Griffin's Egg (Legend novellas) [Paperback]

Michael Swanwick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 13, 1991 | Series: Legend novellas

Two people fall in love and a community fights for its life against a backdrop of thermonuclear war and a hi-tech repressive government in this science-fiction story written by the author of "In the Drift" and "Vacuum Flowers".

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Swanwick's ( Gravity's Angels ) latest combines many elements common to his previous work: a solid hard-science fiction setting, an interest in the workings of interpersonal relationships, and speculation about the potentials of the mind and the nature of personality. Gunther Weil is an underachieving lunar laborer, content in his routine job and the occasional petty expression of insubordination. But when an unexpected solar flare catches him exposed on the moon's surface and his ingenuity alone saves him from death, Gunther becomes a sort of celebrity. Later, when a limited nuclear war breaks out on earth, Gunther finds himself in an even more prominent position. A terrorist has released an engineered virus into the moonbase, rendering all those within it insane, and Gunther is one of the few lucky enough to have been outside at the time. As the sane survivors use and sometimes abuse the highly suggestible insane, Gunther and a few others search for a cure. But will that cure return the sufferers to themselves or leave them irrevocably changed? Swanwick weaves the story with characteristic verve and style, and though his exploration of the issues raised by the psychological viruses falls short of its potential, this is an entertaining and provocative novella.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

All-too-brief medium-future yarn centering on war and brain chemistry, from the author of the fine Stations of the Tide (1990), etc. Gunther Weil is just an ordinary lunar engineer, until a nuclear exchange on Earth spreads conflict to the Moon. The sublunar factory town of Bootstrap is cut off, its inhabitants rendered psychotic through brain chemicals released into the air by a saboteur; only those wearing space suits escape. Gunther's lover, Ekatarina, organizes the survivors along traditional lines, to growing resentment, until Gunther discovers that a range of new brain chemicals has been developed: Not only can the psychotics be cured, but stable personalities can be amended and improved on as a form of mental evolution. Ekatarina resists, and Gunther is forced to shoot her. Absorbing and realistic, packed with provocative ideas that deserve a more thoroughgoing workout than they get here. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 101 pages
• Publisher: Legend; New edition edition (June 13, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0712645772
• ISBN-13: 978-0712645775
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,010,735 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Swanwick at his high-tech/high-touch best. Don't miss., July 17, 2005

By 

Peter D. Tillman (Taos, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Griffin's Egg (Legend novellas) (Paperback)

____________________________________________

Gunther Weil is a truckdriver with a bad attitude, hauling fuel

rods to Chatterjee Crater industrial park....

Gunther drove automatically, gauging his distance from

Bootstrap by the amount of trash lining the Mare Vaporum road...

He likes to break new tracks in the "cherry soil, terrain no human

or machine had ever crossed before." His dispatcher isn't pleased,

and not for the first time: "Weil! Where the f*ck are you?"

Ekaterina Izmailova is a demolition jock, hired to "clean up" a

reactor meltdown. With a briefcase nuke. "It was

unf*ckabelievable. The one side of the crater just disappeared..."

Gunther and Ekaterina end up alone together, stuck in an

emergency rad shelter, trapped by a demented drill-punch -- "The

machine followed him, the diamond-tipped punch sliding

nervously in and out of its sheath. its movements as tremulous

and dainty as a newborn colt's." CLANG... CLANG.

After chiseling off the shelter's outer door, the punch wanders off.

G & E, expecting death, celebrate life: "Are you coming yet?" she

murmured... "Tell me when you're about to come..." -- pillow-talk

with an sfnal twist that it would be unfair to reveal.

Griffin's Egg, while very short (75 pages) "has the multiplex attack

of a true novel" (John Clute). I wish it were longer. This is

Swanwick at his hard-SF best, in a setting that's a prequel to

"Trojan Horse" and Vacuum Flowers. Radical neuroengineering

bears its first fruit -- an aerosol schizomimetic war gas. Which gets

it first use inside the lunar habitat. It's a horrifying vision --

Swanwick is disturbingly good at those -- etched in literally

hallucinatory clarity. Breughel and Bosch come to mind, with a

nod to Shakespeare's Ophelia.

The ending feels false and hurried, but this is the only real flaw in

the piece. Folks, literary space opera doesn't get much better than this. Highly recommended.

Review copyright ©2001 Peter D. Tillman

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hard Popcorn Science Fiction, June 6, 2001

By 

Austin C. Beeman (Waterville, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Griffin's Egg (Hardcover)

Swanwick combines hard science fiction speculation about the future of the moon with a fastpaced action-adventure story that wouldn't be out of place in Hollywood. This is a short novel, orginally published in Asimov's Science Fiction as a novella, and it well worth reading in one sitting. So what are you waiting for? Pop some popcorn and start reading.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Swanwick's done better., September 19, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Griffin's Egg (Hardcover)

The protagonist is a loner on the Moon who wants nothing more than to be left alone to commune with virgin territory, but circumstances throw him into proximity with others as well as wake him up to responsibility. This is a grand theme in the old SF tradition--in fact, except for the explicit sex and the up-to-date science references (specifically, nanotech), this is something that wouldn't have been out of place in 50s SF. This is a short book, technically a novella, that oftentimes seems rushed. The pacing was kind of a jump-up and wait proposition, very irregular feeling. Michael Swanwick has done much better than this in both characters and plot.
(This "review" originally appeared in First Impressions Installment One [http://www.owt.com/users/gcox/fi.contents.html].)