just a brief message to let you know what most people have probably assumed for a long time — Keeping the Door is to be put on ice permanently from now on. With my responsibilities towards my main site Delimiter, I just don’t have enough time to continue to work on a second site on a different topic — any pretense at doing so would be to give false hope.

I have enjoyed publishing the site immensely and our endless discussions about science fiction and fantasy literature and will leave it up for posterity — but for the forseeable future it will see no more articles, and comments will be closed. I will continue to post brief thoughts about sci-fi and fantasy books through my Twitter account as I read them, however, as I will obviously never lose my passion for the genre ;)

I do intend to become a moderately regular commenter in the talkback on other sites, however — so I won’t disappear completely. I will be frequenting:

• Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist
• Neth Space
• The Wertzone
• A Dribble of Ink

Hope to see you around ;)

Cheers,

Renai LeMay
Editor, Keeping the Door

Trying to find the most logical way into Iain M. Banks‘ sprawling Culture series, but been turned off by the abstracted Use of Weapons, the obfuscated Inversions, or even his somewhat flawed first Culture novel Consider Phlebas? Look no further. The Player of Games is probably the best book for you.

One of Banks’ tightest Culture novels, The Player of Games represents the British author writing science fiction at his most accessible. As with the other books in the series, one of the book’s main functions is to display the vivid complexity and richness of human ideas that The Culture itself represents. In many ways, Banks’ Culture novels are a guiding post to what humanity could become; an urbane future, galactic society with powerful ethics, powerful technology, and an even more powerful love for all things pleasurable.

But where many of Banks’ other Culture novels feature several complex post-human protagonists and jump between their vastly differing points of view, The Player of Games features just one. This structure — and the fact that that protagonist eschews much of The Culture’s more exotic mores, and is thus much closer in outlook to today’s reader — makes the book much more highly accessible and a tightly woven read.

That protagonist is Jernau Morat Gurgeh. Gurgeh is typical of many Culture citizens; he lives on one of its massive, constructed ring-planets (dubbed Orbitals), he has its post-human genetics, with an ability to internally create and digest any known drug, and he also has the Culture’s penchant for enjoying every pleasure known to the galaxy, with gusto.

With one difference.

Gurgeh is one of the Culture’s most famous and skilled game players. That is, he excels at any game of diversion that involves intellectual stimulation. Modern examples might be chess or checkers — but in the Culture, games have evolved to somewhat of an art form, with some taking days to complete. And Gurgeh is an acknowledged master of them all.

As many artists at the pinnacle of their profession do, however, Gurgeh has gotten bored. He can easily beat all but the most skilled professional opponents. There are still challenges to accept, but few give him any sense of real competition. And it’s this dissatisfaction with his main occupation that appears to be poisoning everything else the master game player participates in.

Thus, when a set of unusual events occurs that leads him into contact with an unstable drone (the Culture’s extremely intelligent and quirky brand of robots) and eventually, into a jaunt to an alien space empire with the Culture’s Special Circumstances branch — its complex combination of espionage and early stage intervention forces — it doesn’t appear that Gurgeh’s too unhappy to sign on for a tour of duty.

Especially when the Culture needs him to participate in what may be the most complex game ever invented by a humanoid life form; a game which shapes its entire society and has life or death outcomes.

From here on out The Players of Games is vintage Culture. Banks uses the lens of an alien civilisation to display his primary vision of humanity to great effect; its decadence, its tolerance, its advanced systems of ethics and thought and its technology in action.

But the book is also much more than that.

It’s the story of an artist who has been protected for his entire life; allowed to pursue his passion without compromise; sheltered from all forms of violence and able to reach fulfilment, suddenly thrust into a world which is much more brutal, emotional, turbulent, and even vicious.

And it’s about how all of that impacts on him.

