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Polar City #2
POLAR CITY NIGHTMARE
A science fiction mystery with a political twist. The investigation of blackmail and murder on two planets uncovers an interstellar plot that jeopardizes the political balance between the human dominated Republic and the two major alien dominated governments. Set both in Polar City on Hagar and on the capital planet of Sarah POLAR CITY NIGHTMARE explores the universe of katharine Kerr's previous bestseller, POLAR CITY BLUES, digs into its history, and takes a closer look at the interstellar confederation, one of its major cultures. It develops themes first sounded in the original machine intelligence, prejudice, and human relationships, along with a look at what is truly ‘alien’. It is a major work of SF imagination.
368 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
4 people are currently reading
164 people want to read
About the author
Katharine Kerr
69 books1,638 followersBorn in Ohio, 1944. Moved to San Francisco Bay Area in 1962 and has lived there ever since. Katharine Kerr has read extensively in the fields of classical archeology, and medieval and dark ages history and literature, and these influences are clear in her work. Her epic Deverry series has won widespread praise and millions of fans around the world.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 29, 2014
Actually re-reading this, first read in ms yea-these-many years ago. Like Pat Cadigan’s *Synners*, it’s worn surprisingly well. I liked it then because it used present tense, and I had two unpublished novels that insisted on using present, one of which has since been my best success. Like its forerunner *Polar City Blues*, *Nightmare* affirmed that yeah, you cd. ignore the naysayers, use present tense and still get published, even be an established author, and not a wild-eyed marginalist.
I also still like the format for mind-talk between the psychics, much more innovative than most versions. And the racial almost-reversal of black and white, but with Hispanic input, and the presence of slums. (The evacuation plans for the barrio, in case of a space attack, uncannily anticipated the reality of events during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.)
Back then, I was also v. interested in the affair/non-affair of the previous female lead, Bobbie Lacey, and her AI, Buddy, a human/machine trope that turned up in other women’s SF novels. And I lerved Blade the literate lizard and ex-Space Marine Sergeant, who makes a starring reappearance here, quoting everything from Shakespeare to Conrad, while hefting a metal bar for weapon and living in the outer reaches of Down-and-Outville. No, that’s my name for it, not Kit’s.
I will admit, the intricacies of baseball, which plays a central role, tend to go past me, much as cricket might past a US reader, but everything else, including the fascinating set of aliens, from the Cons to the ‘Lies to the newly discovered Enzebbs – first encountered in the person of “Mrs Bug” – are happily Still At It, whatever it is.
Nowadays, *Nightmare* also makes me notice the way our home settings infiltrate our work. It isn’t just the use of “Merrkan,” near to a rap-slang, or the awareness of barrios, that makes this novel proclaim, I was written in an urban setting on the US west coast. It comes over in something as minor as Red Wallace’s taking her skimmer out onto a freeway that circles Polar City.
Sure, for most people in the US, and a lot of people in Australia, this is everyday. But even if/when I wrote SF, it wd. never occur to me to have characters driving on a freeway, because in my hometown such are only just beginning to appear. What this did drive home to me, you shd. excuse the pun, is how much, even when we are going for a radical difference from our own everyday, our secondary worlds are still predicated on that everyday. Down to minor details like this.
I also still like the format for mind-talk between the psychics, much more innovative than most versions. And the racial almost-reversal of black and white, but with Hispanic input, and the presence of slums. (The evacuation plans for the barrio, in case of a space attack, uncannily anticipated the reality of events during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.)
Back then, I was also v. interested in the affair/non-affair of the previous female lead, Bobbie Lacey, and her AI, Buddy, a human/machine trope that turned up in other women’s SF novels. And I lerved Blade the literate lizard and ex-Space Marine Sergeant, who makes a starring reappearance here, quoting everything from Shakespeare to Conrad, while hefting a metal bar for weapon and living in the outer reaches of Down-and-Outville. No, that’s my name for it, not Kit’s.
I will admit, the intricacies of baseball, which plays a central role, tend to go past me, much as cricket might past a US reader, but everything else, including the fascinating set of aliens, from the Cons to the ‘Lies to the newly discovered Enzebbs – first encountered in the person of “Mrs Bug” – are happily Still At It, whatever it is.
Nowadays, *Nightmare* also makes me notice the way our home settings infiltrate our work. It isn’t just the use of “Merrkan,” near to a rap-slang, or the awareness of barrios, that makes this novel proclaim, I was written in an urban setting on the US west coast. It comes over in something as minor as Red Wallace’s taking her skimmer out onto a freeway that circles Polar City.
