Ken MacLeod‘s writing taught me to love science fable again . I had pushed the writing style out of my register life for many years , but I could not ignore his novel Newton ’s Wake .
Though I was a fierce lecturer of scifi novel as a teenager , wolfing down John Varley , Ursula LeGuin , Robert Silverberg , Clifford D. Simak and many others , I gave it up when I went to college . I think I had some misguided musical theme that scifi was for kids , and as a grownup English PhD educatee I should be devoting myself to Dylan Thomas and post - structuralist theory . I strayed from lit at times , reading some Octavia Butler and a Star Trek novel , telling myself I was doing it merely to understand pop culture . It ’s not that I loved it – I just study the stuff .
I became a prof , but roll aside from academe to become an alternate journalist . As the editor program of the leger review section of the San Francisco Bay Guardian , hundreds of books crossed my desk , their gray covers pigeonhole “ advance written matter ” and “ uncorrected trial impression . ” That was how I found Newton ’s Wake , which was prominently bill as a place opera house .
It had been a foresightful clock time since I ’d read scifi in a way you might call serious , rather than studying it as some kind of societal symptom . I picked up the book , read the first page , and was intrigued enough to keep it through two flat and two job – and finally read it after I ’d pass from a year - long fellowship at MIT where I ’d immersed myself in science self - teaching .
I do n’t think it ’s an exaggeration to say MacLeod give me pleasance in reading scifi again . Partly that ’s because his ideas were so meaty – debates over separatist patriotism were deep embedded in a crazed risky venture story about “ rapture fucker ” with nano brainpower and combat archaeologists teleport through a series of holdup across the galaxy . I was in love . In unforesightful order , I say every single MacLeod ledger I could get my hands on , then replunged into scifi lit with what could only be described as a burning penury .
I had missed it for so long ! Now the ledge in my billet prominence with science fiction novels . They ’re ongoing testimony to my love , reawakened by a novel about Scotch pirate on another planet .
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