Book Review | Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel

A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.

Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved—its origins, architects, and purpose unknown. Its carbon dating defies belief; military reports are redacted; theories are floated, then rejected.

But some can never stop searching for answers.

Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top secret team to crack the hand’s code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the provenance of relic. What’s clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unraveling history’s most perplexing discovery—and figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result prove to be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?

***

When the ground beneath her feet disappears for the first time, eleven year old Rose Franklin is excitedly riding her bike around the block in her home town in sleepy South Dakota. Hours later, she wakes up in the clutches of "a giant metal hand" (p.5) with a bit of a headache, but otherwise unharmed.

The military take ownership of the hand almost immediately, and a cover-up of course commences. Once everyone has been sworn to secrecy, the Powers That Be bring the boffins in, but nothing they discover makes any sense. The artifact appears to be something like six thousand years old, which "flies in the face of everything we know about American civilisations." (p.11) It's primarily made of iridium, an immensely dense metal mined from meteorites, mostly—yet the hand is "inexplicably light given its composition." (p.14) Last but not least, the piece came complete with a handful of panels covered in carvings that glow even though they've no light source.

It takes seventeen years for the military to admit that it doesn't have the first clue what to do and hand the hand off to the University of Chicago for further research. Its experts, too, are baffled to begin with—until they bring Rose Franklin in to head up the study.

Now nearing thirty, Rose is a qualified physicist who recognises how unlikely her entanglement with the aforementioned artifact is. "I don't really believe in fate," she says, "but somehow 'small world' doesn't begin to do this justice." (p.12) At pains to prove her history with the hand hasn't clouded her judgment, she approaches it with an open mind:

Generally speaking, people tend not to question what they've been told was true. Scientists are no different; they've just been told a lot more things. As a physicist, it would never occur to me to question the four fundamental forces, for example. I take them for granted, like every other thing I learned, and I try to build on that. We always look forward; never look back. But this thing... it's different. It challenges us. It spits in the face of physics, anthropology, religion. It rewrites history. It dares us to question everything we know about ourselves... about everything. (pp.30-31)

And it's this—Rose's willingness to question everything—that ultimately unpicks the mystery. She becomes convinced that there's more than just a hand out there in the big wide world, and as it transpires, she's quite right.

Book Review | The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts

"I saw the John Carpenter film The Thing for the first time recently. That wasn't one of the VHS tapes they gave us, back then, to watch on the base. For obvious reasons. That's not what it was like for me at all. That doesn't capture it at all. They, or it, or whatever, were not thing-y. They are inhuman. But this is only my dream of them, I think."

Two men, alone together on an Antarctic research base. A killer. A sceptic. Alone for months on end. Separated by what they believe. Joined together by Fermi's Paradox.

Are we, indeed, alone in the Universe? Could it be that we are not alone but that we cannot know it? Could we deal with the horror of either answer?

Crossing the boundaries of time and space, the many threads of The Thing Itself weave both a terrifying adventure and a mind-blowing philosophical conundrum, reaffirming Adam Roberts' unique place in the SF canon.

***

At an Antarctic research station in the 1980s, two men at their end of their respective tethers, alone in this lovely if unlovable land but for one another and a copy of Emmanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, see something that cannot conceivably be:

There was a hint of—I'm going to say, claws, jaws, a clamping something. A maw. Not a tentacle, nothing so defined. Nor was it a darkness. It made a low, thrumming, chiming noise, like a muffled bell sounding underground, ding-ding, ding-ding. But this was not a sound-wave sort of sound. This was not a propagating expanding sphere of agitated air particles. It was a pulse in the mind. It was a shudder of the soul. (pp.25-26)

Sound familiar? Well, it is—for a fraction of a chapter.

Would you be surprised if I were to tell you that The Thing Itself is not—not even nearly—what it appears to be? If you answered yes to that question, I'd be given to guess you've never read an Adam Roberts novel. If you had, you'd know that this is not an author who likes to linger on any one thing for long, so though the first chapter has a handful of callbacks to John Carpenter's tentacular classic, the second is a short travelogue of sorts set in Germany almost a century earlier.

"Let me pick the threads of this story up again, rearrange the letters into a new form," (p.48) the next bit begins—which sentence, I'll confess, had me panicking preemptively at the prospect of a new narrative in every chapter. But although Roberts does repeatedly rewrite the rules of the tale he's telling, The Thing Itself is an easier and more coherent read than it appears.

Which isn't to say it's simple.

