"Clean" by Alex Hughes

Clean by Alex Hughes is an enjoyable piece of science fiction noir, sharing its sensibilities with many popular urban fantasy series, but committed to its near-future environment and characters. If I could have wished for more exploration of the villain's telepathic crimes (how did he do that exactly?) and of the telepaths' powers in general, it was gratifying to see another voice on the science fictional side. I like my fantasy just fine but it has been subsuming everything lately; I love to see some science fiction breaking through.

I don't enjoy entertainment reviews or plugs that say, "It's x crossed with y!" But I have to admit,  Clean does make me want to use the phrase.

I picked up the book because the premise reminded me of Alfred Bester The Demolished Man, one of my favorites. Playing in the yard with Bester's toys strikes me as good fun, and a fine place to start a novel. Telepaths, telekinetics, a powerful Guild: it's all here.

But the (almost) unnamed protagonist is about as far from the confident, powerful Lincoln Powell as you can get. He is a drug addict living on the seedy edge of tomorrow, thrown out of his Guild and distrusted even by his own colleagues. Sound familiar? It put me much in mind of George Alec Effinger's Marid Audran books. A very good thing.

I'm curious as to how much the series will delve into the criminal element; Clean's protagonist is much more of a boy scout than Marid ever was; even his addiction stems from a scientific experiment performed inside the Guild, though it's grip on him makes him no less dangerous. He wants to commit to rebuilding his life after nearly destroying himself; will he stay on that path?

I look forward to reading the next book, Sharp, in April.

Quote

"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

Carl Sagan

World within world within world...

"Hazel wished she had something in her hands to throw. She looked away and sat down.

"She opened up the new library book she'd brought for the bus ride and willed her thoughts to disappear in the pages. The girl in it was reading A Wrinkle in Time. She was best friends with a boy who lived in the apartment below. And then one day the boy stopped talking to her. Hazel closed the book."

Breadcrumbs
by Anna Ursu
p. 131

Hazel, the main character of Breadcrumbs, reading Newbery winner When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, in which Miranda, like Hazel, loves A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. Cute.

Jellyratfish

“Morphologically, we’ve built a jellyfish. Functionally, we’ve built a jellyfish. Genetically, this thing is a rat.” 

Kit Parker, a biophysicist at Harvard University.

There's a SyFy channel movie here somewhere.

Debris by Jo Anderton

I don't read as much as I'd like during the school year. Lack of focus more than lack of time, I think. So the mark of a good novel has become "when I put this down and pick it up a week and half later, do I still want to read it?" Inertia can get me through a lot when I have the brain wattage, but leaden prose and plot meandering just kill me when I am tired.

Debris by Jo Anderton passed the test quite well. Anderton has an enjoyable authorial voice, a welcome relief in a genre with too many plodders. Her plot, while probably spread a little thin for 450 pages of novel, nevertheless takes the reader through a fascinating world that has amazing technology (pions, little lights that build, fix and heal) but that has mostly forgotten how it all works. 

Much like Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet, Anderton creates her own wonderfully original fantastic world. I have no idea if this is fantasy or science fiction and I don't much care. It's so nice to see contemporary authors using the genre's freedom to build really cool things -- and being rewarded with publication.

Quote

"It would just draw attention. Nobody likes a blonde in a hamster ball."

Veronica on Veronica Mars
"Happy Go Lucky"

Quote

"I am Locutus of Borg."

Captain Picard
Star Trek: the Next Generation
"The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1"