Journal Entry

Book recommendation: Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams

I just finished reading Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams last night. I’ve enjoyed Walter’s books over the years, Voice of the Whirlwind being one of my favorites, Hardwired another. I’ll be working on an IGMS review of Implied Spaces for this month’s column, but I wanted to give it a shout out here because it is my favorite SF novel so far this year.

From the back copy:

Aristide, a semi-retired computer scientist turned swordsman, is a scholar of the implied spaces, seeking meaning amid the accidents of architecture in a universe where reality itself has been sculpted and designed by superhuman machine intelligence. While exploring the pre-technological world Midgarth, one of four dozen pocket universes created within a series of vast, orbital matrioshka computer arrays, Aristide uncovers a fiendish plot threatening to set off a nightmare scenario, perhaps even bringing about the ultimate Existential Crisis: the end of civilization itself. Traveling the pocket universes with his wormhole-edged sword Tecmesssa in hand and talking cat Bitsy, avatar of the planet-sized computer Endora, at his side, Aristide must find a way to save the multiverse from subversion, sabotage, and certain destruction.

This novel buckles some swash, along with some great SF-nal settings and crazy cool ideas and situations.

Filed under the topic Books on April 4th 2008 at 5:09 am. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.

Comment policy: this is Tobias' blog and space. Like a guest in his house, accord other guests and your host respect and polite discourse while feeling free to engage in debate or comment. Failure to do so results in comment ban or deletion.

4 Responses so far

  1. 1. Chris

    That sounds bloody awesome!
    I wonder if it’s going to be available in the UK…

  2. 2. wjw

    Thanks for the kind words, Toby!

    Implied Spaces does not have a British publisher, alas, so you’ll have to order a copy from the States.

  3. 3. Tobias Buckell

    My pleasure Walter :-)

    tb

  4. 4. JGS

    That does sound good… I’ll have to keep an eye out for it.

    Though, dog-lover that I am, I’m not sure how I feel about the recent trend of super-intelligent cats in sci-fi.

Your host:

Tobias is a Caribbean-born SF/F novelist who lives in Ohio.

Contact me:

tobias@tobiasbuckell.com
AIM: tobiasbuckell


Latest Comments

Suzan H. on Videoblog: How to pick the idea for your first novel (2)
Rachel Heslin on New Apple TV? Roku’s still a good choice (4)
Steve Buchheit on Videoblog: Walking for ideas (3)
T.N. Tobias on Context (1)
Mary Fitzpatrrick on The unbearable loneliness of the solitary artist (6)

Popular this month

In the ER
Repeat
Why my books are no longer for sale via Amazon
Introducing...
That (not so much) crumbling core of Western Europe's military might


Twitter feed


Jumpcut, a mac clipboard buffering tool. I've been looking for one of these! http://jumpcut.sourceforge.net/ 3 days ago

Gmail's adding Priority Inbox tomorrow. http://bit.ly/b3f8BY /via @cerebus19 (wow, interesting!) 3 days ago

Liking Drop Box more and more. If you want to give it a try, use this link to give you & me extra 250 megs of storage: http://bit.ly/b9Cs0z 3 days ago

doing freelance copy editing. There's a big diff between verses and versus. Just saying. One is more poetic than the other. 3 days ago

For those suggesting collection titles, it's stories from my bibliography: 2008 and on: http://bit.ly/cQHnSU 3 days ago

More updates...


Currently Reading & Enjoying:



Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer


Free Fiction

Novels

Read the first 1/3 free of:
-Crystal Rain: First 1/3 [RTF]
-Ragamuffin-First 1/3 [RTF]
-Sly Mongoose-First 1/3 [RTF]

Short Stories

Toy Planes
The Fish Merchant [pdf]
Her
The Shackles of Freedom (with Mike Resnick)
Necahual
Four Eyes
Aerophilia
Shoah Sry (with Ilsa J. Bick [pdf]

Audio

Smooth Talking
Her
A Green Thumb
Waiting For The Zephyr