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Nanotech #4
Light Music
In a concluding volume to the Nanotech Quartet, people begin vanishing in the wake of unearthly lights, and Jason Peabody, one of the few people who remember the Internet and accompanied by the resilient Dania, makes a startling discovery that prompts him to investigate the disappearances. Reprint.
416 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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About the author
Kathleen Ann Goonan
67 books52 followersFrom Locusmag.com
Author Kathleen Ann Goonan, 68, died January 28, 2021. She was born May 14, 1952 in Cincinnati OH and at age eight moved to Hawaii for two years while her father worked for the Navy, after which the family moved to Washington DC. She got a degree in English from Virginia Tech in 1975, and earned her Association Montessori International Certification in 1976. She taught school for 13 years, ten of those at Montessori schools, including eight years at a school she founded in Knoxville TN. She spent a year back in Hawaii and took up writing full time before returning to the DC area in 1988, the same year she attended Clarion West. She began teaching at Georgia Tech in 2010, where she was a Professor of the Practice.
Goonan’s first story ‘‘Wanting to Talk to You’’ appeared in Asimov’s in 1991. Notable stories include ‘‘Kamehameha’s Bones’’ (1993), Nebula Award nominee ‘‘The String’’ (1995), British SF Award finalist ‘‘Sunflowers’’ (1995), and Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist ‘‘Memory Dog’’ (2008).
Debut novel Queen City Jazz (1994), a New York Times Notable Book, was shortlisted for a British Science Fiction Association Award, and launched her Nanotech Quartet: sequel Mississippi Blues (1997), Nebula Award-nominated prequel Crescent City Rhapsody (2000), and final volume Light Music (2002), also a Nebula Award finalist. Standalone The Bones of Time (1996) was a Clarke Award finalist. Alternate history In War Times (2007) won the Campbell Memorial Award and was the American Library Association’s Best SF Novel of 2007, and was followed by sequel This Shared Dream (2011), a Campbell Memorial Award finalist. Angels and You Dogs, a short story collection, was published by PS Publishing in 2012.
Goonan and her work were featured in venues such as Scientific American (‘‘Shamans of the Small’’) and Popular Science (‘‘Science Fiction’s Best Minds Envision the Future’’). As a member of SIGMA, she gave talks for the Joint Services Small Arms Project and the Global Competitiveness Forum in Ryhad. She published more than 40 short stories, including ‘‘A Love Supreme’’ (Discover Magazine 10/12), ‘‘Bootstrap’’ (Twelve Tomorrows 9/13), ‘‘Sport’’ (ARC 2/14), ‘‘What Are We? Where Do We Come From? Where Are We Going?’’ (Tor.com), ‘‘Girl In Wave; Wave In Girl’’ (Hieroglyph), ‘‘Wilder Still, the Stars’’ (Reach for Infinity), and ‘‘Tomorrowland’’ (Tor.com).
Goonan lived in Tennessee and Florida with husband Joseph Mansy, married 1977.
Author Kathleen Ann Goonan, 68, died January 28, 2021. She was born May 14, 1952 in Cincinnati OH and at age eight moved to Hawaii for two years while her father worked for the Navy, after which the family moved to Washington DC. She got a degree in English from Virginia Tech in 1975, and earned her Association Montessori International Certification in 1976. She taught school for 13 years, ten of those at Montessori schools, including eight years at a school she founded in Knoxville TN. She spent a year back in Hawaii and took up writing full time before returning to the DC area in 1988, the same year she attended Clarion West. She began teaching at Georgia Tech in 2010, where she was a Professor of the Practice.
Goonan’s first story ‘‘Wanting to Talk to You’’ appeared in Asimov’s in 1991. Notable stories include ‘‘Kamehameha’s Bones’’ (1993), Nebula Award nominee ‘‘The String’’ (1995), British SF Award finalist ‘‘Sunflowers’’ (1995), and Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist ‘‘Memory Dog’’ (2008).
