Monday, April 21, 2008

Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams



Walter Jon Williams's post-singularity science fiction book, Implied Spaces, has been "out" since April 1st, but release dates are approximate dates. Backlogs at the printers, last minute typesetting issues, and a plethora of other problems that occur when you make anything by committee can delay the time in which books actually start appearing on shelves. According to Amazon, this book is "expected to be in stock in the next 5-8 weeks".

I myself have already read it, nyah. And it's Walter doing what Walter does best, which is write with such disgusting skill and versatility that I write more notes for my own benefit than critique points as I read his writing every month. This novel is set, as I said above, post-singularity. Humans are immortal and live in complicated habitats all throughout the universe thanks to mind twisting technologies. The line between reality and virtual reality has thinned to near non-existence. Great guardian computers, which are to our regular PCs what a PC is to, say, a rock, control worlds and safeguard humanity. Only, you guessed it, one of them goes rogue.

Rather than go into the hard sf technobabble of the plot points, Walter focuses on the human side of the story, taking the perspective of one individual, an aristocratic, refined man who has access to the frantic, private meetings of the human leadership. Through his eyes we see the personal cost when this world gets turned on its ear, and witness firsthand the events that change it forever.

Here's what other reviewers have to say:

From GreenManReview: "Implied Spaces is an action-packed story written in an elegant and wryly-humorous prose style. If Dumas was alive and writing science fiction, he might well have produced a novel like Implied Spaces."

" . . . If you're looking for a story that takes some of the best ideas in cutting edge science fiction and then weaves those ideas together into a fast-paced story with stylish prose and witty dialogue along with some introspection concerning what we as humans want from our technologies, Implied Spaces should suit to a T."

From Fantasy Book: "From Walter Jon Williams—the celebrated & influential author of “Hardwired”, “Voice of the Whirlwind” and “Angel Station”—comes “Implied Spaces”, a new novel of post-singularity action, pyrotechnics, and intrigue. Williams, whose name has long been synonymous with state-of-the-art SF, builds on the prophetic futurism of Vernor Vinge and Charles Stross, while adding his own brand of poetic prose, masterful plotting and engaging storytelling…

1 comment:

  1. Implied spaces reminded me a bit of spandrels in
    SJ Gould's articles. I'm not convinced by either
    religion or evolution, and I wonder why we have
    consciousness since evolution doesn't impel mind
    development to a pinnacle in general. There are zombie worlds in which everything is identical except consciousness, and the behavior is the same.
    I wonder if consciousness is an example of an
    implied space, inadvertently fortunate (I suppose).

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