Reviews for Nova Swing

The average rating for Nova Swing based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-12-20 00:00:00 Matt Gemlo Nova Swing - M. John Harrison's mix of Space Opera, Steampunk, Cyberpunk, Biopunk, New Wave, New Weird, Alien Invasion, Parallel Worlds and Retro Futurism to create his own unique literary brew. Wow! What a blastoff. Signature M. John Harrison since, after all, he told an interviewer he's the type of author who could see no good reason why you couldn't combine genres and do all types of fiction at once, the type of author who uses literary fiction to undercut sf and sf to undercut literary fiction, an author continually on the lookout for a surprise ending, an ending that flips the direction the reader thought the story was going, an ending to recontextualize a story - in this way, you can keep things alive, fresh and fluid and bring exciting, uniquely individual ideas to your story. Nova Swing is Book Two in the British author's Empty Space Trilogy, bookended by Light and Empty Space. As a way to shake up my own energy in reading the trilogy, I've started with Nova Swing and plan to move outwards. M. John Harrison frames his tale thusly: We're on a distant planet very much like Earth, in a rundown neighborhood within the coastal city of Saudade in the year 2444. With its bars and nightclubs, shoddy streets and restless young men and women hankering after fried food, sex and hard drugs, this future world has a frightening resemblance to our own modern culture; however, one aspect is truly distinctive: many years ago, a space/time disturbance known as the Kefahuchi Tract touched down in the city, radiating chaos every which way. It's no accident Nova Swing carries an epigraph from the Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic. Since our highly original author enjoys telling readers the backgrounds in his novels are closely intertwined with story, I'll shift immediately to the main players and a bucketful of background weirdness: Vic Serotonin - In similar spirit to Stalker Red Schuhart from Roadside Picnic, Vic makes his living the dangerous way - illegally crossing over into the Kefahuchi event site, sometimes retrieving artifacts, sometimes performing the services of a tour guide, leading others into this mysterious realm. And like Red Schuhart, Serotonin, called Vic Testosterone by a gal detective, exudes the aura of a tough-guy, coarse and vulgar in manner and speech, but there's an undeniable humanity at the core of M. John's main character. Irene the Mona - This lady frequents a chop shop for her "one-shot cultivars" to keep her appearance up as a "Mona," a luscious sexpot with the face and hair of Marilyn Monroe (so retro!). Monas swing their stuff all over the lower class neighborhoods. Meanwhile, men like Joe Leone transform their bodies by hitting the shop for a new infusion of chemical energy to keep them in fighting shape. Hey, Joe! Don't overdo it, boy, or you'll wind up like many other combatants, a sack of toxic waste flushed down the drain. Colorful Cast - Several other men and women strut and fret their hours on the novel's stage: a sexy tourist, a knockout with sleek, dark hair, seeks out Vic for a tour of the site; a detective who looks like Albert Einstein and his athletic, cyborg female assistant are more than a little interested in the happenings in the site and Vic's involvement in new developments; Emil Bonaventure, an old veteran explorer of the site shares his wisdom or craziness (although his daughter, Edith, loves her daddy and judges him a man of great insight, as readers, we pronounce the final verdict.) Shadow Operators - Creepy miniature robots complete with recording equipment that fold up like moths in the corners of rooms. Beware of what you say since someone with power might be listening. But who ultimately is in power in this future world? Governments and nations receive not a mention but the Corporate World (my caps for emphasis) looms on the richer, upper class side of the city. In an eerie way, M. John Harrison anticipates the dissolving of the state and the rise of corporations as the absolute authority. Oddball Object - Vic Serotonin's last find in the site that he sold to one Paulie DeRaad: "It was half bone, half metal, or perhaps both at the same time; or perhaps neither. . . . it had been an animal, a one-off thing no one but him would ever see, white, hairless, larger than a dog . . . it had huge human eyes." Once out of the site, the damn thing takes the shape of an 18" worm and emits light that infects both humans and cyborgs. And to think, power hungry Paulie actually paid good money for Vic's find. Well, Paulie, as Vic told you - risk comes with the goods. Twilight Zone Bunch - At one cool jive joint, saxophone and piano play music that's a joke of older, bygone era music (so post-postmodern). The music can cause a weird bending of the laws of physics: "the band squeezed out two or three thin boys in white singlets, earrings and studded leather belts, and into the prismatic light . . . They looked incomplete, and surprised to find themselves here." Did they come from the fourth dimension? Well, perhaps we shouldn't be overly concerned since these youthful visitors can vanish as instantly as they appear. Annies - Youthful women pay a visit to Uncle Zip for the extreme package - to be lean and as fast and as big as a pony (Annies are all about 7' tall), an ideal size for their job as rickshaw drivers. Oh, my, in their iridescent pink or green lycra suits these supersized Annies perform all varieties of extracurriculars. M. John leaves their sexual exploits to a reader's vivid imagination. Far-Out Kitties - At dawn black cats and white cats teem out of the site and then in the evening they all pour back in. Curiously, it doesn't appear any of the city's denizens adopt one of these cute creatures as a house pet. Well, maybe not so curious, since all is not what it seems in a world where biology and physics can morph most unpredictably. John Clute wrote in his review of the novel for the Guardian: "The miracle a writer of the fantastic such as Harrison performs is to expand the possibilities of perception." I entirely agree. Along similar lines, I'll end with a quote from Nova Swing that speaks to the magic age of thirteen when many future sf authors and avid fans were first introduced to books within the genre that set their imagination on fire: "At thirteen you lived on a orbital factory. or a farm planet with infinite horizons and no room for you anywhere. Or you lived in a port city which stank of the outright bizarreness of things and made you raw all your childhood with . . . what? Delight. Anticipation. The desire to escape. The desire to know. Thirteen years of age, you looked older. You were a girl, you were a boy, your gender was indeterminate." Nova Swing - to fire your imagination. Read it. British author M. John Harrison, born 1945 "Perception of a state is not the state." ― M. John Harrison, Nova Swing

Review # 2 was written on 2016-08-01 00:00:00 Michael Watson I had slightly higher expectations for this novel simply because I was blown away by all the awesome ideas that he managed to stuff into Light, and don't get me wrong, he continues the trend beautifully and a lot more cohesively from Vic's PoV, a travel agent that sometimes takes chumps to the Kefahuchi Tract, or at least to what has become of it after it descended to, and transformed, huge portions of Earth. To be clear, this means that the laws of what should or should not be possible have been temporarily suspended in this area, and it also means that this novel has firmly slotted itself into the category of the New Weird. A lot happens, just as many ideas are paraded about in awesome strangeness, including K-Ship tech on the surface of the planet in the hands of shop owners, of semi-intelligent tattoos, the need for rickshaws, and some of the funniest juxtapositions of gene-splicing technology for the marks that I've read, including transforming yourself to have the beauty of an old Einstein, because peeps in the 25th century just don't understand certain things... they should be going after his BRAINS... Not his LOOKS... lol And this is also a mystery. The murders are still going on and it harkens straight back to the first novel and the odd end we got. But most of all, with all the sex and the dreams and all the sheer naked desire for something more being displayed on everyone's scenes, it's also good commentary. About them. Not us. We certainly look nothing like that, do we? Still, as much as I love so much of what's going on here, I wasn't quite as invested in these characters as I should have been, and that's despite the great line, "After all, no one has ever given a fuck about a fat man named Anton." I mean, truly, in a line-by line exploration of the novel, it's rich, rich, rich and literary. It makes me think and wonder and glory in the use of the language. It's truly a step up from normal SF. The mystery is a sight more accomplished and interesting that most, and that's merely because the setting was so damn well fleshed out. :) Still, I have to wonder if the incidentals and the world-building might have been just a tad too strong in its flavors and it drowned out the taste of Vic's story. I mean, not to spoil anything here, he stops being a travel agent, and that's probably a good thing since everybody and their fat dog either wants to betray him or just went ahead and did it, and it's really not safe back at home, anyway. When it comes to themes, it's fine, it's good, and it's right, but I wonder if the plot might have been served better by something a bit more SATISFYING and MEATY, you know? I complain. But I really ought to point out that the sheer weight of idea awesomeness in this series, so far, far outweighs six out of seven SF novels on the market. I complain about characters, while everything else happens to be freakily awesome. :) I just feel like it missed an opportunity. Or perhaps the intent wasn't quite that satisfying for me so it never would have won with me. *sigh*