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The Quiet War (Gollancz) Paperback – 10 Sep 2009

by Paul McAuley (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars 31 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Paperback: 448 pages
  • Publisher: Gollancz (10 Sept. 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0575083557
  • ISBN-13: 978-0575083554
  • Product Dimensions: 12.6 x 2.8 x 19.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 384,401 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

the fascinating inventiveness of the bio-engineered life-forms, the intricate detail of both the societies and habitats, the complex characters all amounted to a fabulous story. This is a book that has been carefully thought out and the author displays a wealth of knowledge on subjects such as bio-remediation and terraforming. It's a tale well worth taking the time to get into and enjoying McCauley's vision of the future. (SF CROWSNEST)

An impressively realised tale of competing ideologies that tackles pertinent questions. This is big, clever science fiction. (BBC FOCUS)

The author creates a magnificent sense of gravitas and wonder as he describes conflict. The ideas expounded are genuinely fascinating and well thought out. The stage is set for war and it is beautifully handled. (SCI FI NOW)

Few writers conjure futures as convincingly as McAuley: his latest novel deftly combines bold characterisation, a thorough understanding of political complexity, and excellent science. (Eric Brown THE GUARDIAN)

The Quiet War is a cleverly plotted book, laced with compelling science, and McAuley's scientific background shines through. (BOOKGEEK.CO.UK)

It's a complex, multilayered novel, almost an SF version of 'Bleak House' or 'Bonfire of the Vanities'. It's packed with great characters, breathtaking set pieces and intriguing SF ideas. (Dave Golder SFX)

Paul McAuley's new space epic finds him deep in Ken MacLeod territory. McAuley depicts his future plausibly. (PRESS ASSOCIATON)

"With restrained brilliance, McAuley takes that hardy SF perennial, the interplanetary war, and shows us how one might actually develop. This novel shows off many of McAuley's strengths - his solid plotting, his command of scientific theory, his sense of the complex moral and political implications of each advance." (Matt Bielby DEATHRAY)

Combines the damn-the-torpedoes, full speed ahead narrative impetus of a Peter F Hamilton, with the detailed, even meticulous attention to world-building and character development that distinguished Kim Stanley Robinson's classic Mars sequence. McAuley has always been a stylish writer, but he outdoes himself here. The Quiet War marks Paul McAuley's triumphant return to full-bore space opera. (Paul Witcover LOCUS) --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Book Description

This exotic, fast-paced space opera turns on a single question: who decides what it means to be human?

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsIntelligent, entertaining and serious SF
By Boydetective on 18 May 2009
Format: Paperback
McAuley returns to the harder end of the SF range with this expansive and complex novel. The story unfolds on a big scale - it offers heady thrills and exciting set pieces - but as ever with McAuley the real success of the book is down to the powerful and precise characterizations. Stories live or die with how much you care about characters, and the people here, for all their posthuman wonders, are utterly believable and true. Few writers succeed at the macro and micro as well as McAuley. His best novel since White Devils and his best pure SF book since Fairyland.
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5.0 out of 5 starsSuperb science fiction novel, does everything right
By A. J. Poulter on 29 Oct. 2009
Format: Paperback
There is not much to say about this novel, not because it is bad but because it is extremely good. In fact there is nothing to find fault with. The setting is the solar system, after Earth has been devastated by global warming, and is beginning to rebuild, while thriving colonies have been established on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter.

All sounds idyllic but it is not. Earlier, colonists from the Moon fled to Jupiter and Saturn after the colony on Mars was nuked by China. Earth is now controlled by three power blocs, Greater Brazil, the European Union and the Pacific Community. All are run by powerful families who squabble behind the scenes. The poor live in overcrowded cities, denied access to the regenerating countryside. Science is fostered, but mainly to create weapons, sometimes involving brutal biological and psychological re-structuring of people.

In stark contrast, the descendants of the Moon colonists, known as the Outers, live in free communities, run by continuous e-ballots. They delve into the physical and biological sciences, especially genetic engineering, to improve their technologies and bodies and to spread new forms of life by creating new ecosystems on previously sterile moons. The 'Quiet War', a low-intensity conflict with little all out fighting, deliberately engineered by factions in Greater Brazil, breaks out after a reconciliation mission to build an Earth-like habitat on Callisto is sabotaged.

