In War Times
by Kathleen Ann Goonan
from Tor Books
During his training, Sam begins to show that he has a knack for science and engineering, and he is plucked from the daily grunt work of twenty-mile marches by his superiors to study subjects like code breaking, electronics, and physics in particular, a science that is growing more important to the war effort. While studying, Sam is seduced by a mysterious female physicist that is teaching one of his courses, and given her plans for a device that will end the war, perhaps even end the human predilection for war forever. But the device does something less, and more, than that.
After his training, Sam is sent throughout Europe to solve both theoretical and practical problems for the Allies. He spends his free time playing jazz, and trying to construct the strange device. It's only much later that he discovers that it worked, but in a way that he could have never imagined.
Mississippi Blues
by Kathleen Ann Goonan
from Tor Books
Mississippi Blues is a uniquely twisted vision of a postapocalyptic future in which nanotechnology is just the most recent rung humanity has climbed in its techno-evolution. Goonan's story features a wild ride down the Mississippi to "Norleans," propelled by a nanoplague that may or may not be humanity's saving grace. Our heroine Verity rescues a motley group from metapheromonal slavery in Cincinnati, and they set off on boats and rafts to an uncertain utopia at the end of the river. On the way, they encounter everything from whirlpools to religious zealots to a terrifying little town that would be best described as the bastard child of Las Vegas and Westworld. It's a swirling, existentialist voyage with a meandering soul; weak in structure but strong in concept, with an ending that smacks of sequels to come. --Jhana Bach
The Bones of Time
by Kathleen Ann Goonan
from Tor Books
Early in the next century, the Interspace company, in charge of humanity's first-generation starship, has been given extraordinary powers. Cen, a descendant of Hawaiian shaman-priests and a mathematical genius, finds out as an adolescent how ruthless they are in their preparedness to exploit human weakness and brilliance, yet he sells his work to them to gain the leisure to pursue his own plans--the conquest of time and the saving of the long-dead princess whom he meets and loves in moments of vision. A decade later, Lynn, a geneticist renegade from Interspace's ruling dynasty, rescues from assassination Akamu, a clone of Hawaii's legendary unifier, and finds herself, like Cen before her, manipulated by Interspace's Hawaiian nationalist foes. She and Akamu are pursued from Hawaii to Hong Kong and into the uplands of Tibet.
Bristling with intrigue and ideas about Buddhism, worm holes, celestial navigation, and quantum theories of intelligence, Goonan's new novel is touching on love and families and a grueling switchback ride for the intellect. Her first novel, Queen City Jazz, was impressive in its dreamy portrayal of a world altered by nano-technology; this radical change of place remakes the near-future techno-thriller as a set of passionately conceived ethical quandaries. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk
Crescent City Rhapsody
by Kathleen Ann Goonan
from Gollancz
What would it feel like to live through a biological revolution? Many science fiction writers chronicling a vast technological shift lose sight of the people who would have to deal with it. Not so Kathleen Ann Goonan, whose Crescent City Rhapsody is the third of her Nanotech Cycle novels. Each of her characters is profoundly real, and the things that happen to them are as confusing, awe-inspiring, and terrifying as you might expect.
Goonan's story begins with the assassination of Marie Laveau, New Orleans cyber-entrepreneur and grand-niece of the famous voudoun queen. By prior arrangement, Marie is resurrected into a cloned body and prepares for revenge, but she awakens into a world beset by the Silence--periodic bursts of microchip-destroying radiation from space. Enter Dr. Zeb Aberly, a bipolar astrophysicist whose manic episodes help him understand that the Silence contains an alien message and perhaps the potential to change humanity's biology radically. Meanwhile, in Japan, a young biotechnician seals her fate when she helps steal the recipe for a Universal Assembler, a nanotech tool of fearsome power and destructive capability. The stage is set for a revolution, and Goonan delivers, with complex, interwoven story lines that resemble the rhythms and structure of a jazz composition.
Brightly colored lines were inching their way up buildings like plants in a fast-growing jungle. She moved briskly, but her heart was lifeless. She was looking at her past and seeing a future that she was not a part of.People sat leaning against buildings here and there, which was the hardest to see. They were not begging. Their brains were changing.
They were adapting to the new city.
As cities become organisms, a new generation of profoundly different humans comes of age and hope dawns in Crescent City, and Goonan directs the show with artistic flair. Crescent City Rhapsody is confusing and delightful, a swoony harmony of words swirling around crisply melodic ideas. --Therese Littleton
A novel about death and grieving, about Afro-Caribbean culture and Voodoo and about the four waves of Nanotechnology development.
The world of CRESCENT CITY RHAPSODY is a world that is being changed by the day by advances in nanotechnology; it is a world where radio has died, of vastly increased lifespans and where extra terrestrials will play a pivotal role in everyone's life.
Light Music (Gollancz)
by Kathleen Ann Goonan
from Gollancz
Once the world worked differently -- before the Silence from space quieted the airwaves and rendered electronics useless. In a haven called Crescent City, built through the wonders of nanotechnology to transport its enlightened inhabitants into the cosmos, far away from the terrors and chaos of a world gone mad, humanity has failed. One of the original pioneers, Jason Peabody, must now flee in the wake of an unanticipated assault on the city by pirates. He embarks on a bizarre odyssey across a perilous, unrecognisable outside -- a landscape of Western round-ups and tragically 'youngening' children; of plague-ravaged humans in foreboding flower cities; of conscious machines, talking animals and toys that long to be real. And the appearance on Earth of strange illuminations is causing widespread panic and fear, as pilgrims gather in Crescent City seeking answers to the Silence's long-concealed mysteries, responding to the hypnotic light music calling them towards a remarkable destiny in the stars . . .
Queen City Jazz
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