Seguito + o - diretto de la torre aliena è un romanzo interessante ed affascinante ricchissimo di personaggi, storie, situazioni, idee ecc... tanto ricco da risultare a tratti difficile da seguire.
L'idea "cosmologica" è tanto affascinante quanto complessa... consigliato. ( )

Ah, Goodreads. Not only are you full of hilarious reviews of Fifty Shades of Grey, you also make it absurdly easy to uncover inane trivia about one's reading habits. Such as, for example, what is the most recent year you haven't read any books from? I asked myself this when I found out what year Paul McAuley's Eternal Light was published. I had assumed it was from the 1970s. This was entirely because it's part of the Gollancz Space Opera collection, those of the sexy monochromatic covers, and all the other works in the collection that I'd read were written in the early ’70s. It turned out Eternal Light was written in 1991 (and the collection as a whole features works spanning from 1930 to 2004). Had I read any books written in 1991? I had a vague notion that books I'd read from the 1980s and 1990s were few and far between, and that it was quite possible my most-recent-year-sans-read-books could be sometime in one of these decades. But no, as it turns out the most recent year that I've read no books from is 1973. Between them, Discworld, Star Trek, and Stephen King cover most of the following three decades.

The early 1990s is an awkward time for science fiction to herald from. Quantum mechanics was sufficiently developed and understood for all sorts of wacky shenanigans to feature in anything written at the time. But the totality of the world wide web was still a single workstation at Sir Tim Berners-Lee's desk. And the supernovae observations that proved the Universe's expansion was accelerating wouldn't come until the end of the decade. Modern science fiction struggles to imagine a future for humanity that doesn't involve ever more advanced versions of the internet (the ongoing Commonwealth saga by Peter F. Hamilton, for example, begins with a man inventing the “datasphere”, a kind of mental version of the ’net, an invention that grows in sophistication as the centuries tick by); and science fiction eschatology almost always has to deal with the accelerating Universe and the contrary roles of dark matter and dark energy (see the Xeelee sequence, for example). The utter lack of internettery in Eternal Light and the fact that a major plot point is the eventual collapse of the Universe both age the novel beyond its twenty years.

Having said that, good science fiction doesn't have to accurately prophesy the future—Arthur C. Clarke may have pre-empted the geosynchronous satellite but he also predicted that hovercrafts would replace all sea and most land travel by the end of the twentieth century. So does Eternal Light succeed as a story if not as a soothsayer? I'd have to say “no”, or possibly “meh”. But probably “no”.

This is the third book in a trilogy, something my edition kindly fails to point out. McAuley does a half decent job at filling in the gaps for people who haven't read the the first two in the series, but I was still pretty lost for the first fifty or so pages. To be fair that's my fault for not checking these things, and Gollancz's fault for choosing the last third of a trilogy for their collection. Once I'd figured out what was going on the story was a little more palatable but unlikeable characters didn't help make it a particularly enjoyable trip to the end. Especially since with fifty pages to go the book does a Lord of the Rings and seems to try starting a whole new story. Aha, thought I, this is preamble for book four in the trilogy tetralogy! But no, it's just a weird, barely developed bit stuck on the end, with an attempt to introduce some new characters but absolutely no room to get to know them nor really learn about them. It's supposed to provide some closure but really just opens up more questions. Maybe there was supposed to be a fourth book, who knows?

Ultimately the book failed to make me say wow, either out loud or mentally. It's got the ingredients for a science fiction book I should love: big dumb objects, a journey to the centre of the galaxy, discussions on the end of the Universe and attempts to prevent it. And yet between the characters, none of whom I really wanted to stay in the company of, and McAuley's often confusing writing style I just never enjoyed the book. Some great ideas stop it being terrible, but sloppy writing stops it ever being good. ( )

Ah, Goodreads. Not only are you full of hilarious reviews of Fifty Shades of Grey, you also make it absurdly easy to uncover inane trivia about one's reading habits. Such as, for example, what is the most recent year you haven't read any books from? I asked myself this when I found out what year Paul McAuley's Eternal Light was published. I had assumed it was from the 1970s. This was entirely because it's part of the Gollancz Space Opera collection, those of the sexy monochromatic covers, and all the other works in the collection that I'd read were written in the early ’70s. It turned out Eternal Light was written in 1991 (and the collection as a whole features works spanning from 1930 to 2004). Had I read any books written in 1991? I had a vague notion that books I'd read from the 1980s and 1990s were few and far between, and that it was quite possible my most-recent-year-sans-read-books could be sometime in one of these decades. But no, as it turns out the most recent year that I've read no books from is 1973. Between them, Discworld, Star Trek, and Stephen King cover most of the following three decades.

The early 1990s is an awkward time for science fiction to herald from. Quantum mechanics was sufficiently developed and understood for all sorts of wacky shenanigans to feature in anything written at the time. But the totality of the world wide web was still a single workstation at Sir Tim Berners-Lee's desk. And the supernovae observations that proved the Universe's expansion was accelerating wouldn't come until the end of the decade. Modern science fiction struggles to imagine a future for humanity that doesn't involve ever more advanced versions of the internet (the ongoing Commonwealth saga by Peter F. Hamilton, for example, begins with a man inventing the “datasphere”, a kind of mental version of the ’net, an invention that grows in sophistication as the centuries tick by); and science fiction eschatology almost always has to deal with the accelerating Universe and the contrary roles of dark matter and dark energy (see the Xeelee sequence, for example). The utter lack of internettery in Eternal Light and the fact that a major plot point is the eventual collapse of the Universe both age the novel beyond its twenty years.

Having said that, good science fiction doesn't have to accurately prophesy the future—Arthur C. Clarke may have pre-empted the geosynchronous satellite but he also predicted that hovercrafts would replace all sea and most land travel by the end of the twentieth century. So does Eternal Light succeed as a story if not as a soothsayer? I'd have to say “no”, or possibly “meh”. But probably “no”.

This is the third book in a trilogy, something my edition kindly fails to point out. McAuley does a half decent job at filling in the gaps for people who haven't read the the first two in the series, but I was still pretty lost for the first fifty or so pages. To be fair that's my fault for not checking these things, and Gollancz's fault for choosing the last third of a trilogy for their collection. Once I'd figured out what was going on the story was a little more palatable but unlikeable characters didn't help make it a particularly enjoyable trip to the end. Especially since with fifty pages to go the book does a Lord of the Rings and seems to try starting a whole new story. Aha, thought I, this is preamble for book four in the trilogy tetralogy! But no, it's just a weird, barely developed bit stuck on the end, with an attempt to introduce some new characters but absolutely no room to get to know them nor really learn about them. It's supposed to provide some closure but really just opens up more questions. Maybe there was supposed to be a fourth book, who knows?

Ultimately the book failed to make me say wow, either out loud or mentally. It's got the ingredients for a science fiction book I should love: big dumb objects, a journey to the centre of the galaxy, discussions on the end of the Universe and attempts to prevent it. And yet between the characters, none of whom I really wanted to stay in the company of, and McAuley's often confusing writing style I just never enjoyed the book. Some great ideas stop it being terrible, but sloppy writing stops it ever being good. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2015/07/review-of-eternal-light-by-paul-mcauley... ( )