Skip to main content

Something Coming Through (SF) - Paul McAuley *****

I have rarely been disappointed by a Paul McAuley book, so thought I would trawl his back catalogue and reaped major rewards with Something Coming Through from 2015 - this is science fiction at its best.

Set in a relatively near future after first contact with aliens, it has one of the most effective portrayal of aliens I've ever seen. Many SF aliens (think, for instance, of the majority in Star Trek) are essentially humans with some characteristic emphasised. The two alien races portrayed here both have motivations that catch you out by not working in a truly human fashion. 

One set of aliens has provided 15 wormholes to distant planets where previous civilisations have existed but are now gone, along with a shuttle travelling back and forth to each destination. The relics from the other civilisations are prized, but can have strange effects on humans, something that is central to the plot. The storyline is divided into two with alternating chapters - one initially based in London featuring a young female scout for alien material, the other on one of the 15 remote planets, where the central character is an middle aged, jaded murder detective.

McAuley really throws in the kitchen sink here (in a good way) - not only do we get the interaction with aliens stuff (one aspect, surely inspired by Close Encounters of the Third Kind), there is a murder investigation, organised crime and more. It all works very effectively - and there's some very clever writing linked to the dates on the alternating viewpoints. Something I particularly enjoyed was that this a novel very much in the British tradition - it felt like the kind of thing John Wyndham would have written if he had still been around.

As it's January, it's not much to say this is the best SF book I've read this year, but I'd also says it's the best in quite a while. There was a sequel too... can't wait. (And very happy to see another, one, if you've some spare time, Paul.)

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

Who Invented the Computer? – Ian Watson

Ian Watson is the author of  The Universal Machine  and featured in a recent  Four Way Interview . Saturday June 23 2012 was the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, the troubled genius who invented the modern computer. Why though do so few people recognize his name and his great achievements? In 1936 English mathematician Alan Turing, published a paper,  On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem . This became the foundation of computing. In it Turing presented a theoretical machine that could solve any problem that could be described by instructions encoded on a paper tape. A Turing Machine could calculate square roots, whilst another might solve Sudoku puzzles. Turing demonstrated you could construct a single  Universal Machine  that could simulate any Turing Machine. One machine solving any problem for which a program could be written – sound familiar? He’d invented the computer. Then,  computers  were peop...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ignorance: How it drives science – Stuart Firestein *****

This is a delightful little book that really gets you thinking. I stress the ‘little’ part not as a negative, but as a good thing. There is nothing worse than fat, bloated popular science books where the author feels they have to get 120,000 words to be taken seriously. This is the sort of book that can be read in a couple of hours – but you will get so much more out of it than one of those tedious doorstops. The premise underlying the book is in once sense extremely simple, yet is fundamental to an understanding of what science is and what scientists do. And it is an understanding that is totally at odds with the typical way science is portrayed both in university lectures and popular science books. As Stuart Firestein points out, what is important is not the facts, but rather the area of ignorance. The interesting part and the fundamental heart of science is not about what we know, but about what we don’t know and where we want to look next. Take this lovely quote: ‘Working ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Star Book – Peter Grego ****

This attractive landscape format book combines an excellent introduction to the stars and basic astronomy with a set of star maps, plus in depth looks at some of the stars featured, with a  bonus section on the solar system. Amazon says it’s a hardback, but in fact it’s a paperback with a rather ingenious cover – you can’t tell from the photo, but the words ‘The Star Book’ are punched through as a series of holes that show the white paper of the next page beneath. Like many astronomy/space books, the cover lacks shelf appeal because it is mostly black, but at least there is some original thought here. Unlike many books in this format which tend to concentrate on the pictures, there is a good deal of excellent text by Peter Grego, so there was no feeling that you were only getting the star maps and star ‘biographies’, something these days much more suited to an iPad or smartphone app. Instead, the opening 30 or so pages give a very good introduction that would be valuable to ...
Post a Comment
Read more