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Spin Trilogy #2
Spin Control
Call Arkady a clone with a conscience. Or call him a traitor. A member of the space-faring Syndicates, Arkady has defected to Israel with a hot commodity: a genetic weapon powerful enough to wipe out humanity. But Israel’s not buying it. They’re selling it–and Arkady–to the highest bidder.
As the auction heats up, the Artificial Life Emancipation Front sends in Major Catherine Li. Drummed out of the Peacekeepers for executing Syndicate prisoners, Li has now literally hooked up with an AI who has lived many lifetimes and shunted through many bodies. But while they have their own conflicting loyalties to contend with, together they’re just one player in a mysterious high-stakes game….
As the auction heats up, the Artificial Life Emancipation Front sends in Major Catherine Li. Drummed out of the Peacekeepers for executing Syndicate prisoners, Li has now literally hooked up with an AI who has lived many lifetimes and shunted through many bodies. But while they have their own conflicting loyalties to contend with, together they’re just one player in a mysterious high-stakes game….
608 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 1, 2006
About the author
Chris Moriarty
10 books184 followersI am the author of SF novels SPIN STATE and SPIN CONTROL, and winner of the 2006 Philip K. Dick Award. Upcoming books include GHOST SPIN and THE INQUISITOR'S APPRENTICE, a middle grade fantasy set on New York's Lower East Side, circa 1900. I also have a regular book review column in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
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June 10, 2013
I would never have thought that a story could be spun out of a wild mix of the Arab-Israeli conflict, ants, AIs, clones, water, fertility and space exploration, plus love, loyalty, and more. It kept my interest throughout each switch in perspective or timeframe, and kept my curiosity high to see how each aspect would play out and fit together. Every scene felt vivid and real, from atmosphere or emotion, without being cumbersome or overdone.
I saw somewhere that Moriarty was contracted for a third book in this universe/series. It's been several years since this came out, but I'm still hoping that the next book will appear some day. She certainly left a good cliffhanger to peak my interest! But more than a plot idea is just my hope for another smart and interesting story.
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June 2013
It's so interesting to re-read a complex book several years later and only remember hints of how things are going to unfold. It took me a while to get into it again this time, but once I was invested in the mystery of Novalis and what it meant for Arkady down on Earth, I was hooked again. It's very different from Spin State in tone and atmosphere, don't go in expecting the same sort of fast space-based investigation style story. But if you let this one unfold and see how the pieces start snapping together, I think you'll be pleased.
And yes, the third book has arrived, that's the reason for the re-read. I'm thrilled to finally get to see the next step in this story's evolution.
I saw somewhere that Moriarty was contracted for a third book in this universe/series. It's been several years since this came out, but I'm still hoping that the next book will appear some day. She certainly left a good cliffhanger to peak my interest! But more than a plot idea is just my hope for another smart and interesting story.
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June 2013
It's so interesting to re-read a complex book several years later and only remember hints of how things are going to unfold. It took me a while to get into it again this time, but once I was invested in the mystery of Novalis and what it meant for Arkady down on Earth, I was hooked again. It's very different from Spin State in tone and atmosphere, don't go in expecting the same sort of fast space-based investigation style story. But if you let this one unfold and see how the pieces start snapping together, I think you'll be pleased.
And yes, the third book has arrived, that's the reason for the re-read. I'm thrilled to finally get to see the next step in this story's evolution.
July 13, 2009
You can tell a book is ambitious when it takes on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and this book is at least as smart as it is ambitious. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only one of the threads in the story, but I think it is done justice. In the future, the Strip is irradiated, and the battles are fought on both sides by soldiers piloted by AIs who think they are war-gaming, rebooted whenever they begin to suspect the war has a human cost.
(The soldiers are colloquially referred to as 'Enderbots,' and I wish the book hadn't stopped to tell me where the name came from, because it ruined my feeling of cleverness for knowing.)
Earth is largely poisonous from years of war, with a moribund fertility rate, but it does have the one thing the colonies and ring need and cannot manufacture: water. The only people left on Earth are those who have refused to leave: religious fanatics and die-hard nationalists. The ring despises those who live on Earth as backwards and superstitious savages, and Earth hates the off-worlders for their embargoed technology.
Another book would have been satisfied with this, but Moriarty simultaneously explores the culture of the Syndicates, a society created by second generation genetic engineering. Arkady, a clone from the syndicates, is unfamiliar with words like 'employer' and 'mother,' but lives happily enough surrounded by his clone-sibs, until he gets sent on a terraforming mission where they discover something which will change the balance of power in human and post-human space.
The Syndicates don't seem to have crime, only 'deviancy', which can mean anything from ideological impurity to heterosexuality. Actually, it's unclear whether the perversion is heterosexuality, or sex with anyone who isn't one's genetic twin, and I suspect it's the latter. Then again, if you're a society bent on perfecting itself by genetic engineering, sexual reproduction is fairly perverse.
Obviously, Earth and the Syndicates are not going to get along very well, and of course, poor Arkady, a scientist who specializes in ants, finds himself on Earth, in Jerusalem, the focus of politics, espionage, and power brokering, out of his depth and out of his element, with no one to trust and everyone trying to figure out how to use him.
And of course, this book also has Li and Cohen, as well as the fairly adorable router/decomposer, a character I wouldn't mind seeing again.
It's interesting to me that although this is (among other things) a classic spy thriller in which no one can be trusted, and there are no good guys or bad guys, the novel still manages to be uplifting in its end, as if, after all, it believes in something. Kindness, perhaps.
You will probably not stop reading this book until you finish it, so do not, like me, start reading it at 9:00 at night.
The only thing not fantastic about this book is the cover, in which a wire-frame woman's body is composed of a mesh of lines that all converge awkwardly on her crotch, looking like Kotex ad from the nineties.
(The soldiers are colloquially referred to as 'Enderbots,' and I wish the book hadn't stopped to tell me where the name came from, because it ruined my feeling of cleverness for knowing.)
Earth is largely poisonous from years of war, with a moribund fertility rate, but it does have the one thing the colonies and ring need and cannot manufacture: water. The only people left on Earth are those who have refused to leave: religious fanatics and die-hard nationalists. The ring despises those who live on Earth as backwards and superstitious savages, and Earth hates the off-worlders for their embargoed technology.
Another book would have been satisfied with this, but Moriarty simultaneously explores the culture of the Syndicates, a society created by second generation genetic engineering. Arkady, a clone from the syndicates, is unfamiliar with words like 'employer' and 'mother,' but lives happily enough surrounded by his clone-sibs, until he gets sent on a terraforming mission where they discover something which will change the balance of power in human and post-human space.
The Syndicates don't seem to have crime, only 'deviancy', which can mean anything from ideological impurity to heterosexuality. Actually, it's unclear whether the perversion is heterosexuality, or sex with anyone who isn't one's genetic twin, and I suspect it's the latter. Then again, if you're a society bent on perfecting itself by genetic engineering, sexual reproduction is fairly perverse.
Obviously, Earth and the Syndicates are not going to get along very well, and of course, poor Arkady, a scientist who specializes in ants, finds himself on Earth, in Jerusalem, the focus of politics, espionage, and power brokering, out of his depth and out of his element, with no one to trust and everyone trying to figure out how to use him.
And of course, this book also has Li and Cohen, as well as the fairly adorable router/decomposer, a character I wouldn't mind seeing again.