The striking thing about the subject matter of the book is how Gurgeh reacts to events. The Culture’s view on violence, even sexualised violence, and the less civilised galactic civilisations that allow it as an everyday event, is complex, and this shows in Gurgeh’s reaction to it. Many would turn away from it; deny its existence to themselves, reject it. The Culture’s approach is different, in that it understands and faces the darker sides of humanity.

This does not mean that it condones, or even in many cases, allows violence to take place. But it does mean that it doesn’t look away from violence. And it acknowledges that sometimes violence is necessary — as when an entire benign civilisation comes under unprovoked attack from without.

The Player of Games is the second Culture novel, and textually, it shows. In my review of the first book in the series, Consider Phlebas, I noted that the book “sprawls”. I wrote:

“In any other popular science fiction writer’s arsenal, the novel would no doubt be seen as their masterpiece; its engrossing narration, the consideration to which its author gave the world he built in it and the characters he portrays would combine to make the book one of the greats.

However, read in the context of Banks’ other Culture novels, it is clear that when the author published Consider Phlebas, he was struggling with both the form of the novel itself, as well as the need to tell a finite story in the world of infinite complexity and interest that he imagined in the Culture.”

When writing The Player of Games, Banks was clearly much less ambitious than when he was putting Consider Phlebas together; and it shows. Although the book covers much less ground, it does it so much more successfully; its more limited scope allows it to shine clearly. Banks learnt much from Consider Phlebas.

The Player of Games’ messages are clearer, its limited set of characters more defined and its plotline more tightly woven. Hints are strewn throughout the book as to the ultimate motives and actions behind the set of events at the forefront of the narrative, but they are not obvious, and Banks does a great job of gradually revealing his story, without going too fast or too slowly.

Ultimately, because of its diminished scope, The Player of Games is not a masterpiece of science fiction; not even a flawed masterpiece like Consider Phlebas. But what it is is an absolute classic of the genre that every sci-fi literature fan should pick up. It’s a triumph; it marks Banks’ coming of age as a science fiction master. It’s a solid gold nugget of enjoyable goodness which will remain in your memory for years to come.

And also — critically, given the complexity of the narrative of some of the other Culture books — it represents an ideal introduction into this ambitious vision of the future of humanity. Read this (or perhaps the later novel Look to Windward) first, before you experience the rest of the Culture series. It’s a fantastic set-up for the bigger Culture universe out there. And it’s a thought-provoking window into humanity’s future soul.

“Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.”
-T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (IV)

Like T. S. Eliot’s epic poem, Iain M. Banks‘ first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas, is an incredibly complex book, in which the author packs a massive amount of ideas detailing his startling vision of the future of humanity and the universe itself; ideas that were fated to only grow to complete maturity over the next two decades as he fleshed that vision out into what has become his epic series of Culture novels.

Read 24 years after it was first published in 1987, it is apparent that Consider Phlebas is what might be termed a flawed gem of modern science fiction.

In any other popular science fiction writer’s arsenal, the novel would no doubt be seen as their masterpiece; its engrossing narration, the consideration to which its author gave the world he built in it and the characters he portrays would combine to make the book one of the greats.

However, read in the context of Banks’ other Culture novels, it is clear that when the author published Consider Phlebas, he was struggling with both the form of the novel itself, as well as the need to tell a finite story in the world of infinite complexity and interest that he imagined in the Culture.

As a novel, Consider Phlebas sprawls. It does not have the neat completeness of The Player of Games, nor does it have the contained pathos evident in Look to Windward. It does not go into the right level of detail as Excession does, and it does not contain the balanced level of nostalgic emotion that Use of Weapons does.

What it does have is all of these things; in places too much of one, in other places not enough of another.

None of this is to take anything away from the book. Its entrance into the science fiction genre in 1987 immediately established Banks as a master of that genre, and one of its most creative thinkers and best writers. But it does mean that in 2011, we can appreciate Consider Phlebas as what it is; Banks writing at what was — for him — at an adolescent level. For anyone else, that level itself would probably be out of reach.

The plot of Consider Phlebas represents nothing less than one of the greatest societal events Banks’ futuristic Culture society has ever known.

