- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Legend; New edition edition (7 Aug 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099559013
- ISBN-13: 978-0099559016
- Product Dimensions: 19 x 11.8 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,214,765 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Stone Canal
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
This man's going to be a major writer (Iain M. Banks )
Plenty of clever surprises... a compelling read (STARBURST )
MacLeod's ideas are always interesting and his descriptive prose is elegant, deceptively simple and extremely vivid (SFX )
MacLeod's offbeat imagination and witty narrative make this a rewarding read (NEW SCIENTIST ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Plenty of clever surprises... a compelling read (STARBURST )
MacLeod's ideas are always interesting and his descriptive prose is elegant, deceptively simple and extremely vivid (SFX )
MacLeod's offbeat imagination and witty narrative make this a rewarding read (NEW SCIENTIST ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Book Description
The acclaimed second novel in the Fall Revolution sequence.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I've just finished re-reading this novel and no, I was right, this is one of the best books I've read for ages.
This is a brilliant mixture of political philosophy, nanotechnology, people-as-software and a dozen other superb ideas.
This was the first of Ken MacLeod's books that I read and is much stronger than any of his others.
Highly recommended.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Stone Canal has a far wider scope than MacLeod's debut, The Star Fraction. There are two threads to the novel, set centuries and light-years apart; in one thread, MacLeod expands on Star Fraction's vision of the near future, tracking an uneasy friendship from Edinburgh University in the 1970s to the end of the characters' lives towards the end of the 21st century. The second thread, set on a distant planet some centuries into the future, sees these two characters resurrected in the form of clones. New Mars is not in our solar system and eighty percent of its inhabitants are sentient machines - a very different environment from turn-of-the-century London, and this uneasy friendship therefore takes on a very different form...
I found this novel a great improvement over Star Fraction - MacLeod's writing skills have certainly developed, and the human characters are rendered in a far more realistic manner (I found Moh Kohn, the main character in Star Fraction, to be little more than a communist Case). The juxtaposition of the modern-day storyline with the far future is most effective, though if you aren't interested in the politics of the future you may find the novel a little tedious. I myself find MacLeod's politics fascinating, and his exploration of how advanced technology, electronic intelligence and space colonisation will affect the political climate of the 21st century is far more authentic than many other authors who deal with the same themes (ie John Barnes, Neal Stephenson etc). Unfortunately MacLeod hasn't yet learned how to seriously grip a reader in the same way as his friend Mr I M Banks, but it would be unfair to expect that much of him. MacLeod's work stands on its own two feet, and very effectively at that!
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Macleod's second novel (not his debut!) is an interesting, if flawed work. Spanning time from the 1970's to some indefinite point in the far future, it follows the life of Jonathan Wilde, an incidental character from the "Star Fraction" through the revolutions, wars, and turmoils that formed the historical backdrop to that novel. Like "The Sky Ships" it also starts with the same group of seventies students in a Glasgow pub discussing anarchism. It ends with a bridge into the "Cassini Division", and as such is the real link between Macleod's first and later novels.
Wilde is a character reminiscent of Abelard Lindsey in Bruce Sterling's "Schismatrix". Like Lindsey he survives through political and social upheaval, inadvertently influencing many followers who come to view him as a libertarian anarchist messiah. However, there the resemblance stops. Where Sterling's novel is a complex analysis of a bewildering array of metaphysical concepts, with a cosmological climax, "The Stone Canal" is more prosaic and parochial, but none the worse for that.
There are some sophisticated political and scientific ideas being bandied around - from free market anarchism al la extreme Thatchersim, worker's stateism and British Republicanism, to wormholes, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. Cyberpunk with a very British feel. However, the novel falls apart when what appears to be the main narrative falls by the wayside to Wilde's reminiscences of his life, and leaving the characters that were emerging as central to play only a minor role in an apparently rushed dénouement.
That said, MacLeod is a very promising author - this book has masses of ideas, almost casually dropped in as asides, which lesser authors would have made the basis of a whole novel! In this way he is much like Iain Banks, but he lacks his old friend's characterisation skills, and dark plotlines. However, he plays with social and technological idea in way that Banks never could - one can only wonder what kind of novel they could write if they came together! In time I would not be surprised to see MacLeod become a major SF writer.
All in all an interesting novel, and an essential read to anyone who has enjoyed his other novels (although I would heartily recommend reading them in the order in which they were written if you ever hope to make sense of it all! ).
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The Stone Canal
Well thought out and written, not his best but worth reading if you are into near future scifi
Published on 22 Nov 2009 by P. J. Frost
Good 2nd half of the book, tedious start
I bought this book based on the recommendations here.
Not sure if its the same book - iy takes forever (1/2 the book) to get a decent story going and the Sci-Fi is... Read more
Not sure if its the same book - iy takes forever (1/2 the book) to get a decent story going and the Sci-Fi is... Read more
Published on 15 Nov 2009 by CjW
Slick
The Stone Canal is a very crisply written novel about life on, and life before, the planet New Mars, which is in a system some distance from Earth. Read more
Published on 5 Mar 2004 by Tom Douglas
Sociology not Politics
After a couple of times through the Fall Revolution cycle I finally realised that Macleod isn't really a radical left winger. At least not in any traditional sense. Read more
Published on 18 Feb 2004 by Russell
Ideas and Ideology
This is the second MacLeod book I've read, and once again he impresses me with his breadth of concepts, original ideas, depth of political insight, and rigorous plotting. Read more
Published on 29 Oct 2003 by Patrick Shepherd
A Cyberpunk/Sci-Fi creation story of a creation story etc...
Best Scifi/cyberpunk book i've read since Neuromancer .In this book the Author has combined many popular theories for creation and technology such as exotic theories in physics and... Read more
Published on 3 Oct 2003 by James Pocock
an interesting, if flawed work
Macleod's second novel (not his debut!) is an interesting, if flawed work. Spanning time from the 1970's to some indefinite point in the far future, it follows the life of Jonathan... Read more
Published on 18 July 2000 by Steven Fouch
A cracker if you like authors like Iain M Banks
Non-stop from 20th century left-wing politics all the way through to wormholes and such.
Published on 25 Mar 2000
A bit lopsided but still way ahead of the pack
There are really two novels here -- one a gritty, futuristic picaresque straight out of the Bruce Sterling tradition (part "Schismatrix", part "Taklamakan"),... Read more
Published on 28 Oct 1999 by David Moles
Politics, Space and Civil War - a true space opera
In Stone Canal Ken MacLeod again returns to his future vision of England. A awespiring book which combines the best features of science fiction: robots, gadgets, hope, despair... Read more
Published on 24 Mar 1999
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