Debut novel Queen City Jazz (1994), a New York Times Notable Book, was shortlisted for a British Science Fiction Association Award, and launched her Nanotech Quartet: sequel Mississippi Blues (1997), Nebula Award-nominated prequel Crescent City Rhapsody (2000), and final volume Light Music (2002), also a Nebula Award finalist. Standalone The Bones of Time (1996) was a Clarke Award finalist. Alternate history In War Times (2007) won the Campbell Memorial Award and was the American Library Association’s Best SF Novel of 2007, and was followed by sequel This Shared Dream (2011), a Campbell Memorial Award finalist. Angels and You Dogs, a short story collection, was published by PS Publishing in 2012.
Goonan and her work were featured in venues such as Scientific American (‘‘Shamans of the Small’’) and Popular Science (‘‘Science Fiction’s Best Minds Envision the Future’’). As a member of SIGMA, she gave talks for the Joint Services Small Arms Project and the Global Competitiveness Forum in Ryhad. She published more than 40 short stories, including ‘‘A Love Supreme’’ (Discover Magazine 10/12), ‘‘Bootstrap’’ (Twelve Tomorrows 9/13), ‘‘Sport’’ (ARC 2/14), ‘‘What Are We? Where Do We Come From? Where Are We Going?’’ (Tor.com), ‘‘Girl In Wave; Wave In Girl’’ (Hieroglyph), ‘‘Wilder Still, the Stars’’ (Reach for Infinity), and ‘‘Tomorrowland’’ (Tor.com).
Goonan lived in Tennessee and Florida with husband Joseph Mansy, married 1977.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 15, 2012
[3 and 1/2 stars]
Another one of Goonan's characteristically fascinating novels. Packed full of her intriguing ideas about the next stage of human evolution, boasting a great range of diverse characters and with a strong focus on the importance of stories, it was nevertheless a disjointed read. And while the bittersweetness of the climax was appropriate, it felt like a somewhat rushed finish, in which a lot of character threads just disappeared and we heard from other sources what had happened to them. Ultimately, a little disappointing.
Another one of Goonan's characteristically fascinating novels. Packed full of her intriguing ideas about the next stage of human evolution, boasting a great range of diverse characters and with a strong focus on the importance of stories, it was nevertheless a disjointed read. And while the bittersweetness of the climax was appropriate, it felt like a somewhat rushed finish, in which a lot of character threads just disappeared and we heard from other sources what had happened to them. Ultimately, a little disappointing.
June 3, 2019
Last of the series. I'm not really sure i really can do it justice here, considering that it's really about complexity. All i can say is go read it, if you have any interest in the literature of ideas, and you'll see. It also kinda reminds me of the spirit of Samuel Delany's Dhalgren, which is no bad company to be in. Especially whenever Peabody ambles into view, he who was once Chief Nanotech Engineer of the Flower City of Chicago, and then The Engineer in Crescent City, and then Radio Cowboy (after being hijacked by a Western Library {g} - his six-guns decimate the enemy with tunes from old musicals), and ultimately the radio astronomer who goes rogue and Johnny Appleseeds the Everything, while Dania travels with the Nows.
Nanotech remains a pretty abstruse subject to wrap one's head around (unless you've been lucky enough to dip into mathematician Rudy Rucker's delirious sf Ware series and hit paydirt), but it has been a popular subject in late-cyberpunk circles, and the worlds we mostly see portrayed in it are dystopic. But both Rucker and Goonan are post-cyberpunk because they are interested in the whys of the worlds they build and pick apart. So Goonan's interest, like Rucker's, centers in the possibilities of nanotech bringing about an evolution of consciousness. We move, then, in the book, from Godel to Bach, deliberately, in considering how change can be occasioned, and also read.
The subject matter of Goonan's series spans topics like complexity theory, and M-theory as a dimensional key. she makes extensive work of stuff like Brian Greene's Elegant Universe to move her narrative, positing a not-far future world in which breakthroughs in these areas will literally change both consciousness and the world from Newtonian into Einsteinian space and on beyond zebra. So from an already fascinating but conventionally dystopic future of mutating worlds and stagnating humankind (i'm particularly fond of the image of the flower cities) she eases the book and the series into a sea of possibilities, reseeding mankind.
