- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Gollancz; New edition edition (5 Aug 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0752808869
- ISBN-13: 978-0752808864
- Product Dimensions: 17.5 x 10.9 x 3.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,238,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
The author of A Million Open Doors (1992) here spins a near-future global catastrophe yarn. By 2028, the worldwide fiber-optic network has become infested with "datarodents," intelligent independent programs designed to capture information and report back to their owners. "XV," a you-are-there, full-sensory-input system, has replaced TV, and the UN has become the world's principal mover and shaker. However, one particular peacekeeping action, a preemptive nuclear strike against some arctic submarine bases built by fractious Siberians, results in the release of vast quantities of methane gas into the atmosphere. The consequent rapid increase in global warming causes gigantic hurricanes, climatic shifts, crop failures, flooding of low-lying areas, and massive human displacement. Barnes develops and explores his disaster scenario and its eventual resolution from a wide variety of viewpoints, including those of President "Grandma" Brittany Lynn and her advisers, researcher Diogenes Callere, computer whiz Carla Tynan and her astronaut husband Louie, and patent-hoarder/money-spinner John Klieg. Astonishing speculations combined with brilliant extrapolations. But the present-tense narrative kills off all sense of drama, and the whole impressive enterprise weighs a ton and a half. (Kirkus Reviews)
Product Description
Hurricanes draw all their energy from the top ten metres of the ocean. If the water is 27 degrees celsius or above, the hurricane will grow. This is what happens in the 21st century, where global warming reaches its full potential. By the author of "Lucifer's Hammer".
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Addictive Apocalypse,
By Rod Williams (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mother Of Storms (Paperback)
Barnes is not one of those authors who finds a particular niche within the genre and fills it with novels of a similar style and content. His work includes the Galactic Human Society of `A Million Open Doors' and `Earth Made of Glass', the parallel universes of `Finity' and here, a near-future disaster novel in which a small nuclear explosion in the Arctic releases a huge amount of methane trapped in the polar ice.
The consequence of this is that Hurricanes, of a size and ferocity never before seen, begin to form and head off to terrorise the world. The background to Barnes' novel is just as fascinating as he has created a near-future world in which the US is no longer a superpower, the dominant force being the UN. Europe appears to have devolved into some kind of Nazi Federation which has exiled `Afropeans' - European black people - to the rest of the world, but mainly America. The popular form of entertainment which has supplanted `flat' TV is XV, a form of direct sensory experience recorded on wedges. The action follows various groups of people who are all connected in some way. Di Callare is a meteorological specialist who becomes a government advisor when the crisis erupts. His young brother Jesse gets caught up in the turmoil in Mexico where he meets a vacationing XV porn star, Synthi Venture. Berlina Jamieson, an exiled Afropean, suddenly finds a market for her retro `flat' style of news reporting. Out in space, Louie Tynan, an American astronaut, is commandeered to report on the hurricanes from his unique vantage point and finds himself infected with a nanovirus which begins to `improve' him, following which he starts to evolve in unexpected and intriguing ways. The unfortunately named Randy Householder is the distraught father of a teenage girl who was raped and murdered in order to make a snuff XV recording. Randy is determined to find the man who commissioned the recording and discovers that his investigations are taking him rather high up the political ladder. This is then, no mere disaster novel. In fact, the sequences where the monster hurricanes destroy cities and countries are not that frequent, but are brilliantly, thrillingly written and conceived. Barnes employs the disaster to bring the various story threads together quite convincingly and one never thinks, as is the case with lesser authors, that the coincidences and connections between the characters are too improbable. Like the hurricane itself, `Mother of Storms' begins slowly and gathers pace to finally rattle along breathlessly to its conclusion. Arguably the best Barnes novel to date.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very patchy and rather boring - one for the bin,
By A Customer
This review is from: Mother Of Storms (Paperback)
I like apocalyptic sf and was looking forward to reading 'Mother of Storms'. But I was rapidly disappointed, having persevered for a while to see if things would get better, I gave up half way through. I did wonder if the author liked any of his characters, because they all seemed shallow and/or irritating to me. His attempts at graphic sex and violence were cack-handed. The plotting seemed makeshift and obvious. It lacked even the redeeming grace of being an easy read; the frequent scene shifts and lacklustre descriptions were tedious - never has a global catastrophe seemed so boring!! My advice would be to read something else; there are plenty of other candidates in this genre, and the chances are a random pick would be better than this effort.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A graphic vision of futuristic apocolypse,
By A Customer
This review is from: Mother Of Storms (Paperback)
This book is set in a futuristic world where sex of any description is to be had directly inside your own brain by linking into the net. Graphic accounts of deathporn, riots, and voyeuristic fetishes gradually draw in the threads of the main characters, set against a backdrop of a terrifying climatic disaster - hurricane. As the sheer scale and ferocity of the winds gather pace, the individual stories each come to their own final, sometimes bizzarre, denouement. Almost incidental detail of death and disaster elsewhere add graphic intensity to the story, which is horrifying, funny, sad and distressing by turns. Upon first reading, the ending seems a bit of a cop-out after so much frantic life-and-death action, but in its own way it works. Characterisation is a touch patchy, but the major protagonists are mostly believable, each with their own particular human failings. All in all, well worth a read, and keeps the interest to the final page.
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