Memory [Hardcover]

Linda Nagata (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 19, 2003

Acclaimed hard-SF author Linda Nagata introduces a new world: a human colony whose people have forgotten their past, on a tremendous structure that forms a great ring around the sun . . . where the sky is bisected by an arch of light and the mysterious "silver" rises from the ground each night to completely transform the landscape-and erase from existence anything it touches.

Young Jubilee is devastated when her brother Jolly is caught and taken by the silver. But when a forbidding stranger with the incredible power to control the silver comes seeking Jolly-and claiming that Jolly knows him-Jubilee first distrusts the man, then fears him and flees. For she has learned an impossible secret: Jolly may still be alive . . . and may somehow become the catalyst for the annihilation of everything she knows if she does not find him first.

Jubilee's flight will lead her to discoveries she could never have imagined, from the secret history of her civilization and her people's origins to the true nature of the silver, to the awesome forgotten memories within her. And with these she will forever alter her world's future . . . unless the dark stranger, relentless in his pursuit, achieves his goal of destroying it. One way or another, Jubilee's final confrontation will change everything . . . .

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of the innovative Limit of Vision (2001) offers another challenging science fantasy. On an artificial world, the people, referred to as players, are reborn time after time, to rediscover their talents (if not their history) from past lives. Their needs are largely provided for by mechanical beetle-like kobolds, which appear out of wells. A silver fog that appears each night constantly reshapes the world. At age 10, Jubilee is devastated when her brother Jolly is taken by the silver, despite the usual protection by kobolds. He had oddly not shown any inherent talents, but in his last words claimed to have called the silver. Jubilee studies the silver assiduously in the ensuing years. The action picks up when she's 17. Her lover, Yaphet, is identified in a faraway town (like talents, mates repeat from former lives), a hauntingly familiar though menacing stranger appears out of the silver asking after Jolly as if Jolly were still alive, and the silver takes Jubilee's father. Jubilee joins her father's younger brother, Liam, on a quest for clues about players who survive the silver. What they learn and do affects the fate of their world. This poignant tale with the bones of hard science is bound to win Nagata new fans.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Young Jubilee lives with her parents and brother, Jolly, in a remote temple, where they are protected by beetlelike metabolic machines from the nocturnal floods of "silver." The stuff, though called "breath-of-creation," "fog of souls," and "mind of a dreaming goddess," seemingly kills animate creatures and haphazardly transforms the landscape, erasing roads and leaving bizarre architecture in its wake. One terrifying night, the silver takes Jolly, while Jubilee watches, horrified. Some years later, a mysterious stranger walks out of the silver, asking for Jolly, whom he seems to know. Can one survive the silver? Hoping to find her brother, Jubilee sets off on a dangerous quest, pursued by the man who can control silver. Her journey leads to her discovery of her civilization's stormy past and her own memories of past existences. Although the concept of the hazardous silver remains enigmatic, Nagata's book conjures up a richly realized world in which a truly eerie landscape serves as the vibrant background of a tale of self-discovery and courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Sally Estes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (April 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312877218
• ISBN-13: 978-0312877217
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,213,605 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Linda Nagata grew up in a rented beach house on the north shore of Oahu. She graduated from the University of Hawaii with a degree in zoology and worked for a time at Haleakala National Park on the island of Maui. She has been a writer, a mom, a programmer of database-driven websites, and lately a publisher and book designer. She is the author of eight novels including The Bohr Maker, winner of the Locus Award for best first novel, and the novella "Goddesses," the first online publication to receive a Nebula award. She lives with her husband in their long-time home on the island of Maui. Find Linda on the web at MythicIsland.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Starts out well, but morphs to an interminable chase scene. 3.5 stars, December 24, 2005

By 

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

This review is from: Memory (Paperback)

______________________________________________
Nagata's world-building here is pretty cool. The setting is a ringworld-orbital where things have gone Terribly Wrong. A long-ago war damaged the habitat, and the construction & maintenance nanoassembler-fogs (the silver), have become a menace to the players, their 'mechanics' (cool hi-tech machines) and their homes. The only safe places to live are temple-complexes around kobold wells -- the temple kobolds, small programmable mechanics, exude a sweet-smelling silver-repellent.

It's a pretty neat setup, an appealing combination of a half-understood high-tech background, a likeable heroine, a nasty villain, and a Quest... So I was having a good time until along about p.200 or so, I started realising that nothing much had happened for awhile, except that the Evil Villain (and/or his minions) was chasing the heroine (and/or her Faithful Friends, and always with her Cute Doggie) through varying landscapes, over and over again. I'm sorry to report that this is pretty much what happens in the rest of the book. The ending's pretty soggy, too.

I'd say Ms. Nagata needed a Stern Editor for this one, or else more inspiration.... Anyway, most everything else she's written is better than this. If you've never tried her (and you should), I'd start with LIMIT OF VISION, her best novel and a standalone. Or, for an appealing sample, her Nebula-award-winning novella "Goddesses", available online.

Happy reading--
Pete Tillman

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars powerful insightful coming of age science fiction thriller, May 16, 2003

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Memory (Hardcover)

Ten year old Jubilee lives with her parents and her brother Jolly in the remote outpost Temple Huacho located in the isolated wild of Kavasphir Hills, a place known for the frequency of the killing silver floods that terraforms the landscape with each new deluge. The family "owns" metabolic machines to keep them safe from the deadly quick flow of the silver. However, that fails when the silver claims Jolly while his younger sister watches in abject horror.

Several years later, a mysterious stranger seemingly walks out of the silver up to a teenage Jubilee asking for Jolly. Beside the awe of seeing what this man did, her fear of him makes her flee, but also wonder if her sibling lives. Needing to know, Jubilee plans to go on a quest to find her brother and learn the secrets of the silver accompanied by her Uncle Liam.

MEMORY is a powerful insightful coming of age science fiction thriller starring a wonderful protagonist seeking answers, but what she learns makes her wonder about a whole different set of personal questions rather than what she originally sought to understand. The story line is action packed yet contains a subtle theme of finding one's self to comprehend the world in which an individual resides. Though the silver remains ironically a somewhat unsolved puzzle, the reader will have a great time observing the brave heroine on her journey to ascertain the truth that takes her as much inside her self as the weird world she lives in.

Harriet Klausner

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A second reading helps quite a lot, January 4, 2005

By 

Roy Sablosky (takoma park, md USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Memory (Paperback)

I read this book when it first came out. It was good, but didn't make much of an impression. Just this week I read it again and I think it's really, really good.

The key to following the story might be this. Picture a story set in the far, far future, where people have godlike powers. Two people create a whole new planet and populate it with organisms. The organisms are very close to human; their bodies and personalities are initially patterned on the avatars of folks who are "playing" in this new "playground," but they are real biological (as opposed to mechanical) beings and they proceed to establish their own families, traditions, and civilization. Meanwhile, the "gods" who created this place have a furious argument, resulting in planet-wide ecological damage. Then they get bored and abandon their project!

BUT! -- "Memory" is not about these far-future "gods" -- it's about THEIR far future! -- the legacy of their creation as it plays out among the people living on their artificial-planet-project many tens of thousands of years later. For the people living there, the original genesis of their entire planet and its population have become mysterious ancient myths. Only IMPLICITLY is the book about "long-ago" era when the "gods" created their world and seeded it with life.

I hope this helps some of the readers who are having trouble. This is a beatifully written and truly thought-provoking book.

"Memory" is not as good as Nagata's earlier "Vast," which I would give five stars. For the uninitiated, however, "Vast" is even harder to follow than "Memory" -- MUCH harder, I would imagine.