On one hand the novel succeeds as a classic space opera, with a militaristic regime trying to control freedom-loving individualists. There is plenty of action, from a ground assault on a domed city to balletic space battles, using clever weapons and some effective 'dumb' ones, like asteroids used as missiles. Heinlein would be proud.Read more ›
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3.0 out of 5 starsOvertaken by events
By Mr. R. Lamont Abrams on 29 Mar. 2014
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
It's hard for SF writers to pitch it just right. Some technologies seem to come out of nowhere and turn everything upside down in an instant.
Autonomous fighting drones will be with us very soon and so rendered a third of the plot irrelevant. The notion of piloted fighters seemed quaint.
Apart from that I couldn't engage with the characters. None of them really came off the page.
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2.0 out of 5 stars"Quiet" is a very appropriate word
By thed0dgydancer on 17 Oct. 2013
Format: Paperback
I really wanted to enjoy this book, especially when people cited it as excellent classic sci-fi. However, it was so painfully slow. There are paragraphs - nay, pages - of waffling, pseudo-scientific guff that amounted to nothing, informed me of nothing, and really spoiled the flow when characters were interacting. I have to confess before I expand, I didn't finish the book. I couldn't. I got to part 2, reached chapter 2, and gave up. It's something quite a few science-fiction writers suffer from; it's almost patronising. They learn all this science and then implement it into the story as if they're trying to show off how much they know and if you can't follow you're not as smart as me. Perhaps that's not their intention but sometimes that's how it feels. Yes I know it's SCIENCE-fiction, but we want the science to exist to serve the story not restrict it. Also, I'm not really fond of politics in science-fiction, since it's so overdone and easy to write but somehow manages to masquerade as intelligent literature. If you want to read this book, don't be afraid to skip as many useless paragraphs as you like. It seems the author wanted to make the book as big as possible.
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4.0 out of 5 starsClassic hard science fiction
By Jo Brookes on 5 Aug. 2013
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
An excellent dystopian science fiction novel. It is set in a future where the earth has been devastated by global warming & subsequent social & political upheavals, many humans have left earth to settle on the outer planets & moons of the solar system. These two principle groupings; the Outers and the Earth are on a collision course. The underpinning science is genetic manipulation but this is only superficially explained and serves really as a backdrop and theme to ponder on rather than a detailed exploration of the pros & cons. Of course (as is always the case with good science fiction) the political game playing reflects 21st century pseudo-democracy and political spin. The characterisation is patchy - some are reasonably fully formed but some are a little thin and underdeveloped although this is probably to be expected given the large cast of characters. There are some set piece chase & battle scenes that are quite effective and overall it reminded me of classic science fiction of the 60s / 70s.
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4.0 out of 5 starsBehind Science Fiction's Iron Curtain
By Niall Alexander on 27 Oct. 2010
Format: Paperback
Let me tell you a story.

In the far-flung future, humanity has spread across the stars. Earth has very probably gone the way of the dodo: if it exists at all, it's a smoldering mess of a planet, barren, stricken, utterly bereft of life or the prospect thereof. We past generations have had our wicked, heathen way with the world, leaving our by-all-accounts more evolved descendants no choice but to venture further afield in order to survive. People have colonised distant planets, moons, built interstellar cruisers, fleets of space-liners. They have gone on.

But resources have become dangerously scarce. Despite centuries of peace, humanity has fallen back on fears it had thought long forgotten. Tensions are at an all-time high; factions squabble with one another; politicians bicker pointlessly. And then someone, somewhere, starts a fight. Like a rash of pimples, war breaks out.

Stop me if you've heard this one before, why don't you!

Evidently, Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author Paul McAuley has. The Quiet War - part the first of a duology concluded in this year's Gardens of the Sun - is smart, self-aware sci-fi from an author who's learned his lesson. It's a novel which takes as its refreshing core tenet not another interminable iteration of the same old space battles we've been reading about for decades - dare I say centuries - but the build-up to boiling point. McAuley's business in The Quiet War is the slow burn which leads to the titular conflict rather than the fast thrash of so much science fiction.

In Professor Doctor Sri-Hong Owen and "the traitor" Macy Minnot, McAuley offers up a pair of narrative chaperones - one on either side of the ever-escalating crisis.Read more ›
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