The Culture — an urbane, pleasure-seeking, genetically modified future version of a human galactic civilisation, which denies itself nothing except the harm of others — is at war with what might be termed its polar opposite; a race of inhuman aliens which believe in one single religion, one discipline, and is spreading itself across the galaxy with the aim of bringing all under its umbrella: The Idirans.

In the midst of this conflict, one of the Culture’s Minds — the supremely intelligent and benevolent artificial intelligences that run their artificially constructed planets and planet-sized spaceships — has become stranded on a distant planet quarantined by an evolved and all-powerful being as some kind of shrine to death.

Into this conflict comes a complex third party; a humanoid shapeshifter, able to change his appearance, identifying marks and much of his basic bodily structure at will.

The mission of this Bora Horza Gobuchul? To steal the mostly defenseless Mind from the planet and hand it over to the Idirans. His motivation? Horza believes The Culture’s dependence on artificial intelligences to run its society — utopian though that makes it — has in truth made the civilisation a society of machines, representing a departure from biological evolution.

Of course, it’s not as simple as that.

Ironically — as he’s not part of it — Horza’s journey to retrieve the Mind becomes a tour by Banks of The Culture itself.

Its complete mastery of technology. Its idiosyncratic artificial intelligences, which normally behave in a more human-like fashion than the humans themselves. Its incredible compassion and implacable desire to live and keep living; but not just living — soaking itself in every pleasure that anyone could believe could exist. Its fearlessness and tolerance of any idea, but conservative nature when it comes to true evolution onto a higher universal plane.

Its complete anarchy; but also its rigid organisation and centralised planning.

Along on the tour bus with Horza and the reader come the normal rogues gallery common to space operas; a violent, self-serving crew who will each gradually divulge their own reasons for living and existing in such a complex galaxy; before they ignomiously die. Of course; not all die ;)

If you were to say anything about Consider Phlebas, you’d say above all, that Banks attempted to pack too much into the book.

In The Player of Games, for example, The Culture is much more gradually and delicately introduced to the reader; Banks allows his characters and the plot itself to explain more about his multi-faceted world than he does through the book’s own exposition.

The vision that Banks has of The Culture is obviously too complex to be fit into one volume; and in fact it can only be told properly through glimpses of its many facets; the way that Banks has told it in many different novels through the 25 years since Consider Phlebas was published.

Then, too, Banks’ characterisation is not fantastic in the book.

Horza’s basic reasons for opposing The Culture with his life are never that convincing; nor does Banks ever really flesh out the rest of the motley crew he constructs for his wide-ranging space opera. Some of them do, but most of the characters never develop and grow much. They remain cardboard cut-outs throughout most of the novel.

Plot, too, suffers; the book is broken up into many segments, and it takes too long to get to its main event. Action scenes are drawn out, meaning suspense is not created as successfully as, say, in later Banks books such as Use of Weapons. Even worse, Banks feels the need to create multiple epilogues after the end of the book to wrap up the whole plot in a nicely tied package.

This is not something an accomplished author would do.

Yet, for all the flaws in Consider Phlebas, it remains a striking vision.

It’s hard to believe that Neuromancer, William Gibson’s vision of a future dystopia, was published just three years before Consider Phlebas, and that Dan Simmons’ epic Hyperion was published two years later. Because Banks’ book ranges much further than either of these two masterpieces do.

There are many similarities between Hyperion and Consider Phlebas, in fact; both feature futuristic galactic civilisations which have virtually mastered technology, including the use of phenomenally powerful artificial intelligences.

And yet Banks, in Consider Phlebas, has thought through the mechanics of his world in far greater detail than Simmons did. And his characters are more real, less cartoonish. Their sharp emotions cut the reader, while their flaws remind us of so much that is human about ourselves.

Consider Phlebas doesn’t have the polish of Hyperion; and it doesn’t have the raw intensity of Neuromancer. But in many ways it doesn’t have to. Because the scope of Banks’ vision is so much grander than those of his compatriots. And in later novels, he would refine his technique and his energy to a high art.

