“A hundred murdered ships swung around Saturn in endless ellipses. Slender freighters and sturdy tugs. Shuttles that had once woven continuous and ever-changing paths between the inhabited moons. Spidery surface-to-orbit gigs. The golden crescent of a clipper, built by a cooperative just two years ago to ply between Saturn and Jupiter, falling like a forlorn fairy-tale moon past the glorious arch of the ring system. Casualties of a war recently ended.”



In “Gardens of the Sun” by Paul McAuley.



Gorgeous quote, right? And it’s SF…

At last a SF novel which isn't about your usual turgid themes: deadbeat arseholes having a mid-life crisis, and dragons with midlife crisis (I'm generally keen on not reading about dragons and whatnot either, but it’s always worth keeping an open mind, although I can’t take seriously any tome which makes me consider the POV of a dragon or dragons, as SF is want to do; I’ll spell it out for you: dragons are the lowest of the low. I know I’m being extremely anti-dragon-ist, but that’s what you get for reading my reviews…). I’m sick and tired of looking for the good stuff…Some people keep trying to make me open my eyes, but to no avail… Speculative-Fiction shouldn’t just be a merely sub-genre of a larger family: the humble novel. Maybe if SF fans didn't insist on lazy caricatures of the genres they hate, people who like those genres wouldn't be so uncharitable? It's like how pop music fans wonder why they can't convince classical music fans to enjoy a bit of the Rolling Stones by lazily generalising about Mozart, and why classical music fans wonder why pop music fans get heat up when they say all pop is "three chords rah rah rah and you can't hear the worlds". I've never found insulting people who I disagree with works particularly well at convincing them to like anything (*arf, arf*). I think we need to distinguish SCIENCE fiction, science FICTION and fantasy. Not enough people read SCIENCE fiction and fantasy gives SF a bad name. Compare Arthur C. Clarke's “A Fall of Moondust” to “Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” to any Harry Potter book…

The Quiet War duology in a nutshell is all about various types of loss: political, physical, spiritual and intellectual, as being reflections of one another. And like all the best SF, it's also talking about now.

I suppose the truth is that nobody can now read every good SF/F book/novella/story that comes out (and this one came out in 2009!), though some people do their best. I confess I tend to stick to authors I already like. McAuley’s stuff is definitely going into that list from now on.

If this two novels comprising “The Quiet War” duology do not make you believe in good SF you’re a lost cause. Such a novel as this one doesn't make you, it invites you, and if you're not able it's your loss and nobody else's. McAuley is always good, a criminally underrated writer.

This is "The Expanse" for adults.



SF = Speculative Fiction. ( )