6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sorely underrated writer, March 30, 2009
This review is from: Mind Over Ship (Hardcover)
I read a lot of speculative fiction, and despite finding most of it only average in quality, I keep trying, hoping for that diamond in the rough so infrequently come across. Dave Marusek's books are like those diamonds in a sea of coal. His writing and world creation are astonishing and very original. His latest book follows up on Counting Heads and is an excellent continuation of the story. You need to read Counting Heads before this book or you will probably not get the most out of it.
The best way I can describe the settings in these two books is Asimov meets Huxley in a kind of nightmarish "Brave New World" but with a wholly realized and plausible super-advanced technological environment. The books are very well written, funny, scary, page turning, and they really get into your head. There are only a handful of spec fic writers whose books I will purchase in hardback as soon as they are released. Marusek is one of them.
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17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A New Classic, Or, Being Human in a Post-Human World, January 28, 2009
This review is from: Mind Over Ship (Hardcover)
In the very early 90's, just as I was hitting puberty, I read Neuromancer, and it changed my life. It brought home to me the reality of the world I would be growing up in, living in as a man. It was dark, yet exciting.
A few years later I encountered Snow Crash, and it also helped inform my views of the world that was quickly taking shape around me. And, despite (or maybe because of) the absurdity of it all, it infused my worldview with humor.
It's some years later now, and in many ways we're living in the "future" world we were all imagining a decade or two ago. And last year I stumbled across Counting Heads, and now its sequel, Mind Over Ship, and once again my imagination is ignited, and I can begin to envision the world just around the bend, one I may or may not see later on in my life. And it is the most bizarre and jarring view I've yet seen, in many ways, of a world that on all levels still screams believable, if not downright likely.
Mind Over Ship is the absolutely amazing followup to Counting Heads, and it is with certainty I say that these novels, and any more Marusek writes down the road that further this tale of humanity coming to terms with life in a more-or-less post/trans-human world, will go down as classics right up there with Neuromancer and the Sprawl Trilogy, and Snow Crash/Diamond Age. Marusek's books are simply a joy to read -- funny, dark, confusing, familiar. They are both hard sci-fi and action-adventure novels, comedies and tragedies. It's difficult to think of praises that are glowing enough to do them justice.
"Post-cyberpunk" lit has a new standard for others to attempt to live up to.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
frightening futuristic science fiction thriller, February 3, 2009
This review is from: Mind Over Ship (Hardcover)
In 2034 the sabotaged rocket crash left financier Eleanor Starke dead while her adopted daughter Ellen's life is saved when her preserved cryogenically frozen head was grafted on to the body of an infant (see COUNTING HEADS). Over the next year Ellen insists her mom is alive while everyone scoffs at her.
At the same time she demands control over the Starke business while other executives want her out of the way as the daughter may have been adopted but is a chip off the old block of her late mom with her desire to help those below the Boutique line. Instead her enemies are more interested in the bottom line even devastating a space colonization scheme to improve the life of the masses. Eleanor's fanatic husband Sammy Harger, who pushed the failed plan to move some of the fifteen billion off a planet over-populated with clones and AIs too, wants a piece of his daughter's head.
This sequel is a timely frightening futuristic science fiction thriller that extrapolates much of what is happening in technology, on Wall St and in DC to paint a dark nightmarish world that makes Malthus' prediction look naively understated. Ninety-nine percent of the populace lives in poverty while the avaricious remainder manipulates events to obtain larger portions of the pie. Ellen is terrific as she struggles to take control of her mom's empire, but her adversaries are diabolical and sleazy as they control the convergence of science, money, and politics at the expense of the many. Though reading the first tale helps the audience understand what COUNTING HEADS is, this second act is a terrific thought provoking thriller that extrapolates the Bush years into the next century.
Harriet Klausner
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