Book Review | Something Coming Through by Paul McAuley

The Jackaroo have given humanity 15 worlds and the means to reach them. They're a chance to start over, but they're also littered with ruins and artifacts left by the Jackaroo's previous clients. Miracles that could reverse the damage caused by war, climate change, and rising sea levels. Nightmares that could forever alter humanity—or even destroy it.

Chloe Millar works in London, mapping changes caused by imported scraps of alien technology. When she stumbles across a pair of orphaned kids possessed by an ancient ghost, she must decide whether to help them or to hand them over to the authorities. Authorities who believe that their visions point towards a new kind of danger.

And on one of the Jackaroo's gift-worlds, the murder of a man who has just arrived from Earth leads policeman Vic Gayle to a war between rival gangs over possession of a remote excavation site.

Something is coming through. Something linked to the visions of Chloe's orphans, and Vic Gayle's murder investigation. Something that will challenge the limits of the Jackaroo's benevolence...

***

Spinning off a series of experimental short stories, Something Coming Through marks the actual factual start of what's been called "an extraordinary new project" by Paul McAuley, the award-winning author of The Quiet War novels. As a beginning, it's inordinately promising, largely because the world is so wide and relevant and well-developed, and though the characters are a little lacking, Something Coming Through satisfies as a standalone story too.

Allow me to introduce you to the Jackaroo, an advanced race of aliens whose near-as-dammit divine intervention in human history may well have saved us—from ourselves:

Just before the Jackaroo had made contact [...] every country in the world had been caught up in riots, revolutions and counter-revolutions, civil wars, border wars, water wars, net wars, and plain old-fashioned conflicts, mixed up with climate change and various degrees of financial collapse. All this craziness culminating in a limited nuclear missile exchange and a string of low-yield tactical nukes exploding in capital cities. The Spasm.

The Spasm has a special place in Chloe Millar's heart:

The Trafalgar Square bomb had [...] obliterated a square kilometre of central London, igniting enormous fires and injuring over ten thousand people and killing four thousand. Including Chloe's mother, who had been working at the archives of the National Portrait Gallery—research for a book on Victorian photography—and had vanished in an instant of light brighter and hotter than the surface of the sun. 

Chloe had been twelve when the bomb had exploded her world, had just turned thirteen when the Jackaroo revealed themselves and told everyone in the world that they wanted to help.

The aliens arrived in the nick of time, natch, and their assistance really did make a difference. There are still tensions, yes, and crimes continue to be committed—more on those in a moment—but given free reign over fifteen so-called "gift-worlds" and the technology to travel to them, albeit under strict supervision, people have room to breathe again; space to expand independently; and time to consider a lot of things—not least the lilies.

But why did the Jackaroo come to Earth in the first? What intergalactic game are they playing, and what cost their kindness?

Book Review | The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC. His work introduces him to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter’s teachings—his Bible is their “book of strange new things.” But Peter is rattled when Bea’s letters from home become increasingly desperate: typhoons and earthquakes are devastating whole countries, and governments are crumbling. Bea’s faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter. 

Suddenly, a separation measured by an otherworldly distance, and defined both by one newly discovered world and another in a state of collapse, is threatened by an ever-widening gulf that is much less quantifiable. While Peter is reconciling the needs of his congregation with the desires of his strange employer, Bea is struggling for survival. Their trials lay bare a profound meditation on faith, love tested beyond endurance, and our responsibility to those closest to us.

***

Michel Faber's first novel since The Fire Gospel—a sterling send-up of The Da Vinci Code and its ilk—is a characteristically compelling exploration of faith which takes place "in a foreign solar system, trillions of miles from home," (p.47) on a wasteland planet populated by hooded beings with foetuses for faces.

So far, so science fiction. Factor in first contact, a spot of space travel, and an awful lot of apocalypse, and The Book of Strange New Things seems damn near destined to be speculative. Unfortunately for fans of the form, as the author warns early on, "there was nothing here to do justice to [that] fact." (p.47) Or, if not nothing, then very little aside the superficial.

Even in addition to the aforementioned trappings, honeydewed drinking water and a dizzying day/night cycle do not add up to much more than an unlikely lens through which to look at love: in the first between mere mortals, but above and beyond that, the love—and the love lost—between man and maker.

