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Vacuum Flowers
In a world of plug-in personalities and colonized asteroids, daring fugitive Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark seeks refuge on Earth orbiting settlements, where evil, self-interest, and greed flourish in the vacuum of space. Reissue.
248 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews
May 4, 2021
Vacuum Flowers is a grand tour of the inhabited Solar System, set in a medium-term future. The book opens in Eros Kluster, one of many asteroid-based settlements that form the bulk of Human space, after all of humanity on Earth was absorbed into the Comprise, a world-wide AI- and net-mediated group-mind. The Klusters are frontier-capitalist polities, more or less, with advanced biotech and neuro-engineering -- most people spend their workday wetware-programmed by their employer, a (+/-) reversible process. There is, umm, 'potential for abuse', and Swanwick has fun exploring the consequences of this technology. For example, a police raid wouldn't require many police -- temp-deputies could be imprinted on the spot...
People's Mars, an unappealing collectivist state based on classical Sparta, is nonetheless making good progress terraforming Mars. The cislunar settlements, a no-man's-land between Humanity and the Comprise, are the dark anarchic Mean Streets. And the remote Dyson settlements in the Oort are bucolic biophile semi-utopias, offstage. Swanwick wrote that he "tried to display a range of plausible governmental systems throughout the System, all of them flawed the way that governments are in the real world..." Nicely done, one of the highlights of Vacuum Flowers.
Oh, and the Flowers are pretty little plants, engineered to live in the vacuum & eat garbage, that have become a weedy nuisance -- another nice touch. Swanwick is, surprisingly, one of the few SF authors who've borrowed Freeman Dyson's remarkable biotech space-settlement ideas. Dyson is an extraordinarily inventive and graceful scientist-writer, and I seldom miss a chance to recommend his books: see my review of Dyson's "The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet": https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
This was Swanwick's second novel, and first really successful one. Despite some rough spots -- notably, the cyberpunkish opening --Vacuum Flowers remains an exemplary modern space-opera, one of the best in the extraordinary reinvention of my favorite subgenre during the past two decades. I've now read VF three times (1987, 1993, & 2000), and I expect to enjoy it again in 2007 or so. Highly recommended.
2021 reread: showing its age a bit -- or maybe it's just my bad mood? Anyway, still a good book, but the magic was intermittent this time.
People's Mars, an unappealing collectivist state based on classical Sparta, is nonetheless making good progress terraforming Mars. The cislunar settlements, a no-man's-land between Humanity and the Comprise, are the dark anarchic Mean Streets. And the remote Dyson settlements in the Oort are bucolic biophile semi-utopias, offstage. Swanwick wrote that he "tried to display a range of plausible governmental systems throughout the System, all of them flawed the way that governments are in the real world..." Nicely done, one of the highlights of Vacuum Flowers.
Oh, and the Flowers are pretty little plants, engineered to live in the vacuum & eat garbage, that have become a weedy nuisance -- another nice touch. Swanwick is, surprisingly, one of the few SF authors who've borrowed Freeman Dyson's remarkable biotech space-settlement ideas. Dyson is an extraordinarily inventive and graceful scientist-writer, and I seldom miss a chance to recommend his books: see my review of Dyson's "The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet": https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
This was Swanwick's second novel, and first really successful one. Despite some rough spots -- notably, the cyberpunkish opening --Vacuum Flowers remains an exemplary modern space-opera, one of the best in the extraordinary reinvention of my favorite subgenre during the past two decades. I've now read VF three times (1987, 1993, & 2000), and I expect to enjoy it again in 2007 or so. Highly recommended.
2021 reread: showing its age a bit -- or maybe it's just my bad mood? Anyway, still a good book, but the magic was intermittent this time.
September 13, 2023
Fascinating world building, particularly what Swanwick does taking "wetware" programming to its extremes and creating a seedy yet richly diverse vision of human colonization of the solar system. Earth having been overrun by a singular hive mind linking every living human there is particularly chilling. In many ways it is a tale of tragedy reflecting on the loss of individuality stemming from the erosion of self through technologies that seemingly promise to enhance and/or connect humanity more deeply. Yet the storytelling and character development is choppy at best, barely coherent at worst, giving the reader a sense of having been thrown into a whirlwind of ideas with no center of gravity or direction, making it easy to feel lost. I can accept that part of that may be by design, but even so. Recommended for cyberpunk die-hards.
April 3, 2012
Swanwick has been an amazing writer for a very long time. I've just reread this after 15 years or so and it's just as fresh as the day it was written. It seems wrong to describe it as cyberpunk as it's got so much more creativity insight and breadth than pretty much anything else in that genre. It reminds me of Samuel R Delaney's work more than William Gibson's.
On the other hand it does all kind of hang on the classic SF trope of the person who has had their memory blasted and so gets a guided tour of all the strange stuff with the reader following along. It takes a long time to figure out where it's headed and while this is true of the POV of the protagonist, lacking that sense of direction makes it less compelling somehow.
I'd rate this above his more recent (and more depressing and or surreal) fantasy novels, above his first novel In the Drift, and behind his most amazing Stations of the Tide.
It's interesting looking back at his career as he's 62 when I write this and was 37 when he wrote this. Right from the start he could out-write almost anyone, but that might be a sad and lonely and certainly not very well paying place in our world where Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) (and the corolary that most people are happy with crap) operates. He's a very smart man, and his justifiedly though not necessarily enjoyable jaundiced view dominates much of his work. He hasn't been fully ground down yet while writing this one, at least.
On the other hand it does all kind of hang on the classic SF trope of the person who has had their memory blasted and so gets a guided tour of all the strange stuff with the reader following along. It takes a long time to figure out where it's headed and while this is true of the POV of the protagonist, lacking that sense of direction makes it less compelling somehow.
I'd rate this above his more recent (and more depressing and or surreal) fantasy novels, above his first novel In the Drift, and behind his most amazing Stations of the Tide.
It's interesting looking back at his career as he's 62 when I write this and was 37 when he wrote this. Right from the start he could out-write almost anyone, but that might be a sad and lonely and certainly not very well paying place in our world where Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) (and the corolary that most people are happy with crap) operates. He's a very smart man, and his justifiedly though not necessarily enjoyable jaundiced view dominates much of his work. He hasn't been fully ground down yet while writing this one, at least.
August 25, 2024
Cyberpunk/space opera crossover, in which a Mindwiped and wetware reprogrammed woman experiences a
Split-Personality Merge
whilst evading a MegaCorp's minions and the Hive Mind that has taken over the Earth by fleeing across the solar system.
A cislunar hongkong
My yellow paged, dead tree, paperback version was a modest 248-pages. It had a US 1987 copyright.
Michael Swanwick is an American fantasy and science fiction author. He has written more than ten novels, and numerous works of short fiction. This was the author’s second novel. I can’t recall the last book I read by the author, although I know I have in the dim past.
I found this paperback on the dusty, plank, shelf of a used book store. In a wild-assed moment, I decided to take a page from my esteemed GR colleagues that only read books which are 25-years or more old and may (or likely not) have stood the test of time. It’s also vintage cyberpunk, a genre as lost an art as cursive writing. And, at a scant 250 pages, it promised to be a quick read.
TL;DR Synopsis
Eucrasia Walsh was a talented wetware programmer. She lives in an era when the solar system has been colonized and where folks could be quickly and easily programmed with new skills and even personalities. This can be done almost as easily as they can change what little clothes they wear. Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark is the IP of a MegaCorp. She’s an state-of-the-art, in-development, blockbuster, adventuress persona. Whilst Walsh was doing some test and development on Mudlark, with herself, Mudlark escapes into the wild in Walsh’s body. Mudlark leaves wearing the MegaCorp’s only Mudlark copy.
Meanwhile, the Earth has long become a Hive Mind. This occurred through the sharing of personas, corollary of the wetware programming. However, the Earth mind’s cohesion is limited by the speed-of-light of the transceivers that link the Earth mind’s billions. Individuals, or groups in ‘dead zones’, like outer space quickly go insane or found rival minds. The persistence of the Mudlark mind interests the Earth mind.
Mudlark leads the minions of the MegaCorp and the agents of the Earth mind a merry chase across the solar system, through space habitats, minor moons, asteroids and orbital ghettos, and finally Earth itself as Eucrasia and Rebel fight for dominance in their shared body.
The Review
Vacuum Flowers is vintage cyberpunk. It starts with the classic disorientation of the reader à la William Gibson. They’re thrown into the world building pool with their clothes on, and their mobile still in-pocket. The reader has to figure it out for themselves—fast. The MegaCorp, Deutsche Nakasone GmbH are the bad guys. Mudlark finds Walsh’s friends, or are they? The Earth mind, called The Comprise, is drawn in. Toggling back and forth using Mudlark’s skillz and Walsh’s memories help them evade capture and mindwiping while on a cook’s tour of the inner solar system.
