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ansatecross's review
4.0
Still an excellent and challenging read. These days I wish there had been less exposition at the end; less telling, more showing. But it's still an amazing work, and I'm so sad this was zir only book.
ninj's review
4.0
Fascinating 110% cyberpunk future, partly Gibsonesque in its obtuse descriptive scenes, and partly early Neal Stephenson in its clashing non-tech tangents. There's a large part of me that's "I'm not too sure..." but there were some way cool pause-and-put-the-book-down-for-the-next-day scenes when things really escalated.
A great book where the first half really throws you right in.
A great book where the first half really throws you right in.
redscrawl's review against another edition
challenging
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
ginnikin's review against another edition
4.0
I remember a movie review that went something like "you walk away feeling not as if the film failed you but as if you failed it." That's kind of how I feel about this book full of philosophy and cyberpunk and resistance and did I mention philosophy? But, wow, was it a good read.
Caveat: The 18-year-old science shows its age, but not in any way that interferes with the story too much.
Caveat: The 18-year-old science shows its age, but not in any way that interferes with the story too much.
mar's review
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
devastating! thanks!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Murder, Violence, Medical trauma, Homophobia, Blood, and Genocide
Moderate: Animal death, Gun violence, Torture, and Mass/school shootings
Minor: Cannibalism and Fire/Fire injury
rmperezpadilla's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Holds up SO well on reread.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Suicide, Homophobia, Classism, Lesbophobia, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Murder, Genocide, War, and Violence
Moderate: Outing and Torture
Minor: Body shaming
oleksandr's review against another edition
4.0
This is a cyberpunk SF novel, which while hasn’t got a serious attention when it was published (1996), now has an almost cult following. Additionally this is a debut novel and the author hasn’t published anything long (there was one short story) since.
Maya Tatyanichna Andreyava is a camera. This means she is a reporter with built in camera and feedback systems, so her watchers, don’t only see, but feel her emotions. Usually cameras work in tandem with a screener, a person, who monitors camera’s live-feed and edits it to exclude slippages or personal details. Maya get a new screener just when she started to tackle with a new theme: a forgotten holocaust somewhere is Kazakh steppes. Her new screener is weird, her name is Keishi Mirabara and she is clearly overqualified for the job.
The rest of the story is a usual cyberpunk, with life in a virtual reality, supersmart Ais, implants, hacking everyday equipment by shadowy figures, all the tropes. At the same time the world is unique, with true power shifted to Africa (to which standards the rest of the world desperately hoping to grew), the virtuality is called greyspace and with evolved organisms; Post police, people temporary controlled by algorithms (agent Smith’s style). All in all it creates a unique place. I think the book is on par with many major cyberpunk works and should be more widely known.
Some quotes:
She was wearing a Word: a gold cartouche on her lapel that, from time to time, would pluck a single word from her thoughts and display it. That's the fashion, too—a random, drop-by-drop exposure that always struck me as faintly obscene. At the moment it said inversion, for no reason I could think of.
***
"If you take flesh as your starting point," she said, "you're always going to find some way that silicon falls short. But there's nothing special about flesh. Look, sex wasn't invented by some loving God who wants us all to understand each other and be happy. It was made by nature, and nature doesn't give a damn whether our hearts hook up or not, just as long as our gametes do. Why should evolution get to make all the decisions? Why can't we use something that is designed to bring people together? If you turn the comparison around, and start with cabling, then love in the meat starts to look pretty shabby. Love happens in the mind, in the soul—what does the union of two sweating bodies have to do with that?"
***
There will be no whales."
"But we need them," I said.
"We need them? Is that the best reason you can come up with?" He laughed, a rasping, mechanical sound. "The kings of the ocean are gone, and what is our argument for their return? We need them? We? Their murderers? The ones that made the water bitter in their mouths, and killed the food they ate? The ones that made the ocean boil red with their blood for miles around? Men need them? Those vermin? Those stinging insects? Struggling pustulent humanity—needs them? Do you think a whale cares? You might as well need the sun to rise at midnight because you're feeling a bit chilly. Yes, of course, certainly we need them. But the question is, do we deserve them?"
***
people around the world are united by telepresence. So—"
"Ah, but not all people. Some are united, and some separated. We are pulled toward cameras, but away from people that we know in our own lives. Can you watch telepresence with your friend, your wife, your child? Not truly—you may be in the same room, but you are not together. Each is locked in his own dream, even if all are tuned to the same channel. Like movies during the binaural fad: a theater full of people wearing headphones, all hearing the same thing, but separately. And so telepresence causes the triumph of the distant over the near.
