Till Human Voices Wake Us [Mass Market Paperback]

Mark Budz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 31, 2007

In such groundbreaking novels as Crache and Idolon, Mark Budz established his reputation as one of science fiction’s most exciting and innovative writers. Now he surprises us again with an ambitious new thriller set in three realities at once, where three different lives hang in the balance….

What if your world were rapidly running out of tomorrows? And what if the only way to save the future was to relive the past? But which past holds the key to survival? That’s the life-and-death question faced by three desperate people separated by the past, present, and future but who share a single terrifying reality. A tortured soul, brain-damaged in a motorcycle accident, issues a pirate broadcast out of a van in near-future California. In Depression-era San Francisco an architect with an inoperable brain tumor seeks a mystical cure. A post-human space traveler caught in a cosmic accident searches for a way to reconstruct himself and the future. In Mark Budz’s spellbinding narrative, their lives–and deaths–are drawn together by a force even more powerful than destiny.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

In three different eras, three protagonists struggle with the spectre of death and grasp for a means to survival. During the Depression, an architect communes with mystics for the key to healing. In the near future, a traveller who believes he has found the answer with Jesus broadcasts his story from a church van. Far in the future, a post-human space explorer who has lost vital parts of his programming because of an accident fights to maintain coherence. Each character struggles for truth and life, their fates becoming more closely linked with every passing moment. Discovering the truth behind their fates and choosing the right set of memories constitute the only path to survival for all three. Budz's fascinating thriller made up of three disparate stories crucially connected and eventually converging on a conclusion perhaps not entirely unexpected satisfies through the exploration of mind and choice that is its mainspring. Schroeder, Regina

About the Author

Mark Budz lives in northern California with his wife, fellow author Marina Fitch. His short stories have appeared in Amazing Stories and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He is the author of four novels, Clade, Crache, Idolon, and, most recently, Till Human Voices Wake Us.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Spectra (July 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553588516
• ISBN-13: 978-0553588514
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1.1 x 6.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,536,272 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Three strong stories that are stronger together, February 15, 2008

By 

Greg Wilson (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Till Human Voices Wake Us (Mass Market Paperback)

The three threads are all strong enough to stand alone; they don't start to tie together 'til the middle of the book, but the end more than makes up for earlier confusion.

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books I've read this year., June 29, 2011

By 

A. J. Luxton (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Till Human Voices Wake Us (Mass Market Paperback)

I first saw this book in my local bookstore. As soon as I read the blurb, I picked it up. "T.S. Eliot, transhumanism and mystic neurology?" It was as if someone had written a novel just for me, and I hoped against hope that it would fulfill its promise.

In fact, it did.

Some of my favorite things in the world include the clinical tales of Oliver Sacks, and the interstitial territory where the experience of neurological events blends into the experience of self and mystical reality. Yeah, a mouthful, that. This may not be your sort of book if a few thousand-dollar words throw you off. But if this sort of thing fascinates you too, read ahead. This is the first piece of science fiction I've encountered which has a full handle on these boundaries and realities.

There is a point towards the middle of the book where a present-day character admits to experiencing a sense that his life is being recorded by cameras in his brain, and in the context of the three interlaced plotlines of the book, it is a moment of wonderful and startling ambiguity. Budz leads us to a place where the possibilities are balanced on a perfect edge: that this character is experiencing schizophrenic hallucinations and that his life *is*, in fact, being recorded by cameras in his brain.

It's a wonderful place to be, a place where it's possible for a thought to be insane and also true, where these qualities are not mutually exclusive. This is a theme throughout the narrative: another character experiences a brain tumor and a series of spiritual revelations, and the relationship between these things is not held to invalidate his experiences...

The situations of the characters in the book are often harsh and dark, but approached with empathy: a kind of open-eyed attitude toward all human experience that drew me deeply into the story. I found myself following every word with deep fascination.

The breadcrumb trail may be a little hard to follow at first, and the author assumes a background knowledge of "post-singularity" fiction conventions on the part of the reader, but it's well worth sticking with for the follow-through. "Human Voices" is a high-bandwidth book; as the pieces come together, it blows the mind, literally and figuratively. This one's a keeper.

6 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars fragmented, October 27, 2007

By 

Sean Riley (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Till Human Voices Wake Us (Mass Market Paperback)

I read this book to the end and I still have no idea what happened. The story jumps between characters, locations and time periods mercilessly and is very vague about the details of the various far-future settings. Maybe the author was deliberately obsfucating the plot to emulate the style of Gibson. If so maybe he went too far.