The New York Times Book Review, July 8, 2002
"(a) distinctive blend of lyrical language and over-the-top plotting . . (a) sprawling, ambitious, multifaceted novel."
Publisher's Weekly
"This classic novel of ideas, with state-of-the-art technology as its subject, remains the work of a powerful imagination with a superior command of language."
Product Description
Once the world worked differently - before the Silence from space quieted the airwaves and rendered electronics useless. In a haven called Crescent City, built through the wonders of nanotechnology to transport its enlightened inhabitants into the cosmos, far away from the terrors and chaos of a world gone mad, humanity has failed. One of the original pioneers, Jason Peabody, must now flee in the wake of an assault on the city by pirates. He embarks on a bizarre odyssey across a perilous, unrecognisable outside - a landscape of Western round-ups and tragically 'youngening' children; of plague-ravaged humans in foreboding flower cities; of conscious machines, talking animals and toys that long to be real. And the appearance on Earth of strange illuminations is causing widespread panic and fear, as pilgrims gather in Crescent City seeking answers to the Silence's long-concealed mysteries, responding to the hypnotic light music calling them towards a remarkable destiny in the stars . . .
From the Author
LIGHT MUSIC concludes my Nanotech Quartet in a way that I hope will surprise and delight my readers.
In the several years I worked on it, I studied Brian Greene's wonderful book on superstring theory, THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE, and used a quote from it in the frontspiece of LM: "With the discovery of superstring theory, musical metaphors take on startling reality . . . " I have tried to make that realization live in the characters and events in LIGHT MUSIC. I also used, extensively, the ideas in EO Wilson's CONSILIENCE, Evan Walker's THE PHYSICS OF CONSCIOUSNESS, and Julian Barvour's THE END OF TIME.
After I was finished with the novel, I was invited to contribute to the Journal of Consciousness Studies' forthcoming issue on Literature and Consciousness, so I put all the previous information to good use.
Most of all, I hope that I have written a beautiful, powerful, and entertaining novel.
About the Author
* QUEEN CITY JAZZ was chosen as one of the eight best novels of the year by the New York Times * 'A startlingly original and energetic imagination' Paul McAuley Goonan is one of the rising stars of world SF Regarded as Goonan's best novel yet Mass market edition many months in advance of US mass market
