Rating: 
Summary: A good time
Review: This one really took me away from the humdrum of 21st century earth. McCarthy takes you on a wild ride where physics is almost magic. I had a great time with this one!
Rating: 
Summary: Wild Speculations, Baroque Setting, Light Tone
Review: Wil McCarthy's new novel, The Collapsium, is built around such scientific speculations based on "edge science" ideas like using black holes as elementary particles. McCarthy plays happily with these ideas, treating them in almost a Tom-Swift fashion, which makes for an implausible but fun SF novel.The book is set several centuries in the future, or, as the opening line declares, "in the eighth decade of the Queendom of Sol". The social setting for McCarthy's baroque scientific speculations is thus appropriately baroque. The Solar System is united under a monarchy, and the ruler is the heir to the only monarchy that has survived to this time: the Queen of Tonga, Tamra Lutui. The central character is Bruno de Towangi, a brilliant scientist from Catalonia, now living a hermit's life in the Kuiper Belt, on an artificial planet, playing with miniature black holes arranged to form the "element" collapsium, trying to see the end of time. Bruno is a Declarant-Philander, a title which reflects both his high scientific achievements, and his status as former official lover of the "Virgin" Queen, Tamra. As the novel begins Bruno is summoned by his Queen back to the inner Solar System to solve a problem with the Ring Collapsiter, a ring of collapsium which his rival Marlon Sykes is building around the Sun. This ring will allow faster than light travel and communications, improving on the current system of "faxes", by which people travel at light speed anywhere there is a receiving station, making copies of themselves, copies which retain their memories, and which also can be "edited" to correct internal problems. Thus, humans may have also become immortal. The novel has three sections which involve successive efforts by Bruno to save the Sun. McCarthy keeps on multiplying his weird scientific speculations: adding in such ideas as "true vacuum", elimination of inertia, electromagnetic grapples, and so on. All this is on the one hand pretty fun, but on the other hand not wholly believable. It's not so much the science itself that is unbelievable: sure, it's all speculative, and probably mostly not very likely to be true, but that's all part of the game, and all the weird stuff is pretty well (for some value of "pretty well") explained in a series of appendices. Rather, Bruno's Tom Swift-like ability to whip up new gadgets base on the new science in quick time becomes somewhat implausible. That said, given the rather light tone of the whole book (albeit a tone which is at odds with any thought for the millions of innocents who die), it all ends up being quite entertaining. The science is larger-than-life, and so are the characters. Neither is quite believable in a realistic fashion, but both are acceptable within the conventions of this book. It's baroque, superscientific, stuff: kind of like bad '30s pulp SF rewritten to be a pretty good new millennium (almost!) take on those old tropes. It's not great SF, but it's good fun, and full of neat and wild ideas.
Rating:
Summary: Dazzling hard-SF opening fades to melodrama
Review: ______________________________________
Rating: science "A+", fiction "B-" -- a dazzling hard-SF opening fades to melodrama. Worth reading for the opener and the bleeding-edge sci-tech. The Collapsium opens with a wonderful novella,"Once Upon a Matter Crushed" (first published in SF Age 5/99). In the late 25th century, in the eighth decade of the Queendom of Sol, gravitation and the zero-point field are pretty well understood. "Neubles," diamond-clad neutronium spheres, are in everyday use -- a standard industrial neuble masses a billion tonnes, and has a radius of 2.67 cm. Our Hero, superscientist Bruno de Towaji, is experimenting with collapsium, a dangerous, metastable material made of proton-size black holes, when he receives a Royal Summons: the new near-solar collapsiter ring is unstable, and will fall into the sun (and eat it) unless Something is Done.... The book is written in an engaging neo-Victorian style -- McCarthy's first experiment with literary Style, vs. his previous 'transparent' prose. I liked it. Witty repartee, amusing pratfalls and shrewd insights abound. Bruno meets a well-married couple at a celebrity fund-raiser on Maxwell Montes, Venus: "The love, shyness and exasperation between them radiated out in invisible rays, like infrared. Warming." Befuddled by a bottomless beer mug, Bruno warms to the pitch: "Would, ah, would a hundred trillion dollars be enough?" <beat> McCarthy's sci-tech extrapolation is exotic, fun and reasonably plausible. He's clearly done his homework -- the book includes 30 pages of appendices, a glossary, technical notes (including the working equations to synthesize neubles), and respectable references. Fun stuff (really!), one of the highlights of the book. The range and depth of McCarthy's imagined technologies are dazzling -- I'm reminded of Drexler's pioneering "Engines of Creation," and I hope McCarthy (or someone) does a speculative-science article on the technological implications, if the zero-point field explanation for gravity turns out to be correct. (If you've seen one, I'd appreciate hearing about it.) Lots more neat SF ideas where these came from.... So I was really pumped, reading the first hundred pages -- cool science, nice Style, nifty characters, a big-screen space-opera storyline. What's not to like? Well, the rest of the book? The first thud comes when Bruno is recalled to the inner system -- to fix the same problem again! Then he has to fix it a *third* time, with even sillier, pulpier results. His scientific competitor, and rival for the Queen's affection, turns out to be a really Horrid Villain.... And the characters are hard to kill, because they have backups, except when they don't -- but wait, maybe they do, after all.... And characters start acting, well, out of character. And there's a pointless, dangling subplot, among other loose ends. I suppose McCarthy intended to write a good old-fashioned super-science melodrama, except with real science -- but the last two-thirds of the book just didn't work, for me anyway. Dammit. Which is a pity, because "Crushed" is brilliant, and the science is so cool. Oh well -- I'd rather read an ambitious failure than a potboiler. If you're already a McCarthy fan, or crave bleeding-edge hard SF, you won't want to miss The Collapsium -- the good parts anyway. And who knows, your tolerance for melodrama may be higher than mine -- other reviewers have been more generous. But if you're new to McCarthy, I'd start with Bloom or another, earlier book -- and you should try him, he's very good. Usually. Maybe next time he should coast a little on the science -- both the Bloom and Collapsium universes have plenty of room for more stories -- and work harder on the fiction. [Published 2000 at SF Site]
Rating:
Summary: Dazzling hard-SF opening fades to melodrama
Review: ______________________________________
Rating: science "A+", fiction "B-" -- a dazzling hard-SF opening fades to melodrama. Worth reading for the opener and the bleeding-edge sci-tech. The Collapsium opens with a wonderful novella,"Once Upon a Matter Crushed" (first published in SF Age 5/99). In the late 25th century, in the eighth decade of the Queendom of Sol, gravitation and the zero-point field are pretty well understood. "Neubles," diamond-clad neutronium spheres, are in everyday use -- a standard industrial neuble masses a billion tonnes, and has a radius of 2.67 cm. Our Hero, superscientist Bruno de Towaji, is experimenting with collapsium, a dangerous, metastable material made of proton-size black holes, when he receives a Royal Summons: the new near-solar collapsiter ring is unstable, and will fall into the sun (and eat it) unless Something is Done.... The book is written in an engaging neo-Victorian style -- McCarthy's first experiment with literary Style, vs. his previous 'transparent' prose. I liked it. Witty repartee, amusing pratfalls and shrewd insights abound. Bruno meets a well-married couple at a celebrity fund-raiser on Maxwell Montes, Venus: "The love, shyness and exasperation between them radiated out in invisible rays, like infrared. Warming." Befuddled by a bottomless beer mug, Bruno warms to the pitch: "Would, ah, would a hundred trillion dollars be enough?" McCarthy's sci-tech extrapolation is exotic, fun and reasonably plausible. He's clearly done his homework -- the book includes 30 pages of appendices, a glossary, technical notes (including the working equations to synthesize neubles), and respectable references. Fun stuff (really!), one of the highlights of the book. The range and depth of McCarthy's imagined technologies are dazzling -- I'm reminded of Drexler's pioneering "Engines of Creation," and I hope McCarthy (or someone) does a speculative-science article on the technological implications, if the zero-point field explanation for gravity turns out to be correct. (If you've seen one, I'd appreciate hearing about it.) Lots more neat SF ideas where these came from.... So I was really pumped, reading the first hundred pages -- cool science, nice Style, nifty characters, a big-screen space-opera storyline. What's not to like? Well, the rest of the book? The first thud comes when Bruno is recalled to the inner system -- to fix the same problem again! Then he has to fix it a *third* time, with even sillier, pulpier results. His scientific competitor, and rival for the Queen's affection, turns out to be a really Horrid Villain.... And the characters are hard to kill, because they have backups, except when they don't -- but wait, maybe they do, after all.... And characters start acting, well, out of character. And there's a pointless, dangling subplot, among other loose ends. I suppose McCarthy intended to write a good old-fashioned super-science melodrama, except with real science -- but the last two-thirds of the book just didn't work, for me anyway. Dammit. Which is a pity, because "Crushed" is brilliant, and the science is so cool. Oh well -- I'd rather read an ambitious failure than a potboiler. If you're already a McCarthy fan, or crave bleeding-edge hard SF, you won't want to miss The Collapsium -- the good parts anyway. And who knows, your tolerance for melodrama may be higher than mine -- other reviewers have been more generous. But if you're new to McCarthy, I'd start with Bloom or another, earlier book -- and you should try him, he's very good. Usually. Maybe next time he should coast a little on the science -- both the Bloom and Collapsium universes have plenty of room for more stories -- and work harder on the fiction. [Published 2000 at SF Site]
Rating:
Summary: Dazzling hard-SF opening fades to melodrama
Review: ______________________________________
Rating: science "A+", fiction "B-" -- a dazzling hard-SF opening fades to melodrama. Worth reading for the opener and the bleeding-edge sci-tech. The Collapsium opens with a wonderful novella,"Once Upon a Matter Crushed" (first published in SF Age 5/99). In the late 25th century, in the eighth decade of the Queendom of Sol, gravitation and the zero-point field are pretty well understood. "Neubles," diamond-clad neutronium spheres, are in everyday use -- a standard industrial neuble masses a billion tonnes, and has a radius of 2.67 cm. Our Hero, superscientist Bruno de Towaji, is experimenting with collapsium, a dangerous, metastable material made of proton-size black holes, when he receives a Royal Summons: the new near-solar collapsiter ring is unstable, and will fall into the sun (and eat it) unless Something is Done.... The book is written in an engaging neo-Victorian style -- McCarthy's first experiment with literary Style, vs. his previous 'transparent' prose. I liked it. Witty repartee, amusing pratfalls and shrewd insights abound. Bruno meets a well-married couple at a celebrity fund-raiser on Maxwell Montes, Venus: "The love, shyness and exasperation between them radiated out in invisible rays, like infrared. Warming." Befuddled by a bottomless beer mug, Bruno warms to the pitch: "Would, ah, would a hundred trillion dollars be enough?" <beat> McCarthy's sci-tech extrapolation is exotic, fun and reasonably plausible. He's clearly done his homework -- the book includes 30 pages of appendices, a glossary, technical notes (including the working equations to synthesize neubles), and respectable references. Fun stuff (really!), one of the highlights of the book. The range and depth of McCarthy's imagined technologies are dazzling -- I'm reminded of Drexler's pioneering "Engines of Creation," and I hope McCarthy (or someone) does a speculative-science article on the technological implications, if the zero-point field explanation for gravity turns out to be correct. (If you've seen one, I'd appreciate hearing about it.) Lots more neat SF ideas where these came from.... So I was really pumped, reading the first hundred pages -- cool science, nice Style, nifty characters, a big-screen space-opera storyline. What's not to like? Well, the rest of the book? The first thud comes when Bruno is recalled to the inner system -- to fix the same problem again! Then he has to fix it a *third* time, with even sillier, pulpier results. His scientific competitor, and rival for the Queen's affection, turns out to be a really Horrid Villain.... And the characters are hard to kill, because they have backups, except when they don't -- but wait, maybe they do, after all.... And characters start acting, well, out of character. And there's a pointless, dangling subplot, among other loose ends. I suppose McCarthy intended to write a good old-fashioned super-science melodrama, except with real science -- but the last two-thirds of the book just didn't work, for me anyway. Dammit. Which is a pity, because "Crushed" is brilliant, and the science is so cool. Oh well -- I'd rather read an ambitious failure than a potboiler. If you're already a McCarthy fan, or crave bleeding-edge hard SF, you won't want to miss The Collapsium -- the good parts anyway. And who knows, your tolerance for melodrama may be higher than mine -- other reviewers have been more generous. But if you're new to McCarthy, I'd start with Bloom or another, earlier book -- and you should try him, he's very good. Usually. Maybe next time he should coast a little on the science -- both the Bloom and Collapsium universes have plenty of room for more stories -- and work harder on the fiction. [Published 2000 at SF Site]
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