The Book of Strange New Things is beautiful, albeit brutal. Despairing to a degree, but also bullish about the future. Hope, however, is a fragile thing, as Faber's protagonist preaches at a point:

As fragile as a flower. Its fragility makes it easy to sneer at, by people who see life as a dark and difficult ordeal, people who get angry when something they can't believe in themselves gives comfort to others. They prefer to crush the flower underfoot, as if to say: See how weak this thing is, see how easily it can be destroyed. But, in truth, hope is one of the strongest things in the universe. Empires fall, civilisations vanish into dust, but hope always comes back, pushing up through the ashes, growing from seeds that are invisible and invincible. (p.315)

Indeed, Peter Leigh means to be one of these seeds; to share his hope—the faith that saved him from a life of drug abuse and destitution—with the natives of Oasis. He still struggles to believe the Powers That Be at USIC picked him of all people—him but not his wonderful wife Bea, who did deliver Peter from his dark past—to be an apostle upon another planet; to spread the Good News about God to the "indigenous inhabitants" (p.71) of this unknowable new world.

Book Review | Channel Blue by Jay Martel

Earth used to be Galaxy Entertainment's most lucrative show. The inhabitants of the Western Galaxy — the savviest, richest demographic in the Milky Way — just couldn't get enough of the day-to-day details of the average Earthling's life.

But Channel Blue's ratings are flagging and its producers are planning a spectacular finale. In just three weeks, their TV show will go out with a bang. The trouble is, so will Earth.

Only one man can save our planet from total destruction. And he's hardly a hero...

***

Guys, meet Galaxy Entertainment super-producer Gerald O. Davidoff — God for short — whose work on planet Earth everyone is of course intimately familiar with. God, say hi to the guys.

*pause for cacophonous applause*

What an immense pleasure it is to have you here, back where it all began! But I understand that you're a very busy man — and your visits, I'm aware, are getting rarer by the day — so I'll keep this quick, the better to let you get right back to business. I just have to ask: what's the plan, man? I'm no great creator, of course, but all this anger and violence and hunger and hatred is getting to be a bit much. The long and short of what we all want to know, I suppose, is... what gives, God?

As you all know, I have a strong attachment to this particular world. It was my very first planet and without it I would never have become part of the Galaxy Entertainment family. But no-one can deny that its programming has fallen off quite a bit in the last few seasons, and while I, more than anyone, appreciate the quality shows that have been produced there in the past, I also need to recognise that the storylines have become too bizarre, the cast to unlikeable to sustain the ratings we have come to expect. I think we can all agree that this planet 'jumped the shark' a long time ago. Plus, the resources spent on this single world could be used to develop several planetainments in less expensive solar systems. 

As a result of these considerations, I regrettably feel that the time has come to cancel Earth. (p.2)

Wait, you what?

Book Review | Abaddon's Gate by James S. A. Corey

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For generations, the solar system — Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt — was humanity's great frontier. Until now. The alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has now appeared in Uranus's orbit, where it has built a massive gate that leads to a starless space beyond. 

Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships charged with studying the artifact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding, with Holden's destruction at its core. As the emissaries of the human race try to decide whether the gate is an opportunity or a threat, the greatest danger is the one they brought with them.

***

Having plumbed the depths of the known solar system, explored the various ramifications of the existence of aliens, and exploded a whole bunch of stuff in the interim, James S. A. Corey — a collective pseudonym for co-authors Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham — shows no sign of slowing down in Abaddon's Gate, the third volume of the fantastic Expanse saga.

If anything, this is the best book in the series so far, and it's been a superb series: an accessible, spectacle-heavy space opera with an expanding cast of characters and a massively ambitious narrative. And this time, the depths are even deeper. The ramifications are far grander. And the explosions? There are oh so many more of those.

Abaddon's Gate picks up a couple of months after the events of Caliban's War, with the human race in disarray after the recent crisis on Ganymede:

Between Protogen and Mao-Kwikowski, the order and stability of the solar system had pretty much been dropped in a blender. Eros Station was gone, taken over by an alien technology and crashed into Venus. Ganymede was producing less than a quarter of its previous food output, leaving every population center in the outer planets relying on backup agricultural sources. The Earth-Mars alliance was a kind of quaint memory someone's grandpa might talk about after too much beer. The good old days, before it all went to hell. (pp.22-23)

Times have thus been tough for some. Not, however, for James Holden and the close-knit crew of the salvaged shingle Rocinante. Since cutting ties with the Outer Planets Alliance, he and Naomi — alongside Amos and Alex — have been operating as space-faring freelancers, the upshot of which is they're now ridiculously rich. Their ship has been refitted from bow to stern, upgraded according to a wish list of sweet new weapons and tech; they've gone on an all expenses paid galactic gambling break; and even then, "they still had more money in their general account than they knew what to do with." (p.13)

But money isn't everything, is it? You've got to have a place to lay down a heavy head at the end of the day, a home to harbour your heart, and when Mars initiates legal proceedings in order to take back the Rocinante, the possibility that they could lose everything they've gained of late becomes very real indeed. The only available way through the rising red tape is to take a documentary team out to the Ring, the self-assembled alien artefact around which Abaddon's Gate revolves, and which Holden and his crew had resolved to stay as far away from as possible.

