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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Provocative, Exciting First Half to Ken MacLeod's "Fall Revolution", January 30, 2009
This review is from: Fractions: The First Half of The Fall Revolution (Paperback)
Written towards the end of, and shortly after, the Cold War, Ken MacLeod's "Fractions", is the first half of a four novel series, "The Fall Revolution", exploring humanity's potential political futures. His first novel, "The Star Fraction", is a brilliant near future exploration as to how mankind copes with a fragmented nation state, 21st Century Great Britain, consisting of Marxist societies co-existing uneasily with others, especially with the overarching libertarian ethos of the US/UN world government. Set several decades after a brief World War III which was fought to integrate all of Europe into one state, MacLeod offers an optimistic appraisal of anarchistic rule, as seen through the eyes of his misfit protagonists, most of whom members of an urban terrorist band resisting the rule of the restored British monarchy and its US/UN overlords.
Centuries and many light years later, in MacLeod's second novel, "The Stone Canal", humans and androids share a world - New Mars, still in the midst of terraforming - and struggle to establish equality for both groups, when a mysterious human clone appears, recognizable as the British leader who triggered the Fall Revolution. MacLeod skillfully weaves back and forth between the lives of the original leader in the early 21st Century and his New Mars clone, drawing uneasy social and political parallels between both societies.
There are no real heroes in either half of "Fractions". MacLeod admits that his protagonists are flawed figures, rising occasionally to do memorable, perhaps even heroic, deeds. As characters they seem far more realized than the cyberspace cowboys and other social misfits inhabiting the near future landscape of William Gibson's "Cyberspace Trilogy". While MacLeod is not nearly as graceful a stylist as Gibson, he does a most impressive job as a storyteller, telling two emotionally riveting tales that may be more meaningful as scenarios of potential human futures than as fiction. "Fractions" is an excellent, if long, introduction to this young British science fiction writer's work; a superlative blend of political science fiction and post-cyberpunk technological thriller.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Smart, quirky, funny SF with a point of view (not an attitude), July 2, 2010
This review is from: Fractions: The First Half of The Fall Revolution (Paperback)
Ken MacLeod is a peerless purveyor of speculative fiction with a bite. An intellectual, fiercely partisan, aggressively funny, British writer, MacLeod gets in your face with his politics -- but makes it palatable by writing about characters you really care about. On top of that, he manages with the Fall Revolution series to create a satisfying puzzle whose pieces all fall together in his final novels of the series (collected as "Divisions"). For the fullest effect, read "Fractions" and "Divisions" together to appreciate how MacLeod spans light years of space and geologic eras of time while stitching together a satisfying yarn about super-long-lived characters linked - and divided - by friendship, love, ideology, and enmity. Oh yeah, and by nanotechnology, steam-punk cybernetics, the Singularity, and rip-roaring space opera.
"Fractions" combines the first two novels of the Fall Revolution series, "The Space Fraction" and "The Stone Canal." MacLeod focuses on a different character in each of his novels, while having the same core personalities appear either in the foreground or background of each of the other. In "The Star Fraction," we are introduced to a war-torn Britain that has been shattered by competing ideologies -- oh, yeah, and by some almost accidental nuclear blasts. We follow some armed-to-the-hilt mercenaries, psychedelic memory researchers, space enthusiasts, and left leaning revolutionaries as England tries to shrug off the latest Restoration. Despite deep discomfort with the notion of artificial intelligence, the protagonists end up unleashing the Black Plan of the Fourth International.
In "The Stone Canal," one of the fringe characters from "The Star Fraction" takes center stage. Using a slightly disorienting device of bouncing between late 20th Century/early 21st Century Britain and a world called New Ares centuries and light-years away, MacLeod tells a tale of love, jealousy, ideology, and the nature of consciousness. We encounter space entrepreneurs, robots, androids (and gynoids!), super-evolved humans, and wormholes, but MacLeod keeps the story grounded by following some compelling, but deeply flawed characters whose struggles span centuries and light years, and even frustrate death itself.
These novels showcase some of the best speculative fiction of the Nineties by an author who really delivers the goods.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a complex political classic, April 8, 2009
This review is from: Fractions: The First Half of The Fall Revolution (Paperback)
I read the two original books that are in this compilation years ago, and now just enjoyed reading them again.
The Stone Canal contains one of my favorite science-fiction sequences of all time. It takes the ghost in the machine literally. Spoiler alert: waking up inside the construction robot and hacking the pleasure AI is just classic.
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