If you’ve read this far, I probably don’t need to tell you that the book is worth reading; and in fact you’re probably actually reading this review itself for nostalgia value only. But if you haven’t read Consider Phlebas, Banks’ first science fiction masterpiece, get out there and do so. It’s a flawed gem, but one that belongs in the hall of fame.

The Quantum Thief is that rarest of rare birds; a first novel by a debut author which is a joy to read and helps take the science fiction genre in which it sits forward. If, like me, you believe the ultimate aim of science fiction is to question and challenge what it means to be human — and ultimately, to reaffirm your belief in humanity in general — pick this book up immediately.

The speculative fiction scene has had a lot of ‘false starts’ over the past few years — debut novels proclaimed to be the next big thing, which turned out to be disappointed and immature efforts. The Quantum Thief is not one of those. Like Patrick Rothfuss‘ stellar 2007 effort, The Name of the Wind, Rajaniemi’s novel is the real thing.

If you read the synopsis of the Quantum Thief on its back cover, you would probably believe the book is something of a heist story, but set in a post-human Solar System. The book’s description ticks all of the right boxes for a novel which sits squarely in the emerging singularity sub-genre of science fiction.

Its protagonist, Jean Le Flambeur, is described as a “post-human criminal”, a mysterious thief who can steal into something called, with echoes of artificial intelligence, the “vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System”, and nicking rare Earth antiques from “the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars”.

Throw in a little philosophy to boot — the book’s jacket mentions the popular ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ problem much-debated in game theory over the past half-century — and the archetypal deadly femme fatalle — dubbed ‘Miele’ — and you have a book which could, going by its synopsis, be described as a stereotype of the singularity niche.

However, as soon as you start actually reading The Quantum Thief, you realise that it is not these superficial melting pot elements which makes book something special; it is the way that — like masters such as William Gibson and Iain M. Banks before him — Rajaniemi constantly displays and explains the phenomenal world he conjurs for the reader, even while his protagonists are moving through it and changing it as they go.

Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the author’s concept of how human privacy is safeguarded, and — when one desires it — breached — in the post-human society of the Oubliette in one of the moving cities of Mars where most of the plot of the book takes place.

Imagine if the granular privacy controls of the currently popular social networking site Facebook could be extended to our everyday existence. Imagine if you could choose who sees your face as you walk down the street — or even if you could control if your housemates knew when you were home. If you could hide every aspect of everything that you are and do — with a thought.

And imagine, simultaneously, if you could also selectively breach your cloud of total privacy protection to share whatever information you wanted to, with whoever you wanted. A memory, your name, your place of work, other selected personal details.

Such a world would be intensely personal — and yet meaningful. Information flows chaotically and dramatically around us in our year of 2010 — out of our control and with constantly damaging effects. But in Rajaniemi’s world, it can be controlled — by every individual.

The Quantum Thief is not truly a heist story. Instead, it is more or less a detective novel.

And Rajaniemi employs his striking Gevulot concept — as well as many other nimble futuristic human thought combinations and permutations to the greatest of effect within this structure. So many of the tropes that you might find in an Agatha Christie suspense mystery are here — but inverted, turned on themselves by the fact of human evolution and post-singularity technology that change them, while still maintaining much of their original shape.

The writing in The Quantum Thief is similarly skilled.

Like Ursula K. Le Guin, Rajaniemi displays somewhat of a light touch with his prose. The reader is never forced into any emotional situation or pushed around intellectually. Instead, the author invites his audience’s mind to gradually comprehend the world and characters he has created. He leads you through the book with one hand, walking backwards, coaxing you onwards.

Then, just when you have understood the implications of a plot event, Rajaniemi shows you that the track goes still deeper.

I don’t want to write too much more about this book; it’s a short one, with the copy I had sent to me by the book’s Australian publisher, Hachette, only clocking in at 330 pages of quite large type. But what I do want those who enjoy science fiction to do is put The Quantum Thief on their list immediately.