The structure itself was eerie. The surface was a series of twisting ridges that spiraled around its body. At first they appeared uneven, almost messy. The mathematicians, architects, and physicists assured them all that there was a deep regularity there: the height of the ridges in a complex harmony with the width and the spacing between the peaks and valleys. The reports were breathless, finding one layer of complexity after another, the intimations of intention and design all laid bare without any hint of what it all might mean. (pp.136-137)

Before you know it, the Rocinante is leading a shaky coalition of ships from Earth, Mars and the Outer Planets right into the Ring... into one side, and out the other, by way of a strange region of space where the rules of physics and relativity are evidently no more important than notes passed back and forth in class in the past.

Stuck in the so-called Slow Zone with Holden and his, a number of new narrators, including Pastor Anna, an ambassador interested in how the Ring might affect the religion she represents, and Bull, an Earther aligned with the OPA, acting as security chief on the Behemoth, "a marvel of human optimism and engineering [...] with mass accelerators strapped to her side that would do more damage to herself than to an enemy." (pp.52-53)

Most notably, though, we meet Melba, a terrorist:

She had been Clarissa Melpomene Mao. Her family had controlled the fates of cities, colonies, and planets. And now Father sat in an anonymous prison, living out his days in disgrace. Her mother lived in a private compound on Luna slowly medicating herself to death. The siblings — the one that were still alive — had scattered to whatever shelter they could find from the hatred of two worlds. Once, her family's name had been written in starlight and blood, and now they'd been made to seem like villains. They'd been destroyed. 

She could make it right, though. It hadn't been easy, and it wouldn't be now. Some night, the sacrifices felt almost unbearable, but she would do it. She could make them all see the injustice in what James Holden had done to her family. She would expose him. Humiliate him. 

And then she would destroy him. (pp.39-40)

With that, the many pieces of Abaddon's Gate are in place, but as limitlessly ambitious as this book is, the well-oiled machine known as James S. A. Corey makes it all seem simple, somehow. I'd still advise newcomers to start at the start of the saga, but if you have either or both of the previous books in the series behind you, you're as good as guaranteed to have a hell of a time with The Expanse's first-class third act. In fact, looking back, Leviathan's Wake and Caliban's War feel — for all that I enjoyed them — like building blocks, paving the way to this pivotal place in time and space.

The decision to yet again expand The Expanse's cast of characters is slightly off-putting, initially, but the ends almost immediately justify the means: between the calculated physical and political action of Bull's chapters and Pastor Anna's nicely measured perspective on the interorganisational stand-off that informs the bulk of this book, Corey cannily counterbalances the potential problems of a story more focussed on gung-ho, know-it-all Holden — though he too is changed by the end of Abaddon's Gate.

Melba, meanwhile, makes for a neat interweaving of protagonist and antagonist. She does something truly terrible early on, outright rejecting the reader's developing affections at the outset, and falls further and further down the old rabbit hole as Abaddon's Gate goes and goes. The co-authors walk a fine line with respect to Melba, certainly, but they walk it very well. It's almost as if they do this sort of thing for a living!

In any case, these new names and faces bring an array of fresh elements to the table, helping to enliven an otherwise familiar framework. That said, what has become familiar over the course of The Expanse saga remains appealing, if inevitably less than it was once, leaving the story's original elements to steal the spotlight, which they indubitably do.

"The problem with living with miracles was that they made everything seem possible. An alien weapon had been lurking in orbit around Saturn for billions of years. It had eaten thousands of people, hijacking the mechanisms of their bodies for its own ends. It had built a wormhole gate into a kind of haunted sphere. [...] If all that was possible, everything was." (p.223)

Speaking of the story, Abaddon's Gate surprised me — pleasantly, I should stress — by closing out aspects of the overall arc begun in book one. Indeed, Corey answers enough questions that I finished this second sequel feeling like the series could very easily, and very pleasingly, end here.