Writing was good. Descriptive narration was inventive and very well done. For example, through genericism lodgings for travelers have become “sheratons”. Action was likewise good. Dialog was terse in comparison. In addition, the writing was well-groomed. I found only two mistakes. The old Timey Arbor House publishers had some good editors. Swanwick was real good at drawing the reader along. I was learning whilst reading, and Getting it. However, I must admit to having benefitted from having seen it all before. (After 35-years, many of the story’s plot elements have since become common sf tropes.)
One thing I noticed with this 35+ year old novel, was how much ‘ground’ the author covered in only 250 pages. Having a single POV (mostly Mudlark), makes for very compact stories.
Unfortunately, the plotting wobbles. Mudlark/Walsh visits more than a half-dozen environments, from Culture -like, cylindrical habitats, tunneled asteroids, to a re-sculpted Earth. Anyone two of them would have been an appropriate scene for the story. The story would have been tighter without the large number of changes of venue. Towards the end, I was whiplashed by a crucial reveal, and the bums rush to the end.
Note there was: “Sex, drugs, and rock’n roll music, along with violence in the story.
Folks had sex, both hetro and gay. It was tastefully done, although it a bit more graphic in-style than the modern flavor of sf. Intoxicants, particularly synthetic drugs were widely in use. Alcohol was consumed in social settings, sometimes in excess. Music was almost pervasive in social situations, but was oddly never described.
The body count was high. I frankly thought that there would likely have been more deaths by misadventure? Folks were very casual about EVA processes and procedures as well habitat maintenance. Vacuum Kills. Most of the violence in space vessels or habitats was physical, or impact weapons to avoid holing the environment. Low velocity air rifles were used inside habs. The violence was moderately graphic.
World building was excellent. However, it suffered from its great variety. (I find it hard to complain about a story being too heavy on ideas.) Several of the technologies were “sufficiently advanced technologies indistinguishable from magic”. These exist alongside more prosaic future technologies that are nearer now than they were in the story.
BTW, the titular Vacuum Flowers are an escaped example of the biotech which has infected the inner system. They're a metaphoric plot element within the story. Designed to decompose space garbage into a harvestable form by leaching out the reusable molecules into a re-cyclable 'space' flower, they escaped into the void. They're now attached to the outside of habitats and vessels eventually weakening their structure.
Summary
I’m a fan of old timey cyberpunk. This book was like a walk down Memory Lane. It’s a story contemporary with Neuromancer , although its more like Schismatrix Plus in its space opera aspect.
I was amazed that the author was able to pack so many ideas in 250-pages. I mentally noted, this book would have been four books in the hands of a modern, cretinous, self-publishing, sf, author of Serial Fiction-- it was so rich with ideas.
I'm also very forgiving when reading old timey sf, whose then new ideas have devolved into common tropes.
However, the story was an embarrassment of riches. The author was too driven in covering all of them in one go. He should have slowed down, less than half-way through, and augured into what was on the plate. That would have avoided the too quick ending.
Still I really liked it. It was a marvelous, near indigestible, chunk of sf ideas, and a great piece of narrative craftsmanship.
Otherwise, having read this, I’m going back to read Schismatrix sometime soon.
A cislunar hongkong
My yellow paged, dead tree, paperback version was a modest 248-pages. It had a US 1987 copyright.
Michael Swanwick is an American fantasy and science fiction author. He has written more than ten novels, and numerous works of short fiction. This was the author’s second novel. I can’t recall the last book I read by the author, although I know I have in the dim past.
I found this paperback on the dusty, plank, shelf of a used book store. In a wild-assed moment, I decided to take a page from my esteemed GR colleagues that only read books which are 25-years or more old and may (or likely not) have stood the test of time. It’s also vintage cyberpunk, a genre as lost an art as cursive writing. And, at a scant 250 pages, it promised to be a quick read.
TL;DR Synopsis
Eucrasia Walsh was a talented wetware programmer. She lives in an era when the solar system has been colonized and where folks could be quickly and easily programmed with new skills and even personalities. This can be done almost as easily as they can change what little clothes they wear. Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark is the IP of a MegaCorp. She’s an state-of-the-art, in-development, blockbuster, adventuress persona. Whilst Walsh was doing some test and development on Mudlark, with herself, Mudlark escapes into the wild in Walsh’s body. Mudlark leaves wearing the MegaCorp’s only Mudlark copy.
Meanwhile, the Earth has long become a Hive Mind. This occurred through the sharing of personas, corollary of the wetware programming. However, the Earth mind’s cohesion is limited by the speed-of-light of the transceivers that link the Earth mind’s billions. Individuals, or groups in ‘dead zones’, like outer space quickly go insane or found rival minds. The persistence of the Mudlark mind interests the Earth mind.
Mudlark leads the minions of the MegaCorp and the agents of the Earth mind a merry chase across the solar system, through space habitats, minor moons, asteroids and orbital ghettos, and finally Earth itself as Eucrasia and Rebel fight for dominance in their shared body.
The Review
Vacuum Flowers is vintage cyberpunk. It starts with the classic disorientation of the reader à la William Gibson. They’re thrown into the world building pool with their clothes on, and their mobile still in-pocket. The reader has to figure it out for themselves—fast. The MegaCorp, Deutsche Nakasone GmbH are the bad guys. Mudlark finds Walsh’s friends, or are they? The Earth mind, called The Comprise, is drawn in. Toggling back and forth using Mudlark’s skillz and Walsh’s memories help them evade capture and mindwiping while on a cook’s tour of the inner solar system.
Writing was good. Descriptive narration was inventive and very well done. For example, through genericism lodgings for travelers have become “sheratons”. Action was likewise good. Dialog was terse in comparison. In addition, the writing was well-groomed. I found only two mistakes. The old Timey Arbor House publishers had some good editors. Swanwick was real good at drawing the reader along. I was learning whilst reading, and Getting it. However, I must admit to having benefitted from having seen it all before. (After 35-years, many of the story’s plot elements have since become common sf tropes.)
One thing I noticed with this 35+ year old novel, was how much ‘ground’ the author covered in only 250 pages. Having a single POV (mostly Mudlark), makes for very compact stories.
Unfortunately, the plotting wobbles. Mudlark/Walsh visits more than a half-dozen environments, from Culture -like, cylindrical habitats, tunneled asteroids, to a re-sculpted Earth. Any
Note there was: “Sex, drugs, and rock’n roll music, along with violence in the story.
Folks had sex, both hetro and gay. It was tastefully done, although it a bit more graphic in-style than the modern flavor of sf. Intoxicants, particularly synthetic drugs were widely in use. Alcohol was consumed in social settings, sometimes in excess. Music was almost pervasive in social situations, but was oddly never described.
The body count was high. I frankly thought that there would likely have been more deaths by misadventure? Folks were very casual about EVA processes and procedures as well habitat maintenance. Vacuum Kills. Most of the violence in space vessels or habitats was physical, or impact weapons to avoid holing the environment. Low velocity air rifles were used inside habs. The violence was moderately graphic.
World building was excellent. However, it suffered from its great variety. (I find it hard to complain about a story being too heavy on ideas.) Several of the technologies were “sufficiently advanced technologies indistinguishable from magic”. These exist alongside more prosaic future technologies that are nearer now than they were in the story.
BTW, the titular Vacuum Flowers are an escaped example of the biotech which has infected the inner system. They're a metaphoric plot element within the story. Designed to decompose space garbage into a harvestable form by leaching out the reusable molecules into a re-cyclable 'space' flower, they escaped into the void. They're now attached to the outside of habitats and vessels eventually weakening their structure.
Summary
I’m a fan of old timey cyberpunk. This book was like a walk down Memory Lane. It’s a story contemporary with Neuromancer , although its more like Schismatrix Plus in its space opera aspect.
I was amazed that the author was able to pack so many ideas in 250-pages. I mentally noted, this book would have been four books in the hands of a modern, cretinous, self-publishing, sf, author of Serial Fiction-- it was so rich with ideas.
I'm also very forgiving when reading old timey sf, whose then new ideas have devolved into common tropes.
However, the story was an embarrassment of riches. The author was too driven in covering all of them in one go. He should have slowed down, less than half-way through, and augured into what was on the plate. That would have avoided the too quick ending.
Still I really liked it. It was a marvelous, near indigestible, chunk of sf ideas, and a great piece of narrative craftsmanship.
Otherwise, having read this, I’m going back to read Schismatrix sometime soon.
February 6, 2017
Dear Vacuum Flowers,
I will not miss reading your pages, as far fetched, right on and eco-cyber-futurist as they may be. I guess if an abridged graphic novel version comes out I'd read that, but you were a bit of a slog for me.