Sure, for most people in the US, and a lot of people in Australia, this is everyday. But even if/when I wrote SF, it wd. never occur to me to have characters driving on a freeway, because in my hometown such are only just beginning to appear. What this did drive home to me, you shd. excuse the pun, is how much, even when we are going for a radical difference from our own everyday, our secondary worlds are still predicated on that everyday. Down to minor details like this.
August 24, 2023
Another fun noir-sci-fi mystery set in polar city. Much like its predecessor it doesn't seem to take any spectacular risks or do anything drastically different but it is just such a fun story with some very entertaining characters. I would definitely recommend reading polar city blues first, just so certain elements of the characterisation don't seem so out of left field.
All the main characters return and much like the first book the tension between the two competing galactic superpowers plays a central role. It does however build on its predecessor by having a much greater focus on baseball, with several of Polar City's players featuring as prominent characters.
The mystery is also pleasingly complex, with the eventual solution being naturally worked out with no wild leaps in logic. The one slight issue for me is that one particular reveal seemed very apparent to me much earlier. Not normally an issue but when the rest of the reveals were so well paced this one particular element seemed out of place. One of the character's motivations also seemed a little... basic or heavy handed.
A very good book my main criticism is that its just polar city blues again, but with a few more incongruities. I consider it a 4 star book but I can't in good conscience recommend it as a four as a recommendation.
All the main characters return and much like the first book the tension between the two competing galactic superpowers plays a central role. It does however build on its predecessor by having a much greater focus on baseball, with several of Polar City's players featuring as prominent characters.
The mystery is also pleasingly complex, with the eventual solution being naturally worked out with no wild leaps in logic. The one slight issue for me is that one particular reveal seemed very apparent to me much earlier. Not normally an issue but when the rest of the reveals were so well paced this one particular element seemed out of place. One of the character's motivations also seemed a little... basic or heavy handed.
A very good book my main criticism is that its just polar city blues again, but with a few more incongruities. I consider it a 4 star book but I can't in good conscience recommend it as a four as a recommendation.
March 12, 2025
Excellent combination of a complex future society - credible science fiction, but including society race and species alongside the technology - enough believable and likeable characters, an extremely complex plot - a mystery-thriller, a powerful ending.
I didn't mind the baseball, it's not my game but I have enough background to follow its importance to the characters. I echo another reviewer's comment that although this is an imagined future on another planet, a lot of the social details are lifted from present-day earth: apart from the baseball there are upmarket "skimmers" called Bentleys and Jags... and so on. There is a general sense of life being a bit precarious, that people are struggling to survive and get on. There is a Soho district around the spaceport offering entertainment for visitors from offplanet, there are rich areas - nothing much happens there - there is a real slum. There is a chief of police who really is doing his best to keep order.
Do read Polar City Blues first, that establishes the world. But I feel this is a more satisfying mystery.
I didn't mind the baseball, it's not my game but I have enough background to follow its importance to the characters. I echo another reviewer's comment that although this is an imagined future on another planet, a lot of the social details are lifted from present-day earth: apart from the baseball there are upmarket "skimmers" called Bentleys and Jags... and so on. There is a general sense of life being a bit precarious, that people are struggling to survive and get on. There is a Soho district around the spaceport offering entertainment for visitors from offplanet, there are rich areas - nothing much happens there - there is a real slum. There is a chief of police who really is doing his best to keep order.
Do read Polar City Blues first, that establishes the world. But I feel this is a more satisfying mystery.
abandoned
March 20, 2024DNF, decided to try and give this one a go since the first book in the series was OK.
I still don't connect with the writing, the slang/lingo and "american vibe".
After about a month of not feeling like reading it, I'm giving up. :\
I still don't connect with the writing, the slang/lingo and "american vibe".
After about a month of not feeling like reading it, I'm giving up. :\
October 30, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in March 2001.
Unlike Palace, Katharine Kerr's previous collaboration, Polar City Nightmare follows on from her earlier solo novel Polar City Blues. Instead of an entirely new scenario, the background and characters are already in existence. This made it harder to believe the claim at the begging (also made in Palace) that this is an "old-fashioned collaboration" in which both partners play a major part, as opposed to the well known author merely lending her name and a little guidance for a novel based on a well known one of her own, as seems to be increasingly common in the genre.
Polar City Nightmare is in fact a direct sequel to Polar City Blues. The Republic of which the planet Hagar is a part continues its precarious existence as a small state between two enormous superpowers. Once again, a problem arises with one of their embassies, this time when a junior attaché and an irreplaceable cultural relic go missing. Once more Bobbie Lacey reluctantly assists the police investigation with her psychic partner Jack Mulligan. In this novel the stakes are higher; the other major difference is that baseball plays a much larger part.
