Customer Reviews

Vaneglory

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I only discovered George Turner quite recently, after reading a review of one of his books in Locus. Sadly, he's now passed away, but the books he left before his death are some of the most challenging and scintillating science fiction I've read recently.

In _Vaneglory_, which is the second book in a loose "Ethical Culture" trilogy (after _Beloved Son_), Turner continues his expose of the new society which has arisen in the wake of the collapse of our present society, a collapse which involved limited nuclear war, famine, ecological failure, etc. Turner is very pessimistic about humankind and our possibilities for learning from past mistakes. The new culture is expressly based on attempting to keep us from falling into the same traps, while the society's leaders continue to use any and all dirty tricks they can to keep and consolidate their power.

45 years after the end, Will Santley and Donald Baird are awakened from cryogenic hibernation at the Gangoil facility, an advanced Australian biological research station. The two men are "Gone Timers," representatives of a violent past who are accorded little or no status in the new society. When it comes out that there may be a race of immortal human mutations living among us, the race is on to capture and sequester an actual representative, a race that ranges from Melbourne Town to the ruins of Glasgow, Scotland.

Turner never lets the book lag and continues to pile on idea after idea. This is a great combination of adventure and philosophy, with a heart-rending conclusion. Highly recommended (though you should read _Beloved Son_ first!).

Radioactive Glasgow, immortals, suspended animation, plans within plans....what more could you ask for !!. Written in such an amazingly claustrophobic style, with such an attention to detail (the chill destruction of Scotland in particular) building up to a catastrophic and heart rending finale. This is a book I personally have been searching for for nigh on 16 years, ever since I had the priveledge to stumble upon it when I was 10. I Haven't read it since so please hurry up and reprint !!!!!

This is another in Turner's somewhat connected Ethical series. This time, the two blokes are woken up from cryogenic suspensions as representatives of the past, or 'Gone Time'.

That not being all, it appears there may be some immortal mutants around, and of course everyone wants to get their hands on people like that. The hunt, therefore is on.

Easily the worst book I've read in a long time. Firstly, everything that happens gets undone. If someone gets killed, you can be sure they'll come back to life before long. Most of the characters have accented speech, but one of the characters has his spelled out phonetically making it needlessly hard to read. Presumably this is done to distinguish this character as the only sympathetic character in the book. Surely a good writer could accomplish this in a hundred better ways.

The writing weaves from first person to third person. In one section, the writing is done in first person and then about half a chapter later that person acts in a way completely contradictory to the way he had been thinking six pages earlier. Sure it's nice to have surprises in a book, but writing in first person and then having characters act against their thought patterns is a pathetic way to go about it. This kind of incoherent writing is typical of the entire novel.

Finally, the author tries to convince us to read his previous (probably equally awful) books by attaching footnotes to characters and events referring to his other works.

The book's biggest virtue is that it is short. I can only assume that Mr. Turner was on a deadline.