Light (GOLLANCZ S.F.) - Softcover

Harrison, M. John

3.61

6,085 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0575070269 ISBN 13: 9780575070264

Publisher: Gollancz, 2002

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Beneath the unbearable light of the Kefahuchi Tract - a huge, fulminating ocean of radiant energy deep in the galaxy - three objects lie on the barren surface of an asteroid: an abandoned spacecraft, a pair of what look like bone dice, and a human skeleton. What are they, and what do they mean?

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Review:

Light marks that fine writer M John Harrison's first return to the heartland of SF--including spaceships and hair-raising interstellar chases--since his apocalyptic anti-space opera The Centauri Device (1975).

The heavy SF action begins in 2400. Space-going humanity is the latest of many civilizations to be baffled by the impenetrable Kefahuchi Tract; that vast stellar region where an unshielded singularity makes physics itself unreliable. Along its accessible fringe, the "Beach", solar systems are littered with crazy, abandoned devices used to probe the Tract since before life began on Earth. A whole dead-end culture is based on beachcombing this rubble of industrial archaeology...

25th-century characters include a woman who's sacrificed almost everything to merge with the AI "mathematics" of a crack military spacecraft; a former daredevil who once surfed black holes but has retreated into a virtual reality tank; the lady proprietor of the Circus of Pathet Lao, with an alien freakshow and a hidden agenda; and a variety of raunchy, smelly, gene-sculpted lowlife, some comic, some menacing. Many are not what they seem.

Meanwhile in 1999 London, physicists Kearney and Tate--remembered in 2400 as the fathers of interstellar flight--are getting nowhere. Kearney's personal problems occupy familiar Harrison territory: urban paranoia, a seedily unreliable guru, bad sex, guilty rituals to propitiate a metaphysical-seeming threat called the Shrander--a pursuing image out of nightmare. In the lab, both Kearney and Tate fear the increasing quantum strangeness of their results.

The cosmological wonders and hazards of the Beach form a backdrop to space pursuits and violent skirmishes whose duration is measured in nanoseconds, reported in tensely lyrical prose. Eventually everything comes together as it should--even that oppressive 1999 story strand--with revelations, transformation, transcendence, and ultimate hope. Harrison demands your full attention and rewards it richly. --David Langford

Review:

This is a major publishing event in the SF world as Mike has not published an SF book for over 20 years. So far the buzz is huge and I have had interest from three major newspapers who want to give it full reviews. Reviews: The IndependentThe GuardianThe Daily TelegraphTLSAmazon.co.ukSFrevu.comSFSiteInfinityPlusWaterstones websiteStarburstDreamwatchSFX 'Light is a novel of visionary power, alert both to the discontents of the modern world and the tubercularcondition of the future.'TLS Interviews:SFXSFRevu.comOutland (Ottakars magazine)The ZoneEnigmaBBC Radio Scotland Book Programme The launch party for Light took place on Tuesday 29th and was attended by the likes of Iain Banks and Muriel Gray, shockingly we even managed to get Lidnsay Duguid from the TLS and Claire Armitstead from The Guardian. It goes to show that SF can get some literary respect!!

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