So why'd I keep reading?
What i liked: imagery, futurist scene setting & plot devices, kick-ass female lead (except when not) , promiscuous female lead who faces few negative consequences for casual hookups, characters who move fluidly between socio-economic strata
what i didn't: no sense of humor (or one i don't share? ), kick-ass female lead (who wasn't ? ), promiscuous female lead who faces few negative consequences for casual hookups, stereotypes instead of archetypes
Worth reading for the "going to the bank scene" alone - i'll remember it a long time .
I will not miss reading your pages, as far fetched, right on and eco-cyber-futurist as they may be. I guess if an abridged graphic novel version comes out I'd read that, but you were a bit of a slog for me.
So why'd I keep reading?
What i liked: imagery, futurist scene setting & plot devices, kick-ass female lead (except when not) , promiscuous female lead who faces few negative consequences for casual hookups, characters who move fluidly between socio-economic strata
what i didn't: no sense of humor (or one i don't share? ), kick-ass female lead (who wasn't ? ), promiscuous female lead who faces few negative consequences for casual hookups, stereotypes instead of archetypes
Worth reading for the "going to the bank scene" alone - i'll remember it a long time .
July 18, 2011
A Persona Bum decides she likes the new personality she just uploaded to her brain so much that she decides to keep it. Unfortunately the corporation that owns the rights isn't too pleased and from there on in we follow Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark (or is it Eucrasia?) on her adventures across a solar system populated by bizarre societies transformed by the inovation of wetware technology and the loss of earth to a hivemind decades before. On the way we get to visit her world as she experiences much of it for the first time. Great 'Grand Tour of the Solar System' book chock full of ideas that scratched that itch for me after I finished _The Ophiuchi Hotline_ and _Schismatrix Plus_...if anyone knows of others books in the same vein, let me know.
April 10, 2018
This book is so good I could have sworn it was written by a woman. The lead female protag is very real and believable—she even manages to be *sexual* without being *sexualized*, which can be a hard line for some authors to walk.
I was thinking how this might be the best 80's era cyberpunk/scifi novel I've read yet, and then Swanwick referenced Kobo Abe, my fav surrealist author.
Like, this book isn't tinged with the misogyny and racism so many other books from this time are, that we try to overlook. IT EVEN HAS A POSITIVE TRANS CHARACTER (altho very briefly).
I was thinking how this might be the best 80's era cyberpunk/scifi novel I've read yet, and then Swanwick referenced Kobo Abe, my fav surrealist author.
Like, this book isn't tinged with the misogyny and racism so many other books from this time are, that we try to overlook. IT EVEN HAS A POSITIVE TRANS CHARACTER (altho very briefly).
September 5, 2007
What a ride! I've read a smattering of short stories(of note the absolutely menacing "The Very Pulse of the Machine"..so unsettling) by Swanwick which people claim are his strength but that seems dismissive of his novels..and on completing my first one..I think he might be dynamite novelist, one of our best. Called cyberpunk or space opera but really this is indescribable, a full on plunge into white hot imagination and political outrage tackling ideas of identity(most characters have several),goverment(a satire of nearly all goverment hypocrisy of human past,present, and future),reality and the other essential messes of life. Humor, terrific characters,scary speculation on technology, and full sense of wonder, also the weirdest "Wizard of OZ" allusion I have ever read (an extra point for including Kobo Abe in the great lost works of literature of Earth..don't ask)...there seems to be about hundred idea per page in this book. Swanwick may be a match for his heroes Gene Wolfe and Pynchon if the rest of his oeuvre it equal to this book. Also, star trek's the borg and the matrix owe him royalties and an apology for simplifying his ideas with their hollywood morality.
August 30, 2017
An early blend of Cyberpunk and Space Opera that relentlessly introduces new ideas several times a page, bizarre cultures residing all throughout the solar system, crazy organic space habitats of multiple variety, programmable minds, devious Ai and characters you probably can't trust. A story that disorients as often as entertains. Which I’ve come to expect from good, classic Cyberpunk.
April 5, 2019
Вакуумните цветя са модифицирани за космоса и растат като се подхранват с всякакъв боклук. Никой обаче не е смятал, че ще са толкова адаптивни и в момента са из цялата Слънчева система и са пълна напаст, отстранима само ръчно. Интересно за какво ли са алюзия според автора?
Действието в книгата се развива в едно средно отдалечено от нас бъдеще, където човечеството е започнало да изживява част от мечтите на Фриймън Дайсън (абе, защо нямаме преведени на български от научно-популярните и научните му трудове?) и е налазило Слънчевата система, но е далеч от междузвездните полети. Сюжетът се гради върху „уетуеър” – програмируеми в човешката личност модели на поведение, от отделни черти, през професионални умения, до цялостни личностни изменения. Главната героиня е тестер точно на такива временни личностни програми, но когато попада на устойчив уетуеър решава да си го запази. Корпорацията, която го разработва съвсем не е съгласна и започва едно шеметно преследване из слънчевата система. В хода на книгата се срещаме с дивата капиталистическа корпоративна система на астероидите, общото съзнание на населението на Земята, социалистическия строй на тераформиращите марс граждани, свободните специалисти от кометните Дайсънови колонии , както и други образи и дребни държави пръснати из пространството и залегнали на програмирането на личности.
Стъпил свободно върху „Вълщебникът от Оз”, Суанвик (ако така се трнскрибира) успява да нарисува една доста шантава и до някъде плашеща картина на възможно бъдеще, като контролира съдържанието да не излезе извън тесните рамки на киберпънка и да навлезе в космическата опера.
Има доста добри наченки на биопънк, както и много други напредничави идеи. Направо се вижда как Симънс се е вдъхновявал за хиперионския цикъл, а влиянието на автора се усеща и в по-късните произведения на Брус Стърлинг. Не знам защо книгата не е по-известна, за мен е фундаментална за развитието на киберпънка. Може би, защото е писана в средата на мимолетния му пик, а доста изнасилва поджанровите тропи. Суанвик е избрал доста разбираем език, без множество техножаргонни думи, а действието на моменти е хаотично. Има и допълнителни недоразвити сюжетни линии, които изцяло служат на светостроенето.
Добре е да се добави и изключително силните за времето женски образи, с които не може да се заяде дори най-радикалнаста феминистка, но са представени без да дразнят средно статистическия читател на фантастика.
Действието в книгата се развива в едно средно отдалечено от нас бъдеще, където човечеството е започнало да изживява част от мечтите на Фриймън Дайсън (абе, защо нямаме преведени на български от научно-популярните и научните му трудове?) и е налазило Слънчевата система, но е далеч от междузвездните полети. Сюжетът се гради върху „уетуеър” – програмируеми в човешката личност модели на поведение, от отделни черти, през професионални умения, до цялостни личностни изменения. Главната героиня е тестер точно на такива временни личностни програми, но когато попада на устойчив уетуеър решава да си го запази. Корпорацията, която го разработва съвсем не е съгласна и започва едно шеметно преследване из слънчевата система. В хода на книгата се срещаме с дивата капиталистическа корпоративна система на астероидите, общото съзнание на населението на Земята, социалистическия строй на тераформиращите марс граждани, свободните специалисти от кометните Дайсънови колонии , както и други образи и дребни държави пръснати из пространството и залегнали на програмирането на личности.
Стъпил свободно върху „Вълщебникът от Оз”, Суанвик (ако така се трнскрибира) успява да нарисува една доста шантава и до някъде плашеща картина на възможно бъдеще, като контролира съдържанието да не излезе извън тесните рамки на киберпънка и да навлезе в космическата опера.
Има доста добри наченки на биопънк, както и много други напредничави идеи. Направо се вижда как Симънс се е вдъхновявал за хиперионския цикъл, а влиянието на автора се усеща и в по-късните произведения на Брус Стърлинг. Не знам защо книгата не е по-известна, за мен е фундаментална за развитието на киберпънка. Може би, защото е писана в средата на мимолетния му пик, а доста изнасилва поджанровите тропи. Суанвик е избрал доста разбираем език, без множество техножаргонни думи, а действието на моменти е хаотично. Има и допълнителни недоразвити сюжетни линии, които изцяло служат на светостроенето.
Добре е да се добави и изключително силните за времето женски образи, с които не може да се заяде дори най-радикалнаста феминистка, но са представени без да дразнят средно статистическия читател на фантастика.
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January 25, 2015I give up. DNF at 50%. The world building is just so chaotic that I don't really know how anything works or why or where the characters even are half the time. As for the characters, I'm seriously struggling to care about them. Just when I think I understand what the story is about and where the plot is going, random stuff happens that makes me all confused again. Sadly, I've reached the point where I just don't care anymore. Time to move on... :(
August 6, 2024
Just gets better and better every time you read it. Pretty sure I have reviewed it already, but the copy I own is not that poxy green thing GR is displaying, so maybe my review is elsewhere.
