Souls in the Great Machine : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Future History
Review: This entertaining book is set in Australia approximately 2 millenia from now. A post-nuclear winter world, Australia resembles a combination of Renaissance Italy and Medieval Spain, only with giant heliographic signalling towers and wind powered railroads. Further technological development is blocked by a number of factors too complex to explain. The leading character, a woman of scientific and political genius, perceives a threat to civilization. Centuries earlier, during human civilization's technological apogee, concern about the greenhouse effect had resulted in the start of a project to develop a sun shield around the Earth. Constructed by self perpetuating automata, the sun shield is nearing completion. Deployment of the sun shield would result in another ice age. The heroine has to find a way to stop this, apparently without use of electricity or even steam power. Her first step is to develop a computer, which she does by use of relays of humans with abaci (a device used in one of Arthur Clarke's stories). From this innovation follows a series of scientific, technological, and political revolutions, delineated well in the course of following the main plot line. This book is written well despite a series of plot lines and a number of characters. An ambitious and enjoyable book.

Rating:
Summary: A Good Start
Review: This is a good story full of great and interesting ideas and a fascinating future world. Yes the characters are driven and rather immoral but then many people in the real world are (politicians for example). I do think however that some of the characters in this novel change their behaviour and loyalties too frequently and without sufficient reason, particularly Lemorel who's conversion from a loyal Librarian to menacing warlord is odd and unconvincing. Ditto for Ilyire who's changes and motivations are very unconvincing and inexplicable.

The story also shows signs of padding - too many characters and too many incidents that could have been omitted without loss. The pressure to produce a BIG trilogy with 600 pp books seems to have resulted in a story that could have been improved by better editing - the story would have been better in 350-400 pages with excess scenes and characters removed. It would have made it easier to follow and held the readers attention better.

I've read a collection of McMullen's short stories - Call to The Edge - where in The Eyes of The Green Lancer he introduces the post-Great Winter world and some of the events and characters he later expanded on in STGM. It's a very good collection by a skilled and interesting writer. I think the main problem with STGM is he tried to expand it into a Big Fat Novel from that short story when he should have been satisfied with just a regular novel (I suspect his publisher is to blame in large part - don't get me started on the vogue for big fat door-stopper multi-volume sagas in SF and Fantasy, suffice it to say they're killing the field and it's time to stop!)

Given all this however it's still a good story set in a fascinating future world and I want to find out what happens next. I'll buy the second volume (Miocene Arrow) and see if McMullen's style settles down by then and he sticks more to the essentials and leaves out the kitchen sink.

Rating:
Summary: Enormous Fun, Especially for Librarians
Review: This is a great book, creating a future society with wit, style, and just a touch of satire. The pomp and ritual of the Dragon Librarians - for whom marksmanship is a prerequesit of advancement - is edge-of-your-seat fun. Highly Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: This is an completely intriguing work of Science Fiction.

Not only is the book immensely entertaining, with its meandering plot, well-crafted characters, and economical prose, it offers a refreshing vision of a "low-tech" future dominated by the most unusual of computers.

Rating:
Summary: Great Character & Culture Development
Review: This post-apocalyptic view of a pre-industrial revolution Australia is presented with memorable characters (although just a few too many to keep up with), a great and intricate plot, and entertaining action. It could use a trifle more action, but we can't have everything can we? It has almost as good of a cultural and religious panorama as was presented in Hebert's Dune, but missing the coherence. Still, it is even worth buying in the hard back edition (and I only do that once a year). [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: What's the Story?
Review: Too many SF writers love to take one or two clever ideas and use thousands of pages of prose to beat them to death. Now we have a book that has at least a dozen clever ideas -- and beats them all to death. And this is just the first in a series!

It's all here: Civilization disrupted by a global "call". Global warming. Nuclear winter. Nanotechnology. Religous dogma as a response to ecological disaster. Dueling as an instrument of social stability. Librarians as a social elite. Librarians re-inventing the computer without access to industrial technology. The econmic infranstructure of passenger-powered railways. Genetically-enhanced cetaceans out for revenge against humanity. Social consequences of dealing with genetically enhanced cetaceans. Humans genetically engineered to resist the "call" of genetically enhanced cetaceans. Social prejudice against said genetically enhanced humans. Even, heaven help us, a revival of the broad-gauge/standard-gauge railway controversy!

The sad thing is that McMullen has the makings of a first-rate SF writer. He's a good storyteller, and has an eye for detail. Alas, he seems to think that detail is the whole point. The story itself simply gets lost. If McMullen concentrated on a reasonable number of premises, and on the fate of a manageable number of characters, he could really amount to something.

Alas again. He has no incentive to do so. Most SF readers have come to view the form as a kind of self-hypnonsis. The more bloated and out-of-control a story is, the better it sells. I predict that McMullen will sell very well.

Rating:
Summary: Minor changes do not make a book!
Review: Tor books and Sean McMullen have edited his original Greatwinter trilogy (VOICES, MIRRORSUN, and CALL) and published it as the hardcover SOULS IN THE GREAT MACHINE. After having bought and read the original trilogy, I paid over twenty dollars for SOULS, then discovered it was the same thing!

TOR, as publisher, is responsible for alerting readers to the fact that this is previously published material. TOR: you won't lose many sales by informing readers of this work's history--you may gain more by being honest.

SOULS is very good, but I've read it already. I want my twenty dollars back.

Rating:
Summary: Fantasic, Memorable, Engrossing
Review: While many critics say Sci Fi authors in general spend too little time on character development, it is clear that in "Souls in the Great Machine," Sean McMullen has spent a great deal of time on fleshing out his characters. I found myself very attached to the motley crew of warriors, librarians, politicians, commoners, harlots and artisans. The story itself is wonderfully crafted, and beautifully executed in a post-apocalyptic Australia, with a blend of modern technology, ancient tradition, honorable duels, giant computer networks powered by human beings, and even a species of man-bird left over from the age of technology, 2000 years before the story begins.

Few authors have been able to accomplish what McMullen has done with the Greatwinter Series - innovate the genre, and produce a fine work of fiction that seems familiar and fantastic at the same time.

Everyone should own this book - and read it!