- Hardcover: 311 pages
- Publisher: St Martins Pr (April 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0312180748
- ISBN-13: 978-0312180744
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 14.2 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,991,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
WILLIAM GIBSON
'Dark, edgy and inflicted with just the right degree of lyricism'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
INTERZONE
'Disturbing orginality which explodes in your face like a fistful of fireworks.'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Richard Calder's 4th novel is a heady mix of science fiction ideas, exploring the link between image and reality, and extending current fears over the influence of violent media into a dystopian future where children are constantly watched over by censors. The novel is equally divided into three different first person narratives: the first telling the tale of Tarquin and his love for the `ghost' (a sentient media image that has escaped from the mirror Net world Earth 2) of movie star Dahlia Chan; the second telling of a female impersonator called Mosquito who attempts a daring masquerade to aid the lovers cause; and finally the story of the imprisoned Flynn - film-maker of the banned Dahlia Chan movies - as the ghosts of his creation attempt to free him from prison. Cythera is packed with solid SF ideas - from the media ghosts and a Third World Children's Crusade against the West to downloading minds into new bodies being built by Von Neumann machines off Earth - and some dizzying post-modern narrative tricks as the worlds of reality and fantasy combine towards the novels end. There is also a pleasing symmetry running through the book, from one character being a woman living in disguise as a man and another being a male female impersonator to the way the filmmaker and actresses lives are mirrored by their creations, with a remorseless father-figure plaguing both Tarquin and Flynn. Readers familiar with Calder's `Dead Girls/Dead Boys/Dead Things' trilogy will recognise a couple of major supporting characters, but as this is technically a prequel to that series this should work well as a stand-lone novel. By no means an `easy' book when it comes to either concepts or Calder's extravagant use of language, this may well be too bizarre for the more casual science fiction reader, but for those up to the challenge this is staggering, beautiful stuff.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Welcome to the vortex
12 Mar 1999
Format:Hardcover
Lovers of Richard Calder's Dead Boys/Girls/Things will lap up Cythera. A swirling giddy mix of William Gibson and William S Burroughs, Cythera is a veritable vortex of images - Lolita-like doll children, beautiful cyborgs, pirate ships, Antarctican mansions, computers, ghosts. Bubbling up through this fractured narrative are such themes and concepts as childhood's end, violated innocence, uploading, geopolitics, virtual universes, nanotechnology. Not so much a story, running on its rails from start to finish, this is more a kaleidoscope, or better yet, a hologram, meant to be viewed from a multitude of angles (a hologram that has fallen off the mantlepiece and shattered!) Well, I'm kind of old-fashioned, I love stories with a plot I can follow, characters I can relate to. Cythera has its gems, many flashes of sharp and surreal brilliance, but it was rather like watching a firework display that went on too long; reading more than a chapter or so had me reaching for my headache pills (I've given myself a headache now, just from thinking up all those metaphors!)
Cythera
22 Jan 2004
Format:Hardcover
When I initially read this book, I found it somewhat confusing, seemingly a let down from the Dead Girls series. The writing itself may actually be somewhat improved, but the plot seemed difficult or impossible to follow.
I've since re-read it twice more, along with re-reading the Dead Girls series several more times, and I've read Calder's most-recently-available-Stateside book, Frenzetta, twice to boot. Seeing them all again, and next to one another, it becomes more apparent that these books fit together in a larger scheme. With this in mind, a lot of the confusion in Cythera vanishes. There is still some ambiguity to the plot, but with the context of Frenzetta especially, some of the more seemingly inexplicable threads are resolved, for me. The remainder of them work well as deliberate ambiguity. And who knows, perhaps his other novels will provide greater clarity.
I'm looking forward to picking up The Twist, just to see where it fits in, and what clues it leaves. I know it's already been alluded to at least once, in Cythera I believe, at that.
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