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Title: Vacuum Flowers by Michael Swanwick ISBN: 0-441-85876-7 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.54 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Ashamed that I hadn't read this one earlier
Comment: I only purchased this book because of Swanwick's 1998 short story "Radiant Doors" which was such an amazing story that I knew I had to see if he had written any longer sci fi. I was pretty amazed when I did a search on him and saw how many novels he has written. I have a lot of friends who read sci fi and NONE of them ever mentioned Swanwick.
I am very happy to have stumbled onto this book. What a great read! It has something that you don't always see in sci fi: exploration of thought provoking issues PLUS a fun side that makes the book really enjoyable to read. One of the things this book does best is to put you in it's world and proceed with telling it's story. It doesn't try to explain everything in it's world upfront and doesn't use any cheesy narrative techniques to explain everything. Rather, you learn about how this world is set up through the story itself. Everything fits into place and as I was reading it, I was constantly saying "Ahhh, well that explains that!".
Since this book was written in 1987, many of the topics discussed in it (ie hive mentality, integration of technology into humanity) have been discussed to death in other novels. However, this book stands out in two ways: it was ahead of the rest AND it's better than the rest. This book has elements of Neuromancer, Ender's Game, and even Star Trek (the Borg). But it uses all of those items in such original ways that it stands on it's own. Great sci fi novel, highly recommended.
Rating: 5
Summary: A complete delight to read.
Comment: I don't know how he does it. I mean, you start this book and , BOOM, suddenly you're in the middle of a complex story that is completely out of context to both culture and consciousness as we know them, and you can follow it. Swanwick feeds you just enough info so you can stay with the story. But never too much info, so you don't get a sense that you're reading something different that needs to be explained. It's an amazing balancing act.
Rating: 4
Summary: A great story, but could have been better told
Comment: Vacuum Flowers is the tale of a time in the future. Earth has been taken over by the Comprise, who are interrestingly very like the Borg of Star Trek without all the cybernetic implants. The rest of humanity is spread through the solar system, many in cities floating through space, living in tanks and habitats in cramped conditions.
Rebel is a newly awakened manufactured personality. Memories of the body she occupies surface from time to time and threaten to wipe her out, but she knows there is some purpose for which she is destined to complete. In this time, programing people like software is commonplace, people getting programing to change thier personalities to make them have certain desireable traits which are in style, or even to completly loose themselves to a more full persona for a temporary time.
While I did enjoy the story quite a bit, I did feel the writing lacked in some charachter development, and espically in setting. I found it hard to imagine the places in which the story progressed, and when I would finally get a mental picture peiced together, some new fact would come up to make what I was thinking impossible or highly improbable, or the charachters would simply move to a new place. I did notice in the final chapters of the book the settings seemed to be more aptly described.
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Title: Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick ISBN: 0380730456 Publisher: Eos (HarperCollins) Pub. Date: 01 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Jack Faust by Michael Swanwick ISBN: 0380974444 Publisher: Avon Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick ISBN: 0380730464 Publisher: Eos (HarperCollins) Pub. Date: 01 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Tales of Old Earth by Michael Swanwick ISBN: 1583940561 Publisher: North Atlantic Books Pub. Date: 09 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick ISBN: 0380812894 Publisher: HarperTorch Pub. Date: 25 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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