This book is a weird genre of technology-economics science fiction. The author is clearly really intelligent. The book has many smart ideas and references, many of which I didn't understand.Despite not feeling like I really got it, I liked the book and the story was engaging. A group of dead humans have colonized New Mars resurrecting themselves in bodies grown from DNA. They coexist with robots of varying degrees of cognition, some very human. Humans have solved many problems of the human condi...

Star Fraction was a 3.5 stars I rounded up because of the political aspects, this was also a 3.5 star that I rounded down, even though it probably has better pacing and traditional narrative than Star Fraction. I liked the political cyberpunk stuff more in that book, and the fast-folk/singularity plot more in Cassini Division, which I read before this one (if I'd read this first it might be 4 stars). I really liked the two-track plot and the deeper dive into the world of New Mars, and I enjoyed

I want the time I spent reading this backJust not worth the time it took to read it. I kept on hoping for redemption of the plot, but the end feels like it was just hurriedly put together to wrap things up and is totally lacking of any satisfaction.

Jonathan Wilde and David Reid are toiling amid the anarcho-syndicalist politics of the Scottish working class. Both have similar ideologies but different motivations and when Jon is killed during a strange revolution he is astonished to wake up by the banks of a stone canal on New Mars, orbiting a star far from Earth. Told in alternating chapters from their political roots in the 20th century to their rivalry in the 25th, Ken Macleod has given us a political SF novel in a genre whose only other

Stuff happened. More stuff happened. Somewhat more interesting stuff happened near the end. But what was the book about? I found it hard to figure that out.

I have to remember that this was written in 1996, when we were admiring Netscape 1.0; indeed it was probably written in 1995. I liked some of McLeod's later works more, which is to be expected. There are some interesting ideas here about humanity, robots, soul, etc. but for me they were lost in a sludgy plot. So ... is Reid totally evil, or a decent guy who's a tad paranoid, or evil-but-later-not, or what? I prepared to lose my suspension of disbelief when the book droned on about radical anarc...

31 December 2008 – *****. This is the second novel in the Fall Revolution series, although it is not strictly a sequential series. The books are:#1 The Star Fraction (1995) - Prometheus Award winner 1996.#2 The Stone Canal (1996) - Prometheus Award winner 1998.#3 The Cassini Division (1998) – Nebula Award nominee 1999.#4 The Sky Road (1999) – British SF Award winner 1999.Ken Macleod's books are densely packed, intelligent, and political. His are among the few books for which I keep a dictionary

Pros: Original, quality writing, with an eye for detail and a driving story arcCons: None whatsoever"The Stone Canal" takes place in the same future universe Mr.MacLeod's previous novels have described: a post-Singularity Solar System infested with uploaded 'Fast Folk,' anarcho-capitalist escaped slaves in their extra-solar breakaway republic, Marxist mercenaries and orbital armies protecting the nano-technological 'climax community' utopia that Earth has become . . .I won't give away the plot.

Before reviewing Stone Canal, I have to confess that I really disliked Star Faction, its prequel. The nuances of political ideologies and their almost ridiculous preeminence in his character portraits deeply distract me from the fabulous concepts he can bring to his stories. In Stone Canal, I found the beginning almost unbearable - an exploration of early friendship and political ideologies (socialism, libertarianism, etc.) of the main characters. As the novel progresses, however, these shallow

The 2and in the author's Fall Revolution series. I didn't realise this, or the earlier book, The Star Fraction, forms part of a series and I'm not clear whether there are any more books. I mentioned this on Facebook sci fi page and had a reply saying that the individual making it didn't like that as you could end up reading a volume in the middle of a saga and having to buy earlier books in the series. The thing with this is, however, that the books can be read entirely separately. None of the c...

I had some trouble finishing the first book in the series but still had high hopes for this one, and it more than exceeded my expectations. It feels like the author really fixed a lot of issues with pacing and character development that made the first book harder to read. This is still an incredibly dense book full of tons of ideas, but it's done very well and the characters are so much more sympathetic that I felt very invested in their journey and finding out what happens to them. There's also...

Really enjoyed the writing style and jumping between timelines.

3 1/2 stars.

Storyline: 4/5Characters: 3/5Writing Style: 3/5World: 5/5What a tremendous improvement over the first in the series, The Star Fraction. Unlike the founding book of the Fall Revolution tetralogy, MacLeod had answers for my mental objections and criticisms. Stop throwing out proper noun "isms" and show us what Libertarianism means in your world. -"Okay." MacLeod gets right to that by plotting out such examples as private sector nuclear deterrence. Please, please give us some chronology and orienta...

This book explores two main themes: the politics of anarchism, and the differences between human and machine. I was not impressed with the anarchism theme; the politics were hard to follow and did not always feel realistic. The human/machine theme, though, covers multiple perspectives, with human minds in virtual reality, human minds in robot bodies, artificial intelligences similar to humans, and artificial intelligences which evolve into a superior race. All this takes place in a creative and

Originally published on my blog here in December 2000.The two interlocking narratives which make up The Stone Canal concern libertarian anarchist Jonathan Wilde. The earlier chronologically starts when he is a student at Glasgow University in the 1970s, and basically deals with his gradual development into a political guru as Western capitalism begins to fall apart in the twenty first century. The other narrative is set in the far future, when a clone of Jonathan Wilde is given his memories, cop...

6/10Woof!I just finished this, and I don’t really know what to think. I feel like I need to come back later after I’d had time to process. There were things that I adored about this book and found super fascinating. There were parts that bored me near to tears. And there were parts that just made me feel stupid. (I am sure I missed way more references than those I picked up on)I’m not sure yet that I 100% understand the connection between the fascinating parts and the boring parts (thus the need...

This is the third Ken Macleod book I've reviewed in what seems to be a very short time, so I'll skip the usual plaudits- regular and semi-regular readers of the blog should be well aware of them by now. 1. He's an awesome writer, 2. He writes thought-provoking science fiction which is the best kind of science fiction and 3. He is well worth reading.Now that's out of the way- The Stone Canal. The second book in Macleod's Fall Revolution series (I'm reading these all ass backwards, I know. I'm sor...

This came off as a science-fiction lover's science-fiction novel, and so I liked it a lot, even if there weren't a lot of "big ideas" per se.The narrative is split in two between the "present day" of the protagonist's life from the 70s to the near future, and the far future on New Mars where his mysteriously rejuvenated self has to intervene in a major political dispute, with alternating chapters helping to bring some structural tension as more and more backstory is slowly revealed. Jonathan Wil...

This book is a weird genre of technology-economics science fiction. The author is clearly really intelligent. The book has many smart ideas and references, many of which I didn't understand.Despite not feeling like I really got it, I liked the book and the story was engaging. A group of dead humans have colonized New Mars resurrecting themselves in bodies grown from DNA. They coexist with robots of varying degrees of cognition, some very human. Humans have solved many problems of the human condi...