Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets.
Carlyle Foster is a sensayer–a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away.
That’s when things get weird.
The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labeling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world’s population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competition is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life.
And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destabilize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life…
This is how Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer’s debut novel, begins! And while we must admit that Bridger sounds a little bit like Trumpy from that one episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the rest of the story sounds terrifying. Palmer’s future sounds like it gives us a lot. It also sounds like it does a great job of obscuring all that it takes away.
Too Like the Lightning is the first book of Palmer’s political sci-fi Terra Ignota series and arrives on May 10, 2016. Pre-order it here and check out the cover by artist Victor Mosquera!
I love this book with the burning fire of a thousand supernovas.
I was loving the description up until the last paragraph. Maybe I’m jumping the gun and there’s some scientific explanation (beyond “psionic powers are totally science you guys!”), like he’s a child prodigy who’s figured out how to or was designed to tap into nanobots embedded in everything, but I always hate when there’s an interesting-seeming SF universe that just throws actual magical powers into the mix, and that’s what it’s feeling like for me.
But I’ll keep an eye out for further information.
@2, Well, this book certainly isn’t for everyone, and it may not be for you, but, in this case, I’m writing the books as someone who, like yourself, has often been frustrated by stories where a nicely-developed and engaging science-fictional future has something supernatural plonked into it without integrating it well. So I wanted to write a story where that very issue is one of the central conflicts, and where we see the characters native to this science-fiction future face this apparently-supernatural disruption, trying to figure out it might mean, to humanity and to science, if this is what it seems to be, and whether science can explain/describe it or not.
This story is astonishing- emotional heft, intellectual daring, intricate worldbuilding, and characters that claw their way out from between the covers with more savagery and permanence than fiction should reasonably allow.
Oh lovely; both an appealing cover in and of itself and a very good fit for the book in question.
This sounds really good (and the cover looks cool).
Coming off a few fun novels by well established S-F authors, I stumbled upon Ada Palmers first S-F attempt with no great expectations other than wanting to be entertained. I was not entertained. I was provoked. Provoked to think, to assess, to ponder, to walk some of Ada’s ideas off, to question, to evaluate, to even fear many others. Someone has commented this book may not be for everyone. I offer that it is only for a select few with a definable demographic. Caution to the printer; Get paid before more big runs. Caution to the purchaser; Read a dozen pages before laying down serious sheckles. Caution to the author; Read more, write less, then evaluate what kind of writer you really want to be. The conflict continues between the educator and the entertainer. This effort raises those stakes to war. Palmer is brilliant but very intense and difficult. It needed serious scrutiny and a small market trial before it reached my eyes which, attached to my brain and stomach, all hurt. And for the life of me, I cannot determine if that is a good or bad thing!
Glad you found it so thought-provoking! That was my goal, not a comfortable book but a challenging one, with many new ideas to chew on — I hope in the end you’ll decide that’s a good thing. Someone who pushes the conversation forward is the kind of writer I want to be. And I certainly agree with your advice to the reader: this is a very odd book! So it’s a great idea to give it a quick try (the first chapters are up online) to make sure you enjoy its kind of challenges before digging in deep.
FYI (being a print history geek I love sharing print history trivia) Tor did print a modest initial print run, since they (and I) were not sure whether it would appeal to a big audience, but much to our surprise, and delight, it sold out in pre-order, and just kept selling out as we reprinted, hitting its fifth printing by July, when the decision was made to rush out a paperback. It seems a lot of people are excited to wrestle with difficult & chewy new ideas!
Thanks for reading :-)
Why no ebook?
There is a North American e-book, but there is not yet a UK/Australia e-book because, for licensing reasons, that requires a UK publisher. But I’m very optimistic that there will be one soon!