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]
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