It won't, of course. Certain doors are literally left open for further adventures in the supersized galaxy of The Expanse — adventures I'll happily have, because Abaddon's Gate is absolutely great. Courageous and audacious, with short chapters, smart characters, and a snappy narrative, it's leaps and bounds bigger and better than the vast majority of space opera.

And the fun is undoubtedly far from done.

***

Abaddon's Gate
by James S. A. Corey

UK & US Publication: June 2013, Orbit

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Book Review | The Recollection by Gareth L. Powell

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When his brother disappears into a bizarre gateway on a London Underground escalator, failed artist Ed Rico and his brother's wife Alice have to put aside their feelings for each other to go and find him. Their quest through the 'arches' will send them hurtling through time, to new and terrifying alien worlds.

Four hundred years in the future, Katherine Abdulov must travel to a remote planet in order to regain the trust of her influential family. The only person standing in her way is her former lover, Victor Luciano, the ruthless employee of a rival trading firm.

Hard choices lie ahead as lives and centuries clash and, in the unforgiving depths of space, an ancient evil stirs... 

***

I've often bemoaned a certain lack in contemporary sf: a confusion, as I see it, of the precedence given to each of science fiction's component parts, namely the science, and the fiction. In the genre today, so far removed from the scientific romances with which it began—stories of love and adventure and discovery with just a whiff of tomorrow's world about them—the tech, nine times out of ten, takes top billing; the science overrides, or undermines, the fiction, obscuring character and narrative in favour of worldbuilding, speculation and so on.

The Recollection is the exception that proves the rule. Gareth L. Powell's second novel to see print—not including The Last Reef, his award-winning short story collection—The Recollection is fiction, first and foremost: good, old fashioned, character-driven fiction, with a neat narrative to boot... and yes, some fascinating science.

As it should be, then. As so rarely it is!

On his blog, Powell relates an encounter he had with an agent when this novel was still just a twinkle in his eye; an agent who advised Powell to give up The Recollection's ghost in order to "concentrate instead on writing something that would give him"—and this is the messed-up part—"a 'hard-on.'" This sort of perspective—not at all uncommon today, I'd add—is anecdotally symptomatic of the very problem I've been banging on about: of how the big ideas modern sf orbits have come to repel rather than attract the plight of the little guys that is at the heart of fiction as the masses understand it. The Recollection is in that sense part of the solution... though I doubt it will result in a great many erections.

Which isn't to say it's simple, or dull. In the first of the two timeframes The Recollection concerns itself with, Ed, a struggling artist, is riddled with guilt over the extra-maritals he's been having with his brother Verne's wife. Verne mightn't know the particulars of Alice's affair, but he has his suspicions, and confronts Ed about them in a cafe. The resulting squabble spills out into the street, then the subway... when out of nowhere, a great, glowing gate phases into existence, sucking poor Verne into the beckoning silence beyond.

This gate is only the first to appear of what soon seems a complex network, sprouting up the world over. "China's closed its borders," Ed explains. "Germany's gone for martial law. Everyone's scared. I even saw some troops on the streets of Hackney yesterday." (p.28) But though Ed and Alice are as terrified as anyone else, anywhere else, they're also plagued by an almighty sense of business unfinished, so when a new gate appears in Alice's back yard, practically, the guilt-ridden lovers pack a bag and venture through it... only to find they can never, ever go back. Only forward; in time, and in space.

Speaking of which, several centuries into the future, the gates are the least of anyone's worries. Humanity has long since inherited the galaxy: more people—many more people—now live off Earth than on, and our species has made friends at least one other. The Dho keep themselves to themselves, mostly, except to stress that, from the deepest, darkest reaches of the void, something is coming... something that will change everything. The Recollection is "darkness and hunger. It is a cancer gnawing at the bones of this galaxy," (p.145) which no-one and nothing can stand against.

Among those with pivotal parts to play in the conflict on the cards, Powell proffers Victor Luciano and Katherine Abdulov, star-cross'd former lovers from powerful rival families each with their own reputation to maintain. Embroiled in a bitter race with one another to the planet Djatt, where a valuable plant which only flowers every hundred years is about to bloom, Victor and Katherine are about to discover that they have unfinished business of their own to attend. That, and The Recollection, which seems to take a particular interest in Katherine.

