Skip to main content

The Midas Rain (SF) - Adam Roberts *****

As a genre, science fiction is surely the best-known home of short fiction. Magazines carrying SF short stories and novellas have always been part of the field, and although publishers always claim that books of short stories don't sell, there are still a fair number of science fiction story collections published. The only downside is that publication has traditionally required a larger vehicle before the story can be made public. But ebooks make it possible to sell a novella as a cheap standalone, and a good number of authors have gone down this route.

As one of the leading current SF writers, Adam Roberts has given us a good example of the opportunities that standalone ebook novellas provide in The Midas Rain. Like a short story, it is too focussed on a single idea to make a satisfactory novel, but has sufficient length to allow some character development and to explore that idea in significantly more depth than would otherwise be possible.

The novella set in a future where asteroid mining is undertaken by dropping chunks of asteroids onto the Earth, creating hellish conditions for those who live nearby. The payloads are coated in a smart foam that can protect the contents and produce comet-like jets to steer and slow their fall. Midas Rain's central character, Paul Samson, has a philosophy reminiscent of Communist Russia - he wants to help the masses, but doesn't mind hurting a lot of people to do so. Paul plots to undertake the biggest heist ever, waylaying an asteroid on the way to Earth that is mostly solid gold.

To an extent, the whole story is a vehicle for a central speech by Paul that is effectively a short essay on the nature of money, of gold and of the significance of its inertness. (This is even published without speech marks, emphasising that essay-like nature.) Because his motivation is not what they assume, Paul repeatedly surprises his associates by his actions, ending with the biggest surprise of all. 

This edition does suffer from a couple of small issues. The editing is a little haphazard, and (as was often case with golden age books) the cover image effectively gives away a major plot point. Paul's plan to steal the asteroid is also absurd, because of the one aspect that Paul doesn't discuss in his monologue: gold's dependence on scarcity. But I'm sure Roberts was aware of this, simply adding to the futility of the human condition described here. It's not a cheery story.

Despite the dystopian setting, this is, though, an enjoyable read, and, as is often the case with good SF, it makes you think, in this case about the nature of money and of the value of gold.

Ebook only: Kindle:  


Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Luna: Moon Rising (SF) - Ian McDonald ****

I'm not the natural audience for this book. Game of Thrones l eaves me cold - and it's hard not to feel the influence of GoT (and a whole lot of Dune )   underneath a veneer of science fiction and the trappings of a South American drug cartel in the cod-medieval family power battles and chivalric details. There are even dragons (of a sort). I'd be really sad if the future did involve this sort of throwback feudalism. However, remarkably, despite this I found Luna: Moon Rising kept me engaged. The fact is that Ian McDonald can put together a good plot with intricate machinations, which is enough to carry the reader through what can be a bewildering collection of characters. The two page scene-setter saying who did what to whom at the start was useful, but I could have done with family trees for the main family as I was constantly forgetting who was who - especially easy as McDonald endows many families with characters with the same first initial (e.g. Ariel and Al...
Post a Comment
Read more

Adventures of a Computational Explorer - Stephen Wolfram ***

Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the scientist's mathematical tool of choice, Mathematica, plus a whole host of other software products, including the uncanny Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine, is undoubtedly a genius of the first order. In this book, we get an uncensored excursion into the mind of genius - which is, without doubt, a fascinating prospect. The book consists of a collection of essays and speeches that Wolfram has produced over the last ten to fifteen years, covering an eclectic range of topics. Like all such collections, the result is something that lacks the coherence of a book with a narrative that runs through it, inevitably introducing a degree of repetition and a mix of interesting and not-so-interesting topics - but there's likely to be something to catch the attention anyone who is into computing or mathematics. One of the most interesting pieces is the opening one, where Wolfram describes being a consultant on the SF movie Arrival. He seems to hav...
Post a Comment
Read more

John and Mary Gribbin - Five Way Interview

Mary and John Gribbin are bestselling authors and science writers. As a pair, they have written several science books, including Being Human, Fire on Earth, major biographies of Richard Feynman and Robert Hooke plus Edmond Halley , and the 'in 90 minutes' series of biographies. Mary is a previous winner of the TES Junior Information Book Award and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Sussex. John’s title Six Impossible Things was shortlisted for the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize and he is also a Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex. Their latest book is  Against the Odds .  Why this book? We enjoy writing biographies of scientists, which gives us particular scope to collaborate, with Mary rooting out the biographical background and John focussing on the science (although neither role is exclusive). We hadn't done one for a while, and particularly wanted to highlight a female scientist this time.  But we had great troubl...
Post a Comment
Read more