The Stone Garden

by Mary Rosenblum

Discovery of the mysterious asteroids called Stones had quickly spawned a new breed of artists: "sculptors" who shaped the Stones into vivid collages of sensation and emotion by layering human experiences into them one by one. Although asteroid-belt miners harvested the Stones from deep space and artists with inborn sensitivity sculpted them, no one was sure what made the Stones so strangely receptive -- or where they came from.

Now Stone sculptors were being brutally murdered, one by one. No one knew why, and no one had more need to know that sculptor Michael Tryon. Famous, burned out, and reclusive, Michael had given up the security of Old Taos to meet Margarita Espinoza, a young artist who claimed to be his daughter -- only to find out that someone was killing off his friends and rivals and framing him for murder. The search for the truth led Margarita and Michael below the sea, onto a dangerous orbital platform, and into the far reaches of space. But the answer lay in the Stones themselves . . .

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

359 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 30, 1994

About the author

Mary Rosenblum was a science fiction/fantasy and mystery author. She grew up in Allison Park, "a dead little coal mining town outside Pittsburgh PA," and attended Reed College in Oregon, earning a biology degree. She attended the Clarion West workshop in 1988.

Her first story came out in 1990 and her first novel in 1993. Her career began, and has largely returned to, science fiction. However, from 1999 to 2002 she wrote the "Gardening Mysteries" novel series under the name "Mary Freeman."

She was also a cheesemaker, teaching the craft at workshops. At the age of 57, Rosenblum earned her pilot's license. Rosenblum died on March 11, 2018, when the single-engine plane she was piloting crashed near an airfield south of La Center, Washington.
(from Wiki)

Reviews

[Clint Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this a while ago (before GR), forgot about it, but recently had it pop back into my head.

If I remember correctly, I thought the prose was very poetic, the ideas quite interesting, the execution well done, but I really felt all the male characters were a little too feminine. I seem to recall a comparison of being punched to fluttering butterflies.

[Mitchell Hahn-Branson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given some further reflection and maybe a reread in a couple of years, I might be compelled to give this novel another star. Rosenblum interrogates the traits of art as both a shelter from the real world and a window to it, which is right where I live as far as my favorite themes in fiction go. So I definitely dug it. It's the kind of book that takes a good long time—months, at least—to settle.

In the fairly near future, mining operations in the solar system's asteroid belt have uncovered large stones that can permanently absorb specific sensations and experiences from a human mind. People with certain sensitivities can imprint these sensations by touch and mental transmission onto the stones, which then pass them on to whoever else touches them. A profitable new artistic medium results, in which audiences can go to galleries and live a whole range of moments with just a second of contact, like being in love on a summer day or having a religious experience underwater. Then someone starts killing the stone artists—or rather, apparently, inducing them to commit suicide. One of them, Michael, leaves his cloistered creative space in Taos, New Mexico, and travels into a larger, dangerous, cyberpunkish city to find out what's going on and also to find a younger artist, in a different new science fiction-y medium, who claims to be his daughter by the former love of his life. Much conflict ensues between artistic ideals, the need for personal connection, and the disconnect between those who luck into a stable life as artists, the less fortunate ones who have to fight to support themselves and get their work seen and acknowledged, and still others who resent anyone who's ever had the chance to create at all.

It's fascinating stuff. The only thing that pulled me out of the story occasionally was a factor that couldn't have been helped: there's a certain mid-'90s goofiness to the depictions of technologies that were still new when the book was written. Some of the devices imagined by Rosenblum still sound pretty neat in 2016; others are rather quaint now and bound to the early internet era. But once you get used to the regular reminders that this is a book from 1995, the whole thing is beautiful, provocative, and a little frightening in its ardency.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent read if you can find this book. It's been out of print for quite a while, too bad. Mary Rosemblum was a pretty good author.