I came to The Recollection primarily on the advice of Eric Brown, The Guardian's genre fiction reviewer and of course a prolific and much-admired author in his own right. And you know what? If I hadn't known any better—though I did and I do—I'd have believed The Recollection was his doing, too. It put me in mind of Engineman in one moment, and The Kings of Eternity—Brown's strongest novel to date—in the next. The best of both worlds, then.

But never mind me. These are—but of course they are—worlds entirely of Powell's devising. And The Recollection really is a terrific romp: fast-paced, laser-focused, and steadfastly accessible when so many of the genre's foremost proponents seem to have plotted a course in exactly the opposite direction. Bravo, Gareth L. Powell, for going against the grain!

That is not to say The Recollection is without a few minor missteps. In particular, the last act is something of an anti-climax, I'm afraid: resolution is arrived at all too conveniently, both in terms of the characters, who simply put aside their differences and pair off, and in terms of the world, which there seems much more to be said about. Come to that, the whole thing is somewhat on the slight side; more novella than novel.

But I can forgive a good book a great deal, and The Recollection is absolutely that, however modest it may be. More a space ballet than a proper opera, Powell's second is fun, energetic and emotionally very relevant... for it is a tale, above all else, of those things we leave behind. And we are always doing that, are we not? In the erstwhile, resolutely unperturbed as it is by the hard line the genre has for all intents and purposes drawn around itself, The Recollection stands as a sort of bastion of classic sf: gone... but not forgotten.

***

The Recollection

by Gareth L. Powell

UK and US Publication: September 2011, Solaris

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Video Game Review | Resistance 3, dev. Insomniac Games

Once upon a time, Resistance meant something.

In the early years of the PS3, when it looked disturbingly like Sony were yet again fighting an uphill battle, not to mention losing - to the Xbox 360, of course, but also to the Wii, and this when the Wii was at its most potent - Resistance: Fall of Man was a call to arms of sorts. A Halo-killer, they said, with bits of Bioshock in... and who in their right mind wouldn't want that?

Alas, like Killzone before it, and again after it, the first Resistance was crushed under the not-inconsiderable weight of expectations. It was no Halo, no Call of Duty, and assuredly no Bioshock, but for a few text and audio logs your player character - Nathan Hale, a one-man army with a strict sell-by date - could pick up.

For all that, though, Resistance: Fall of Man was alright. It was very much an Insomniac joint: coming as it did from the developers of Ratchet & Clank, it had a neat, arcadey feel to it, a bunch of interesting weapons you could and should switch between on the fly, and a concept (aliens invade) which, if it was a little overfamiliar - and it was - then at least it was a new spin on an old story. The alt-history of the early 50s Insomniac Games' creative team cobbled together was a familiar thing twisted almost beyond recognition. It looked the part, played the part, but its various successes aside, it could never realistically have hoped the part was be any more meaningful than any other understudy's.

With Resistance 2, in 2008, Insomniac only dug in deeper. This was exactly the wrong thing for it to do. Nobody needed yet another wartime shooter, and what had made Resistance: Fall of Man stand out was largely absent its rushed sequel. It was a bigger thing, oh yes, but very far from a better thing. The Resistance franchise was in the end its own worst enemy, stripping its own corpse - how ghastly! - of the very things which had made it distinct... if only ever slightly so.

Colour me utterly bloody beside myself with surprise, then, at what I'm about to say, because Resistance 3 is easily the best Resistance yet. Third time's the charm, right?

It's not hard to see the benefits wrought of the extra year Insomniac took developing this second sequel: in everything from the stunning lighting to the pared-down and markedly more effective narrative, by way of the myriad refinements applied to the twitchy, free-for-all gunplay returning from the original Resistance rather than the more directed experience that (in part) made Resistance 2 such a boob. Resistance 3 is Resistance done right, finally, and the best argument I've seen in recent years for taking whatever time it takes to do something justice, instead of shitting out an installment every holiday season come hell or high water.

Humanity is old news, in Resistance 3. Only a scant fraction of the population has made it through the Chimeran attack initiated in the first game, none unscathed, and the efforts of infected man of action Nathan Hale in the sequel served to quicken the fall of man, rather than stop it. Now even his heroic hardships are of a bygone era, because Nathan Hale is gone: shot dead, in fact, by Corporal Joseph Capelli, which is to say the player character of Resistance the third.