It is commonly said that the job of science fiction author is to take one technology or scientific concept present in modern day society forward into the future — extrapolating it to its eventual outcome and then positioning protagonists in that altered world.

Yet too few modern science fiction authors do that.

It’s not enough — in 2010 — to extrapolate what the future implications of the atomic bomb, the electricity network or the discovery of black holes might have on the future of humanity. That was the role of authors in the 1970′s, and they did that well.

Today’s readers want to see the future of concepts introduced by the Internet, by Facebook and Twitter, by the iPhone and the personal storage system embodied by Gmail. They want to see how the iPad will change the way humanity functions as a species in millennia to come. Over the past decade we’ve had authors like Charles Stross and Iain M. Banks to do this for us. Now, let us add the name of Hannu Rajaniemi to that list.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about this remarkable effort for a first novel is not that it is so good. It is that it sets high expectations for what else we can look forward to from the master to come.

Mariposa, the latest novel by American science fiction author Greg Bear, went on sale last week, accompanied by a limited set of generally positive reviews.

Bear is best known among fans for books like 1985′s Eon and 1987′s The Forge of God, although he has written a variety of other novels, including fantasy books, Star Trek books, and in general has diversified out of the hard science fiction sub-category he mainly wrote in in the 1980′s.

Mariposa pictures an America which has been driven to near bankruptcy by crushing foreign debt. But there is one success story – the Talos Corporation, which trains soldiers and provides logistics and troops for the US Government. But the company’s end goals are somewhat more nefarious – the destruction of the government itself.

From the book’s blurb:

Three FBI agents are all that stands between Talos’s CEO Axel Price and the subversion of our nation. Fouad Al-Husam is working undercover in Lion City, Texas, on the Talos Campus—but he may have just overplayed his hand. Agent William Griffin will engage in a desperate diversion to try to rescue Al-Husam, and the top-secret information he literally carries in his blood.

Rebecca Rose is called into action to partner with an unlikely hero: Nathan Trace, one of a team of four who created and programmed the thinking machines that are about to help Axel Price in his plans for domination.

Trace and his colleagues were caught up in a violent incident in the Middle East several years ago, and experienced Post-Traumatic Stress disorder. All of them were forcibly enrolled in a treatment program sponsored by Talos Corporation, code-named Mariposa—which supposedly cured their PTSD.

But now they are beginning to notice unexpected side effects. The Mariposa subjects are being liberated from nearly all human emotions and concerns—and all mental limits—to become brilliant sociopaths. They are out of control and they must die.

Publisher’s Weekly has given the book a positive review, stating that Bear “keeps everything whizzing right along to the slam-bang conclusion”, and an Amazon reviewer noted that the underlying technology in the book was “effortlessly interwoven into the fast-paced, never decelerating story line”.

The book is a follow-up to Bear’s 2005 novel Quantico. Bear’s site notes that Vanguard Press had already gone to press for a second printing of the book – before it was released – which could be an indicator of demand.

Commentary
I’ve read quite a few Greg Bear books (from The Way and The Forge of God series), and while Bear is a competent writer, I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend him as an amazing one.

He’s the kind of writer you won’t mind finding tucked away in the science fiction & fantasy corner of your local bookshop when you stop in there on holidays and need a meaty read. But he’s not the kind of writer you’ll remember for the rest of your life as someone who blew your mind.

Note: Many US readers haven’t finished reading The Quiet War as it came out internationally in 2008 but only debuted in the US this year. Some spoilers for The Quiet War may appear in this article.

Paul McAuley‘s new book Gardens of the Sun has started to garner positive reviews as readers approve of the conclusion to the 2008 novel The Quiet War by the British science fiction writer.

The Quiet War focused on the war between different branches of humans who live separately on Earth and on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, with the latter having genetically modified themselves and moved away from the Earth norm.