Maya Tatyanichna Andreyava is a camera. This means she is a reporter with built in camera and feedback systems, so her watchers, don’t only see, but feel her emotions. Usually cameras work in tandem with a screener, a person, who monitors camera’s live-feed and edits it to exclude slippages or personal details. Maya get a new screener just when she started to tackle with a new theme: a forgotten holocaust somewhere is Kazakh steppes. Her new screener is weird, her name is Keishi Mirabara and she is clearly overqualified for the job.
The rest of the story is a usual cyberpunk, with life in a virtual reality, supersmart Ais, implants, hacking everyday equipment by shadowy figures, all the tropes. At the same time the world is unique, with true power shifted to Africa (to which standards the rest of the world desperately hoping to grew), the virtuality is called greyspace and with evolved organisms; Post police, people temporary controlled by algorithms (agent Smith’s style). All in all it creates a unique place. I think the book is on par with many major cyberpunk works and should be more widely known.
Some quotes:
She was wearing a Word: a gold cartouche on her lapel that, from time to time, would pluck a single word from her thoughts and display it. That's the fashion, too—a random, drop-by-drop exposure that always struck me as faintly obscene. At the moment it said inversion, for no reason I could think of.
***
"If you take flesh as your starting point," she said, "you're always going to find some way that silicon falls short. But there's nothing special about flesh. Look, sex wasn't invented by some loving God who wants us all to understand each other and be happy. It was made by nature, and nature doesn't give a damn whether our hearts hook up or not, just as long as our gametes do. Why should evolution get to make all the decisions? Why can't we use something that is designed to bring people together? If you turn the comparison around, and start with cabling, then love in the meat starts to look pretty shabby. Love happens in the mind, in the soul—what does the union of two sweating bodies have to do with that?"
***
There will be no whales."
"But we need them," I said.
"We need them? Is that the best reason you can come up with?" He laughed, a rasping, mechanical sound. "The kings of the ocean are gone, and what is our argument for their return? We need them? We? Their murderers? The ones that made the water bitter in their mouths, and killed the food they ate? The ones that made the ocean boil red with their blood for miles around? Men need them? Those vermin? Those stinging insects? Struggling pustulent humanity—needs them? Do you think a whale cares? You might as well need the sun to rise at midnight because you're feeling a bit chilly. Yes, of course, certainly we need them. But the question is, do we deserve them?"
***
people around the world are united by telepresence. So—"
"Ah, but not all people. Some are united, and some separated. We are pulled toward cameras, but away from people that we know in our own lives. Can you watch telepresence with your friend, your wife, your child? Not truly—you may be in the same room, but you are not together. Each is locked in his own dream, even if all are tuned to the same channel. Like movies during the binaural fad: a theater full of people wearing headphones, all hearing the same thing, but separately. And so telepresence causes the triumph of the distant over the near.
courtney_mcallister's review against another edition
4.0
The Fortunate Fall is a weird book, but it's wonderfully weird. Carter manages to create a cyberpunk dystopian setting that doesn't overshadow the intense psychological drama that drives the novel towards its devastating conclusion. Even though Maya has a skull full of sockets and chips, she is intensely, almost unbearably, relatable.
From the very first chapter, I was swept up in the torrent of Carter's prose. She immerses the reader into this world in medias res and never really pauses for breath. The only section with pacing issues is in the last third, where a verbose, philosophical/political treatise gets a bit tiring. Otherwise, Carter keeps things compact and tense. In fact, the logistics of the world, and how it came to exist, are not fully explained. We get snippets of backstory, but since Maya's own past is mysteriously barricaded by her suppressor chip, her perspective doesn't gravitate towards historicity.
My favorite aspect of The Fortunate Fall is the inter-relationship between telepresence (multi-sensory voyeurism enabled by living cameras like Maya) and literature itself. Carter doesn't get didactic, but there's a compelling meta discourse embedded in the parallel between the reader's absorption of Maya's narrative and the mass consumption of that perspective that occurs through telepresence. The Fortunate Fall is not a happy, comforting book, but it is rich, multifaceted, and fantastically troubling.
From the very first chapter, I was swept up in the torrent of Carter's prose. She immerses the reader into this world in medias res and never really pauses for breath. The only section with pacing issues is in the last third, where a verbose, philosophical/political treatise gets a bit tiring. Otherwise, Carter keeps things compact and tense. In fact, the logistics of the world, and how it came to exist, are not fully explained. We get snippets of backstory, but since Maya's own past is mysteriously barricaded by her suppressor chip, her perspective doesn't gravitate towards historicity.
My favorite aspect of The Fortunate Fall is the inter-relationship between telepresence (multi-sensory voyeurism enabled by living cameras like Maya) and literature itself. Carter doesn't get didactic, but there's a compelling meta discourse embedded in the parallel between the reader's absorption of Maya's narrative and the mass consumption of that perspective that occurs through telepresence. The Fortunate Fall is not a happy, comforting book, but it is rich, multifaceted, and fantastically troubling.