Dreaming in Smoke - Softcover

Sullivan, Tricia

3.3

188 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553577034 ISBN 13: 9780553577037

Publisher: Bantam USA, 1998

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The survival of a human colony on a hostile planet depends upon a slightly mad, middle-aged statistician and his abortive, cyber-assisted dream, which also jeopardizes the life of a young woman. By the author of Lethe. Original.

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Review:

Trica Sullivan's SFnovel debut was Lethe (1995), which was followed by Someone To Watch Over Me (1997): this is her third book. It drops readers in at the deep end with a truly bizarre opening that turns out to be heroine Kalypso Deed's surreal perception of a major crash in the AI computer to which she's linked ... and which she should have been guarding. Unfortunately this machine runs the main human outpost on T'Nane, a watery colony world with a strange and poisonous biosphere. As things fall apart, Kalypso finds herself sailing alien seas as captive of an almost literally mad scientist who plans to bridge the gap between Earthly and T'Nane biology--using her as an unwilling experimental subject. Painful episodes follow, described with clinical detachment. T'Nane's exotic ecology is richly imagined, as are the surreal metaphors of cyberspatial interfacing with the mysteriously mutating AI core. Various human factions argue and grumble at occasionally tiresome length; Kalypso herself is a moody, passive heroine who does rather little except when bullied by others. But the writing is excellent and the ultimate biological revelations (though familiar in outline from much past SF) feel satisfying and right. Sullivan remains a writer to watch. --David Langford

Book Description:

Stunning sf from a young Amerian writer resident in London - far future sf in the glorious tradition of Arthur C Clarke and sharing the contemporary vision of Iain M Banks

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