According to its blurb, however, that war is over in Gardens of the Sun:

The Quiet War is over. The city states of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have fallen to the Three Powers Alliance of Greater Brazil, the European Union and the Pacific Community. A century of enlightenment, rational utopianism and exploration of new ways of being human has fallen dark.

Outers are herded into prison camps and forced to collaborate in the systematic plundering of their great archives of scientific and technical knowledge, while Earth’s forces loot their cities, settlements and ships, and plan a final solution to the ‘Outer problem’.

I won’t post the full blurb here as it is a bit spoileriffic. But you can find out more from the website of publisher Pyr, which has also this week posted the new cover for Gardens of the Sun (see above right).

On his blog PunkaDiddle, respected reviewer Adam Roberts praised Gardens of the Sun in late October, although with caveats:

“To be clear: my sense is that The Quiet War/Gardens of the Sun, taken together, is a very major work of contemporary science fiction, amongst the great genre achievements of the noughties, a long novel that will still be being read and remembered fifty years from now.”

And on Amazon.com, A. J. Poulter similarly added positive comments about the book:

“While there is no FTL drive in sight, and robots are just clever, but not intelligent, workers, this novel re-invents optimism in space exploration. It sidesteps the dead end of building another Earth by terraforming Mars, and instead proposes a new goal of colonisation of the entire solar system, and hints at a new type of ‘generation starship’, built around Outer closed eco-system designs.”

Commentary
One thing I must firstly say about Gardens of the Sun is to wonder whether McAuley is aware of Steven Erikson’s heralded fantasy novel Gardens of the Moon, the first book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series?

I’m currently reading Gardens of the Moon. It would be a very strange event indeed if I happened to be reading both books at the same time, although they have nothing to do with each other :)

Anyway, enough with the silliness.

I was pretty harsh on The Quiet War‘s few chapters when I had a chance to check them out a while back, although I haven’t read the full book yet (although a lot of people have, it was the first book featured by Io9′s book club).

However Roberts’ review in particular made me feel as though it would be a shame to miss out on The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun, and that the second book does much to correct shortcomings of the first – in fact, he suggests they should be published as one. Perhaps it is time to give The Quiet War a try.

Greg Egan is one of Australia’s top science fiction authors, with seven novels under his belt and a slew of collections and short stories under his belt. His 1998 novella Oceanic won the 1999 Hugo Award for Best Novella.

Egan’s work is usually referred to as “hard” sci-fi, which is a sub-section of the genre which often focuses on scientific accuracy or detail. It’s easy to understand why the author can bring this approach to his writing when you realise that he holds a Mathematics degree from the University of Western Australia and has a second career as a software developer.

However, as the best sci-fi authors do, he also has a focus on showing the implications for humans of the technology that he writes about. His books are available widely, and watch out for his next novel Zendegi, which is due out in mid-2010.

When doing research about Egan we also found several other interviews going back quite a ways; one with Piffle, with Eidolon, and a short one about Incandescence.

There is also a lengthy rant on Tor.com from Jon Evans wondering why Egan isn’t considered a superstar of the genre. The easy answer is that many people do consider him so :)

From your website it looks like you have two new books upcoming: Zendegi and Orthogonal. What can you let slip about their current status and subject matter?

Zendegi is set in Iran in the very near future; the first part of the novel takes place in 2012. The ultimate focus of the story involves brain mapping and virtual reality, but the backgrounds of all the characters are entwined with the Iranian pro-democracy movement in various ways. It’s due to be published in mid-2010.

Orthogonal is a novel I’m working on right now; it’s set in a universe with laws of physics that are different from our own. One small change in a fundamental equation — just turning a minus sign into a plus sign — leads to some incredibly rich variations in everything from the way biology works to the relativistic effects of space travel.

Do you have any other writing projects on the boil?

No, Orthogonal is taking up all of my time right now.

There was a fairly large gap between your 2002 book Schild’s Ladder and 2008′s Incandescence. Why so large a gap between books?

In 2002, I got involved with the refugee support movement, trying to help some of the asylum seekers who were in long-term detention in Australia. It really was a disgraceful situation; many people were locked up for three or four years, and some for as long as seven. That ended up monopolising my attention for about four years, so I didn’t get much writing done.

And though the current Australian government has been much better than the last one, in recent weeks the whole issue has been turned into an hysterical, politicised mess once more.

We love the notice on your website about photographs of you. In addition, you’ve been described as a famously reclusive author. What’s the background to your approach there?

Photographs of your friends and family mean something to you, because they remind you of people you’ve interacted with face-to-face for years. A photograph of someone like an author, even if you happen to like their books, is utterly meaningless. Actually, the bizarre situation which the note on my web page addresses — the fact that some idiots have been stealing photos from the web sites of other people called “Greg Egan”, and putting them on SF sites as photos of me — only proves the point.

At one stage, about two dozen SF sites had a picture of the same professor of engineering from Monash University that they were representing as a photo of me. But apart from being incredibly rude to this man whose photo they’d stolen, what difference did it make to any reader that this picture wasn’t actually me? None at all.

As for being “reclusive”, that’s pretty funny; I spend my time with people whose company I enjoy. If there are authors who genuinely enjoy spending their long weekends at SF conventions, that’s fine, but I’d be bored out of my skull.

Your work is often described as “hard” science fiction, in that it is characterised by an emphasis on scientific accuracy. And yet it often also focuses on what might be termed an exploration of how technology has the potential to change what it means to be human (a classic sci-fi trope). Is there a tension between the two ideas, and if so, how do you negotiate it?

I’m interested in science as a subject in its own right, just as much as I’m interested in the effects of technology on the human condition. In many things I write the two will be combined, but even then it’s important to try to describe the science accurately. In a novel such as Incandescence, though, the entire point is understanding the science, and it really doesn’t bother me in the least that it’s not an exploration of the human condition.

There are times when it’s worth putting aside the endless myopic navel-gazing that occupies so much literature, in order to look out at the universe itself and value it for what it is.

Australian readers such as myself get a little thrill whenever we pick up a local mention in your books; it’s rare that our country features at all in sci-fi/fantasy literature. What’s your opinion of the state of the Australian sci-fi literature scene, and what can be done to boost it?

Writers should just write to the best of their ability; everything else follows from that.

Computer science is advancing rapidly, yet not always in the arenas which earlier sci-fi writers thought it would. In particular, we appear to have quite a few barriers in the area of artificial intelligence.

Are you personally disappointed by this, or happy to remain in a world where humans are relatively alone for a little bit longer?

I can’t say I’m disappointed, or surprised, that we don’t have artificial intelligence yet. I’ve written things where conscious software is created in the near future, but it’s usually in the form of direct copies of human minds, so it’s more a matter of us migrating from our bodies than creating a new form of intelligence from scratch.

At the moment we’re so far away from creating any kind of conscious software that it’s hard to know which prospects are realistic, and which are pure fantasy. When we do finally grope our way towards some tangible results, I hope we proceed slowly and carefully, because this has the potential to lead to a lot of suffering.

The present generation of humans emerged out of hundreds of millions of years of animals tearing each other’s throats out, and tens of thousands of years of people being prey to famine and disease. We might aspire to do much better than that, but creating an entirely new kind of intelligence that’s happy with its own place in the world is an incredibly daunting prospect.

What methods do you use to keep up to date on mathematical and scientific theory, and to research it for your writing?

I read a lot of general science, and more specialised journal papers and textbooks in areas that I’m focusing on.

What current technologies most fascinate you when you think about their future potential?

Brain mapping is going to be an immensely interesting and important field. In practical terms, it will lead to all kinds of assistive technology for people with disabilities, and in the longer term it’s
going to shed light on the nature of every mental process.

I usually find your books easy to get into right from the first few chapters. But some sections have attracted criticism from reviewers for what has been described as lengthy technical exposition. How would you respond to this criticism?

People with no interest in science are very well catered for in science fiction; 99% of SF is written for them. I make no apology for contributing to the 1% that treats science as something of interest in its own right.

Lastly, in my household we are also vegetarians. What is your favourite vegetarian meal?

Eggplant parmigiana.

The novel is the ultimate in quick and easy addiction – we couldn’t put it down and finished it in two days flat. The term “slow burning” in no way applies to this book. This is a fast-paced stunner of a space opera in six sumptuous parts that will knock your socks off. In Hyperion Simmons achieves what so few sci-fi writers even attempt – the creation of a vision that is complex, multi-faceted, and being worthy of described as literature rather than just fiction.

There are three sequels to Hyperion — The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion and The Fall of Endymion.

Littered with literary, religious and philosophical references and hilarious asides (a couple of items referring to cyberpunk author William Gibson are particularly hilarious), even the novel’s title is a reference – to the abandoned epic poem written by English poet John Keats shortly before he died in 1821. Structurally, the novel is a frame story, in which six ‘pilgrims’ tell the story of their lives on a lengthy voyage to the residence of a legendary creature known only as the Shrike.

Think ‘Canterbury Tales’.

It’s the twenty ninth century after the death of Jesus Christ in Hyperion and humankind has colonised the stars, building a web of worlds spanning the galaxy and connected by gates which provide instantaneous travel to each. As a species, we’ve lived long enough to birth our own creations as powerful as gods – the all-knowing artificial intelligences which inhabit the domain known as the TechnoCore.

Yet the only creature which humanity has discovered which could be described as an actual god is the Shrike, the legendary killing machine which lives in the so-called Time Tombs on the mysterious planet of Hyperion, to which travel is only possible via (slow) spaceship.

On the eve of intergalactic war, seven pilgrims from all background make the traditional trip to visit the Shrike in its domain and plead for whatever boon they desire.

As the pages of Hyperion turn, the reader will hear from most of these pilgrims one by one. And their lives have been as varied as the human civilisations of the twenty-ninth century are. A soldier. A priest. A scholar. A diplomat. A detective. And a foul-mouthed poet who is continually drinking.

Their stories will each shock you to core and keep you riveted to the pages of Hyperion … even as they gradually reveal the layers of the complex world Simmons has created.

Hyperion is one of those odd books in which you find it hard to really take in the prose or analyse it, because it’s written in such a comfortable style. Not, perhaps, unlike the writing of Joe Haldeman. The humour is constant and black, but you don’t really notice the author’s distinct voice, because he keeps you so close to the action by virtue of having each major segment told in first person by each pilgrim.

At the end of each chapter there is a disjunctive pause as you are forced to leap back into the perspective of the entire group … knowing that you might have previously pre-judged one of its members, but now be forced to empathise with them.

One of the remarkable things about the book is that Simmons plainly understands well the viewpoints of each of the characters. His writing style, the nuances of his appreciation of their individual characters, all illustrate just how wide his own personal knowledge and appreciation of human life is.

How can one author see inside the coping mechanisms of a drunken poet, the cut and dried yet thriving appetite for life of a hardened soldier and the religious ecstasies of a priest at the end of his rope, simultaneously?

It’s a task beyond all but the best of writers.

One of the most impressive things about Simmons’ work is that he weaves in so many literary, philosophical and religious references … and yet they are not thrust in the reader’s face like in so much literature (think Ulysses), but used appropriately, to illustrate points of plot, character, or world. This is the ability of a master – to weave in so much of the milleiu of human thought, while still relating it to the thundering events of the moment and the minute changes that make up character development.

I’m not the first to say it, and I won’t be the last. But before the Shrike comes for you in the dead of night and leaves the walls covered in your blood, do yourself a favour and read Hyperion. You might want to take a couple of days off work while you do so and consider not operating heavy machinery (say, nothing bigger than a toaster), because at no stage will your consciousness be remaining on Earth or in our century.