The part that we might well find exciting is how she chooses to frame the ways in which these connections might ultimately be organically made: she uses music as a key to mathematics and she uses story as the ultimate connecting link to make the leap. These are both exciting metaphors to see applied on the ground, and they are central to her themes so they are well-developed, as she elaborates on their meaning throughout the work.
Both quoted therein: "Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists." (Marcel Proust) "Art is a lie which tells the truth." (Picasso)
It is by the Storyteller's ordering of story into comprehensible patterns that the world ultimately is changed. And when people begin to inhabit and interpret story from the inside - stories of emotion, stories of science - they learn to transcend themselves. These are huge, huge metaphors and it's really nifty to wade in and join with her in playing them out. I think i've made it sound a lot less colorful than it really is, talking about the ideas in it, but i recommend it to anyone who is interested in these issues. Angelina the Storyteller is first infected by stamps within the pages of Cortazar's Hopscotch, and before she knows it she's full of Octavio Paz, Borges, and Garcia Lorca, hot jazz and Heidegger, Max Planck and Neruda. Story is an infection, that mutates as she crosses between the pages of the book.
"Stories are the folded-up dimensions in string theory. Stories are how humans unfold time." Essentially, human consciousness makes the Bridge that drives the Change, that sends the ship into the stars, that becomes the calculus, that is the Map. A complex portrait of a system that is multi-dimensional. "She opened the book. FROM THIS SIDE, she saw; and later on, FROM THE OTHER SIDE." Similarly, Su-Chen plays, and the city-ship is launched. They all begin to move to the tune of Light Music.
"The stories of emotion began to blend with the stories of science. The stories of science were stories that kept on making sense as one built on them, test after test. They explained reality reliably." "And one of the stories she learned was the story of the curled-up dimensions. Realities which might never be. But dimensions which were ineffably part of physical reality, a necessary and supporting part. A place of doorways, and portals, much as her own human mind seemed to be."
Nanotech remains a pretty abstruse subject to wrap one's head around (unless you've been lucky enough to dip into mathematician Rudy Rucker's delirious sf Ware series and hit paydirt), but it has been a popular subject in late-cyberpunk circles, and the worlds we mostly see portrayed in it are dystopic. But both Rucker and Goonan are post-cyberpunk because they are interested in the whys of the worlds they build and pick apart. So Goonan's interest, like Rucker's, centers in the possibilities of nanotech bringing about an evolution of consciousness. We move, then, in the book, from Godel to Bach, deliberately, in considering how change can be occasioned, and also read.
The subject matter of Goonan's series spans topics like complexity theory, and M-theory as a dimensional key. she makes extensive work of stuff like Brian Greene's Elegant Universe to move her narrative, positing a not-far future world in which breakthroughs in these areas will literally change both consciousness and the world from Newtonian into Einsteinian space and on beyond zebra. So from an already fascinating but conventionally dystopic future of mutating worlds and stagnating humankind (i'm particularly fond of the image of the flower cities) she eases the book and the series into a sea of possibilities, reseeding mankind.
The part that we might well find exciting is how she chooses to frame the ways in which these connections might ultimately be organically made: she uses music as a key to mathematics and she uses story as the ultimate connecting link to make the leap. These are both exciting metaphors to see applied on the ground, and they are central to her themes so they are well-developed, as she elaborates on their meaning throughout the work.
Both quoted therein: "Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists." (Marcel Proust) "Art is a lie which tells the truth." (Picasso)
It is by the Storyteller's ordering of story into comprehensible patterns that the world ultimately is changed. And when people begin to inhabit and interpret story from the inside - stories of emotion, stories of science - they learn to transcend themselves. These are huge, huge metaphors and it's really nifty to wade in and join with her in playing them out. I think i've made it sound a lot less colorful than it really is, talking about the ideas in it, but i recommend it to anyone who is interested in these issues. Angelina the Storyteller is first infected by stamps within the pages of Cortazar's Hopscotch, and before she knows it she's full of Octavio Paz, Borges, and Garcia Lorca, hot jazz and Heidegger, Max Planck and Neruda. Story is an infection, that mutates as she crosses between the pages of the book.
