- Hardcover: 384 pages
- Publisher: Orbit; First Edition edition (4 Mar 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1841491756
- ISBN-13: 978-1841491752
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 805,684 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
SFX on NEWTON'S WAKE
'Read the book. Then read it again. It's even better the second time'
Iain M Banks on Ken Macleod
'Stunningly assured, inventive and intelligent'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Threads, Poor Cloth,
This review is from: Newton's Wake (Hardcover)
Although crammed with fascinating ideas and livened by moments of humour and irony, Newton's Wake disappointed me. It is by far the weakest of his stories so far. Why? It's hard to put a finger on it. Perhaps it's because the events are episodic and disconnected in time and place. Scenes of conflict and war bubble up with little preparation or justification, seemingly just to provide some action. Perhaps it is because few characters are developed beyond charicature (Winters and Calder, the folk singers, and Higgens being notable exceptions). Perhaps it is because the societies and systems of the future are quite 'cartoon'-like. The story is also strangely lacking in visual texture and description - my overriding impression is of drab and barren moorland.Probably, it is a combination of all of these elements, meaning that Newton's Wake is an interesting essay, and very entertaining in episodes, but fails as a story. Still, that being said, it's better than 90% of the junk of the science fiction shelves at the moment, which fail in every way.
18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Law of diminishing returns,
By Famousdog (Bradford, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Newton's Wake (Paperback)
Oh Ken, Ken, Ken... Your early work promised so much. You created a uniquely British, nay Scottish, politically-informed cyberpunk. I learnt more about anarchist history and ideals from reading The Star Fraction, The Stone Canal and The Cassini Division than I have before or since... You created a beautiful, diverse, realistic, Balkanised future as an antidote for the monolithic uniform utopias of Star Trek. And then you wrote The Sky Road, which was... okay. And then you wrote Cosmonaut Keep, which was actually (and i whisper it almost inaudibly) not very good. So not very good that i didn't bother getting either of the follow ups. Then you wrote Newton's Wake and i thought, Aha, a New Start (snigger). Lets give this one a go... Gah. What happened? In the early days your puns were endearing, your chapter titles revolutionary (snigger) your programming in-jokes laugh-out-loud funny. No more. Newton's Wake simply annoyed me. The characters were annoying. The obscure plot was annoying. The sodding gags were annoying. I thought you couldn't get more daft than pot-smoking aliens. You did. Bad show.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Flimsy,
This review is from: Newton's Wake (Paperback)
I brought this after being pleasantly surprised by 'Learning the World' from the same author. I wish I'd read these reviews first! MacLeod introduces and occasionally even develops some nice ideas and concepts, but never really follows through. In some respect it's rather reminiscent of Charles Stross's works, being built around the ideas and aftermath of a singularity, and is just as incomprehensible. The use of pseudo-glaswegian dialect doesn't really help, either - it's easily read, but pointless complication. After a promising start, it seems as though the author has suddenly realised he's going to go over his page limit, and from then on, everything feels rushed and compressed, or at very least lost and looking for the punchline.
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