By being such a novel, Polar City Nightmare reads as though Kerr were sole author, though it does lack something of the spark of its predecessor. That may be due to the part played by the sport, which limits the novel's appeal to one who is not American and is not particularly a lover of any kind of sport. Polar City Nightmare is diminished a little by this, but it remains well written, exciting, and an interesting portrayal of the future.
One interesting point, shared with the earlier novel, is made by Kerr in her introductory note. As she says, in most fiction - and, really, in most Western fiction - it is the intention of the author that, unless explicitly stated, the race of a character should be assumed to be white. Here, the opposite holds, and race relationships are generally a mirror image of late twentieth century America - whites in crime ridden ghettos, black and Hispanic people in most positions of power. That this assumption is made by readers (and that it is expected by authors) is a sad reflection on our culture, and is probably a consequence of an unequal distribution of education and prosperity - more white people have jobs which leave time and energy to read novels. It is effectively the same point made in Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and it is a pity that it can still be made. (I suspect that a lack of black TV and film stars of both sexes also contributes to the way that characters in novels are imagined.) I should note that the background to Ursula Le Guin's earlier Earthsea novels makes the same assumptions about race as Kerr does here.
Unlike Palace, Katharine Kerr's previous collaboration, Polar City Nightmare follows on from her earlier solo novel Polar City Blues. Instead of an entirely new scenario, the background and characters are already in existence. This made it harder to believe the claim at the begging (also made in Palace) that this is an "old-fashioned collaboration" in which both partners play a major part, as opposed to the well known author merely lending her name and a little guidance for a novel based on a well known one of her own, as seems to be increasingly common in the genre.
Polar City Nightmare is in fact a direct sequel to Polar City Blues. The Republic of which the planet Hagar is a part continues its precarious existence as a small state between two enormous superpowers. Once again, a problem arises with one of their embassies, this time when a junior attaché and an irreplaceable cultural relic go missing. Once more Bobbie Lacey reluctantly assists the police investigation with her psychic partner Jack Mulligan. In this novel the stakes are higher; the other major difference is that baseball plays a much larger part.
By being such a novel, Polar City Nightmare reads as though Kerr were sole author, though it does lack something of the spark of its predecessor. That may be due to the part played by the sport, which limits the novel's appeal to one who is not American and is not particularly a lover of any kind of sport. Polar City Nightmare is diminished a little by this, but it remains well written, exciting, and an interesting portrayal of the future.
One interesting point, shared with the earlier novel, is made by Kerr in her introductory note. As she says, in most fiction - and, really, in most Western fiction - it is the intention of the author that, unless explicitly stated, the race of a character should be assumed to be white. Here, the opposite holds, and race relationships are generally a mirror image of late twentieth century America - whites in crime ridden ghettos, black and Hispanic people in most positions of power. That this assumption is made by readers (and that it is expected by authors) is a sad reflection on our culture, and is probably a consequence of an unequal distribution of education and prosperity - more white people have jobs which leave time and energy to read novels. It is effectively the same point made in Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and it is a pity that it can still be made. (I suspect that a lack of black TV and film stars of both sexes also contributes to the way that characters in novels are imagined.) I should note that the background to Ursula Le Guin's earlier Earthsea novels makes the same assumptions about race as Kerr does here.
April 7, 2009
This is a strange book. It takes place in another planet, but it's about baseball and race politics.
Really, it felt like it could have been about the Detroit Tigers in the 70s instead of the Polar City Bears in year whatever in planet whatsitname.
Really, it felt like it could have been about the Detroit Tigers in the 70s instead of the Polar City Bears in year whatever in planet whatsitname.
June 23, 2011
Polar City Blues is a very competent crime thriller, and the alien angle in it works very well. The second book is not of the same caliber, but well worth reading if you like the first book.
http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=882
http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=882
December 7, 2007
A verry good followup to Polar City Blues.
The same caracters, a new story on the same theme.
The same caracters, a new story on the same theme.
July 10, 2008
I'm not a huge baseball or mystery fan, and while this was a decent read, it didn't have me enthralled.
July 23, 2013
A fun read which would have been more fun if I was a baseball fan!
Read
August 23, 2008isbn,original
December 25, 2011
Took a bit of getting used to in terms of style. Ultimately a satisfying read.
Read
February 25, 2018Was so happy to find this one since I loved Polar city blues. Read them in order and enjoy them like I do.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews