dea in machina
Sep. 9th, 2016 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishKen MacLeod, The Restoration Game
I've read two novels by Jon Courtenay Grimwood: Stamping Butterflies and, um, End Of The World Blues. I remember very little about Stamping Butterflies except that I enjoyed the writing and that at the end it pulled the "universe reset" / "erase the fact that the story occurred" trick, which (it turns out) really, really irritates me. End Of The World Blues didn't do that; instead, it set up an intriguing premise and then used that premise mostly to illuminate a single character's life and growth in the way that more literary novels often do.
Verdict: Grimwood writes well and succeeds admirably in what he sets out to do, and that goal does not line up at all with what I want out of a book. To quote James Nicoll, I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface. Or, in this case, that the surface be integral to the story that's being told.
I mention Grimwood because The Restoration Game does something similar to those two books, but it works for me. I think.
This is not a spoiler: the opening scene of the novel involves space-cops discovering that some jerk has set up a computer running a simulation of a universe and all the life in it, including the sentient life. Said sentient life are scientifically advanced enough to start bumping up against the limits of the universe's physics engine. Creating such a simulation is a horrific crime against those sentients-- but the space cops may have an idea of how to fix things. And then much of the rest of the novel is a contemporaryish (set in 2008, written in 2010) spy thriller revolving around something strange that's going on near the border of Russia and Georgia.
I like spy thrillers, so I was predisposed to like this... but I also like weird worldhopping near-future cyberpunk, and End Of The World Blues left me cold. That said, Restoration Game wisely doesn't try to do anything clever with its frame story except use it as a) the Macguffin and b) closure. It's a spy thriller that peters out to a weirdly philosophical resolution. It's not even deus ex machina (dea in machina, rather, the goddess entering into the machine) because nothing gets solved by the arrival of God, they just talk for awhile. It's just ... what it is.
It helps, I think, that Restoration Game explicitly acknowledges its setup from the start. You know, unless you aren't paying any attention at all, that the world is "just" a simulation, though that doesn't make it any less real to anyone involved. It doesn't come as a surprise when the curtain gets tugged away and then pulled down altogether. It feels more like a natural conclusion. Everything drawn together.
I've been chewing on the question of whether I liked it for the past three days. I think that's a good sign.
I've read two novels by Jon Courtenay Grimwood: Stamping Butterflies and, um, End Of The World Blues. I remember very little about Stamping Butterflies except that I enjoyed the writing and that at the end it pulled the "universe reset" / "erase the fact that the story occurred" trick, which (it turns out) really, really irritates me. End Of The World Blues didn't do that; instead, it set up an intriguing premise and then used that premise mostly to illuminate a single character's life and growth in the way that more literary novels often do.
Verdict: Grimwood writes well and succeeds admirably in what he sets out to do, and that goal does not line up at all with what I want out of a book. To quote James Nicoll, I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface. Or, in this case, that the surface be integral to the story that's being told.
I mention Grimwood because The Restoration Game does something similar to those two books, but it works for me. I think.
This is not a spoiler: the opening scene of the novel involves space-cops discovering that some jerk has set up a computer running a simulation of a universe and all the life in it, including the sentient life. Said sentient life are scientifically advanced enough to start bumping up against the limits of the universe's physics engine. Creating such a simulation is a horrific crime against those sentients-- but the space cops may have an idea of how to fix things. And then much of the rest of the novel is a contemporaryish (set in 2008, written in 2010) spy thriller revolving around something strange that's going on near the border of Russia and Georgia.
I like spy thrillers, so I was predisposed to like this... but I also like weird worldhopping near-future cyberpunk, and End Of The World Blues left me cold. That said, Restoration Game wisely doesn't try to do anything clever with its frame story except use it as a) the Macguffin and b) closure. It's a spy thriller that peters out to a weirdly philosophical resolution. It's not even deus ex machina (dea in machina, rather, the goddess entering into the machine) because nothing gets solved by the arrival of God, they just talk for awhile. It's just ... what it is.
It helps, I think, that Restoration Game explicitly acknowledges its setup from the start. You know, unless you aren't paying any attention at all, that the world is "just" a simulation, though that doesn't make it any less real to anyone involved. It doesn't come as a surprise when the curtain gets tugged away and then pulled down altogether. It feels more like a natural conclusion. Everything drawn together.
I've been chewing on the question of whether I liked it for the past three days. I think that's a good sign.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-10 10:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-10 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-10 02:10 pm (UTC)Thanks for the review!
no subject
Date: 2016-09-10 03:46 pm (UTC)