Skip to main content

The Last Murder at the End of the World (SF) - Stuart Turton *****

Usually a mystery novel is based on a straightforward puzzle - whodunnit (or occasionally howdunnit). But now and again you get a mystery that's far more sophisticated, where initially the reader hasn't a clue what's going on. The master of such books was the late Gene Wolfe with novels like Free Live Free and There are Doors. These were fantasies, but Stuart Turton achieves a similar level of intriguing, slowly revealed complexity in a science fiction novel (though it feels quite fantasy-like with an Arthur C. Clarkesque 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' way.)

Of course, anyone can write something that is bafflingly incomprehensible. What made Wolfe's, and now Turton's work so special is that the initial confusion doesn't put the reader off - instead we are drawn enthusiastically into the web of the mystery. 

Turton takes us to an island where the only survivors of a worldwide, life-destroying 'fog' are kept safe by a few scientists. The ordinary people live a simple existence, overseen by what appears to be an AI called Abi, who can read their thoughts and communicate with them mentally. But we learn straight away that either an experiment will succeed or all human life will be wiped out in just a few days time. This will involve a murder and the need to solve it. Yet nothing is certain.

If that sounds mysterious enough, there's more: a fair amount of what we first discover is not what it seems. I'm not keen on apocalyptic dystopian SF - life's too short to read miserable books - but the doom-laden past only touches on us occasionally - and the whole thing is handled beautifully. This isn't so much about the end of the world as a sort of beginning. I really didn't want to put the book down when I had to.

I hadn't come across Turton before and now will be working through his short back catalogue. Brilliant.

Paperback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support our online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all reviews and Brian's online articles or subscribe 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