The Klavier Station has been silently ambling through the empty sectors of the galaxy for longer than anyone can remember. If it hides a mystery, it is well concealed. Nathaniel Freer, a trader en route with a cargo of dedicated nano-robots, knows that he has been manoeuvred into stopping for repairs on Klavier having survived what was made to look like a botched attempt at piracy. And once there, he gradually begins to understand why. For his cargo is destined for a recently colonized planet whose only export promises to revolutionise data-processing. That export has a remarkable, ancient connection, with Klavier. And if it's reawakened, the universe will become a very different place. Fast-paced hard SF at its best, APPLESEED is a fireworks display of storytelling. More information on this book and others can be found on the Orbit website at www.orbitbooks.co.uk
Appleseed
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Amazon Review
Post-modern to the nth degree, fermenting genre references and massive conceptual detail into data overload, Appleseed reconfigures the distant future through a century of science-fictional preconceptions and techo-pagan fantasy. Throwing the Stinky Meat Brain reader into a spaced-opera populated by exceptionally alien ETs, where not just the technology but the biology is future-shockingly outré where an AI interfaced humanity has been reduced to a nihilistic vulgar hedonism, Appleseed is a phantasmasgoriacal tuned-in, switched-on, tripped-out and hung-over epic in the spirit of the 60s brave New Worlds of New Wave SF; imagine Aldiss, Delany and Moorcock rewriting The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels as forensically graphic anti-erotic hard(core) SF.
In wired prose, Clute even dissects the online zeitgeist
Most of the data streams displayed the Insort Geront logo, the fiery three-snake caduceus, the marque of the vastest of the godzillas--an ancient Human Earth term for any corporation, whether snail or trad dot.com or seeded nous cube, which having gone rogue was no longer subject to the rule of law of any individual state or planet or systemWhether this is pretentious adolescent obscenity, a synaesthetic masterpiece which redefines the genre, or a honker of a shaggy dog story is a debate primed to run for years.--Gary S. Dalkin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'A triumph ... surely the most original and one of the most entertaining novels of the year ... goes beyond most space opera in stylistic inventiveness, wit and sheer joie de vivre' TLS 'intoxicating...remarkable' NEIL GAIMAN 'Exuberant, witty, sexy, satirical...every word is a special effects firecracker' STEPHEN BAXTER 'A glorious explosion of language and thought' JOE HALDEMAN 'A comprehensive re-imagining of space opera - not to say space - for the 21st century' M.JOHN HARRISON
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
...and you will be rewarded. Personally I agree with some of the -ve reviews given here, in that the plot can be confusing at times. However, this seems to be a trait of Clute's work, having read some of his short stories published in Interzone (among others) and, if you ignore the plot and just read, it does not detract at all from the book as a whole.
I had similar problems with plot in my younger years reading Moorcock's Cornelius books, where numerous characters would come and go in different guises, and the stories, if there were any, were non-linear. So, if you don't like the style, then you'll probably never like this book, or any of John Clute's work for that matter.
But if you just let the language, the ideas and the absurd, but ultimate rightness, in the tale wash over you, then you will be rewarded by an engrossing and fascinating, if strange, read.
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
The concept, brilliant, the writing style tedious. The 'Glorious explosion of language and thought' I was told it was on the cover turned out to be long winded rambling and I was completely and thoroughly bored by this book by the time I got half way through chapter two. I did persevere, since I paid good money for the book but frankly it was a bit of a waste of time. As an avid reader of anything science fiction, I have read hundreds of books good and bad, and I hate to say this about anyones work, but this has to be one of the worst. It could have been so good. The idea was there, but the actual storytelling sucked for want of a better expression. Sorry but I would give this one a wide berth unless you suffer from insomnia and then it will probably work better than a sleeping pill!
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
Mr. Clute was so worried about showing off his gigantic vocabulary and his own shiny, all singing, all dancing, invented lexicon that he forgot to make the story any good.
A good idea buried under a mountain of incomprehensible language that leaves the reader largely guessing what's happening in the 'real' world, as so much of the main protagonist's time is spent literally living in the abstract.
A shame - had this been written in a more accessible style, it could have been a winner.
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
First of all, this book is not even remotely 'techno-pagan'. It's a complex space opera in a simultaenously expanding and dying, multi species universe and for once 'opera' isn't a euphemism. While Clute's braids are practical devices for the confining of the unutterably smelly and over-sexed human beings, they are also metaphors for the solo voice, increasingly augmented by companions, by the unfolding of personalities, by enemies and by the merely curious until the full beauty of the ensemble is heard. The novel opens out gradually, dazzling with its language and use of metaphor, from the commission gone wrong to the universe defying battle. The aliens are some of the strangest and most convincing I have ever met while the humans force the reader to question what human is.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Too much noise. Not enough signal. Some of the concepts where OK. He buried its mediocrity under a difficult style.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I loved this book. Like Anthony Burgess (Clockwork Orange) and Jack Womack (e.g. Ambient) Clute has developed his own linguistic trope. I found it almost like reading poetry but I can understand that some people find it hard going. That I suppose is the problem with this kind of book, its great, but you do have to work at it a bit. Then again you could say the same about reading shakespeare or indeed chaucer.
I just hope he writes another.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read this through in a couple of days and at the end of it I had very little idea as to what the story was actually about. Flowery, 'arty' language it may be, it only serves to confuse. Lose your concentration for a second and you'll be completely lost. I tried reading this for a second time to see If I could follow it and still I lost track of what was happening very early on. Maybe people with genius level IQs can follow the story, but I'm fairly confident in the premise that us mere 'casual' sf fans will remain forever flummoxed.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Foureyes
Format:Paperback
What a pity Clute spoilt this story by showing us how many weird and wonderful words he knows that many of us have never seen before. Pare away the verbosity of his work and underneath lies a very good story. However, have a dictionary handy beacuse you'll need one. Why use two words when you can use twenty? Oh my eyes, my eyes!
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