It's interesting to me that although this is (among other things) a classic spy thriller in which no one can be trusted, and there are no good guys or bad guys, the novel still manages to be uplifting in its end, as if, after all, it believes in something. Kindness, perhaps.
You will probably not stop reading this book until you finish it, so do not, like me, start reading it at 9:00 at night.
The only thing not fantastic about this book is the cover, in which a wire-frame woman's body is composed of a mesh of lines that all converge awkwardly on her crotch, looking like Kotex ad from the nineties.
January 23, 2023
The future-y universe that this trilogy inhabits is absolutely fascinating. It's a time of post-human space colonies, populated with robots, AIs and "constructs." Humans still exist and generally maintain the arrogance of believing themselves the superior species in our local galaxy. However, despite the accompanying loss of "status" there are humans who opt to become "constructs."
Constructs are essentially augmented humans. They're people who have been able to afford and acquire non-natural enhancements to their bodies. The way this is achieved is often novel and interesting... picture viruses that are designed to implement changes at the cellular level, to reinforce your skeleton for an example. You've probably noticed the similarity with the Borg "nanobots" on Star Trek, but the idea behind those is far more general, those nanobots seem to work to augment all internal systems upto an established state of optimum efficiency. The viruses used in these stories are designed specifically to achieve a set of improvements and you buy each enhancement as you can afford to, if you so desire.
The characters (many of whom we have been following since book one) are believable. This one has a large focus on another story of entangled lovers, which was excellent for the development of these characters but dulled the overall plot for me.
The political and social settings are quite interesting and partly believable.
I certainly didn't enjoy this one as much as the first, but I can't say that I've been overly disappointed by it either.
Constructs are essentially augmented humans. They're people who have been able to afford and acquire non-natural enhancements to their bodies. The way this is achieved is often novel and interesting... picture viruses that are designed to implement changes at the cellular level, to reinforce your skeleton for an example. You've probably noticed the similarity with the Borg "nanobots" on Star Trek, but the idea behind those is far more general, those nanobots seem to work to augment all internal systems upto an established state of optimum efficiency. The viruses used in these stories are designed specifically to achieve a set of improvements and you buy each enhancement as you can afford to, if you so desire.
The characters (many of whom we have been following since book one) are believable. This one has a large focus on another story of entangled lovers, which was excellent for the development of these characters but dulled the overall plot for me.
The political and social settings are quite interesting and partly believable.
I certainly didn't enjoy this one as much as the first, but I can't say that I've been overly disappointed by it either.
April 28, 2023
Spin Control follows up the first book with a John le Carré espionage plot set in the never-ending war between Israel and Palestine, and some very 2000s scientific ideas that still manage to be provocative and relevant 20 years on.
Arkady is a defector from the Syndicates, a survivor of a terraforming expedition gone horribly wrong. He's been shipped to an Israeli private security firm, with the explicit cover that he is selling knowledge of a deadly biological weapon to gain the freedom of his creche mate Arkasha, another member of the expedition. The plot extends in two parallel strands, the revelation of how the shoestring expedition went wrong, and the multifaceted bargaining as we find what Arkady is really selling, and who is buying it.
The first plot thread reveals more about the subtle politics of the Syndicates, who we mostly glimpsed through gunsights in the first book. The Syndicates are lines of genetic clones, each generation a single model designed for a specific task and carefully kept within norms through euthanasia and culling. Even though every line is genetically identical and Syndicate ideology holds to a sociobiological Marxism, there is still love and politics every bit as fraught as in baseline humanity. Arkady is an ant specialist, a politically fraught role since ants hold the same symbolic space for Syndicates as primates do for us. And while most planets are technically habitable in that there is liquid water on the surface and the atmosphere won't kill you immediately, the one he's assigned to, Novalis, is something else entirely. Novalis is covered by impossible forests full of animals extinct in Earth's ravaged biosphere. And the expedition, under-crewed, lead by non-scientists, and full of contrary impulses submerged within Syndicate solidarity, is unready to deal with the impossible.
In the 'present', Arkady is dropped into a deadly spy game which he has to survive and Cohen, the AI from the first book, has to unravel. Israel and Palestine had peace, centuries of peace, and then for whatever reason, and there are plenty on a dying and blockaded Earth, relations broke down and war started again. But this isn't the raw violence of the Intifadas. Both sides are symmetrically, with able spymasters and a key military technology of Enderbots. Infantry conscripts don't have the skills to survive a modern battlefield, and combat AIs are notoriously unstable, so soldiers on both sides are avatars of an AI that thinks its just playing a simulation-and when it figures out what's going on their plug is pulled.
The Israelis have been slowly losing this war, and the top of the Mossad suspects that they have a mole, codenamed Absalom. The Tel Aviv fiasco with Cohen mentioned in the first book was about uncovering Absalom, and it ended with multiple UN agents dead and more questions than answers, ruining the reputations of several people involved. Cohen and Li are working to find the truth about Absalom, and Arkady is a naïf out of his depths just trying to survive in the bizarre world of humans.
The espionage stuff is well done, and I enjoyed the 25th century Israel-Palestine stuff more than the Irish miners of the first book. But where this Spin Control gets cool is grabbing the big picture of evolution, ecosystems, and emergence. The things that matter, war and peace, artificial intelligence, terraforming, life itself, cannot be dictated from above. They emerge from below, complexity forming from the behavior of simpler elements.
The problem is one of local maxima, of matching the need to maintain a stable identity with the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Arkady, Arkasha, and author Moriarty postulate that is is about the ability to search an evolutionary space, that survival depends on the strategies available to you and the speed at which you can explore them. The Syndicates understand their own fragility very well, living in epidemic-prone space habs or domes on worlds with sparse ecosystems that might fall apart at any moment. Earthers understand it as well on a bone-level, living on dying planet with a dwindling population surrounded by the ghosts of extinct species. And the fat and powerful UN rulers in their glittering ring around Earth don't get it at all. Earth was a kind mother, but space is cruel and capricious, and on a big enough time scale we all live in space.
Arkady isn't selling a weapon, he is the weapon, a vector carrying a virus that executes an idea called Turing Soup. DNA/RNA is definitely complex enough to run a Turing machine, and the virus hits your genetic code and searches for... something outside the understanding of their best scientists. This might be certain doom, or the only chance at post-human survival.
Spin Control extends on and improves Spin State, and I'm excited to see where the story goes.
Arkady is a defector from the Syndicates, a survivor of a terraforming expedition gone horribly wrong. He's been shipped to an Israeli private security firm, with the explicit cover that he is selling knowledge of a deadly biological weapon to gain the freedom of his creche mate Arkasha, another member of the expedition. The plot extends in two parallel strands, the revelation of how the shoestring expedition went wrong, and the multifaceted bargaining as we find what Arkady is really selling, and who is buying it.
The first plot thread reveals more about the subtle politics of the Syndicates, who we mostly glimpsed through gunsights in the first book. The Syndicates are lines of genetic clones, each generation a single model designed for a specific task and carefully kept within norms through euthanasia and culling. Even though every line is genetically identical and Syndicate ideology holds to a sociobiological Marxism, there is still love and politics every bit as fraught as in baseline humanity. Arkady is an ant specialist, a politically fraught role since ants hold the same symbolic space for Syndicates as primates do for us. And while most planets are technically habitable in that there is liquid water on the surface and the atmosphere won't kill you immediately, the one he's assigned to, Novalis, is something else entirely. Novalis is covered by impossible forests full of animals extinct in Earth's ravaged biosphere. And the expedition, under-crewed, lead by non-scientists, and full of contrary impulses submerged within Syndicate solidarity, is unready to deal with the impossible.