Joseph is one of a few survivors eking out an existence underground in Haven, Oklahoma, where Resistance 3 begins. When their hideaway is inevitably discovered, Joseph's wife Susan begs him to leave her and their son, Jack, in order to go with Dr. Fyodor Malikov to the Chimeran tower atop the ruins of New York, where the scientist believes the wormhole gradually freezing the entire surface of the earth can be closed. Eventually, the former Corporal obliges and sets sail for the Big Apple, but not before Susan has implied that she would pick Jack's safety over Jospeh's any day of the week.

Resistance 3's story allows it a few moments of spectacle, of gargantuan alien grandeur or appalling human horror - best exemplified by a long level that put me in mind of nothing so much as that one time I went to Ravenholm - but by and large the narrative of this finely-honed return to form is a more personal affair than those loosely chronicled in either of its predecessors. And it hits home all the harder for that, imbuing the moment-to-moment experience of Resistance 3 - which is to say left trigger to aim, right trigger to shoot, rinse and repeat... as per the formula of every other shooter, but faster, and more fun for it - with precious import on the small scale as well as the impossibly large.

A darker, more intimate, and ultimately more meaningful sequel to a should have been and a could have been respectively, Resistance 3 simply is, and it is, at last, no longer the least of all the franchises scrapping over the FPS crown. Polished to a sparkling sheen, it is a gorgeous thing bolstered by fundamentally satisfying core mechanics inspired as much by Ratchet & Clank as Call of Duty, and though neither of those series are under any threat from Resistance 3, with this third iteration, Insomniac are finally fighting the good fight.

Shame, then, that if reports are to be believed, this will be the studio's last dalliance with a franchise only now hitting its stride. No doubt Resistance will power on into the next generation, and perhaps beyond, but without Insomniac at the helm, who knows what fate may await the last remnants of humanity? Them, or us.

Book Review: Dead Space Martyr by Brian K. Evenson

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"We have seen the future: a universe cursed with life after death.

"It all started deep beneath the Yucatan peninsula, where an archaeological discovery took us into a new age, bringing us face-to-face with our origins and destiny.

"Michael Altman had a theory no one would hear. It cursed our world for centuries to come.

"This, at last, is his story."

***

There's been a lot of talk about the viability of shared worlds recently. On the one hand, after decades of marginalisation such that print magazines have established an historical tradition of ignoring franchise fiction, tie-ins and brand adaptations have become increasingly visible of late. Much less quote unquote "fringe," I would argue (from, admittedly, my position on the fringes of such fonts of literary criticism). It's difficult to quantify exactly why the tides have turned so dramatically, insofar as perception is notoriously difficult to measure, but they certainly have: for all the proof that particular pudding might have needed, see the winner of this year's David Gemmell Legend award, a Black Library novel by Graham McNeill.

Shared worlds are more viable, commercially if not yet critically, than ever before. In light of McNeill's Warhammer novel triumphing over such supposed genre favourites as Joe Abercrombie, Brandon Sanderson, previous winner Pierre Pevel, and the late, lamented Robert Jordan's last turn on The Wheel of Time, things might be on the up in those terms too. In any event, these days, it's not altogether uncommon to hear of notable authors lending their talents to tie-in fiction, and the candidates range far and wide. Michael Moorcock will write a Doctor Who novel; Neil Gaiman just handed in a script for an episode of the cult British show proper. Renowned sci-fi bestseller Greg Bear has a trilogy based on the Halo video games and indeed the pre-existing fiction to have come from that franchise forthcoming. Then there's Predator: South China Seas, by experimental auteur Jeff VanderMeer, and Dead Space: Martyr, the latest tie-in set to explode the perception of its mode of storytelling as an avenue of hack trash.

And why not? A good story's a good story, right? Given a capable author's hand, that's a truth no genre fan would dare dispute, and Brian Evenson is nothing if not capable. The crossover author has, as B. K. Evenson, dabbled in shared worlds before, with Aliens: No Exit and "Pariah," a short story in last year's Halo anthology. As I understand it, however, he came to fame as a former Mormon whose controversial debut, Altmann's Tongue, rather set the cat among the pigeons among the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Evenson's literary work has since seen comparisons to the likes of Borges, Ballard and Burroughs. His genre fiction, too, has been notable: Last Days took home the ALA/RUSA for Best Horror Novel of 2009, and before even that, The Open Curtain came near enough to the Edgar and the Shirley Jackson. Following in those footsteps, Dead Space: Martyr looked for all intents and purposes like another jewel in the shared worlds crown.

No such luck.

It's not the fiction's fault. All told, the Dead Space lore is rich - scriptwriters including Warren Ellis and Antony Johnston saw to that - if, admittedly, rather derivative. In the original game, space carpenter Isaac found himself the lone hope for humanity on a ship carrying a powerful religious artifact which just so happened to transform men into monsters. Horrifically deformed monsters, rendered from flesh and blood and bone, come to that, and virtually unstoppable. Cue a bunch of creepy spaceship exploration, in which ominous nuggets of the backstory (an effective enough riff on Scientology) were dispensed like collectible Pez, and tonnes of nasty fun in the form of "strategic dismemberment." EA went whole hog with the cross-media promotion, too, with a comic book, an animated movie, an ARG and an underrated on-rails shooter for the Wii in the form of Dead Space: Extraction. Isaac, we came to understand, wasn't really the crux of the overarching Dead Space fiction: it was all about The Marker, a monolith equivalent. And in Dead Space: Martyr, we learn at last how the Marker was discovered... how the spread of Unitology under its fallen messiah Michael Altman came to spell an apocalypse.

It's just a shame the revelations so pivotal to the greater fiction are made with such nonchalance. Evenson has a good story, the means to tell it well, and a shared world more potent than most of the puny excuses for space marines to shoot monsters video games are guilty of purveying. Yet Dead Space: Martyr is a onerous experience. Evenson makes nothing of Altman's pivotal narrative, engages not at all with neither the significance nor the weight of the events he's chosen to recount. Altman's journey from curious scientist to Unitology Godhead feels rote and distant. Those other characters in Dead Space: Martyr are never more than caricatures, and though the action (almost all of which is clumped together in the last quarter) is exciting enough, it too suffers from the sense that Evenson is merely going through the motions. He's played the game, evidently - I'll give the man that: when the Marker finally makes its move, the ensuing horror feels like a blow-by-blow description of similar such scenes in the original game. It's authentic, yes, but stirring? Not at all.

Dead Space: Martyr is a far cry from the worst tie-in literature I've read. Evenson does a credible job of taking us from point A to point B, and the trip's not long, nor, from time to time, without its highlights. Unfortunately, for the larger part, Dead Space: Martyr has little to recommend it. Evenson's well-documented storytelling knack is here in workmanlike form. As shared worlds fiction comes, it could be been - should have been - another home run. In fact, Dead Space: Matyr is unremarkable at best.

***

Dead Space: Martyr

by B. K. Evenson

July 2010, Tor US

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Recommended and Related Reading

Film Review: James Cameron's Avatar

"Despite his broken body, Jake Sully, a former Marine confined to a wheelchair, remains a warrior at heart. He is recruited to travel light years to the human outpost on Pandora, where a corporate consortium is mining a rare mineral that is the key to solving Earth's energy crisis. Because Pandora's atmosphere is toxic, they have created the Avatar Program, in which human "drivers" have their consciousness linked to an avatar, a remotely-controlled biological body that can survive in the lethal air. These avatars are genetically engineered hybrids of human DNA mixed with DNA from the natives of Pandora... the Na'vi.

"Reborn in his avatar form, Jake can walk again. He is given a mission to infiltrate the native alien race, who have become a major obstacle to mining the precious ore. But a beautiful Na'vi female, Neytiri, saves Jake's life, and this changes everything. Jake is taken in by her clan, and learns to become one of them, which involves many tests and adventures. As Jake's relationship with his reluctant teacher Neytiri deepens, he learns to respect the Na'vi way and finally takes his place among them. Soon he will face the ultimate test as he leads them in an epic battle that will decide the fate of an entire world."

***

Well, it took me a month, but The Speculative Scotsman is a difficult sort to tempt into a proper cinema. A 46" series 6 Samsung LCD TV with 5.1 and some massive old speakers see to my particular needs just fine. Sadly, Avatar is not yet available for consumption at home - that is unless a dodgy-quality downloaded cam copy will see to your needs. And readers: you must resist.

If I could only offer you a single piece of advice about this film, it would be to see it on as big a screen as you can feasibly find, and in 3D, while you still can. Then, perhaps, you might like to see it again. More than a decade in the offing, Avatar represents an experience that will not easily be matched in the next ten years - and not in terms of its undeniable aesthetic splendour alone.

The time Cameron and his team have taken to dream up the Na'vi and their planet Pandora has absolutely paid off. Never in my life have I seen a world and a people other than our own realised so spectacularly. From the wonderful interplay of Pandora's ecosystem to more practical concerns such as power and transportation, it seems that every last detail of this fantasy to end all fantasies has been plotted out in some epic story bible.