"Stories are the folded-up dimensions in string theory. Stories are how humans unfold time." Essentially, human consciousness makes the Bridge that drives the Change, that sends the ship into the stars, that becomes the calculus, that is the Map. A complex portrait of a system that is multi-dimensional. "She opened the book. FROM THIS SIDE, she saw; and later on, FROM THE OTHER SIDE." Similarly, Su-Chen plays, and the city-ship is launched. They all begin to move to the tune of Light Music.
"The stories of emotion began to blend with the stories of science. The stories of science were stories that kept on making sense as one built on them, test after test. They explained reality reliably." "And one of the stories she learned was the story of the curled-up dimensions. Realities which might never be. But dimensions which were ineffably part of physical reality, a necessary and supporting part. A place of doorways, and portals, much as her own human mind seemed to be."
January 5, 2020
??? Which was my thinking while reading this book. I did not read the first three. Judging by the book description I didn't need to, but maybe I did? I'm glad I didn't though because this story was just one giant vague description of something called "Light Music". I struggled and struggled to follow along with metaphor after convoluted metaphor and I'm still left with boring vagaries. The only reason I slogged through this one was the fact that I've been carrying this book around for 10+ years (5 moves back and forth across the country), never reading it. Finally picked it up and figured I'd better finish it to justify keeping it on my shelf for a decade....I liked the characters, but the story and plot they were thrown in was just...??? The city is becoming a ship and leaving for who knows why? Some next step in human evolution, but it's never clearly explained. There are absolutely no antagonists, no driving plot other than a supposed time crunch which is unclear and not urgently felt at all in the plot development until the very end when all of a sudden we know the city is leaving in 4 days. Ok? Gah. This one is getting dropped at the used book store. Good riddance, get off my shelf.
December 22, 2016
If an author has gone to the effort to sit down and write a book, probably involving some or all of the following: blood, sweat tears and probably some alcohol, and produced a piece of work that they are proud of it doesn’t seem fair to slate a book because you don’t like it. This is why I not a fan of snarky reviews. In the case of this book, Light Music, I really couldn’t get along with it. It might have been me, but reading the few reviews that are out there makes me think I am not alone.
There were a few things wrong with it, the plot was barely visible in the writing the very disparate threads that didn’t seem to tie together at all and it really could have done with editing to within an inch of its life. It wasn’t totally dire, there are a few good ideas hiding amongst the voluminous writing; but neither was it good. That is a few hours of my life that I won’t get back. 1.5 Stars
There were a few things wrong with it, the plot was barely visible in the writing the very disparate threads that didn’t seem to tie together at all and it really could have done with editing to within an inch of its life. It wasn’t totally dire, there are a few good ideas hiding amongst the voluminous writing; but neither was it good. That is a few hours of my life that I won’t get back. 1.5 Stars
June 28, 2024
7/10
The events in the final book in the Nanotech series take place after the previous three in time. (This is important because book 3 was actually a prequel to the events in books 1 & 2.) Some characters, however, carry over, thanks to longevity treatments.
I loved parts of this book, but it just didn’t come together into a coherent story for me. I give the author credit for writing a unique book (and series), with a number of creative and original ideas. I loved the interplay between music (especially improvisation), light, and mathematics. She was willing to speculate in a number of different directions—nanotech, obviously, but also genetic engineering, medicine, communication, and sociology. The author explored was it means to be alive, to be human, to be family, to be sentient.
My main quibble is that the author (and thus, the reader) invests a lot of time and effort into characters and relationships only to let them kind of fall by the wayside. Do any characters get to stay with someone they love? I’m thinking of Chester, Angelina, Peabody, Dania…
So, great ideas, some very interesting characters, but the pieces just don’t seem to quite fit together, the tapestry isn't woven tightly enough, and so this reader was left a bit dissatisfied.
