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

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zero Degrees of Empathy [The Science of Evil] – Simon Baron-Cohen ***

I’ve been a real fan of previous books by Simon Baron-Cohen like  The Essential Difference , so opening this was one was a pleasant prospect. What I found was a book that wasn’t  bad … but that could have been a lot better. I got the impression of a book that had been rushed out without a lot of work going into it. The thesis at the heart of the book – that one of the important ‘circuits’ of the brain is the one dealing with empathy, and that individuals sit on an empathy spectrum, with some residing at zero degrees of empathy – is an interesting one. Baron-Cohen introduces us to three key personality types he defines as ‘zero-negative’ including psychopaths, plus types that are ‘zero-positive’ like those with Asperger’s. In a way both of these definitions are odd, in that his zero-negatives can actually have a lot of the kind of empathy that involves being able to read another person’s emotional state, and his zero-negatives can have a lot of the kind of empathy i...
Post a Comment
Read more