September 1, 2021
”Do you remember being born?” the armless girl asked. “We do.”
It was OK. As other reviews have stated; a bit chaotic.
It was OK. As other reviews have stated; a bit chaotic.
June 3, 2024
Die Menschheit lebt übers Sonnensystem verteilt. Rebel wacht im Krankenhaus auf, kann sich erst mal nicht erinnern. Sie war früher Eucresia Walsh, eine "Wetware"-Expertin, also jemand, der die Persönlichkeit und das Gedächtnis von Personen editieren kann (mittels Technik). Sie hat sich aber als Versuchskaninchen für die Firma "Deutsche Nakasone" gemeldet, die neue Persönlichkeiten entwickelt und verkauft. Wieso ist ihre Persönlichkeit so wertvoll?
Ein Cyberpunk- Roman (wie Heyne auf dem Cover betont) mit ein paar interessanten Ideen. 2 davon fühlen sich für mich leider "falsch" an, was den Lesegenuss trübte:
Das Leben der Menschen in den Raumstation ist so geschildert, als wären sie quasi unbegrenzt ausgedehnt, es gibt Slums und wuchernde Riesenpflanzen.
Ähnlich unwohl war mir mit seiner Vision der Entwicklung der "Wetware". Ich denke, das menschliche Gehirn ist zu kompliziert, als dass man das so einfach editieren könnte.
Die Charakterzeichnungen sind ordentlich wenn auch nicht großartig, der Stil ist ganz gut.
Der Handlungsbogen entwickelt sich überraschend. Eine Zeitlang macht es den Eindruck als ob da nicht mehr viel Interssantes käme, dann steckt doch mehr dahinter.
Ach ja... es gibt auch eine Liebesgeschichte.
Ein Cyberpunk- Roman (wie Heyne auf dem Cover betont) mit ein paar interessanten Ideen. 2 davon fühlen sich für mich leider "falsch" an, was den Lesegenuss trübte:
Das Leben der Menschen in den Raumstation ist so geschildert, als wären sie quasi unbegrenzt ausgedehnt, es gibt Slums und wuchernde Riesenpflanzen.
Ähnlich unwohl war mir mit seiner Vision der Entwicklung der "Wetware". Ich denke, das menschliche Gehirn ist zu kompliziert, als dass man das so einfach editieren könnte.
Die Charakterzeichnungen sind ordentlich wenn auch nicht großartig, der Stil ist ganz gut.
Der Handlungsbogen entwickelt sich überraschend. Eine Zeitlang macht es den Eindruck als ob da nicht mehr viel Interssantes käme, dann steckt doch mehr dahinter.
Ach ja... es gibt auch eine Liebesgeschichte.
May 23, 2019
Starke Parallelen zu "Schismatrix" von Sterling (Wobei mir "Vakuumblumen" eher liegt.
October 18, 2020
This type of scifi really isn't my cup of tea. To quote another reviewer on goodreads:
"The world building is just so chaotic that I don't really know how anything works or why or where the characters even are half the time. As for the characters, I'm seriously struggling to care about them. Just when I think I understand what the story is about and where the plot is going, random stuff happens that makes me all confused again."
This is pretty much how I felt for the first half of the book. In the second half I started to get more of a grasp for the world and the plot of the story, but I never developed any affinity for the characters.
"The world building is just so chaotic that I don't really know how anything works or why or where the characters even are half the time. As for the characters, I'm seriously struggling to care about them. Just when I think I understand what the story is about and where the plot is going, random stuff happens that makes me all confused again."
This is pretty much how I felt for the first half of the book. In the second half I started to get more of a grasp for the world and the plot of the story, but I never developed any affinity for the characters.
March 12, 2023
This is a good book. If you like science fiction that explores interesting science concept that hold up pretty well but also has elements of the fantastical then this is the book for you. As other reviewers say this book is delightfully feminist and a very well written female protagonist. However, few black characters and the ones there are are stereotypes and referred to as ‘rude boys’ and ‘rude girls’, didn’t bother me that much and I don’t think Swanwick intended it to be racist, but it did make the book feel dated…
November 4, 2013
‘Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark is hot property. The body she awakes in isn’t her own: her mind is unique; the agency owning her is deadly. If she stays in the Medical Centre, she has No Future.
So she does what anybody sane would do – she escapes.
And in the sprawling, mad civilisations of the future, she’s in for a very interesting time indeed. If she survives.’
Blurb from the 1989 Legend paperback edition.
The basic pursuit scenario is either that the protagonist is in search of something or someone, the discovery of which is of vital importance to the outcome of the story, or else the protagonist is the pursued and his or her capture, or that of whatever he or she possesses, is of vital importance.
In ‘Vacuum Flowers’ - the title refers both to the genetically engineered blue flowers which grow in vacuum on the surface of asteroids and to the many societies which have flowered in various exotic habitats within the Solar System – the element sought is the persona of Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark. Personas (or personae) are wetware programmes with which users can augment, supplement or overlay their personality. Persona bums (such as Eucrasia Walsh) are hired to test the personas before they go on the market, but in this case Eucrasia liked her persona so much that she ran off with the original copy still in control of her mind.
The Deutsche Nakasone Corporation want the persona back all costs while a rival bidder, fronted by an avatar called Snow, also gets in on the act.
Rebel escapes again and again, while in the meantime undergoing personality disorders because of the battle going on in her mind between the new Rebel personality and the repressed Eucrasia.
Meanwhile, we discover that Earth has been subsumed by the Comprise, a gestalt human cyborg organism, ‘comprised’ of billions of individual human units forming a single consciousness.
The Comprise have existed in an uneasy truce with the rest of Humanity since the time they attempted to absorb them into the cyborg collective. As it transpired the Comprise cannot sustain communication with Earth over distances beyond the Moon’s orbit and their attempts to create Comprise off-shoots have failed, so the Comprise are effectively confined to Earth.
Rebel teams up with Wyeth, a tetrad; his mind divided into the four separate aspects of Warrior, Leader, Mystic and Clown, and their journey, attempting to evade both the assassins of Nakasone and the offers from Snow, takes us on a fabulous journey through the Solar System in which Swanwick throws out inventive wonders, marvels and biological impossibilities seemingly effortlessly.
They visit Deimos where for a brief time they are employed by ‘People’s Mars’, a socialist collective who are fanatically dedicated to their long-term plan of terraforming the Red Planet, and though a cheerless bunch are meticulously efficient and frugal.
The fines from the mining of Deimos, for instance, are ejected into areosynchronous orbit to create a reflective cloud which focuses additional sunlight on the planet.
The pace is relentless and Swanwick’s style is so full of poetic if sometimes bewildering terms, it becomes redolent of Burgess’ ‘A Clockwork Orange’ or Hoban’s ‘Riddley Walker’.
Wonders abound and there is a restless energy which permeates the book urging the reader and the heroine on.
The central figure, Rebel, eventually comes to terms with the part of her which is Eucrasia and finally learns the nature of her own self.
Swanwick is a very individual writer. Although employing elements of cyberpunk and hard scientific premises he extrapolates some elements to the heights of the fantastic.
When Wyeth is contracted to oversee the transfer of ‘tank slums’ and its population of workers to Deimos, a habitat is created by the Comprise within a geodesic sphere based around a giant free-floating orchid within whose branches the workers create small villages and communities. The Comprise (their exponentially heightened intelligence putting their science centuries beyond Man’s) have created a transit ring which essentially shifts space itself from one point to another, and the entire sphere, occupants, orchid and all are packed up and put through and sent to Mars.
It’s also a love story since Wyeth, who knew Eucrasia before she became Rebel (it was Eucrasia who split Wyeth’s head into four separate divisions) falls in love with Eucrasia’s new self and she with him, despite her misgivings.
Although fast-paced and light-hearted in tone there is a depth and a sophistication in the intricate background detail which raises this well above the norm.
So she does what anybody sane would do – she escapes.
And in the sprawling, mad civilisations of the future, she’s in for a very interesting time indeed. If she survives.’
Blurb from the 1989 Legend paperback edition.
The basic pursuit scenario is either that the protagonist is in search of something or someone, the discovery of which is of vital importance to the outcome of the story, or else the protagonist is the pursued and his or her capture, or that of whatever he or she possesses, is of vital importance.
In ‘Vacuum Flowers’ - the title refers both to the genetically engineered blue flowers which grow in vacuum on the surface of asteroids and to the many societies which have flowered in various exotic habitats within the Solar System – the element sought is the persona of Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark. Personas (or personae) are wetware programmes with which users can augment, supplement or overlay their personality. Persona bums (such as Eucrasia Walsh) are hired to test the personas before they go on the market, but in this case Eucrasia liked her persona so much that she ran off with the original copy still in control of her mind.
The Deutsche Nakasone Corporation want the persona back all costs while a rival bidder, fronted by an avatar called Snow, also gets in on the act.
Rebel escapes again and again, while in the meantime undergoing personality disorders because of the battle going on in her mind between the new Rebel personality and the repressed Eucrasia.
Meanwhile, we discover that Earth has been subsumed by the Comprise, a gestalt human cyborg organism, ‘comprised’ of billions of individual human units forming a single consciousness.
The Comprise have existed in an uneasy truce with the rest of Humanity since the time they attempted to absorb them into the cyborg collective. As it transpired the Comprise cannot sustain communication with Earth over distances beyond the Moon’s orbit and their attempts to create Comprise off-shoots have failed, so the Comprise are effectively confined to Earth.
Rebel teams up with Wyeth, a tetrad; his mind divided into the four separate aspects of Warrior, Leader, Mystic and Clown, and their journey, attempting to evade both the assassins of Nakasone and the offers from Snow, takes us on a fabulous journey through the Solar System in which Swanwick throws out inventive wonders, marvels and biological impossibilities seemingly effortlessly.
They visit Deimos where for a brief time they are employed by ‘People’s Mars’, a socialist collective who are fanatically dedicated to their long-term plan of terraforming the Red Planet, and though a cheerless bunch are meticulously efficient and frugal.
The fines from the mining of Deimos, for instance, are ejected into areosynchronous orbit to create a reflective cloud which focuses additional sunlight on the planet.
The pace is relentless and Swanwick’s style is so full of poetic if sometimes bewildering terms, it becomes redolent of Burgess’ ‘A Clockwork Orange’ or Hoban’s ‘Riddley Walker’.
Wonders abound and there is a restless energy which permeates the book urging the reader and the heroine on.
The central figure, Rebel, eventually comes to terms with the part of her which is Eucrasia and finally learns the nature of her own self.
Swanwick is a very individual writer. Although employing elements of cyberpunk and hard scientific premises he extrapolates some elements to the heights of the fantastic.
When Wyeth is contracted to oversee the transfer of ‘tank slums’ and its population of workers to Deimos, a habitat is created by the Comprise within a geodesic sphere based around a giant free-floating orchid within whose branches the workers create small villages and communities. The Comprise (their exponentially heightened intelligence putting their science centuries beyond Man’s) have created a transit ring which essentially shifts space itself from one point to another, and the entire sphere, occupants, orchid and all are packed up and put through and sent to Mars.
It’s also a love story since Wyeth, who knew Eucrasia before she became Rebel (it was Eucrasia who split Wyeth’s head into four separate divisions) falls in love with Eucrasia’s new self and she with him, despite her misgivings.
Although fast-paced and light-hearted in tone there is a depth and a sophistication in the intricate background detail which raises this well above the norm.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 18, 2015
Earth is a hive-mind, police forces are press-ganged criminals, and aboriginal hunting parties can reside inside a single head. These are a few of the quirks and inventions in this 80s sci-fi. Along with the conceptual creativity, one of the best aspects is the seamless ecology of the asteroid worlds & the gradations between their gravities and cultures. It becomes a rich backdrop to the breakneck race for survival our heroine takes us on. I felt a genuine claustrophobia & disorientation at times which suited many of the circumstances & conundrums.
Not to everyone's tastes, and not always successful (a tripped out commando raid & several delirious speeches come to mind) it still charges along at a fair old clip and will probably engage anyone into deep space&time shenanigans. So long as you don't mind the politics angle being left to writhe over future spires. No neat geopolitical endings here.
It hits up against the wall of a lot of sci-fi in terms of scant relevance to current times, beyond the industrial-politicial preoccupations, but there's some semi-lurid sex and a struggling relationship-against-the-odds that allow the toes of the skittering story to ground themselves occasionally.
3.5+
Not to everyone's tastes, and not always successful (a tripped out commando raid & several delirious speeches come to mind) it still charges along at a fair old clip and will probably engage anyone into deep space&time shenanigans. So long as you don't mind the politics angle being left to writhe over future spires. No neat geopolitical endings here.
It hits up against the wall of a lot of sci-fi in terms of scant relevance to current times, beyond the industrial-politicial preoccupations, but there's some semi-lurid sex and a struggling relationship-against-the-odds that allow the toes of the skittering story to ground themselves occasionally.
3.5+
July 5, 2016
Swanwick has constructed an impressive world in this book, but he does it without acknowledging the reader's unfamiliarity. From the very beginning, it's written as if the audience is contemporary to this world; details are included to enhance the picture, but not all details are explained. Just like someone wouldn't feel the need to explain how a telephone call works in a story of our time, he assumes the reader knows (or will figure out) what is happening. At times it made for slow, muddy reading, but the whole time I felt as though he had an encyclopedic knowledge of this world and that he understood and knew more about it that was ever included in the book. This is not a book for people who want it all spelled out in a prologue with a dictionary at the end; it's for someone who wants to be immersed and has to think about what's going on.
Having said that, as enamored as I am with the world, the plot was all over the place and not all the characters were as well thought out as the world they inhabited. I have a nagging feeling my opinion will change on the plot objection upon further re-reads, but as of now, I'd say this was like three short stories glued together.
Having said that, as enamored as I am with the world, the plot was all over the place and not all the characters were as well thought out as the world they inhabited. I have a nagging feeling my opinion will change on the plot objection upon further re-reads, but as of now, I'd say this was like three short stories glued together.
February 15, 2021
Swanwick, Michael. Vacuum Flowers. 1987. Open Road, 2016.
Michael Swanwick is a writer who should be better known than he is, despite one Nebula award for his novel Stations of the Tide and three Hugo awards for his short fiction. He caught the cyberpunk bus early on, and in Vacuum Flowers he extends its reach into the kind of space opera I usually associate with John Varley’s Eight Worlds series. The story is set in a solar system that is inhabited all the way to the Oort Cloud with “cannister habs,” “Dyson trees,” and a partially terraformed Mars. Most of the solar system is dominated by large corporations, but not Earth. It has been taken over by an AI that has incorporated all its residents into a hive mind. Our heroine, Rebel Mudlark, is resurrected into a body not her own after her death by suicide. Her persona with all its memories and skills is owned by a corporation, but Rebel lives up to her name. She is “wetware” who does not accept her programming. Her story is fun to follow, and if I have one complaint about the novel it is that the world-building too often leaves Rebel in the background. Nevertheless, Swanwick is a writer I will revisit.
Michael Swanwick is a writer who should be better known than he is, despite one Nebula award for his novel Stations of the Tide and three Hugo awards for his short fiction. He caught the cyberpunk bus early on, and in Vacuum Flowers he extends its reach into the kind of space opera I usually associate with John Varley’s Eight Worlds series. The story is set in a solar system that is inhabited all the way to the Oort Cloud with “cannister habs,” “Dyson trees,” and a partially terraformed Mars. Most of the solar system is dominated by large corporations, but not Earth. It has been taken over by an AI that has incorporated all its residents into a hive mind. Our heroine, Rebel Mudlark, is resurrected into a body not her own after her death by suicide. Her persona with all its memories and skills is owned by a corporation, but Rebel lives up to her name. She is “wetware” who does not accept her programming. Her story is fun to follow, and if I have one complaint about the novel it is that the world-building too often leaves Rebel in the background. Nevertheless, Swanwick is a writer I will revisit.
November 8, 2014
This doesn't feel like a cyberpunk novel, because most cyberpunk feel very much of their time, whereas this has a freshness to its exuberant vision that seems to disdain such strictures.
Rebel wakes up in Eucrasia's body. Rebel is an artificial persona that has come to life, though she is marked for death by the corporation that owns her. Literally of two minds, she escapes and goes on the run with Wyeth, a friend of Eucrasia's with an interesting mind-state of his own, and they jaunt across the cylinder cities and dyson spheres and ice comets of the solar system looking for answers and adventures and finding both.
It's a marvelous read, bright and energetic and crisp and fun, full of invention and strangeness. The cover for my edition is awful, but it isn't inaccurate and as such is just a single glimpse of the dizzying wonders of Swanwick's strange and alien future.
Rebel wakes up in Eucrasia's body. Rebel is an artificial persona that has come to life, though she is marked for death by the corporation that owns her. Literally of two minds, she escapes and goes on the run with Wyeth, a friend of Eucrasia's with an interesting mind-state of his own, and they jaunt across the cylinder cities and dyson spheres and ice comets of the solar system looking for answers and adventures and finding both.
It's a marvelous read, bright and energetic and crisp and fun, full of invention and strangeness. The cover for my edition is awful, but it isn't inaccurate and as such is just a single glimpse of the dizzying wonders of Swanwick's strange and alien future.
May 6, 2009
I don't remember "cyberpunk" book that was more unsettling than this - pure in-depth horror of our future where the very essence of humanity will become completely and routinely correctable. This book gives more perspective on that subject than any dystopian book I read or heard of. Because author creates not simple story to tell some warning, send a message or paint a bleak picture, he creates absolutely balanced and self-contained normal world where people live and prosper, going forward and spreading... but the Change! I can argue with it, say some strong words like "price", "never" and so on, I can fear and hate it, but I still believe in possibility of this.
November 4, 2022
Incomprehensible, incoherent, irritating read
Cyberpunk is a subgenre that I almost never tire of experiencing. So, it pains me to say how disappointed I was at my experience reading Vacuum Flowers.
This obscure, well at least obscure to most people now, novel from the late eighties, 87’ so a few years published after Gibson’s Neuromancer in ‘84. It was on a few peoples recommended lists of must-read cyberpunk novels. And hard to find as well. The local Barnes and Noble didn’t carry it, nor did any used bookstore around where I lived. I did what I dislike doing for the most part and downloaded it via eBook format. And no, I don’t think that dampened my view on it, I’ve read books that way before. Physical copy or not, my opinion wouldn’t change.
This…What am I supposed to make of the experience. Brain bending, but not in a good way, in a mega frustrating way that makes me think that the author was deliberately being obtuse because that is the Gibson style. But where Gibson, at least early Gibson, had a basic plot within that you could somewhat follow the first time around, Vacuum Flowers is simply all over the place.
Wetware is a term that I recalled hearing but forgot. Like the term cyberspace, which is obviously the easy one because it’s been used to death, wetware not as much so I found the definition as a sort of biological computer where the cells or the biological components, are hardware and they function running complex software. Organic computers. Persona-bum the other term mentioned off the bat, which I took someone who ran a different personality over their own original, downloaded or whatever through their wetware.
So in the world of Vacuum Flowers you can be anything I guess but that personality is corporate controlled? As in the main character who used to be a woman with the name Rebel Mudlark, now has the persona and memories of Eucrasia. Then another character she meets, Wyeth, has multiple personalities. I want to say they’re Warrior, King, Magician, Lover which he can switch at will, or else appear out when he needs them to?
Wetware, and persona-bum are only two of the slew of the terms the author throws at you. After that he simply lost me. I was no longer reading a novel, just a bunch of jargon with novel stuff happening in between. People live in suspending Tanks instead of apartments, that are like these pods with bad plumbing. There’s this asteroid cluster that is being mined, including ones that grow trees in them. I had to look them up. Dyson trees. And not asteroids, but comets.
Rebel moves from place to place, so quickly it seems that I was just getting acclimated to the new setting whilst trying to remembering what happened, why she was there, why is she here now?
Rebel or Eucrasia or whoever, just goes from place to place. She picks vacuum flowers, they are actual like these blue bell flowers that are black in the night and you have to wear PPE whilst picking them, then she visions herself jumping down attaching herself and riding this magnetic beam. Literally lost the plot after that. There’s no action really, long passages of nothing much then maybe a fight scene. All that stood out to me about her character is that she has sex with a lot of guys, seemingly sleeping with every guy she meets, except for the Baron Harkonnen like floating fat man who keeps a zoo of personality slaves who are set serve him or perform tasks like animals or just be human furniture in his courtyard? I really don’t know.
At one part late in the novel, it jumps two years later. Why this far in the novel when everything is already confusing that you then jump into the future. Are the characters still on Mars, Deimos? What are they doing there? Why is this so unnecessarily tough to follow?
The most interesting idea here is the Comprise, a massive human collection where the individuality is destroyed in place of the collective. It functions almost as one giant organism. It reminded me of something like the ‘Singularity Consciousness’ and apparently that is the prime order of existence in Earth now. Also, they wear orange and red jump suits. I guess this is the main antagonist? I don’t really know why its attacking Rebel and Wyeth and everyone else. Or why in the end Rebel and crew suddenly out of nowhere band together to go fight it. Into this giant overgrowth of flowers containing clusters of these Comprise humans inside them like pods in the ‘Matrix’? I guess because some huge climax to the story was needed.
Maybe I was just reading this in the wrong mindset. I’ll admit, Neuromancer was near the same, where I read it the first time and pretty much nothing stuck, it took until the third time before I ‘got it’. But those characters were interesting. Rebel just stands in rooms whilst characters then remind us by telling us that she’s kick ass, then it’s time to go on to the next place! Planet hopping.
At one point, late, late in the book we jump to two years later. Boom! Just like that. Rebel or Eustice or whatever she’s supposed to be is on Mars or Mars’ moon? Doing what? She reminiscences about her mom, who tells her she worked super hard so that she’d never have to live on the moons of Mars, only to return to it later in the book, and Mars is an awful place to work and on the hundred-year plant of being terraformed and…I give up.
I dread reading this a second time, much less a third. I think weird is good, I don’t shy away from books that are tough, ‘Book of the New Sun’, ‘Peripheral/Agency’ but not when it's this super disjointed and everything feels like it only tenuously connects somehow. This left me really exhausted and irritated.
Cyberpunk is a subgenre that I almost never tire of experiencing. So, it pains me to say how disappointed I was at my experience reading Vacuum Flowers.
This obscure, well at least obscure to most people now, novel from the late eighties, 87’ so a few years published after Gibson’s Neuromancer in ‘84. It was on a few peoples recommended lists of must-read cyberpunk novels. And hard to find as well. The local Barnes and Noble didn’t carry it, nor did any used bookstore around where I lived. I did what I dislike doing for the most part and downloaded it via eBook format. And no, I don’t think that dampened my view on it, I’ve read books that way before. Physical copy or not, my opinion wouldn’t change.
This…What am I supposed to make of the experience. Brain bending, but not in a good way, in a mega frustrating way that makes me think that the author was deliberately being obtuse because that is the Gibson style. But where Gibson, at least early Gibson, had a basic plot within that you could somewhat follow the first time around, Vacuum Flowers is simply all over the place.
Wetware is a term that I recalled hearing but forgot. Like the term cyberspace, which is obviously the easy one because it’s been used to death, wetware not as much so I found the definition as a sort of biological computer where the cells or the biological components, are hardware and they function running complex software. Organic computers. Persona-bum the other term mentioned off the bat, which I took someone who ran a different personality over their own original, downloaded or whatever through their wetware.
So in the world of Vacuum Flowers you can be anything I guess but that personality is corporate controlled? As in the main character who used to be a woman with the name Rebel Mudlark, now has the persona and memories of Eucrasia. Then another character she meets, Wyeth, has multiple personalities. I want to say they’re Warrior, King, Magician, Lover which he can switch at will, or else appear out when he needs them to?
Wetware, and persona-bum are only two of the slew of the terms the author throws at you. After that he simply lost me. I was no longer reading a novel, just a bunch of jargon with novel stuff happening in between. People live in suspending Tanks instead of apartments, that are like these pods with bad plumbing. There’s this asteroid cluster that is being mined, including ones that grow trees in them. I had to look them up. Dyson trees. And not asteroids, but comets.
Rebel moves from place to place, so quickly it seems that I was just getting acclimated to the new setting whilst trying to remembering what happened, why she was there, why is she here now?
Rebel or Eucrasia or whoever, just goes from place to place. She picks vacuum flowers, they are actual like these blue bell flowers that are black in the night and you have to wear PPE whilst picking them, then she visions herself jumping down attaching herself and riding this magnetic beam. Literally lost the plot after that. There’s no action really, long passages of nothing much then maybe a fight scene. All that stood out to me about her character is that she has sex with a lot of guys, seemingly sleeping with every guy she meets, except for the Baron Harkonnen like floating fat man who keeps a zoo of personality slaves who are set serve him or perform tasks like animals or just be human furniture in his courtyard? I really don’t know.
At one part late in the novel, it jumps two years later. Why this far in the novel when everything is already confusing that you then jump into the future. Are the characters still on Mars, Deimos? What are they doing there? Why is this so unnecessarily tough to follow?
The most interesting idea here is the Comprise, a massive human collection where the individuality is destroyed in place of the collective. It functions almost as one giant organism. It reminded me of something like the ‘Singularity Consciousness’ and apparently that is the prime order of existence in Earth now. Also, they wear orange and red jump suits. I guess this is the main antagonist? I don’t really know why its attacking Rebel and Wyeth and everyone else. Or why in the end Rebel and crew suddenly out of nowhere band together to go fight it. Into this giant overgrowth of flowers containing clusters of these Comprise humans inside them like pods in the ‘Matrix’? I guess because some huge climax to the story was needed.
Maybe I was just reading this in the wrong mindset. I’ll admit, Neuromancer was near the same, where I read it the first time and pretty much nothing stuck, it took until the third time before I ‘got it’. But those characters were interesting. Rebel just stands in rooms whilst characters then remind us by telling us that she’s kick ass, then it’s time to go on to the next place! Planet hopping.
At one point, late, late in the book we jump to two years later. Boom! Just like that. Rebel or Eustice or whatever she’s supposed to be is on Mars or Mars’ moon? Doing what? She reminiscences about her mom, who tells her she worked super hard so that she’d never have to live on the moons of Mars, only to return to it later in the book, and Mars is an awful place to work and on the hundred-year plant of being terraformed and…I give up.
I dread reading this a second time, much less a third. I think weird is good, I don’t shy away from books that are tough, ‘Book of the New Sun’, ‘Peripheral/Agency’ but not when it's this super disjointed and everything feels like it only tenuously connects somehow. This left me really exhausted and irritated.
September 2, 2013
A cyberpunk classic. It takes place in a far-flung future where humans have colonized the solar system and can be programmed like computers. Even though it was written in 1987, it still holds up. Though in some spots the author plops in items without explanation (not everyone knows what a dyson tree is).
January 6, 2010
This is a cut above the usual sf cyberpunk, though it didn't leave me with much or introduce anything that was really original. I note, however, that the bibliographical card for this title bears the note: "rather good sf novel", so I must be forgetting something and will give this four stars.
June 28, 2007
This is an overlooked cyberpunky gem. It features interesting tech that asks the question: if you could change your personality at will, who would you be?
May 2, 2024
I bought this because Michael Swanwick co-wrote the great short story 'Dogfight' with William Gibson – one of the best stories in the fantastic 'Burning Chrome' collection and a key document of cyberpunk. Having read a Swanwick novel and several Gibson novels I feel confident that Swanwick elevated the writing in that one, making the characters a lot more real – Gibson can be too heavy on monotone tech-heavy exposition, whereas Swanwick is a bit more lively and, well, kind of horny for his female characters. I can't help but wish Gibson had co-written a novel with this guy, not just Bruce Sterling – Sterling is great, but it feels like he and Gibson pushed each other to be even drier than usual.
'Vacuum Flowers' is from 1987, 2 years after the Gibson co-write, and it's a much loopier sci-fi concept than the somewhat grounded cyberpunk you'd find in 'Burning Chrome' – here much of the solar system has been colonised and asteroids have become habitable. As with 'Dogfight', a heavy theme is neural/brain re-programming; people can be very easily and quickly programmed with new knowledge or entire new personalities, indicated by face-paint. (A striking sequence early in the book has officers in a brutal police raid force-reprogramming detained civilians to 'become' police and assist in the raid on their own community.) The end result of this easy rewriting can be catastrophic - Earth is inhabited by a hive-mind called the Comprise, all imprinted to be one unified mind-organism. The Comprise form the antagonist for much of the story and are likely intended to be a fable about the nightmares of communism (like a lot of late Cold War SF, this novel has a lot of posturing about totalitarian group-thought – the fanatical bureaucrats of Mars also seem to be a clumsy analogy for close-minded Reds), though I suppose it could just be a warning of the dangers of tech gone wild or just plain old mass conformity, maaaaaaan.
Our hero is Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark, whose personality has just been programmed into a 'persona bum' called Eucrasia Walsh, in a way that's made it seemingly impossible for Eucrasia to return to control of this body. Rebel’s persona is the property of a corporation called Deutsche Nakasone, who think she could be a popular and lucrative hit for people to buy / become, and they’re out to ‘reclaim’ her mind in a way that will surely be fatal for our heroine, so she has to flee, going on a circuitous and occasionally erotic journey through the solar system. Along the way she meets criminals, extremists and total freaks who she'll either kill, fuck, or there's probably a third option used a few times. Eucrasia is a little more interesting than I'm giving her credit for, but she isn't exactly the most three-dimensional protagonist I've read.
The real draw is the far-future society that Swanwick has invented. It's such a rich and odd world that it feels like a shame it only was used for one novel. An SF writer putting this out today, I think, would insist on making it part one of an 8-book series. Sadly, to my knowledge Swanwick didn't return to this fictional universe again.
I don't have issues with 'Vacuum Flowers' really, but it is a little light, breezy and occasionally trashy for something with such big and ambitious themes. Characters are a little thin and often just come back to stating their ideology in lieu of character development, but man, the plot really moves from the very beginning - unlike many cyberpunk classics I've read, which seem to only gain momentum around the 50% mark. I feel that Rebel's tendency to jump into bed with anyone who shows interest does get dull after a little while – this aspect of her character is too silly and cartoony to really believe she's a well rounded character and not - at least a little bit - an idealised sexy lady the author dreamed up for his own amusement, yet the sex isn't explicit enough to turn this into compelling cyberpunk erotica. A missed opportunity, perhaps. It's worth noting, though, that she's able to be assertive sexually without other characters or the narrator chastising her as degenerate or immoral.
7/10
'Vacuum Flowers' is from 1987, 2 years after the Gibson co-write, and it's a much loopier sci-fi concept than the somewhat grounded cyberpunk you'd find in 'Burning Chrome' – here much of the solar system has been colonised and asteroids have become habitable. As with 'Dogfight', a heavy theme is neural/brain re-programming; people can be very easily and quickly programmed with new knowledge or entire new personalities, indicated by face-paint. (A striking sequence early in the book has officers in a brutal police raid force-reprogramming detained civilians to 'become' police and assist in the raid on their own community.) The end result of this easy rewriting can be catastrophic - Earth is inhabited by a hive-mind called the Comprise, all imprinted to be one unified mind-organism. The Comprise form the antagonist for much of the story and are likely intended to be a fable about the nightmares of communism (like a lot of late Cold War SF, this novel has a lot of posturing about totalitarian group-thought – the fanatical bureaucrats of Mars also seem to be a clumsy analogy for close-minded Reds), though I suppose it could just be a warning of the dangers of tech gone wild or just plain old mass conformity, maaaaaaan.
Our hero is Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark, whose personality has just been programmed into a 'persona bum' called Eucrasia Walsh, in a way that's made it seemingly impossible for Eucrasia to return to control of this body. Rebel’s persona is the property of a corporation called Deutsche Nakasone, who think she could be a popular and lucrative hit for people to buy / become, and they’re out to ‘reclaim’ her mind in a way that will surely be fatal for our heroine, so she has to flee, going on a circuitous and occasionally erotic journey through the solar system. Along the way she meets criminals, extremists and total freaks who she'll either kill, fuck, or there's probably a third option used a few times. Eucrasia is a little more interesting than I'm giving her credit for, but she isn't exactly the most three-dimensional protagonist I've read.
The real draw is the far-future society that Swanwick has invented. It's such a rich and odd world that it feels like a shame it only was used for one novel. An SF writer putting this out today, I think, would insist on making it part one of an 8-book series. Sadly, to my knowledge Swanwick didn't return to this fictional universe again.
I don't have issues with 'Vacuum Flowers' really, but it is a little light, breezy and occasionally trashy for something with such big and ambitious themes. Characters are a little thin and often just come back to stating their ideology in lieu of character development, but man, the plot really moves from the very beginning - unlike many cyberpunk classics I've read, which seem to only gain momentum around the 50% mark. I feel that Rebel's tendency to jump into bed with anyone who shows interest does get dull after a little while – this aspect of her character is too silly and cartoony to really believe she's a well rounded character and not - at least a little bit - an idealised sexy lady the author dreamed up for his own amusement, yet the sex isn't explicit enough to turn this into compelling cyberpunk erotica. A missed opportunity, perhaps. It's worth noting, though, that she's able to be assertive sexually without other characters or the narrator chastising her as degenerate or immoral.
7/10
December 9, 2022
A conflation of cyberpunk and space opera that interrogates the psychology of existence between mind and machine.
Warning: spoiler alert!!
Set in the medium-term future in what is now a widely colonised Solar System, Vacuum Flowers envisions a society where the recorded minds of the deceased can be commoditised and sold for entertainment purposes. The novel explores core assumptions of what it means to be human, particularly the point at which advances in neural technology start to undermine fixed notions of personhood.
The mind of deceased Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark – the corporate property of Deutsche Nakasone – is tested on Eucrasia Walsh who earns a living lending her mind/body to private corporations, a sort of guinea pig. Something goes wrong and Rebel wakes up in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there and only a faint memory of her past person. Instinct tells her to escape and with Deutsche Nakasone in pursuit, she begins a journey across the Solar System’s many different habitats, trying to uncover her own as well as Eucrasia’s past, all the while threatened by a dangerous, expansionist hive-mind known as the Comprise.