In the 'present', Arkady is dropped into a deadly spy game which he has to survive and Cohen, the AI from the first book, has to unravel. Israel and Palestine had peace, centuries of peace, and then for whatever reason, and there are plenty on a dying and blockaded Earth, relations broke down and war started again. But this isn't the raw violence of the Intifadas. Both sides are symmetrically, with able spymasters and a key military technology of Enderbots. Infantry conscripts don't have the skills to survive a modern battlefield, and combat AIs are notoriously unstable, so soldiers on both sides are avatars of an AI that thinks its just playing a simulation-and when it figures out what's going on their plug is pulled.
The Israelis have been slowly losing this war, and the top of the Mossad suspects that they have a mole, codenamed Absalom. The Tel Aviv fiasco with Cohen mentioned in the first book was about uncovering Absalom, and it ended with multiple UN agents dead and more questions than answers, ruining the reputations of several people involved. Cohen and Li are working to find the truth about Absalom, and Arkady is a naïf out of his depths just trying to survive in the bizarre world of humans.
The espionage stuff is well done, and I enjoyed the 25th century Israel-Palestine stuff more than the Irish miners of the first book. But where this Spin Control gets cool is grabbing the big picture of evolution, ecosystems, and emergence. The things that matter, war and peace, artificial intelligence, terraforming, life itself, cannot be dictated from above. They emerge from below, complexity forming from the behavior of simpler elements.
The problem is one of local maxima, of matching the need to maintain a stable identity with the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Arkady, Arkasha, and author Moriarty postulate that is is about the ability to search an evolutionary space, that survival depends on the strategies available to you and the speed at which you can explore them. The Syndicates understand their own fragility very well, living in epidemic-prone space habs or domes on worlds with sparse ecosystems that might fall apart at any moment. Earthers understand it as well on a bone-level, living on dying planet with a dwindling population surrounded by the ghosts of extinct species. And the fat and powerful UN rulers in their glittering ring around Earth don't get it at all. Earth was a kind mother, but space is cruel and capricious, and on a big enough time scale we all live in space.
Arkady isn't selling a weapon, he is the weapon, a vector carrying a virus that executes an idea called Turing Soup. DNA/RNA is definitely complex enough to run a Turing machine, and the virus hits your genetic code and searches for... something outside the understanding of their best scientists. This might be certain doom, or the only chance at post-human survival.
Spin Control extends on and improves Spin State, and I'm excited to see where the story goes.
March 14, 2017
Generations in the future, those willing to embrace AIs, body mods, and genetic manipulation ascended to live technologically advanced lives far above Earth's atmosphere. Now variations on humanity and sentience travel throughout the galaxy, looking for new planets, resources, and adventures. Those left behind on Earth content themselves with religion, endless rehashings of old wars...and controlling the best known source of water and wild-type genetics. Ordinarily, a Syndicate clone like Arkady would probably never set foot on old poisoned Earth, nor encounter a non-genetically manipulated human. But his exploration team found something astounding on an alien planet, and the Syndicate wants him to deliver it to Earth. Among the bidders for his discovery are our old friends Catherine Li (possibly a war criminal, definitely a hardass ex-soldier) and Cohen (the longest lived AI, whose relationships are integral to maintaining his sense of self). They decided to share a consciousness in the last book, but their marriage of true minds isn't that comfortable in this one.
The world building is fascinating and top notch. I would love to read more about any one of the characters or their societies. The plot got a bit too convoluted for me, and I'm still not entirely sure what the Syndicate's plan was: I really look forward to reading more in this universe.
The world building is fascinating and top notch. I would love to read more about any one of the characters or their societies. The plot got a bit too convoluted for me, and I'm still not entirely sure what the Syndicate's plan was: I really look forward to reading more in this universe.
May 30, 2018
Very different from the first book. Ideas remain fascinating. Perhaps more improvement will come with a third book.
November 26, 2023
Arkady's a clone from the Syndicates, a post-human offshoot of humanity that mass-produces genetically superior bodies and considers them one, distributed, person. In practice, it doesn't quite work quite so well, there is variation between clones and sometimes they think of themselves instead of the superorganism. Arkady, in particular, a meek scientist specializing in ants, has defected to Earth, a ruined landscape with low birthrates and constant wars on the few settled areas, in order to sell a potential weapon that he discovered on a Syndicate mission. But his motivation is more than simply profit, and there are lots of players interested in what he knows... it's a game of spies and double-crosses and him getting out alive might not be in the cards.
This is a sequel to Spin State, which I kind of liked, although the focus shifts away, slightly, from Catherine Li and the AI Cohen. They're still major viewpoint characters, but they share the spotlight with Arkady. The book works much better than the first one, not just because of this, although I think that's a factor.
It extends the setting of the first book with a detailed look at the life inside the Syndicates, and on the surface of Earth which is barely hanging on with low birth rates, and both are compelling and feel natural and organic to the universe. Even though a lot of characters are similar types (there are a lot of spies and soldiers in the book) there's enough difference between them than I found many memorable characters. And some remarkably funny moments that I can't even explain because they require too much setup, but, knowing the characters and universe, worked really well.
While it's not the outright focus of the book, the relationship between Li and Cohen might be one of the hearts. And it's a bit weird to say, but that is remarkably vivid and realistic. In fact, it might be one of the most realistic depicitions I've read in science fiction of a relationship that (despite both players deeply caring for each other) is troubled and potentially headed for a collapse that both people can see coming but can't manage to avoid. Which is doubly remarkable because one person's a genetically engineered ex-soldier and the other's a suave rich artificial intelligence hundreds of years old. Yet it works remarkably well, not just as a relationship but as one that keeps in mind the nature of the participants. Cohen may be remarkably human on the surface, but enough page space is given to exactly how he exists and is different that I don't feel cheated as I sometimes do, with an AI that's pretty much just a human who happens to have certain powers.
As a story, I can see that it might not be to everyone's tastes. A lot of it is dense in scientific investigation and although there's action, a lot of the spy stuff is low-key maneuvering pieces into place and manipulating people into acting the way desired. The way I found myself coming back to, when I think of how to describe it, is that it's rarely EXCITING, but it's relentlessly INTERESTING. To me, at least. Some people might not be as interested in descriptions of ant social organization and complexity theory and how it relates to humanity's future. But I'm just that kind of nerd.
In terms of flaws, I do think that certain elements of the ending do recapitulate elements of the first book... like, where it'd be fine if this was a stand-alone book, but when you think "Didn't you JUST do that same sort of thing to end the last book?" it feels like a mark against it. And it shares some of the flaws of the first book but they're not as bad, so on the whole it feels like an improvement.
The first time I read this, there were only two books in the series and one was expected somewhere down the line. For whatever reason, I never got around to buying book three when it came out, but rereading this one, not only did I feel like revising my score upward, about halfway through I decided to just go ahead and order book three, Ghost Spin, because this one impressed me so much (after a mixed reaction to the first book) and I wanted to see if the author could keep raising her game.
This is a sequel to Spin State, which I kind of liked, although the focus shifts away, slightly, from Catherine Li and the AI Cohen. They're still major viewpoint characters, but they share the spotlight with Arkady. The book works much better than the first one, not just because of this, although I think that's a factor.
It extends the setting of the first book with a detailed look at the life inside the Syndicates, and on the surface of Earth which is barely hanging on with low birth rates, and both are compelling and feel natural and organic to the universe. Even though a lot of characters are similar types (there are a lot of spies and soldiers in the book) there's enough difference between them than I found many memorable characters. And some remarkably funny moments that I can't even explain because they require too much setup, but, knowing the characters and universe, worked really well.
While it's not the outright focus of the book, the relationship between Li and Cohen might be one of the hearts. And it's a bit weird to say, but that is remarkably vivid and realistic. In fact, it might be one of the most realistic depicitions I've read in science fiction of a relationship that (despite both players deeply caring for each other) is troubled and potentially headed for a collapse that both people can see coming but can't manage to avoid. Which is doubly remarkable because one person's a genetically engineered ex-soldier and the other's a suave rich artificial intelligence hundreds of years old. Yet it works remarkably well, not just as a relationship but as one that keeps in mind the nature of the participants. Cohen may be remarkably human on the surface, but enough page space is given to exactly how he exists and is different that I don't feel cheated as I sometimes do, with an AI that's pretty much just a human who happens to have certain powers.
As a story, I can see that it might not be to everyone's tastes. A lot of it is dense in scientific investigation and although there's action, a lot of the spy stuff is low-key maneuvering pieces into place and manipulating people into acting the way desired. The way I found myself coming back to, when I think of how to describe it, is that it's rarely EXCITING, but it's relentlessly INTERESTING. To me, at least. Some people might not be as interested in descriptions of ant social organization and complexity theory and how it relates to humanity's future. But I'm just that kind of nerd.
In terms of flaws, I do think that certain elements of the ending do recapitulate elements of the first book... like, where it'd be fine if this was a stand-alone book, but when you think "Didn't you JUST do that same sort of thing to end the last book?" it feels like a mark against it. And it shares some of the flaws of the first book but they're not as bad, so on the whole it feels like an improvement.
The first time I read this, there were only two books in the series and one was expected somewhere down the line. For whatever reason, I never got around to buying book three when it came out, but rereading this one, not only did I feel like revising my score upward, about halfway through I decided to just go ahead and order book three, Ghost Spin, because this one impressed me so much (after a mixed reaction to the first book) and I wanted to see if the author could keep raising her game.
February 8, 2010
This is set in the same universe as Moriarty's Spin State, but is not a direct sequel. Because I was so completely impressed with the use of current-state physics in Spin State, it took almost half of this book to get over my disappointment that this book is not the same. Sure, there is passing mention of Bose-Einstein and particle entanglement, but that is not part of this story at all. Moriarty here digs into evolutionary informatics, but that didn't engage me as much. However, after I accepted this novel for what it was, a 26th century thriller set in Israel/Palestine with human, posthuman, and artificial intelligence characters, I was pulled in.
Apparently, Moriarty's third novel - Ghost Spin - has been in progress for the past four years and not yet published. I looked up her blog, and found that she has had a child since 2006, so maybe it will be a while. I hope not too long.
Apparently, Moriarty's third novel - Ghost Spin - has been in progress for the past four years and not yet published. I looked up her blog, and found that she has had a child since 2006, so maybe it will be a while. I hope not too long.
July 14, 2012
I really was excited to read this book, and it had the potential to be really great, but fell flat.
The author decided to focus on making a very bland, boring commentary on the Arab-Israeli conflict instead of focusing on any of several very interesting sci-fi elements of his world, that could have perhaps stood with the great social commentary sci-fi of the 60s and 70s if done well.
Aliens with a virus that can make the infertile population of Earth fertile again? A society of clones coming into their indivuality? Old school spacers vs. Earth conflicts? All glossed over to make an extremely trite 'Can't we all just get along' statement on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
It is a decent spy story at heart, but the missed potential probably makes me grade it harder than it deserves.
The author decided to focus on making a very bland, boring commentary on the Arab-Israeli conflict instead of focusing on any of several very interesting sci-fi elements of his world, that could have perhaps stood with the great social commentary sci-fi of the 60s and 70s if done well.
Aliens with a virus that can make the infertile population of Earth fertile again? A society of clones coming into their indivuality? Old school spacers vs. Earth conflicts? All glossed over to make an extremely trite 'Can't we all just get along' statement on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
It is a decent spy story at heart, but the missed potential probably makes me grade it harder than it deserves.
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July 23, 2021wow this book was meeesssssyyyy
it got increasingly problematic and distracting that the setting is that it's like 2400 and palestine and israel are at war (again, after 200 years of peace), and depicting palestine as sort of in an equivalent and symmetric actor to israel in this war. chris moriarty is jewish, and i have no idea what her politics are really, but what i got from this book was that sort of insipid apathy or two-side-ism that itself sort of takes sides, right? at one point a character remarks something like "nobody knows why these wars start up again". so clearly a book that wouldn't touch on the settler colonialism aspect with a ten foot pole, doesn't think of it that way. and the book is primarily about both israeli and palestinian spies and soldiers and spymasters who are kind of the same flavor of bad and good and conniving, just on opposite sides, no super clear political motivations about the war they are embroiled in, no opinions on ppl from 'the other side', this political situation is just happening to them. i think it was especially grating with Gavi, who is half-Palestinian and half-Israeli (which feels like one of those eye-rolling as-fate-would-have-it liberal parable set ups), but whose nationality is Israeli, and who married a Palestinian woman ... and had a son with Palestinian citizenship ... and it's like ... why ... are you in the highest echelon's of the Mossad then ... bro ?? like political motivations-wise why is this happening? ultimately the most groan-worthy part was that the whole thing is resolved when Cohen 'wakes up' the emergent AI networks that have been powering both sides' flesh-and-bone-armies by?? downloading onto it a huge repository of testimonials from The Holocaust?? so the rogue AIs put a temporary stop to the war? which just feels like a wildly cheap thing to do with the Holocaust, some really mid-2000ts pulp. whew. lots to unpack there and i'm not gonna.
so obviously long dark shadow there. i think the other issue was this book felt like that thing where the author built really elaborate backstories and emotional patinas for all these characters in her notes, but only put in the emotional payoffs in the book itself, so they all seem shallow. for example, by the time the book starts it has already been 2 years since a disastrous spy mission ruined the israeli spy Gavi's career and broke his relationship with his squadmates and the AI Cohen. but we don't see it, not even as a flashback, and we don't get more than a few sentences about it from Cohen's perspective. It's clear that the squadmates and Cohen physically seeing Gavi again is supposed to be this huge emotional impact scene, but it doesn't hit right because the history isn't heavy enough for the reader. a lot of moments happen like this.
in general like in the previous book, the plots within plots were a bit too whirling and yanking the reader from scene to scene , or maybe i'm just stupid, so hard to follow there.
but what did fuck was the non-set-on-Earth stuff. the Syndicate research ship exploring an obviously terraformed, abandoned planet and all the inter-team tensions was just fun. this series i think is fun in the popcorn sense 85% of the time, and that really delivered here with all the inter-party tensions. was a little disappointed about depictions of Syndicate life, in that i feel like she took 'society made of just clones' and went flat-socialism-critique on it a little, borrowing cultural ideas like lots of committees and structured conversation time that reminded me of "struggle sessions" more than anything and fear of being deviant lest you get sent to a 're-norming center'. but i did like the bits of worldbuilding there, like that the older Syndicates have more 'human' values and the newer ones are like, "why don't we have a clone-based caste system? what's wrong with that?".
other worldbuilding was also cool; i liked the political tension between Earth and 'the Ring', literally a ring of technologically advanced humanity orbiting earth and enforcing a tech embargo on Earth for its own political benefit. i liked the consequences of infertility in the Earth human population and how that is itself a threat to the Syndicates, who need fresh genetic variation but don't want to implement it themselves, of course. i liked the detail about how much water Earth gets to keep vs the Ring gets to harvest is calculated on its population, and water is therefore heavily measured out.
so idk, this is problematic popcorn fiction with like fun scifi tropiness in it. i'll read the third one, it's like cozy and easy to read.
it got increasingly problematic and distracting that the setting is that it's like 2400 and palestine and israel are at war (again, after 200 years of peace), and depicting palestine as sort of in an equivalent and symmetric actor to israel in this war. chris moriarty is jewish, and i have no idea what her politics are really, but what i got from this book was that sort of insipid apathy or two-side-ism that itself sort of takes sides, right? at one point a character remarks something like "nobody knows why these wars start up again". so clearly a book that wouldn't touch on the settler colonialism aspect with a ten foot pole, doesn't think of it that way. and the book is primarily about both israeli and palestinian spies and soldiers and spymasters who are kind of the same flavor of bad and good and conniving, just on opposite sides, no super clear political motivations about the war they are embroiled in, no opinions on ppl from 'the other side', this political situation is just happening to them. i think it was especially grating with Gavi, who is half-Palestinian and half-Israeli (which feels like one of those eye-rolling as-fate-would-have-it liberal parable set ups), but whose nationality is Israeli, and who married a Palestinian woman ... and had a son with Palestinian citizenship ... and it's like ... why ... are you in the highest echelon's of the Mossad then ... bro ?? like political motivations-wise why is this happening? ultimately the most groan-worthy part was that the whole thing is resolved when Cohen 'wakes up' the emergent AI networks that have been powering both sides' flesh-and-bone-armies by?? downloading onto it a huge repository of testimonials from The Holocaust?? so the rogue AIs put a temporary stop to the war? which just feels like a wildly cheap thing to do with the Holocaust, some really mid-2000ts pulp. whew. lots to unpack there and i'm not gonna.
so obviously long dark shadow there. i think the other issue was this book felt like that thing where the author built really elaborate backstories and emotional patinas for all these characters in her notes, but only put in the emotional payoffs in the book itself, so they all seem shallow. for example, by the time the book starts it has already been 2 years since a disastrous spy mission ruined the israeli spy Gavi's career and broke his relationship with his squadmates and the AI Cohen. but we don't see it, not even as a flashback, and we don't get more than a few sentences about it from Cohen's perspective. It's clear that the squadmates and Cohen physically seeing Gavi again is supposed to be this huge emotional impact scene, but it doesn't hit right because the history isn't heavy enough for the reader. a lot of moments happen like this.
in general like in the previous book, the plots within plots were a bit too whirling and yanking the reader from scene to scene , or maybe i'm just stupid, so hard to follow there.
but what did fuck was the non-set-on-Earth stuff. the Syndicate research ship exploring an obviously terraformed, abandoned planet and all the inter-team tensions was just fun. this series i think is fun in the popcorn sense 85% of the time, and that really delivered here with all the inter-party tensions. was a little disappointed about depictions of Syndicate life, in that i feel like she took 'society made of just clones' and went flat-socialism-critique on it a little, borrowing cultural ideas like lots of committees and structured conversation time that reminded me of "struggle sessions" more than anything and fear of being deviant lest you get sent to a 're-norming center'. but i did like the bits of worldbuilding there, like that the older Syndicates have more 'human' values and the newer ones are like, "why don't we have a clone-based caste system? what's wrong with that?".
other worldbuilding was also cool; i liked the political tension between Earth and 'the Ring', literally a ring of technologically advanced humanity orbiting earth and enforcing a tech embargo on Earth for its own political benefit. i liked the consequences of infertility in the Earth human population and how that is itself a threat to the Syndicates, who need fresh genetic variation but don't want to implement it themselves, of course. i liked the detail about how much water Earth gets to keep vs the Ring gets to harvest is calculated on its population, and water is therefore heavily measured out.
so idk, this is problematic popcorn fiction with like fun scifi tropiness in it. i'll read the third one, it's like cozy and easy to read.
July 16, 2020
With some reservations, I enjoyed the first book (“Spin State”) in Chris Moriarty’s “Spin” series. But I’m not happy at all with her 2006 sequel, "Spin, Book 2: Spin Control.” I’ve got three major problems:
- The first can be boiled down to the same major issue I had with the first book: she sets up a society and its technologies, then utterly ignores them to use some ridiculous setting as the backdrop for the whole thing. In this book, we’ve got two such settings. On the UN side, Earth has theoretically been abandoned for generations because of environmental damage except for a few people hunkering down and fighting in gas masks in frozen cellars (according to the first book). Well, the locale for this part of the book is on Earth in Israel (where the Israeli/Palestinian thing is still going on). At one point, the characters are sitting in what amounts to a sidewalk internet cafe drinking coffee and talking. And, the internet bit is important since Cohen the AI is there somehow stealing enough bandwidth to function (and from the first book, that’s about as much bandwidth as a major corporation needs). Remember, Earth has been abandoned as being uninhabitable. On the Syndicate side, the setting is a terraforming project on some planet. From the previous book, we know the Syndicate’s culture is based on a complete population of designed clones who are culled during development if they don’t meet technical and social standards. They know and have their “Place.” Yet, this whole portion of the book is turned into some kind of soap opera because one of the clones is both technically and socially incompetent. The whole point of the Syndicate is to remove the grit from the gears of society. Yet, we’ve got a clone who’s an entire truckload of gravel sitting here gumming up the works. It’s ridiculous.
- Next is the environmental issue. In the first book, it was just mentioned as a given and Moriarty moved on. In this one, she harps on it continually with lectures to us specifically and mostly blaming America for destroying the Earth with our Eeeeeevil consumer culture. Of course, like all such people, she doesn’t have a solution that would allow 8 billion people to live here without affecting things. She’s “solved” the problem in this book by miraculously moving almost all 8 billion people off the Earth into a series of habitats in orbit (the Ring). She describes nothing that would provide enough energy or materials (i.e., ships) to lift those people into orbit, enough resources to build the habitats (and those should number in the 10s, if not 100s of millions of habitats), or enough of anything to provide those 8 billion (now 18 billion) people with food, water, oxygen, energy, materials, industry, entertainment, etc. to actually live there. And, that’s not even mentioning what’s required for protection from solar radiation and cosmic rays.
- And finally, this story doesn’t even feel like science fiction. On the one hand, it feels like some kind of cold war spy thriller. On the other, some kind of soap opera.
So, no. I’m not happy. And, at the 25% point, I’m giving up and rating the book at a Not Very Good 2 stars out of 5.
