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Nanotech #2
Mississippi Blues
Follows the journey of Verity across the wonderfully altered landscape of mid-America, in a vision of America transformed by new and apocalyptic technology
511 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
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 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 10, 2024
7.5/10
A somewhat more coherent, focused story than the first book in the Nanotech Quartet, but there still are a lot of tangents. The author doesn’t mind leaving a number of things without explanations; I realize there are 2 more books in the series, but there is more “glossing over” than I like. Still, the characters are fascinating, as is the assortment of scientific, technological, and medical developments that permeate this future earth. It ended on a more positive, hopeful note than I’d expected.
Edited to add that I learned a lot about the blues and their roots.
A somewhat more coherent, focused story than the first book in the Nanotech Quartet, but there still are a lot of tangents. The author doesn’t mind leaving a number of things without explanations; I realize there are 2 more books in the series, but there is more “glossing over” than I like. Still, the characters are fascinating, as is the assortment of scientific, technological, and medical developments that permeate this future earth. It ended on a more positive, hopeful note than I’d expected.
Edited to add that I learned a lot about the blues and their roots.
April 17, 2020
After a nanotechnology plague destroys civilization, refugees escape down the Mississippi River from Cincinnati to New Orleans.
April 6, 2015
My favorite type of science fiction story - looking forward to the next in the series!
December 23, 2008
I didn't like it as much as I liked Queen City Jazz in general. There were places where the language came together with that same lyricisim that I liked in QCJ, and those parts were good. But there were also long stretches where I was fairly bored. These were long stretches where a single character would be going on for several paragraphs at a time, telling other characters (usually Verity or Blaze) about things that happened with them--and that got to me after a while. Too much show, not enough tell. What made it particularly vexing was that there were two minor characters who joined the cast after getting a side chapter devoted to them, just enough to introduce them to the reader before throwing them into the main plot--and I did like that. So when other characters didn't get that introduction at all and only got these long stretches of show-not-tell dialogue to explain their stories, it was extra jarring.
I also didn't care for Verity's characterization very much in this story. I liked her pretty well in QCJ, but in this story, she got a lot more random--and, more annoyingly, whiny. She sniped at people. She screamed. And for extra special annoyance value, in places this seemed to be handwaved away as "oh, she's pregnant, so this is why she's so emotional"--not in the narrative, mind you, but in how other characters are reacting to her. They know she's pregnant (and they seem to clue in on that amazingly well despite the fact that she's not even showing at the time, which made me go WTF?!), and then dismiss her behavior. I didn't care for that at all.
More importantly, through most of the story Verity is really only a cardboard cutout version of a main character for me. She's ostensibly the one in charge of the situation--but unlike in QCJ, where she did a really good job of trying to figure out what the heck was going on and get to the heart of things, in this story she spends a lot more time just reacting to things that happen to her. As a result, she's a lot less interesting.
Blaze became a lot more interesting to me in this book, since there are large parts that are told from his point of view and in first person, distinguishing his parts of the story from Verity's, which are in third person. His pursuit of learning how to play the blues as part of rediscovering his lost identity was ultimately pretty fun, and it became a vital part of how to fix one of the last challenges the cast faced in the story. Writing about it now, I find myself thinking that Blaze really ought to have been the main viewpoint character in the story this time around, because he goes through a much more interesting plot arc than Verity does. And when Blaze plays music, when he grabs hold of one of his instruments and lets loose on the songs he's learned, Goonan gets a lot better at showing me that way with words that I like about her. When she's writing about her characters making music, she shines through again. And hell--she even threw in a brief passing mention of Elvis in Blaze's experiences learning all about the history of the blues. I had to like that. I'm biologically compelled. ;)
Even Blaze's parts of the book were erratic, though. He's got a part towards the end where he's clearly the viewpoint character, and yet the scene dropped into third person for no reason I could discern.
Ultimately, my reactions to Blaze and Verity typify my reactions to the book as a whole. There's stuff in here I like a lot. For example, the character pairoff of Mattie vs. Mark Twain (or, rather, a nanotech-created version of Twain) had some excellent side character development. And though the book has a distinctly surreal feel to it that I had a hard time following for a while, as I came in towards the end it all started making better sense. Characters who seemed to join in on the plot for no reason eventually showed their purpose for being in the plot--especially Mattie, who ultimately becomes even more vital than Blaze's music to help the characters get to where they're going.
As all this started to happen, I found myself going "okay, there is an overall theme here"--not unlike trying to follow individual themes in a big complex piece of music, and getting that sense of satisfaction that comes from final chords starting to resolve. And I am still very interested in the overall big picture of what's happened to the world as Goonan's describing it in this series. But my early gut reaction of "early draft", I think, holds true. I think one more good hard edit pass through this book could have brought out a much more polished story.
As it stands, there's enough here to pull me on into Crescent City Rhapsody. But I'm glad this read is done. It was difficult to hang in there and make it through, and I'll be happy to be starting fresh with a new set of characters.
I also didn't care for Verity's characterization very much in this story. I liked her pretty well in QCJ, but in this story, she got a lot more random--and, more annoyingly, whiny. She sniped at people. She screamed. And for extra special annoyance value, in places this seemed to be handwaved away as "oh, she's pregnant, so this is why she's so emotional"--not in the narrative, mind you, but in how other characters are reacting to her. They know she's pregnant (and they seem to clue in on that amazingly well despite the fact that she's not even showing at the time, which made me go WTF?!), and then dismiss her behavior. I didn't care for that at all.
