I wouldn’t disagree that this isn’t the holy grail of SF yet, although it did pick up after an unpromising start and his writing has improved since. Truth is, this really is a problem that is endemic to SF; there’s plenty of concept led hard SF from authors who can’t write for toffee, and a fair bit of well written work where the technologies and science are frustratingly vague. The Holy Grail is a writer who can properly combine the two and I can’t quite say I’ve really seen that yet. Reynolds and Banks come close although for all their many gifts Al can sometimes drift into rather too much explicating waffle and Iain’s characterisation could be quite samey. What is often interesting is when writers from outside the genre have a genuine attempt at is - I thought Chris Brookmyre’s “Places in the Darkness” could have been a quite decent attempt, for instance. Unfortunately and specifically what he seemed to do with all the dialogue was pack it with teams of exposition, lengthy explanations. At most parts of the book it was all exposition. No-one speaks that way. And then in between, there were actual long sections of exposition. It made it a slog. He is clearly in love with Technology and Crime Fiction, so I suppose people who love that love his books, but it’s bad writing 101. If you can’t show rather than tell ... at least most of the time ... or intersperse some vital bits of exposition in speech with more natural dialogue, then you simply can’t write well.

I struggled through the Mars trilogy, by book 3 I was just skipping to see what happened. It frustrates me that the Mars trilogy constantly features on best of SF lists.

Greg Egan is my favourite "gets the writing right, gets the science right" author. Although patchy – “Zandegi” felt like a waste of my time - his short story collection “Axiomatic” has so many great ideas, plots, and characters that I still, 15 years later, can't believe how good it is (if you want a more recent collection go for “The Best of Greg Egan”).

What I’d really like to see is serious literary writers take on hard SF - and I’m looking at you, Franzen, Boyd and Mantel, stop fidgeting about at the back of the class.



SF = Speculative Fiction. ( )

Brookmyre, Chris. Places in the Darkness. Orbit, 2017.
Chris Brookmyre is a well-known writer of hard-boiled crime fiction. In Places in the Darkness he moves his mean streets to a large double-ringed space station in Earth orbit. His antiheroine is an ex-New York cop, who turns a blind eye to smuggling and the sex trade for payoffs in high-priced scotch and sexual favors from both sexes. She is joined by a tightly wrapped undercover agent from Earth who has come to investigate corruption on the station. For a writer who is working out of his usual genre, Brookmyre does a credible job of near-future world-building. In fact, he gets something right that many experienced science fiction writers get wrong—the time it would take to build an orbital habitat that would house thousands of people. His station has been inhabited for seventy years, and it is still not finished, even with an efficient space elevator that connects to short-haul shuttles. He also finesses the development of machine intelligence and biological modification in a plausible way. As one might expect from a good crime writer, his action taught and his plot twisty. I would love to read a sequel to Places, if he ever writes one. ( )

An enjoyable read. Interesting for a crime author to delve into SF. I have read another Brookmyre book which I enjoyed more than this. I struggled to find the pace and the first half took me some time to get through. It did pick up. I liked the environment of CDC was interesting and well thought through. I would suggest that this is a great crossover book between two great fiction genres. ( )

Ciudad de Cielo (CdC) is supposed to represent the future of mankind. It's a space station that is primarily set up to produce a colony ship that will take humanity to the stars as well as developing technologies that will aid in this quest. It's supposed to be a paragon of virtue where the best and best and brightest will lead mankind into the future. At least that's the story they feed you back on Earth but as Alice Blake is about to find out it couldn't be further from reality. We join Alice on her arrival at the station as she's due to take charge of the security oversight for the Federation of National Governments. The other POV character comes in the shape of Nikki Fixx (aka Sgt. Nicola Freeman of the Seguridad).. Not only does Nikki turn a blind eye to all the illegal activity on the station but she is also an active enabler for most of it. Using her position in the private security force that passes for law enforcement on the station to assist in her racketeering and protection schemes. So when a particularly gruesome murder is discovered shortly after her arrival, Alice uses the opportunity to tag along with Nikki on the investigation to see for herself just how bad things really are. When the body count starts rising and it’s not just their careers on the line can the two women learn to work together to solve the case or could it be that one of the two is actually behind it all?

This is not just a murder mystery in a science fiction setting as there’s some real hard science on show here along with many of the philosophical questions of identity, memory and what it means to be human that are associated with the genre. While there may be a few missteps with the science part that a few people will no doubt catch it doesn’t make the story any less enjoyable. The setup may take a little longer than the norm for Brookmyre but once the action starts it doesn’t let up. The two strong female leads are great characters to get to know with two very different personalities and backgrounds. So all in all a good trip into the science fiction genre while still retaining some of the author’s usual fare. ( )

Where to begin with this one and not give away any spoilers?

It all begins like any usual episode of Law & Order would, with a regular Jane & Joe chatting during their commute to work. Apparently, even on a space station two people on their way into work can't avoid the happenstance of stumbling upon a dead body. And when I say stumbling upon, I mean finding bloody glistening body parts floating about in zero-g. And so begins this twisty tale on the CdC, Ciudad de Cielo.

Enter Nikki Freeman, our officer in residence on SeeDee. She walks both sides of the law so also is on the take as an enforcer & protector, depending upon what's needed. She's also the only one on the station who has experience in homicide (this was her area of expertise when she was planetside) so she's called in to head the investigation (a circumstance she warily accepts). Just in case the dismemberment wasn't enough to drive home the killer's sadism, when Nikki checks out the scene, she realizes that the skin is missing from all the body parts, which she shortly finds neatly folded and tucked into a flight suit bag that's partially stowed. Sadistic but tidy.

Also arriving on the scene is Alice Blake of the Federated Nations Government. Newly arrived on the station to take the position of Principal of the Security Oversight Executive. She's a stickler for the rules and is here to establish order out of disorder and ferret out the causes. The powers that be on Earth are spoiling for a reason to take over the station and the projects surrounding the Arca (long term generation ship plan, in short) and she may just find what they need to finally make that happen.

The women wind up together to deal with the murder. Nikki, trying to cover her tracks as much as solve the murder and Alice trying to investigate Nikki. In their interaction lies the real strength of the story. Both women balanced one another out well. Alice had a raging case of self-righteousness & Nikki had her cynicism.

While investigating the first murder, another body turns up and it's evident that Nikki is supposed to be the prime suspect and that's when things really jump off. And it's not just the dead bodies stacking up that's posing an ever larger problem, it's those memories that are disappearing at an alarming rate (those had me yelling at the characters earlier than it dawned on them to be worried)The story is pretty tense until the end but does have wonderful moments where some fairly deep and important philosophical arguments are put forth. If you want to think about humanity in all it's grace and grime, this is a nice sandbox to play in. And it's a well plotted out mystery too.

The world building was very well done. The descriptions of the space station were vibrant and was one of my favorite aspects of the book. It was claustrophobic in some areas and positively ghost town in others.

Favorite passage: In zero-g, the gentle ballet of objects in motion can make anything look elegant. Not this. Glistening organs dance gently around each other in the bright expanse, like motes of dust in a shaft of sunlight. Intestines curl and twist between sections of limbs denuded of skin, muscle exposed like illustrations in an anatomy textbook. She sees an empty skull, the top sheared off. The brain has been removed, floating free amidst this carnal constellation.

I loved the way this ended and would be happy to return to CdC again for another adventure. I don't even need to follow the same main characters, the world was that coolly rendered. I'd recommend this for mystery and scifi fans. Personally, it's a combination of my two favorites science fiction and mystery so I'm far more predisposed to love this. ( )