""''prognathous, callipygous, steatopygous, exophthamlus"" '' , or as Swan then thinks it ""''toad, newt, frog""''. I'm not sure I ever fully grasped what his profession is: some kind of trade envoy seems near the mark, but he was one of Alex's confidantes.

Swan & and Warham get caught up in intergalactic politics, terrorism and intrigue and in true thriller fashion chase after the bad guys, fall in love, fall out, get hurt and face death. Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily only the once. Of course this being Sci-fi, there is also the threat that quantum computers (Qubes) without whose AI, none of the modern conveniences can function, may just be evolving into androids with genuine consciousness and a kind of free will.

The Swan & and Warham tale (which I choose to think of as 'book 1') is the heart and momentum of the book. It's the bit that will eventually make the screen play. 'Book 1' is entirely my invention and bears no resemblance at all to Robison's structure.

'Book 2' (in my head) is something of a poetry anthology. This is made up of chapters that intersperse the narrative. Chapters called ""''Lists""''. They are what they say they are. Simple ~ - or maybe not so simple ~ - lists. Some of them hit the mark as pure poetry. Others count at least as lyrical prose. What their purpose is intended to be and whether they meet it comes under that heading ""''challenging""''. Some of them I loved, some of them I got so bored with I skipped over them. Which might be another way of saying ""''some work, some don't""''. The book would have been none the poorer without them. As an anthology, they could probably stand alone. For those who like their literary allusions, the echoes for me were of Vonnegut and Jim Morrison… which is both compliment and condemnation.

'Book 3' is the back-story, the history book. ""''Extracts"" '' again litter the pages between the story and the Lists. These are the half-formed explanations of how things got to where they got to. Presented as extracts from history books which post-date the story by who-knows-how-long they explain how earthlings have managed to colonise the solar system, building homes on (or in) all of these uninhabitable planets. They explain the politics that resulted. They describe how you terraform the inside of an asteroid and what it's like to be within one. They explain how you can speed up a planet's spin to give it a usable day-length or how you build a city that needs to stay of the dark side of rotating planet. All of this is the author showing that he has thought his universe through, that given particular scientific extrapolations it isn't impossible. And that's my problem with it. All of these chapters read like some kind of ""''proof""'', a self-justification for a world that either doesn't need one, or that needs one that he couldn't find a proper way of building into the story line. This for me is the book's real failure.

The very nature of these chapters is that they are presented as ""''extracts"" '' i.e. disconnected paragraphs. They read like the construction notes for the novel. To me it felt as though a novel had been padded out with all of the research and theory and speculation that went into its making, lifted straight from the work in progress notebook. It felt both imposing and lazy. It's a purely personal view, but I strongly feel that if the reader NEEDS to understand then you have to show it through the story, and if we DON'T then you can leave it out entirely.

There are also a couple of ""''Quantum Walks"" '' which are amalgams of the narrative, the Lists, the extracts… and more confusing than any of them.

 The scientific speculation is brilliant. I don't dispute that at all. It leaves you wondering if, just, maybe, could it…. ????? And that has to be part of the point of Sci-Fi writing. Unfortunately, it is just too much in-your-face, laid-bare, this-is-why-you-have-to-accept-my-premise, rammed down your throat. I'd rather the really important bits had been worked into the story line and the rest just ditched ~ - or sent to one of the relevant magazines as justification for the book, so that the real geeks can read it and the rest of us can take it on trust.