The events in the final book in the Nanotech series take place after the previous three in time. (This is important because book 3 was actually a prequel to the events in books 1 & 2.) Some characters, however, carry over, thanks to longevity treatments.
I loved parts of this book, but it just didn’t come together into a coherent story for me. I give the author credit for writing a unique book (and series), with a number of creative and original ideas. I loved the interplay between music (especially improvisation), light, and mathematics. She was willing to speculate in a number of different directions—nanotech, obviously, but also genetic engineering, medicine, communication, and sociology. The author explored was it means to be alive, to be human, to be family, to be sentient.
My main quibble is that the author (and thus, the reader) invests a lot of time and effort into characters and relationships only to let them kind of fall by the wayside. Do any characters get to stay with someone they love? I’m thinking of Chester, Angelina, Peabody, Dania…
So, great ideas, some very interesting characters, but the pieces just don’t seem to quite fit together, the tapestry isn't woven tightly enough, and so this reader was left a bit dissatisfied.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 24, 2020
Fleeing an unanticipated assault on Crescent City by pirates, a singing cowboy, entrusted with the recovery of lost technology needed to heal the sentient metropolis and rocket it upward, embarks on a bizarre odyssey across a perilous, unrecognizable outside--through a landscape of Western round-ups and tragically “youngening” children; of plague-ravaged humans in foreboding “flower cities;” of conscious machines, talking animals, and toys that long to be real.
June 30, 2010
Nanotech has transformed the world, for the better in some cases, for the worse in others. Into the middle of this changed world came El Silencio - the sudden, inexplicable failure of all long range communication. The book traces the experiences of Dania and Peabody on a mission from Crescent City, Angelina searching for her son and Ra and Zeb on a mission TO Crescent City.
While the book had some really great and creative ideas and it conveyed a few them well, so much of it was lost in a miasma of prose that just over described things that the book was difficult to get through. Parts of it came back to something a little clearer, and for then it worked out pretty well, and the various plot threads meshed into something comprehensible; and then it would go back into grand prosaic descriptions of things which the author obviously felt were important to convey but just weren't.
While the book had some really great and creative ideas and it conveyed a few them well, so much of it was lost in a miasma of prose that just over described things that the book was difficult to get through. Parts of it came back to something a little clearer, and for then it worked out pretty well, and the various plot threads meshed into something comprehensible; and then it would go back into grand prosaic descriptions of things which the author obviously felt were important to convey but just weren't.
December 18, 2021
This review is for the whole series. The last two books pull it all together masterfully. I am in total awe. Reading the books was an enthralling experience. Some kind of alien EMF pulse gradually knocks out all of the world's power and communications. At the same time, nanotechnology runs wild, causing all kinds of weirdities. In the midst of it, some engaging characters try to live their lives and pull things together. With a major theme of New Orleans jazz for enjoyment and vibrational transformation.
December 6, 2012
If you light possible tetchy apopalistic future type books, then you might like this series. It's a bit disjointed like the others in the series (each could be read alone). If not, this would not be an enjoyable read.
November 4, 2009
The last of these stories. I wished they could go on forever.
December 28, 2011
I enjoyed the entire series, and would have rated them more highly if they had been more tightly edited. Goonan's vision is SO comprehensive, and she wants to express it ALL.
November 26, 2018
I didn't realize I was jumping into the middle of a series when I picked up #2 in Goonan's Nanotech series, but you don't actually need to have read the previous ones - they work as standalone novels. I got a little obsessed with Goonan. I LOVE her world-building. In the previous book book, a signal from space, called "The Pulse," knocks out radio and internet on earth and children born at the time of the Pulse grown up with strangely different brains. This book is set many years later, and humanity is trying in the midst of world chaos brought on by a wave of nano-bio technology to adapt to new ways of being and is attempting to reach the stars and find the source of the Pulse.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews