Vast by Linda Nagata

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the last Nagata that I read although I understand this one is superseded by another novel called Edge. I have no interest in reading that. I have no interest in re-reading this one either (or any of this series), but I do have a decent enough recollection of it to say this was the best of the three I did read, and to give it a worthy rating.

The story could be a standalone since it's essentially unconnected with anything that preceded it and needs no connection with anything else. It tells the story of a group of astronauts in a spacecraft named the 'Null Boundary', who are running from an alien race known as the Chenzeme. The Chenzeme for reasons either unexplained or which I do not recall, are purging space of humans. Maybe they're terrified of the nano-tech that humans have unleashed? LOL!

There's some weird stuff that happens in this novel and some situations which make it interesting, but that's all I'm going to say about it. I do commend it as a worthy read although I have to say that after three of her novels, I'm really not feeling any need to read anything else by this author.

The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata

Rating: WARTY!

I know I read this, but I recall nothing about it, which tells me it wasn't that great even though at the time I did read two other novels in "The Nanotech Succession" of which this is supposedly the first, although Tech Heaven is also part of the series and precedes this one.

The story in retrospect makes no sense. It features two nano-enhanced characters, Nikko, and Phousita, both of whom were enhanced by a device from which this novel takes its title. Nikko is coming to the end of his allotted span, just like Roy in Blade Runner, and just like Roy in Blade Runner, Nikko doesn't want to go quietly into that bad night, or any night, so he steals the Bohr Maker, which despite the terror in which it holds society, was never destroyed, but was retained in the archives of the Commonwealth police. Why? Who the fuck knows! Honestly? It makes zero sense.

Only now are the Commonwealth police determined to wipe out all trace of the Bohr Maker, so like Roy in Blade Runner, selfish Nikko is on the run with Rachael, um, Phousita, and we're supposed to root for him after what he did? That's it. So, Blade Runner, really. I don't recall and I'm not inclined to go back and re-read it this or any other of this series! If I were I'd probably rate this more highly than warty!

Deception Well by Linda Nagata

Rating: WARTY!

I read this some considerable time ago and barely remember it, which is what is now coloring my rating, because if it had been more entertaining than it evidently was, I'd have finished out the series, but I have no interest in ever reading it again or getting back into these stories at all.

There is a series of four: Tech-Heaven, The Bohr Maker, Deception Well, and Vast and they're only loosely connected, although I believe a couple of them are more sequential and connected than the rest. I never did read the first one and cannot summon up any interest in doing so now.

This story, named after the planet where it takes place, is set in a community which lives on the side of a space elevator. Why, I do not recall, but they are trapped there. How they survive is sketchy. The planet below is supposedly infested with nanotech that is commonly believed harmful, so no one is allowed down there, but even though there are rebels who wish to be set loose down there, the authorities won't allow it. There's no reason at all given as to why they're not simply allowed to go. Naturally they do go down there eventually, but I can't for the life of me recall what happened, which should speak volumes about how uninteresting this was.

Nor is there any info as to why this high-tech society doesn't have robots - a common omission is far too many sci-fi stories. Those robots could have been sent down there to probe the surface and see if the problem was A, as bad as it was supposed and B, getting better or worse. It seems to me that nanotech has a lifespan and maybe all the tech is dead on the surface now. No one seems remotely curious to find out what the status is! That's not authentic and it's a common problem with this sort of dystopic novel because the author stupidly seems to treat everyone as though they all believe the same things and behave the same way - there never are any rebels or conspiracy theorists, or adventurers, or whatever. It's not realistic.

The novel must have seemed interesting enough at the time, but reflecting on it now, it seems silly. There is a main character named Lot who is the son of a guy named Jupiter Apolinario, which I'm sorry but is just plain stupid as names go, to say nothing of pretentious. Earlier, he led a group of followers down the planet and they were never heard from again. Just like his father, Lot is considered a potentially inspiring leader, but as a character, he never inspired me! After all of his suffering, maybe he should be consider a Job Lot?!

We're told in the book blurb that on Deception Well, "a razor-thin line divides bliss from damnation" but if they have no idea what's going on down on the surface, and have never investigated it, how can they possible know this? Again, stupid. Like I said, I did read this once, but I recall nothing of it and have zero interest in starting it again (I know 'cause I tried!), so in hindsight I cannot rate this a worthy read.

The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata

Title: The Bohr Maker
Author: Linda Nagata
Publisher: Bantam
Rating: TBD

This is volume one in the loosely-connected Nanotech Succession quadrilogy. I've read Deception Well and Vast, but not Tech Heaven, so I'm pleased to be able to review the first of this group for the blog. Even though this is not a new novel (indeed, it was the first Nagata ever published!), it is new to me, and hopefully I'll enjoy this as I have the other two. It begins in Asia (and the choice of typeface imbues the novel a rather Japanese aura) where a few members of a local 'tribe', trying to eke out an existence in an abandoned mill by a river, discover a dead body in the water. Jensen Van Ness has apparently been murdered and robbed, but his body still bears clothes which might be traded in the city for food. As two of the tribe, the petite, retiring Phousita and domineering and cruel Arif haul the body to shore, something sharp slides out of his chest and stabs Phousita, the diminutive woman who looks like a child, infecting her with the Bohr Maker, an illegal and self-directing genetic enhancer.

I confess I found that while it was an acceptable read, and engrossing in parts, I did not find myself enjoying this novel as much as I had the other two, and I was somewhat disappointed to discover that the Bohr of the title was the fictional Leander Bohr, not Neils Bohr, who was neither an engineer nor a biologist, which is probably fueling my lack of complete enthusiasm! Neils Bohr was a giant in the wild early days of particle physics. I read a charming, sad, and amusing account of this in Faust in Copenhagen by Gino Segrè, which contained the picture I reproduce below, which I find really extraordinary. The sheer magnitude of brainpower concentrated in this one instant in time in this photograph is as humbling as it is inspiring. The ones most interesting to me are identified by the red numbers in the list below.

1. Paul Ehrenfest
2. Erwin Schrödinger
3. Wolfgang Pauli
4. Werner Heisenberg
5. Paul Dirac
6. Arthur Compton
7. Louis de Broglie
8. Max Born
9. Neils Bohr
10. Max Planck
11. Marie Curie
12. H.A. Lorentz
13. A. Einstein

Meanwhile, somewhere slightly off-planet, the Chief of Police, Kristin, cruelly abuses a dead man, whose brain patterns have been preserved by a cutting-edge scientist before laws were enacted which severely circumscribed such experimentation. The dead man, Nikko Jiang-Tibayan, is now dying again - the license for his existence is about to expire. This is an era which has declared that thou shalt not mess with the human genome, and he represents the last such experiment - a human consciousness in a ceramic body. Kristin, living in luxury at the top of one of many Earth-space elevators uses his body for her own perverse and abusive sexual pleasure (yes, this made no sense to me either!).

Nikko puts up with this in the desperate hope that she will relent and help him to continue his existence. She cruelly taunts him over his impending doom, refusing to grant him a reprieve even as she pleasures herself with his ersatz body and causes him pain by biting his kisheer - an augmentation to the body which permits him to survive in a vacuum by recycling CO² in his blood. She has affixed above her bed a collage made from the confiscated body parts of the human experiments she has personally terminated and mentions that she would like to see his skull up there eventually.

Nikko unfortunately involved his brother, Sandor Jiang-Tibayan in his theft of the Bohr maker and now Kristin is hunting Sandor, too, and she doesn't care if his involvement came about in Sandor's ignorance or not. But Phousita's transformation, under the refurbishing power of the Bohr maker is startling. She becomes a Messiah to her people and so well-known that both she and Arif must go on the run to escape Kristin - a run which takes them into the cold of space and the the bizarre artificial world at the top of the elevator - the one created by Fox Jiang-Tibayan, Nikko and Sandor's dad.

That's all I'm going to reveal about this novel. I am rating this worthy although I have to say I was not as impressed as I had been with the other two. But Nagata can write inventively; she had surrogates before Surrogates had surrogates, and she has some really interesting sci-fi scenarios on display.