Count on Marusek for a top-notch debut

REVIEWS BY GAVIN J. GRANT

What a month for speculative fiction readers! First up is a sizzling debut novel, David Marusek's Counting Heads. Marusek built a following with his short fiction, including stories such as "We Were Out of Our Minds With Joy," published a decade ago in Asimov's magazine. For his first novel, Marusek builds on that wonderful story and fleshes out a future where almost anything is possible—for those who can afford the price. Most people in the 22nd century use life extension therapies so they don't have to age. However, for security purposes, the U.S. government has seeded its domed cities with slugs that continually check everyone's DNA for corruption or viruses. Samson Harger, an artist married to one of the most powerful women on Earth, is ecstatic—he and his wife, Eleanor, have just been given a license to have a child. However, a slug registers him as a terrorist and he is "seared"; his nanomachines and personal computer are burned out of him and he can no longer use life extension technologies. This is just the first complication in Samson's life, which will become something stranger than he ever expected. Counting Heads is full of both invention and action. It is dense and thought-provoking, and its story pulls the reader along until the very last page. Let's hope there's more where this came from.


Cold front
Next is Kim Stanley Robinson's Fifty Degrees Below, where, as Senate aide Charlie Quibler comments, "The stakes just keep getting higher, don't they?" Robinson's latest book is the second of a near-future series in which politics as usual is thrown out the window by a succession of extreme weather events. In the first novel, Forty Signs of Rain, Washington, D.C., is flooded by a massive storm surge (an event strangely reminiscent of recent real-life events). In Fifty Degrees Below, the government reacts strongly to being hit in its home base. However, it is quickly apparent that not all parts of the District of Columbia will be treated equally, and while the water drains relatively quickly, there are regions of the city that do not receive more than cursory aid. Frank Vanderwal has been working for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and, after the storm, finds himself homeless. Being practical, he takes his outdoor skills and what he knows of the city and manages to live under the radar. Frank is one of the most fascinating characters in recent speculative fiction. He is interested in everything and dissects all kinds of behaviors, from casual to formal, to consider them from an evolutionary or socio-biological standpoint. With the weather going wild and the onset of another Ice Age a real possibility, Frank and the NSF undertake bold maneuvers to put scientists and science at the forefront of government policies. It is human engineering on a grand scale, yet Robinson tells the story through the lives of his characters: Charlie and his family, Frank and a mystery woman and the Buddhist inhabitants of the low-lying island nation of Khembalung. As with Robinson's other books (the Mars trilogy, Antarctica), Fifty Degrees Below is an intensely positive book, brimming with ideas and hope for the future—real or imagined.


A Feast for Martin fans
Finally, we have the release this month of a book that has been looming large on readers' horizons for several years, George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows. This is the fourth entry in Martin's huge, career-making series, A Song of Ice and Fire. From the first book, A Game of Thrones, this series caught readers' imaginations. Previously, Martin was a critical fave (he won multiple Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards, as well as many lesser-known accolades, such as the Skylark, Geffen, Ignotus, Seiun and Balrog awards) yet he had never broken onto the bestseller lists. For a time, he even gave up on novels and turned to writing and producing for film and television. Fortunately for fantasy readers, Martin eventually returned to fiction. In A Feast for Crows, the Seven Kingdoms have almost reached peace after the long years of the War of the Five Kings. But there are rumors of newly hatched dragons, of ancient powers reborn, and, as one of the less savory characters, Leo Tyrell, says, "An age of wonder and terror will soon be upon us, an age for gods and heroes." Unlike the previous books in the series, Crows follows only half of the characters. As he found the book growing longer and longer, Martin decided to save the other half for a second volume, A Dance with Dragons, which is promised for publication next year.


Gavin J. Grant runs Small Beer Press in Northampton, Massachusetts.

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