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Pasquale's Angel
In Pasquale's Angel, his fifth novel, McAuley's ability is such that he can carry off an alternate history of renaissance Italy with a light, sure touch. Like most "counterfactuals" he makes use of historical figures - Machiavelli is an investigative journalist, Lisa Giocondo is the lover of the painter Raphael. These are fully realised characters rather than the cheap name checks too common in alternate history. In fact, closer study of the historical period shows how well the author used the characters available and how accurately they have been drawn. Another distinction from many attempts at alternate history is the strength of the plotting, which has no reliance on comparison with our own history. Descriptive passages make no assumptions of the reader's knowledge either. It is made clear Michelangelo and Raphael are great artists and great rivals. In the course of the story, the reader learns about the mechanisms of renaissance art as well as achronic newspaper production.
The catalyst which leads to a changed reality is Leonardo da Vinci's decision to dedicate himself to engineering rather than art. The result is industrial revolution being folded into the already rich mixture of politics and machinations in the city state of Florence. This produces an environment where tossing a spent match leads naturally to a discussion on the fall of Lucifer and the possibility of Man's redemption, an environment which has room enough for action and for moments of contemplation.
The great Raphael is of Venice and arrives in Florence shortly before the Pope is due to resolve Rome's differences with the city. Pasquale is a country boy and a painter's apprentice, desirous of getting close to the famous painter when he is caught up in murder and intrigue. It is almost impossible to avoid describing the plot as Machiavellian, involving magicians, priests, riots and philosophy but the story also includes gunfights, stakeouts and chases in steam powered vehicles. At times there is a danger of losing track of who is doing what to whom and why but the ride is always enjoyable and the tangles mostly untie themselves.
Pasquale's Angel avoids the usual traps in alternate histories - pointlessly mixing periods and easy moralising by implicit or explicit comparison with our world. The premise leads plausibly to the technology available within the story. The characters, historically, were born into the dawn of a new age, so it seems reasonable that they should cope with change even on the scale presented. They are, generally, more interested in money and politics, in turning the new technology to their own advantage, than in the technology for itself. There may be a moral in this, but it is applicable to all human nature.
The storyline developed may seem thoroughly over the top but it is a large part of what makes the book work. McAuley makes excellent use of historical sources (from the age when the modern biography was invented) and mercilessly plunders technology from every page of da Vinci. This is a novel where entertainment is built up in layers of provocative ideas.
Purchase this book at Amazon.
Just wondering...are there any geeks out there who don't read sci fi? I personally never do, most likely because of a lack of time.
just idle wondering...
jeremy
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
Like if Bill Gates had realised that 640k RAM wouldn't be enough for everyone.
Sounds like a rewrite of Gibon's book:
1 X/o/qid=940596502/sr=8-1/002-4326795-73538 33
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/05532946
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Theodore Sturgeon, who has written some of those roses on the dunghill, was asked to comment on some critic's assertion that "90% of science fiction is crap."
His response -- "Well, sure. But 90% of everything is crap."
"90% of everything is crap" has now been enshrined as Sturgeon's Law (and well-correlated to Murphy's), but lots of folks don't know its origin in SF.
(And yes, I'm a fan of the genre, and yes, there is a lot of crap published with spaceships on the cover, and yes, too much of it reads like "swords&sorcery with lasers" ...)
I remember visiting the local library as a child, and being amused by the garish covers of science fiction paperbacks. Maybe it's just because I'm a cynic, whose parents are cynics and lives in a nation of cynics - but those books looked intensely sad.
Years later I actually tried reading a few SF books. For a genre that should be based on wild flights of imagination, it read like swords and sorcery tales with lasers. Turgid was an understatement.
As with any genre, there are a few roses growing on the dungheap of Science Fiction (to paraphrase Nietzsche), but it's one enormous mound of shit with very few roses.
Chris Wareham
>>guys were still there but Gates didn't get
>the IBM deal and dos was written from the
>ground up. Who knows - we might not be using
>Linux now because DOS was written properly
>and multitasked from day 1!
That's kinda complicated because you would have to change a lot.
I think there are two main reasons why IBM did what they did.
Gates just happened to be in the right place at the right time... so, I think WHO they got the os from could easily be imagined to be someone else.. but ibm never would have wrote it themselves at the time...
Not really - if you read through my original piece you'll see I dont say 'if IBM wrote DOS from the ground up' just that it could have been written from the ground up - I'm sure there were more companies than just Microsoft who were looking at writing the OS for the machine.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
I read the novelizations of the Star Wars movies, but in general I have much better things to do than to immerse myself in a world of wacky gadgets and societal pontification. I get plenty of that already; just look around. Want amazing technical breakthroughs? Read Slashdot! Want police-state conspiracy theories? We got that, too! Want to latch into a planet-wide data dump? Hell, look no further!
We're living in the future, people!
Our Dumb Century
Now *that's* a book.
What's that you say, you want fiction? James A. Michener is a good author, for one. The only sci-fi I'd read if I had spare time (what's that?) would be Neal Stephenson.
-- Liquor up front, poker in the rear.
I'd like to think that a single change in the early pioneering days would have made a huge change to what we have now - hopefully not for the worst.
Let's imagine that Gates, Jobs and the early guys were still there but Gates didn't get the IBM deal and dos was written from the ground up. Who knows - we might not be using Linux now because DOS was written properly and multitasked from day 1!
I can't proclaim to have any solid ideas as regards what might have been but it's fun to think about it.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
Am I the only person who is not overwhelmed at any of William Gibson's work? I found 'The Difference Engine' in particular to be aimless, shallow, and uninteresting. I spent the entire book waiting to reach 'the point' and it never got there. It is all style and no substance, like everything else of his I have read. Nor am I impressed with his attempts to use technological themes, which I think betray a real lack of understanding of current technology, human psychology, and social forces (as well as common sense and logic).
Speaking of alternate histories, what if Bill had decided to make DOS completely open-source and created the GPL?
Would that mean that the "i" in Microsoft would have to be pronounced as a soft "i" instead of a hard one?
-Vel
The "what if" ploy usually does end up reading like a poorly hashed out plot with one dimensional characters. If, however, this is of the calibre of the Difference Engine by Gibson then I know that I will enjoy it. The whole point of sci-fi is to be entertaining and imaginative. A willing suspension of disbelief is necessary for a good sci-fi novel to work. This "what if" scenario proposed in the sounds interesting enough just from the review for me to go out and buy it.
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
Pascal's Triangle.
And probably the first totally on-topic post so far... :)
If Spain (the bad guys in the book) have been deprived by Florence of the American gold, how do they ever become a superpower capable of posing a threat? That's something I never really bought...
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
Well, I worked at a library for awhile, so you can't blame me from reading then. I would read a whole Animorph books (a children's book, if you must know) on my 15 minute break. I knew a trucker who always came in on Mondays and would check out all of the sci-fi and mystery books on tape for his week on the road. Computer enthusiasts (geeks) do read sci-fi, but they checked out more mysteries on average. I am now in college though. Lately, I have read about 5 sci-fi books, which was basically the Donaldson's Gap series. I do hope you read something else other than technical books and non-fiction. Sometimes you just have to read for the sake of reading and not care about it. I read anything that is written well, except for romance of course.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - F. Voltaire.
I agree about Ms Penman, but I want to recommend two different novels. The Queen's Man, and Cruel as the Grave. Set in England in 1193 when Richard the Lionheart is feared lost on His return from the Crusades. These two are well done historical mysteries.
Sharon Kay Penman.
She writes historical fiction (i.e. almost all real people, places, events, with the personalities approximated from historical records and embellished for literary interest). Her forte is medieval England/Wales. I read her first book, "The Sunne in Splendour" and LOVED it! It's an alternative view of Richard III as a decent man and king that made a questionable decision. She goes into such fascinating detail in everything - war, love, daily routines, she REALLY does her research well! So far these are the books she's written(That I know of):
The Sunne in Splendour (my favorite)
and the Welsh Trilogy:
Here Be Dragons
Falls the Shadow
The Reckoning
For anyone who wants EXCELLENT medieval historical fiction, with high levels of detail and absolutely engaging and realistic characters, please try Penman. The only downside is that her books are quite lengthy (Sunne in Splendour ~ 900pp, Welsh trilogy ~600-700pp) but you will be enjoying them for a while!
Respectfully,
Kevin Christie
kwchri@maila.wm.edu