Skip to main content

Loophole (SF) - Ian Stewart ****

The tendency is for science fiction written this century to work on the small, personal scale, focusing more on characters than plot, but there is a long tradition of older SF novelists from E. E. (Doc) Smith, through Isaac Asimov to Larry Niven who took their stories big and bold - and that is the direction taken by mathematician and author Ian Stewart in his chunky (560 page) novel Loophole. 

A strange phenomenon is discovered where a moon appears and disappears - it turns out it is orbiting through a wormhole, spending part of each orbit in two different universes. The discovery of this weird phenomenon leads to three sets of main characters being able to interact - something they need to do, as a mysterious fourth force is rapidly destroying stars. The first set we meet are distinctly alien (even though they behave like parish councillors), a second are apparently normal humans who aren't quite what they seem, and the third are humans of our future - between them spanning at least two universes. 

It's mind boggling stuff, containing a truly remarkable collection of ideas. Each group has its own, different high-tech abilities, which together it is hoped can save both universes from the superorganism-like mechanical 'horde' that are killing stars. Only it seems that this horde is unstoppable and ever living thing will be destroyed.

It’s those high concept, massive ideas that earn this novel four stars. Beyond that, I have to say that it has significant weaknesses. The book is way too long, in part because Stewart insists on spelling out what’s happening in far too much detail and giving too much time to long, rather dull, expositions. There's something of a tendency to throw in lots of meaningless terms and explain them many pages later, including unnecessary ‘alien’ units: when alien speech is translated, why not translate the units too? This is just obscurity for the sake of it. Then, about 40% through, we suddenly get a flashback and a third set of characters. This does work out effectively, but only after another information dump. And the final chunk of the book is another information dump - after the action has finished, we get page after page of explanations. There are some nice twists in there... but it isn't great fiction.

Stewart, then, isn’t an outstanding novelist. His writing skills are more oriented to the putting across the factual. But just as, for example, Fred Hoyle’s SF was better than his writing skills suggested because of the idea content, the same applies here. It’s a fascinating attempt at portraying both human and non-human future tech on a grand scale.

Paperback:   
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

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here.  We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...
Post a Comment
Read more