- The first can be boiled down to the same major issue I had with the first book: she sets up a society and its technologies, then utterly ignores them to use some ridiculous setting as the backdrop for the whole thing. In this book, we’ve got two such settings. On the UN side, Earth has theoretically been abandoned for generations because of environmental damage except for a few people hunkering down and fighting in gas masks in frozen cellars (according to the first book). Well, the locale for this part of the book is on Earth in Israel (where the Israeli/Palestinian thing is still going on). At one point, the characters are sitting in what amounts to a sidewalk internet cafe drinking coffee and talking. And, the internet bit is important since Cohen the AI is there somehow stealing enough bandwidth to function (and from the first book, that’s about as much bandwidth as a major corporation needs). Remember, Earth has been abandoned as being uninhabitable. On the Syndicate side, the setting is a terraforming project on some planet. From the previous book, we know the Syndicate’s culture is based on a complete population of designed clones who are culled during development if they don’t meet technical and social standards. They know and have their “Place.” Yet, this whole portion of the book is turned into some kind of soap opera because one of the clones is both technically and socially incompetent. The whole point of the Syndicate is to remove the grit from the gears of society. Yet, we’ve got a clone who’s an entire truckload of gravel sitting here gumming up the works. It’s ridiculous.
- Next is the environmental issue. In the first book, it was just mentioned as a given and Moriarty moved on. In this one, she harps on it continually with lectures to us specifically and mostly blaming America for destroying the Earth with our Eeeeeevil consumer culture. Of course, like all such people, she doesn’t have a solution that would allow 8 billion people to live here without affecting things. She’s “solved” the problem in this book by miraculously moving almost all 8 billion people off the Earth into a series of habitats in orbit (the Ring). She describes nothing that would provide enough energy or materials (i.e., ships) to lift those people into orbit, enough resources to build the habitats (and those should number in the 10s, if not 100s of millions of habitats), or enough of anything to provide those 8 billion (now 18 billion) people with food, water, oxygen, energy, materials, industry, entertainment, etc. to actually live there. And, that’s not even mentioning what’s required for protection from solar radiation and cosmic rays.
- And finally, this story doesn’t even feel like science fiction. On the one hand, it feels like some kind of cold war spy thriller. On the other, some kind of soap opera.
So, no. I’m not happy. And, at the 25% point, I’m giving up and rating the book at a Not Very Good 2 stars out of 5.
August 12, 2023
Brilliant. Hard core sci/fi in the tradition of Alistair Reynolds, Greg Bear and Neal Stephenson. The writing is excellent, the story just flows along at a breakneck pace. The story occurs in the same universe as the prior book, Spin State, but the author continues to rebuild and reimagine it. The book explores the ramifications of AI, cloning and terraforming. At the same time, as many other reviewers have noted, the author manages to splice in the future state of the Israeli/Palestinian struggle much in the style of John LeCarre. The characters are fully formed, and I found myself routing for the Arkady character. If I had to ding the book in any fashion, it would be that the complex plot occasionally was a little hard to follow and I found myself having to go back and reread some sections after a key detail was later revealed that shed some enlightenment on the earlier passages.
All in all, a formidable book that should have garnered greater acclaim. I am mystified why the author did one more book in the series and, aside from a YA entry hasn't written anything since 2013.
All in all, a formidable book that should have garnered greater acclaim. I am mystified why the author did one more book in the series and, aside from a YA entry hasn't written anything since 2013.
February 8, 2020
I liked this book without really understanding what was going on. Like most books in the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction, the concepts usually lose me. I guess I just don’t have the mind for them. It’s kind of like being a luddite while working in the computer industry, which I am, and in which I do. Still, I really liked reading this book. The prose was terrific. It was very readable. My problem though was that the author threw around a ton of jargon that I only partially comprehended. This is the second book of a series, though it’s not a direct sequel to the first. Still, I wonder if I would have understood more if I read the first book, or if I would have simply stopped at the first book if it had the same complexity of this one. I read this because it is on the Worlds Without End LGBTQ Spec. Fic. Resource, having been nominated for a Gaylactic Spectrum Award in 2007.
Come visit my blog for the full review…
https://itstartedwiththehugos.blogspo...
Come visit my blog for the full review…
https://itstartedwiththehugos.blogspo...
July 7, 2017
I swithered between giving this three and four stars. The quality of the writing is very good indeed, and a huge amount of research and thought has obviously gone into things like terraforming, the future of the Israel-Palestine conflict, clone society, Emergent AIs, and ants. But overall it didn't hugely hang together very well for me - long sections of exposition on the various topics just made it feel a bit disjointed and slow. The plot was often lost under layers of things Chris Moriarty obviously finds interesting; the excellent character of Catherine Li doesn't do much but be grumpy; and the conclusion felt a bit rushed and anti-climactic. I think Moriarty would have done better to cut some of the themes he was exploring or separated them into other books.
Still going to pick up the third one, though.
Still going to pick up the third one, though.
February 23, 2021
Overall this was a pretty good book! I really enjoyed the world building and found the specific science tidbits regarding the main characters respective interest of ants and genetics really interesting. That said there were some plot points that kind of took me out of the story. I have a hard time believing that despite humanity resettling across the solar belt the Israel-Palestine conflict is still very much happening (but maybe that's just cause it bums me out?). ALSO if you can terra-form how the hell is there still water shortage...curious.
Overall I would recommend this book to sci fi nerds in need of a queer narrative and who revel in the opportunity to trudge through pages of exposition. That said it didn't 'grab' me.
Overall I would recommend this book to sci fi nerds in need of a queer narrative and who revel in the opportunity to trudge through pages of exposition. That said it didn't 'grab' me.
December 18, 2019
3.5 Stars
Like the first, this one had slick, smooth writing with a plethora of great futurism world-building with some interesting characters that ended up way too convoluted for it's own good.
Reduce the character count, trim the book by about 200 pages, and make the story more focused and I think you could have had something really special here.
As it is, it reads like an incredibly talented writer did a whole bunch of research and wanted to show everybody her hard work. Sometimes you need to know what to keep in and what to remove.
Recommended for the veteran SF reader in your life.
Like the first, this one had slick, smooth writing with a plethora of great futurism world-building with some interesting characters that ended up way too convoluted for it's own good.
Reduce the character count, trim the book by about 200 pages, and make the story more focused and I think you could have had something really special here.
As it is, it reads like an incredibly talented writer did a whole bunch of research and wanted to show everybody her hard work. Sometimes you need to know what to keep in and what to remove.
Recommended for the veteran SF reader in your life.
October 6, 2020
Actual story was not as good as the first book, but I still love the characters, especially Cohen. The story took almost exclusively took part in Israel on Earth. A spy story that just as easily could have taken place in the 1970s in a non sci-fi book. Still the writing was good.
April 26, 2023
Again, very much my thing. Briskly paced, politically aware, and the characters are the same shades of grey that humans are-even as they themselves vary in their physical and conceptual distance from humanity, and the tech ideas continue to translate very well almost 20 years later
February 9, 2017
If you were wondering if Chris Moriarty is Jewish, this book definitely answers that question. Plus we get to find out what happened in Tel Aviv (kinda).
Read
July 25, 2019L
May 4, 2020
Catherine Li and Cohen are back in action and as entertaining as ever.