More importantly, through most of the story Verity is really only a cardboard cutout version of a main character for me. She's ostensibly the one in charge of the situation--but unlike in QCJ, where she did a really good job of trying to figure out what the heck was going on and get to the heart of things, in this story she spends a lot more time just reacting to things that happen to her. As a result, she's a lot less interesting.
Blaze became a lot more interesting to me in this book, since there are large parts that are told from his point of view and in first person, distinguishing his parts of the story from Verity's, which are in third person. His pursuit of learning how to play the blues as part of rediscovering his lost identity was ultimately pretty fun, and it became a vital part of how to fix one of the last challenges the cast faced in the story. Writing about it now, I find myself thinking that Blaze really ought to have been the main viewpoint character in the story this time around, because he goes through a much more interesting plot arc than Verity does. And when Blaze plays music, when he grabs hold of one of his instruments and lets loose on the songs he's learned, Goonan gets a lot better at showing me that way with words that I like about her. When she's writing about her characters making music, she shines through again. And hell--she even threw in a brief passing mention of Elvis in Blaze's experiences learning all about the history of the blues. I had to like that. I'm biologically compelled. ;)
Even Blaze's parts of the book were erratic, though. He's got a part towards the end where he's clearly the viewpoint character, and yet the scene dropped into third person for no reason I could discern.
Ultimately, my reactions to Blaze and Verity typify my reactions to the book as a whole. There's stuff in here I like a lot. For example, the character pairoff of Mattie vs. Mark Twain (or, rather, a nanotech-created version of Twain) had some excellent side character development. And though the book has a distinctly surreal feel to it that I had a hard time following for a while, as I came in towards the end it all started making better sense. Characters who seemed to join in on the plot for no reason eventually showed their purpose for being in the plot--especially Mattie, who ultimately becomes even more vital than Blaze's music to help the characters get to where they're going.
As all this started to happen, I found myself going "okay, there is an overall theme here"--not unlike trying to follow individual themes in a big complex piece of music, and getting that sense of satisfaction that comes from final chords starting to resolve. And I am still very interested in the overall big picture of what's happened to the world as Goonan's describing it in this series. But my early gut reaction of "early draft", I think, holds true. I think one more good hard edit pass through this book could have brought out a much more polished story.
As it stands, there's enough here to pull me on into Crescent City Rhapsody. But I'm glad this read is done. It was difficult to hang in there and make it through, and I'll be happy to be starting fresh with a new set of characters.
September 19, 2010
About halfway through this book I realized I had read the Nanotech Quartet out of order (I read Crescent City Rhapsody before this, even though that is the 3rd book of the quartet while Mississippi Blues is the 2nd). That's not really an issue, and in some ways it gave me some more context about the world.
I liked this a lot more than Queen City Jazz, its precursor. Verity and Blaze, the central characters from both books, seemed much more developed, as did the world (a futuristic, post-nanotech USA). The major reason I enjoyed this is that it gives the reader a broader experience of life in post-nanotech America.
Yes, there are parts that feel a bit like infodumps, and there are times when it feels like Goonan is shoehorning a musical style (the blues, in this case) into the story rather than allowing its place to develop naturally, but the story comes together in the end and makes for a rather satisfying chapter in Goonan's vision of the USA transformed by nanotech.
I liked this a lot more than Queen City Jazz, its precursor. Verity and Blaze, the central characters from both books, seemed much more developed, as did the world (a futuristic, post-nanotech USA). The major reason I enjoyed this is that it gives the reader a broader experience of life in post-nanotech America.
Yes, there are parts that feel a bit like infodumps, and there are times when it feels like Goonan is shoehorning a musical style (the blues, in this case) into the story rather than allowing its place to develop naturally, but the story comes together in the end and makes for a rather satisfying chapter in Goonan's vision of the USA transformed by nanotech.
April 19, 2011
I don't know, this was such a frustrating book. Never ending diatribes from characters that all started to blend together by the end, long periods of reflective self-flagellation with very little plot movement coupled with some really interesting ideas examined in a vivid and interesting landscape. The musical device worked much more cohesively in this novel.
Most frustrating of all was the with-holding of info by key characters, for no solid reason, to maintain an artificial tension within the narrative. It was all very angsty and I really wanted the story to get to the point. I'm not sure if it even did in the end.
I'm debating about whether or not to read the next one. I'd certainly like to get a sense of resolution out of these books which has not been particularly forthcoming.
I think I'll read the first few pages of the next and see how I feel.
Most frustrating of all was the with-holding of info by key characters, for no solid reason, to maintain an artificial tension within the narrative. It was all very angsty and I really wanted the story to get to the point. I'm not sure if it even did in the end.
I'm debating about whether or not to read the next one. I'd certainly like to get a sense of resolution out of these books which has not been particularly forthcoming.
I think I'll read the first few pages of the next and see how I feel.
July 6, 2013
A futuristic post-apocalyptic jumping off from Mark Twain’s story of an adventure down the Mississippi. And boy does she play with the Mark Twain theme, in the most delightful way! Thoroughly enjoyable, rich and multi-layered. As much as I loved the book, the ending was just a touch over the top for me. But given that I know there’s a sequel, I’m wondering if it was all perhaps meant to be slightly ironic? Interesting how she takes on race as a topic.
October 18, 2011
review to follow
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February 1, 2016read in manuscript and enjoyed it
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews