Rating: 
Summary: Great space opera
Review: At the beginning of the fourth millennium galaxy trader Nathaniel Freer owns the space ship Tile Dance piloted by artificial intelligence KathKirtt, an essence with two brains. The crew consists of androids and cybernetic beings. On a routine run, the Tile Dance heads to Trencher to pick up cargo that they will next deliver to another planet Eolhxir.
At about the same time, a plague threatens to destroy computer data. The dangerous impact includes those aging humans that reside in outer space rest homes run by companies like Insort Geront, the firm producing the computer chips that causes the plague. Only lenses from Eolhxir can destroy the plague. Freer takes on board ship an Eolhxir native with a lens. Now the Insort Geront targets Freer and company for eradication so that their master plan to control a galaxy can go on unimpeded. Fleeing for his life, Freer meets Johnny Appleseed and others who join with him to stop this nefarious plot from succeeding.
John Clute destroys the myth that them that can't write write reference books. The award winning encyclopedist provides science fiction fans with a strong futuristic tale that never slows down as the audience goes for a hyperspeed journey into various elements of the genre. Nathaniel is a wonderful lead character who wants only to earn a living picking up and delivering cargo and women, but now deals with the galaxy wide conspiracy that has him trapped in the middle. APPLESEED stretches credibility at times, but then again that is the essence of science fiction, as Mr. Clute would know from his encyclopedia days.
Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the time
Review: Clute struggles to create an interesting vision for the future, but his vision is so clouded by his own "language"(I'll bet that he thinks he's being clever) that it takes too much effort to get through to the story. When you finally do figure it out, he has nothing to say... his grand conflict between god and the universe left me completely bored. And what really annoyed me, was that Clute has the gall to describe in the aknowledgements how he used elements from two Borges stories (an author who I greatly enjoy) to create his mess. Don't waste your time with this book - if you want to read some trippy sci-fi, read some Phil Dick.
Rating:
Summary: Stick to reviews John
Review: I agree with Sean. One of the few SF books I have tossed before I got to the end. Glad I didn't buy it. Strip the gibberish and you have a thin story with no character development. Who are these characters? Who cares.
I hate it when SF writers think twisting language around passes for erudition. I want a story I can sink my teeth into and characters I can conceive, not 300 pages I have to work to picture the slightest image.
One of the reviews on the book jacket described it as a "space opera", apt description... this is an opera sung in a language only the author is speaking.
Save your money.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth the effort
Review: I'll agree, Clute borrows heavily from a number of authors in imagining the glactic stage on which Appleseed is set, including Vinge and Banks, as noted, but didn't they draw on those who came before as well? Rich, baroque, and minutely imagined post-human galactic cultures date back at least to Dune and Ringworld, if not long before. What made me enjoy Appleseed so was Clute's insistance on giving the reader a full-immersion introduction to his unique flavor of galactic civilization, painting his picture as he will, and leaving interpretation up to the viewer. So much nicer than endless dull straightahead descriptive paragraphs. In this he reminds me of Gene Wolfe at the height of his powers (the Torturer series), providing us with an alternate universe seemingly imagined down to the most mundane, yet shockingly out-of-the-ordinary, details. I for one will grab the next volume as soon as I see it.
Rating:
Summary: dont waste your time
Review: It is very very rare for me to give up on a novel - especially a hardcover that I paid [money] for, but i gave up on this one. Fifty pages from the end I had no idea what was going on or even which characters were which anymore so I just threw in the towel.
Reading this novel was a pointless excercise in frustration. There are a few interesting ideas in there, but they were buried under so much annoying, meaningless, decorative language that it wasnt worth digging them up. I lost count of how many words the author made up or used in bizarre contexts. I don't consider re-reading every second sentance of a book to try to glean the meaning to be entertainment.
Being obtuse and keeping the reader guessing are well-used literary mechanisms. Authors such as William Gibson and Bruce Sterling have used inventive language and imagery to create impressions of concepts beyond our current day, but Clute's penchant for obscuring meaning makes Gibson's writing style appear clear and open. His habit of refering to his characters by multiple un-related names was incredibly confusing was the final straw in me putting it down with only FIFTY PAGES TO GO.
Rating:
Summary: Luxuriant language conceals a thin story
Review: John Clute is a singular SF critic: he writes with verve and style and with a unashamedly vaste vocabulary. Indeed his unapologetically fertile use of words, his love of language as a sensuous and liquid thing, alienate some who prefer a more direct and uncomplicated approach. His knowledge of the genre is also unmatched, and would be called 'encylopaedic' had he not in fact edited the definitive encyclopaedia in the field.
Given this background one might expect his first SF novel, a dense and intense reimagining of the classic space opera, to be a unique confection, and this it certainly is in these two respects at least.
This book delights in words, it explodes with linguistic pyrotechnics, it exalts in unexpected juxtapositions of the obscure and the mundane, of the arcane and the obscene, it drowns the reader is an almost cloyingly rich thesauric stew. In this sense it is an astonishing book, a novel whose language both makes and mirrors the baroque universe in which it is set. Because the language does work. It is not simply filagree, it is the substance and structure of the book and it does its job: I have never read a more utterly atmospheric and engulfing description of the process of landing on an alien trading world as Clute presents in the first two dozen pages of Appleseed.
Secondly, Clute's vast knowledge of SF enables him to play with tropes, concepts and situations in away that is a delight for the afficianado. There are references everywhere, only some of which are credited in the afterword. There are also some fascinating inventions of his own: the azulejaria tiles which line 'Tile Dance', the ship piloted by the protagonist, Nathanial Freer, and which are simultaneously story and storage; the world of Klavier as a multi-dimensional palimpset, layer upon layer, twist within turn; and the hilarious treatment of human odour and sexuality within a universe where most species find sex offensive and use smell to communicate subtle and complex matters.
But... and this is a big 'but'...
Some of the borrowings are more than references. The central notion of the entropic data 'plaque' infecting the universe, and indeed many of the situations, species, and general 'feel' of Clute's universe, while by no means exactly the same, certainly appear to have a lot in common with Vernor Vinge's 'A Fire upon the Deep', a work that is not mentioned by Clute in his afterword. While I would never go so far as to accuse SF's greatest critic of plagiarism, I would say that Clute certainly owes more of a debt to Vinge, who is neither as culturally-central or as highly-regarded as those whom Clute does namecheck, than he admits. In addition, his 'made-minds', Artifical Intelligences, are also strongly reminiscent of Iain M. Bank's darkly witty and bizarre Culture minds.
Most importantly of all however, the plot and resolution, character development - such as it is possible in a universe where identity is so malleable - and emotional content, are flimsy and ramshackle affairs when stripped of the dense superstructure of description. The lack of connection to what we know of as human emotion is a common and perhaps insoluable problem in any reasonable far future setting - it seems to go with the territory - although Attanasio's Last legends of Earth is a magnificent exception. However Appleseed's lack of substantial 'story' is far less forgiveable.
Still, this book should be read. For all its failings as a tale, stylistically there isn't much like it in SF (or elsewhere), and in many ways it is brave: the outrageous lovechild of a menage a trois between Vernor Vinge, Iain M. Banks and the Oxford English Dictionary, it won't be easily read, but certainly not easily forgotten.
Rating:
Summary: Squibblest dinsk I non pas beau booko
Review: John Clute obviously thinks he's James Joyce or at least Anthony Burgess. Well he's not.
He's melded, sorry, combined a thin plot and a couple of well worn SF ideas (Look Out ! There's a data plague consuming the galaxy. Wow, there were 'ancients' around before mankind). He's then eaten a thesaurus and run around the kindergarten trying to show off.
The result is a boring book which is a chore to read. Half the words in every sentance are arcanely obtuse, the other half are just made up from some dodgy etymological stew pot. And if I can write a sentence like that, I know I don't need Mr Clute to educate me any further.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: John Clute's debut full-length novel is a mind-bending, fast-moving account of ship captain Nathaniel Freer and his inadvertant mission to keep data plaque from taking over known space.
The plot sounds simple, but the beauty of this book is in the stylistic writing that Clute uses to express situations, thoughts, communication, and other aspects of life as it exists in this future. Sci-fi writers are almost never stylistic in their delivery of the story, and it is such a breath of fresh air to read a story that is so unique because of the writing style. Think Frank Herbert meets Tom Robbins meets George Lucas - and that's a start.
The story itself is engaging and moves rapidly. Johnny Appleseed comes to the aid of Nathaniel Freer, and - with the help of several truly alien computer intelligences and other lifeforms - they attempt to undo the data plaque that has taken over many parts of known space.
Greatest of this books strengths is the fact that it is so truly alien. There is almost nothing the reader can relate to, and yet Clute keeps us intrigued through the use of humor, strange stylistic references, and abstract human and alien emotions.
An excellent book.