March 24, 2024
Ok, I’ll read the third one
January 11, 2012
Not since mid to late 1980s William Gibson and Bruce Sterling have I read a book that's nearly as well written and as grandiose in scope with regards to the potential impact that a computer-based technological future may have on humanity. With "Spin Control" Chris Moriarty has written what can be described as the finest post-cyberpunk space opera novel ever written, effortlessly capturing the gritty realism of William Gibson's street-wise "Sprawl" short stories and "Cyberspace" trilogy ("Neuromancer", "Count Zero", "Mona Lis Overdrive") with Bruce Sterling's hard-edge, almost dystopian, Shaper/Machinist cyberpunk space opera ("Schisimatrix"). Others, most notably Richard K. Morgan, in his Takeshi Kovacs series of novels, have come close to providing such a compelling, thoughtful piece of entertainment on humanity's post-human future. However, none have rendered such a scientifically firmly-rooted, realistic bit of extrapolation as Chris Moriarty has done, by relying upon important work in complexity theory, evolutionary ecology and the systematic zoology of ants, and by citing someone as important as distinguished evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson for providing the nonfictional roots of her elegantly realized post-cyberpunk science fiction novel (Indeed, much of the novel relies strongly upon a strong dose of evolutionary ecology and systematic zoology, which, undoubtedly will come as an unwarranted surprise to IDiots (Intelligent Design advocates) and other creationists who strongly doubt the scientific validity of evolution.). Best of all, Chris Moriarty is such a skillful prose stylist that her writing warrants favorable comparisons to the likes of both Gibson and Sterling.
"Spin Control" is the immediate sequel to "Spin State", which introduced readers to Moriarity's brilliant, exquisitely-realized future of off-world post-human Syndicates allied against a United Nations comprised of human colonies and an ecologically devestated Planet Earth that is still losing its human population, centuries after a rapid ecological collapse which led to both widespread human immigration from Earth and the mass extinction of many species of animals and plants (I have not yet read "Spin State", but am eagerly looking forward to it.). In "Spin State" readers where introduced to intelligence operative - and AI-enhanced clone - Hyacinthe Cohen and UN Peacekeeper Catherine Li; here in "Spin Control", they have returned, in subordinate roles, as representatives of ALEF (Artificial Life Emancipation Front), in search of one very special prize. His name is Arkady, a "clone with a conscience", a Syndicate myrmecologist (ant ecologist), who arrives on Planet Earth as a survivor of an ill-fated terraforming mission on the Planet Novalis, and a willing defector to the State of Israel with a dangerous, potentially deadly, weapon that could change the fate of humanity; an unknown genetic weapon which he "discovered" by accident on Novalis. However, the Mossad, Israel's Secret Service, claims ample disinterest, offering to bid him to the highest bidder: ALEF, the Palestinians, even the Fundamentalist Protestant religious theocrats now in charge of the United States of America. What will follow - as deftly told by Chris Moriarty in her riveting, almost ornate, yet rather poetic, prose - may determine the future of humanity not only on Planet Earth, but also in interstellar space, and the survival of the post-human Syndicates.
"Spin Control" is the immediate sequel to "Spin State", which introduced readers to Moriarity's brilliant, exquisitely-realized future of off-world post-human Syndicates allied against a United Nations comprised of human colonies and an ecologically devestated Planet Earth that is still losing its human population, centuries after a rapid ecological collapse which led to both widespread human immigration from Earth and the mass extinction of many species of animals and plants (I have not yet read "Spin State", but am eagerly looking forward to it.). In "Spin State" readers where introduced to intelligence operative - and AI-enhanced clone - Hyacinthe Cohen and UN Peacekeeper Catherine Li; here in "Spin Control", they have returned, in subordinate roles, as representatives of ALEF (Artificial Life Emancipation Front), in search of one very special prize. His name is Arkady, a "clone with a conscience", a Syndicate myrmecologist (ant ecologist), who arrives on Planet Earth as a survivor of an ill-fated terraforming mission on the Planet Novalis, and a willing defector to the State of Israel with a dangerous, potentially deadly, weapon that could change the fate of humanity; an unknown genetic weapon which he "discovered" by accident on Novalis. However, the Mossad, Israel's Secret Service, claims ample disinterest, offering to bid him to the highest bidder: ALEF, the Palestinians, even the Fundamentalist Protestant religious theocrats now in charge of the United States of America. What will follow - as deftly told by Chris Moriarty in her riveting, almost ornate, yet rather poetic, prose - may determine the future of humanity not only on Planet Earth, but also in interstellar space, and the survival of the post-human Syndicates.
Read
October 21, 2007http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2007/04/the_2007_philip.shtml[return][return]This is a future spy story, a loose sequel to Moriarty's earlier Spin Control; its setting alternates between an unsuccessful research mission by a crew of cloned scientists to the planet Novalis, and the process of selling the secret they discover to the highest bidder in a 26th-century Jerusalem. The two settings are truly memorable, the alien planet - which, as it turns out, is not quite alien enough - with the crew of clones from the space-based Syndicates, struggling with their professional and personal tensions, balanced well against the convincing sordidness of the dying earth with mutual paranoia of Israeli and Palestinian security services, each (rightly) convinced that they have traitors within their own ranks. There are some gems of description and characterisation along the way; this was the only book on the short-list where I found myself reading the best lines out loud to my wife.[return][return]However, the huge amount of technical vocabulary supporting the book's themes of biology and artificial intelligence got very distracting after a while, especially since the plot of potential betrayal and counter-betrayal is already fairly heavy going. In addition, I have to wonder if a far future Middle East will be as similar to today's Jerusalem as Moriarty depicts it here; consider how much the region, unlike some, has changed since the sixteenth century, and then add centuries of peaceful coexistence to come between the Israeli and Palestinian states, followed by a sudden return to conflict. If we take the Middle East of Spin Control as an ironic reflection on today's situation, then it is indeed a thought-provoking exercise, but one that comes at the expense of the credibility of the rest of the future universe as extrapolation rather than parable.
December 31, 2018
I read Spin State years ago and had vague memories of a fairly interesting take on AI but not much else, so I picked up this follow up when I saw it at a used book sale. It does continue the exploration of the intriguing AI concept, as well as extending (or introducing?) the idea of Syndicates of genetically engineered people, created in series and deployed in pairs. There is also the terraforming plot line presented in flashback, which adds another potentially interesting angle.
However, Moriarty chooses to embed all this in the setting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is not only still going on 500+ years in the future, but with the same grim spycraft, torture, land mines... I’m not sure whether to say that’s not believable or that it’s all too believable, but I’m afraid that for me, it’s tiresome and fails to hold my interest. In the backstory episodes, meanwhile, the bickering and social awkwardness among the Syndicate members is even less interesting.
In the end, the tedious interplay among shadowy middle eastern figures with mysterious motives overwhelmed what should have been the most fascinating aspect of the story, the underlying motive for Arkady’s journey to Israel, which I won’t mention here. Anyway, in spite of a number of points in its favor, for me the book was less than compelling.
However, Moriarty chooses to embed all this in the setting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is not only still going on 500+ years in the future, but with the same grim spycraft, torture, land mines... I’m not sure whether to say that’s not believable or that it’s all too believable, but I’m afraid that for me, it’s tiresome and fails to hold my interest. In the backstory episodes, meanwhile, the bickering and social awkwardness among the Syndicate members is even less interesting.
In the end, the tedious interplay among shadowy middle eastern figures with mysterious motives overwhelmed what should have been the most fascinating aspect of the story, the underlying motive for Arkady’s journey to Israel, which I won’t mention here. Anyway, in spite of a number of points in its favor, for me the book was less than compelling.
May 13, 2008
Ahhhh, much better. I was far more pleased with this than I was with Spin State. I think Betsey was right about Moriarty coming into herself as a writer with Spin Control. It goes a long way to proving just how much the writing can make or break a story. See, Spin State had all the ingredients of a kick ass sci-fi space drama, but it wasn't mixed properly. Spin Control had even less of those ingredients, was set in middle east earth, (I don't know about anyone else but I get tired of the middle east drama), ended kinda klunky, but it still read better than Spin State. Much better than I wrote that last sentence!
Anyway, my favorite parts of the story had to do with the AI Cohen and his relationships to people and other AIs. Especially his relationship to Li, Router/Decomposer, and Gavi. The Novalis virus idea is great as well. And I look forward to finding out if Moriarty explores further with the "alien" encounter on Novalis.
I just started reading Altered Carbon. Holy crap! I'm having a tough time putting it down. I can't help to think how good ideas like Moriarty's would flourish if she could write like Morgan. I know it's unfair to do that to an Author, but still I wonder. Perhaps she'll get there, and when she does I'll be one of her biggest fans.
Anyway, my favorite parts of the story had to do with the AI Cohen and his relationships to people and other AIs. Especially his relationship to Li, Router/Decomposer, and Gavi. The Novalis virus idea is great as well. And I look forward to finding out if Moriarty explores further with the "alien" encounter on Novalis.
I just started reading Altered Carbon. Holy crap! I'm having a tough time putting it down. I can't help to think how good ideas like Moriarty's would flourish if she could write like Morgan. I know it's unfair to do that to an Author, but still I wonder. Perhaps she'll get there, and when she does I'll be one of her biggest fans.
November 21, 2011
This is really smart, a lot of ideas with a great understanding of the science and some very clever inversions of sexuality norms. I wish Goodreads had half stars - this was almost a 4. I noticed there was a review here criticising the book for the lack of science - I wish that person would point out the errors - I know a lot about programming simple AI - and I didn't spot any clunckers. Perhaps that reviewer wanted huge info dumps of hard science. I guess that's a matter of taste.I prefer my cyberpunk written by women. They have a more human way of dealing with stories about technology - and their characters are always better drawn. You could tell the writer loved all the characters in this book.
They flaws are really just in the basic prose style - the language is not 4 star, but neither is it cringe worthy - It's solid without ever making you laugh out loud or cry. And the ideas aren't old and tired yet... but they have mostly all been done before in some way. Alastair Reynolds had a go at clone sex in "House of Suns" - a dreadful book - this book pulls this of in a believable way. I do wonder though whether this could be classed as a gay novel - as the incestuous transgressions here confuse that possible genre label.
They flaws are really just in the basic prose style - the language is not 4 star, but neither is it cringe worthy - It's solid without ever making you laugh out loud or cry. And the ideas aren't old and tired yet... but they have mostly all been done before in some way. Alastair Reynolds had a go at clone sex in "House of Suns" - a dreadful book - this book pulls this of in a believable way. I do wonder though whether this could be classed as a gay novel - as the incestuous transgressions here confuse that possible genre label.
May 20, 2008
First off, let me just say that I really loved Spin State. Spin Control was the "sequel" although it's one of those sequels that doesn't necessarily require reading the first book. In fact, for the the first few chapters, I was nervous that the main characters from Spin State weren't even going to be in this book. Rest assured, Catherien Li and the venerable Cohen are more than present in the book.
With those fears relieved, I still felt a little let down by this book. Technical jargon aside, I felt lost. The main plot, involving a story of past espinoge and the hunt for the mysterious party involved was just too convoluted for me. I suppose having a good handle on middle eastern affairs might be helpful as well, but when it comes right down to it I don't know Jordan from Israel.
The "second" story line involving the Arkady's on Novalis was definately more interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing how the "cliff-hanger" plays out in the next book. Overall, this is still great writing, and another good page turner, but you may want to keep a notepad close at hand so you can keep tab of who's who and who works for who.
With those fears relieved, I still felt a little let down by this book. Technical jargon aside, I felt lost. The main plot, involving a story of past espinoge and the hunt for the mysterious party involved was just too convoluted for me. I suppose having a good handle on middle eastern affairs might be helpful as well, but when it comes right down to it I don't know Jordan from Israel.
The "second" story line involving the Arkady's on Novalis was definately more interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing how the "cliff-hanger" plays out in the next book. Overall, this is still great writing, and another good page turner, but you may want to keep a notepad close at hand so you can keep tab of who's who and who works for who.
November 22, 2007
Ok ... Gay Clones from Outer space... It's like when Harry met Sally, but in outerspace, and Harry's actually meeting an exact genetic copy of himself, they don't settle for the space needle. They're in Outta fuckin' Space!!
Don't worry the gay thing isn't an issue, because, when you're a space clone, you ARE gay. Them's the breaks... There's just no room for babies in outerspace (see: Enemy Mine). The book is a THICK read, definitely for Sci-Fi homos. But honestly, when it comes to pretty gay clones from outerspace, who ISN'T a Sci-Fi homo?
Lots of politics, space stuff, computer stuff, and gay stuff. I don't think Moriarty likes to write to one audience at a time. There's stuff in there for programmers. A lot of errant Hassidim trying to get home for dinner. Some Artificial Intelligents Pan-Trannyism going on. Imagine being a computer based on an old Jew's personality that can jump from body to body. Oh and the cyborgs. CHRIST, THE CYBORGS!!!
I just want other people to read it so we can talk about what the hell could possibly be going on. This was a 4 on the readership scale, but a Flawless FIVE on the WTF scale. LOVED IT.
Don't worry the gay thing isn't an issue, because, when you're a space clone, you ARE gay. Them's the breaks... There's just no room for babies in outerspace (see: Enemy Mine). The book is a THICK read, definitely for Sci-Fi homos. But honestly, when it comes to pretty gay clones from outerspace, who ISN'T a Sci-Fi homo?
Lots of politics, space stuff, computer stuff, and gay stuff. I don't think Moriarty likes to write to one audience at a time. There's stuff in there for programmers. A lot of errant Hassidim trying to get home for dinner. Some Artificial Intelligents Pan-Trannyism going on. Imagine being a computer based on an old Jew's personality that can jump from body to body. Oh and the cyborgs. CHRIST, THE CYBORGS!!!
I just want other people to read it so we can talk about what the hell could possibly be going on. This was a 4 on the readership scale, but a Flawless FIVE on the WTF scale. LOVED IT.
April 7, 2009
This is pretty standard science fiction fare about the struggles among clones, humans, and artificial intelligence units. An ant-expert clone named Arkady comes to earth with a secret that he wants to trade for one of his mates. Lots of bad humans try to figure out what he's up to (he meets a few good ones along the way). A series of flashbacks describe Arkady's mission to explore a planet that inexplicably appears to have been terraformed even though no record exists of the procedure. Some sort of genetic "weapon" has been used and now the powers of earth want it for their own purposes.
Although Spin Control has its riveting moments and the science is at times interesting, the characters are lacking and the story is never close to gripping or suspenseful, even though I think it was intended to be. As I was reading it, I kept thinking that science fiction needs a jolt (I don't like the term paradigm shift, but I'll throw it out there anyway) that probably hasn't been seen since Neuromancer.
Although Spin Control has its riveting moments and the science is at times interesting, the characters are lacking and the story is never close to gripping or suspenseful, even though I think it was intended to be. As I was reading it, I kept thinking that science fiction needs a jolt (I don't like the term paradigm shift, but I'll throw it out there anyway) that probably hasn't been seen since Neuromancer.
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