Fractions: The First Half of The Fall Revolution (Paperback)

~ Ken MacLeod (Author)
Key Phrases: ring canal, army council, sieve plates, Black Plan, Beulah City, Jonathan Wilde (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Should make those who’ve been crying that British SF can’t work for an American audience think twice. This is strong stuff, full of ideas and yet with a hard-driving plot, and readers whose taste extends beyond good-guys/bad-guys adventure stories ought to love it.”
--Asimov’s SF on The Stone Canal
 
“Science fiction’s freshest new writer…MacLeod is a fiercely intelligent, prodigously well-read author who manages to fill his books with big issues without weighing them down.”
--Salon
 
"As much fun as these books provide, it’s that fierceness, that seriousness of purpose, that powers their engines and makes me want to read on."
--Locus

Product Description

In a balkanized future of dizzying possibilities, mercenaries contend with guns as smart as they are, nuclear deterrence is a commodity traded on the open market, teenagers deal in "theologically correct" software for fundamentalists, and anarchists have colonized a planet circling another star. Against this background, men and women struggle for a better future against the betrayals that went before. Death is sometimes the end, and sometimes something altogether different…

This volume comprises The Star Fraction and The Stone Canal.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: Orb Books; Reprint edition (October 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765320681
• ISBN-13: 978-0765320681
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #190,199 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provocative, Exciting First Half to Ken MacLeod's "Fall Revolution", January 30, 2009

By	John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Written towards the end of, and shortly after, the Cold War, Ken MacLeod's "Fractions", is the first half of a four novel series, "The Fall Revolution", exploring humanity's potential political futures. His first novel, "The Star Fraction", is a brilliant near future exploration as to how mankind copes with a fragmented nation state, 21st Century Great Britain, consisting of Marxist societies co-existing uneasily with others, especially with the overarching libertarian ethos of the US/UN world government. Set several decades after a brief World War III which was fought to integrate all of Europe into one state, MacLeod offers an optimistic appraisal of anarchistic rule, as seen through the eyes of his misfit protagonists, most of whom members of an urban terrorist band resisting the rule of the restored British monarchy and its US/UN overlords.

Centuries and many light years later, in MacLeod's second novel, "The Stone Canal", humans and androids share a world - New Mars, still in the midst of terraforming - and struggle to establish equality for both groups, when a mysterious human clone appears, recognizable as the British leader who triggered the Fall Revolution. MacLeod skillfully weaves back and forth between the lives of the original leader in the early 21st Century and his New Mars clone, drawing uneasy social and political parallels between both societies.

There are no real heroes in either half of "Fractions". MacLeod admits that his protagonists are flawed figures, rising occasionally to do memorable, perhaps even heroic, deeds. As characters they seem far more realized than the cyberspace cowboys and other social misfits inhabiting the near future landscape of William Gibson's "Cyberspace Trilogy". While MacLeod is not nearly as graceful a stylist as Gibson, he does a most impressive job as a storyteller, telling two emotionally riveting tales that may be more meaningful as scenarios of potential human futures than as fiction. "Fractions" is an excellent, if long, introduction to this young British science fiction writer's work; a superlative blend of political science fiction and post-cyberpunk technological thriller.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a complex political classic, April 8, 2009

By	Sean Riley (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I read the two original books that are in this compilation years ago, and now just enjoyed reading them again.

The Stone Canal contains one of my favorite science-fiction sequences of all time. It takes the ghost in the machine literally. Spoiler alert: waking up inside the construction robot and hacking the pleasure AI is just classic.

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars retains their fresh creativity, October 30, 2008

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The Star Fraction. By 2040, the Kingdom of Great Britain lays in ruins divided into independent states due to the policies of the leftist Labour Party. Some of these new entities are no bigger than a few city streets and run by gang-lords while others like the Army of the New Republic control a vast area. Marxist gun for hire physical security expert Moh Kohn, computer scientist Janis Taine, terrorist Catherine Duvalier and teenage atheist Jordan Brown meet when Moh is assigned to protect Janis and her lab from the fundamentalist Stasis who control technology and have ruled that her work needs to be destroyed. After several Stasis assaults, the foursome decide they must take out an evil artificial intelligence if they are to survive.

The Stone Canal. Political rivals Jonathan Wilde and Dave Reid both love Annette, but the former marries her. Over time Jonathan drifts to the extreme left while Dave turns towards the anarchist's credo. Their competition grows more heated with Annette still in play. Wilde wakes up near a canal where Jay-Dub the robot informs him he is a clone with the original Wilde's memories downloaded into the replica. Reid runs the Martian colony, but the Wilde clone remembers his rival being there when he was assassinated. Worse Reid has a clone of Annette. Round two is commencing.

This is a reprint of the "The First Half of The Fall Revolution" with the second part to come soon. The tales retain their fresh creativity though both were published in the mid 1990s. Each is fast-paced with the worlds, a futuristic dismal earth and a Mars colony after a loss in WW III, seem genuine even with clones and AI machines. The additional fun for Ken Macleod fans is to see the leap in skill from his first to second novel as each is entertaining but THE STONE CANAL is much tighter despite containing two major subplots.

Harriet Klausner