The idea that minds or ‘wetware’ (the term adopted in the novel) can be digitised and commoditised is an archetypical cyberpunk trope, one that Pat Cadigan grappled with in Mindplayers (1987), published the same year. And where it is Jerry in Mindplayers who takes the technology to its extreme, constantly rebooting his mind, shattering any notion of fixed personhood in the process, in Vacuum Flowers it is the character of Wyeth who as a composite of four different wetwares represents the potential monstrous effects of brain programming, his mind trapped in a hall of mirrors.
While the development of the AI based hivemind, the Comprise has fast-forwarded human knowledge, not least in physics, displaying all the hallmark characteristics of a technological singularity in the making, it is also presented as a potential danger to humanity. Now a necessary evil, it started out as a seemingly innocent attempt to maintain cohesiveness in a burgeoning civilisation stretched across space. By the same token, symbolically at least, the virulent growth of vacuum flowers, bioengineered weed that literally grows in the vacuum of space and is constantly in need of weeding, also reveals a pessimistic view of human civilisation, one that is on the cusp of spinning out of control, close to falling victim to its own creations. Much like Rudy Rucker’s portrayal of humanity in the Ware tetralogy (1982-2000), Swanwick is basically saying that humanity’s path to progress is imperilled by human haphazardness and misguidedness.
Vacuum Flowers anticipates the trope of a splintering humanity that has since come to characterise much postmodern space opera. Swanwick notes that he "tried to display a range of plausible governmental systems throughout the System, all of them flawed the way that governments are in the real world...”, a train of thought that recalls Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix (1985). It is early days and many of the experiments in the Solar System still have a whiff of idealism and utopian euphoria about them, whether it is People’s Mars, a collectivist state based on ancient Sparta, or the bucolic Dyson settlements in the Oort Cloud. Initial euphoria and idealism, a neoliberal fantasy world of space exploration, also shaped the narrative arc of Kim Stanley Ronbinson’s Mars trilogy (1992-1996).
Warning: spoiler alert!!
Set in the medium-term future in what is now a widely colonised Solar System, Vacuum Flowers envisions a society where the recorded minds of the deceased can be commoditised and sold for entertainment purposes. The novel explores core assumptions of what it means to be human, particularly the point at which advances in neural technology start to undermine fixed notions of personhood.
The mind of deceased Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark – the corporate property of Deutsche Nakasone – is tested on Eucrasia Walsh who earns a living lending her mind/body to private corporations, a sort of guinea pig. Something goes wrong and Rebel wakes up in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there and only a faint memory of her past person. Instinct tells her to escape and with Deutsche Nakasone in pursuit, she begins a journey across the Solar System’s many different habitats, trying to uncover her own as well as Eucrasia’s past, all the while threatened by a dangerous, expansionist hive-mind known as the Comprise.
The idea that minds or ‘wetware’ (the term adopted in the novel) can be digitised and commoditised is an archetypical cyberpunk trope, one that Pat Cadigan grappled with in Mindplayers (1987), published the same year. And where it is Jerry in Mindplayers who takes the technology to its extreme, constantly rebooting his mind, shattering any notion of fixed personhood in the process, in Vacuum Flowers it is the character of Wyeth who as a composite of four different wetwares represents the potential monstrous effects of brain programming, his mind trapped in a hall of mirrors.
While the development of the AI based hivemind, the Comprise has fast-forwarded human knowledge, not least in physics, displaying all the hallmark characteristics of a technological singularity in the making, it is also presented as a potential danger to humanity. Now a necessary evil, it started out as a seemingly innocent attempt to maintain cohesiveness in a burgeoning civilisation stretched across space. By the same token, symbolically at least, the virulent growth of vacuum flowers, bioengineered weed that literally grows in the vacuum of space and is constantly in need of weeding, also reveals a pessimistic view of human civilisation, one that is on the cusp of spinning out of control, close to falling victim to its own creations. Much like Rudy Rucker’s portrayal of humanity in the Ware tetralogy (1982-2000), Swanwick is basically saying that humanity’s path to progress is imperilled by human haphazardness and misguidedness.
Vacuum Flowers anticipates the trope of a splintering humanity that has since come to characterise much postmodern space opera. Swanwick notes that he "tried to display a range of plausible governmental systems throughout the System, all of them flawed the way that governments are in the real world...”, a train of thought that recalls Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix (1985). It is early days and many of the experiments in the Solar System still have a whiff of idealism and utopian euphoria about them, whether it is People’s Mars, a collectivist state based on ancient Sparta, or the bucolic Dyson settlements in the Oort Cloud. Initial euphoria and idealism, a neoliberal fantasy world of space exploration, also shaped the narrative arc of Kim Stanley Ronbinson’s Mars trilogy (1992-1996).
March 7, 2023
In the future humanity is still tethered to the confines of the Milky Way, but it’s getting ready to push further outward, and none too soon. There’s a Borg-like entity called the Comprise which abominates the individual and is intent on assimilating all personalities into its unified gestalt. Humanity bears some of the blame for the cult of effacing the personality, as thanks to the trend of “wetware wafers,” personalities can be swapped and installed, at will. It’s sort of like CRISPR, except for minds rather than genes.
One young woman named Rebel is being slated for such a graft—placed in “coldpack” (some sort of cryogenic freeze) for the surgery. But, like Philip Dick’s Quaid, she wakes up on the table and starts thrashing. There is something in Rebel, a streak of stubbornness, a strength of consciousness, that won’t let her submit to the personality grafting.
Now everyone from the faceless heartless corporations that proliferate like spore in cyberpunk to the Comprise want to get their hands on Rebel. Eventually she navigates her way through all of the traps lain for her, and bribes and blandishments thrown her way. But she can’t quite shake her attraction to Wyeth—a man whose psyche plays host to four personalities—nor can she escape her fate.
Vacuum Flowers is an inventive if somewhat scattershot and schizophrenic examination of human personality, the mind as a kind of patentable property. It asks questions that humans have been asking themselves since at least Descartes, and probably Aristotle, and it asks them against a sexy interstellar background of warring tribal factions.
Its greatest strength is its characterization of Rebel, its close study of what makes her tick and how she came to have the fortitude to resist the personality swap. Its greatest weakness is a bit of the “white room” syndrome, failing at times to adequately describe the environs where the story is happening. Its sense of place is in some ways as weak as its sense of character is strong. At times we seem to be in the kind of cylinder worlds proposed by Gerald O’Neil, at others in more nebulous and ill-described lands.
It's certainly ambitious, and occasionally brilliant, but it somehow hoses the balance between immersion and exposition. It seems so reticent to explain itself—its technology, politics, the literal environment—that we’re left baffled even when characters wax and soliloquize in attempts to explain it all.
Then again, it could be I’m a knucklehead, and my inability to follow the large cast of characters, intrigues, and subplots is my fault, not the author’s.
One young woman named Rebel is being slated for such a graft—placed in “coldpack” (some sort of cryogenic freeze) for the surgery. But, like Philip Dick’s Quaid, she wakes up on the table and starts thrashing. There is something in Rebel, a streak of stubbornness, a strength of consciousness, that won’t let her submit to the personality grafting.
Now everyone from the faceless heartless corporations that proliferate like spore in cyberpunk to the Comprise want to get their hands on Rebel. Eventually she navigates her way through all of the traps lain for her, and bribes and blandishments thrown her way. But she can’t quite shake her attraction to Wyeth—a man whose psyche plays host to four personalities—nor can she escape her fate.
Vacuum Flowers is an inventive if somewhat scattershot and schizophrenic examination of human personality, the mind as a kind of patentable property. It asks questions that humans have been asking themselves since at least Descartes, and probably Aristotle, and it asks them against a sexy interstellar background of warring tribal factions.
Its greatest strength is its characterization of Rebel, its close study of what makes her tick and how she came to have the fortitude to resist the personality swap. Its greatest weakness is a bit of the “white room” syndrome, failing at times to adequately describe the environs where the story is happening. Its sense of place is in some ways as weak as its sense of character is strong. At times we seem to be in the kind of cylinder worlds proposed by Gerald O’Neil, at others in more nebulous and ill-described lands.
It's certainly ambitious, and occasionally brilliant, but it somehow hoses the balance between immersion and exposition. It seems so reticent to explain itself—its technology, politics, the literal environment—that we’re left baffled even when characters wax and soliloquize in attempts to explain it all.
Then again, it could be I’m a knucklehead, and my inability to follow the large cast of characters, intrigues, and subplots is my fault, not the author’s.
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