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Cosmos Incorporated: A Novel
The first major English translation of one of France’s most admired writers, Cosmos Incorporated is a triumph of science fiction–a masterwork of cataclysm, mysticism, and suspense.
Fifty years of warfare, disease, and strife have decimated the world’s population. Those who remain are motes in the mind of UniWorld, a superstate that monitors humanity via a vast computer metastructure that catalog everything about everyone on the planet–race, religion, genetic codes, even fantasies. Those who have the means escape UniWorld’s tight control through the Orbital Ring.
Though his memory has been wiped clean and his history fabricated in order to pass through UniWorld’s check points, Sergei Diego Plotkin knows his name.And he knows his to murder a man in the city of Grand Junction, a Vegas-like outpost that is home to the private launching pad to the Ring. But this sense of purpose is compromised by random memories that flash through Plotkin’s brain. England and Argentina. The shores of Lake Baikal. And something else. Something indescribable.
Now Plotkin is about to meet his maker. As his identity and mission incrementally resurface in his conscious mind, and in the presence of an eerily beautiful woman, Plotkin will soon discover that he has come here not just to kill but to be born. . . .
“Like Houellebecq, Dantec takes inspiration from both high and low culture; he is the sort of writer who cites Sun Tzu’s Art of War and the Stooges’ Search and Destroy with equal facility.”
–The New York Times
“DNA is to Dantec what the swan was to romantic an invitation to dream. . . . This rocker-writer teleports us into the cyberpunk beyonds of literature. Fasten your seatbelts!”
–Le Nouvel Observateur
Fifty years of warfare, disease, and strife have decimated the world’s population. Those who remain are motes in the mind of UniWorld, a superstate that monitors humanity via a vast computer metastructure that catalog everything about everyone on the planet–race, religion, genetic codes, even fantasies. Those who have the means escape UniWorld’s tight control through the Orbital Ring.
Though his memory has been wiped clean and his history fabricated in order to pass through UniWorld’s check points, Sergei Diego Plotkin knows his name.And he knows his to murder a man in the city of Grand Junction, a Vegas-like outpost that is home to the private launching pad to the Ring. But this sense of purpose is compromised by random memories that flash through Plotkin’s brain. England and Argentina. The shores of Lake Baikal. And something else. Something indescribable.
Now Plotkin is about to meet his maker. As his identity and mission incrementally resurface in his conscious mind, and in the presence of an eerily beautiful woman, Plotkin will soon discover that he has come here not just to kill but to be born. . . .
“Like Houellebecq, Dantec takes inspiration from both high and low culture; he is the sort of writer who cites Sun Tzu’s Art of War and the Stooges’ Search and Destroy with equal facility.”
–The New York Times
“DNA is to Dantec what the swan was to romantic an invitation to dream. . . . This rocker-writer teleports us into the cyberpunk beyonds of literature. Fasten your seatbelts!”
–Le Nouvel Observateur
464 pages, Paperback
First published August 24, 2005
5 people are currently reading
99 people want to read
About the author
Maurice G. Dantec
23 books61 followers(English version below) Maurice Georges Dantec naît à Grenoble le 13 juin 1959, au sein d'une famille communiste, d'un père journaliste scientifique et d'une mère couturière et employée de service de la Ville d'Ivry-sur-Seine. Il passe la majeure partie de sa prime enfance dans cette ville, en pleine banlieue « rouge ». À l'âge de 5 ans, de violentes crises d'asthme vont éveiller en lui « d’atroces angoisses de mort imminente », dont le souvenir va hanter son adolescence. Ces problèmes de santé et la séparation de ses parents vont le conduire à vivre avec sa mère et sa soeur durant plus de 5 ans dans les Alpes, près de Grenoble, sa ville natale.
Après une scolarité brillante, il entre en 1971 au lycée Romain-Rolland, où il rencontre Jean-Bernard Pouy, futur créateur du Poulpe, qui amplifie son attirance déjà bien ancrée envers les littératures "marginales" américaines de l'époque (roman noir, écrits psychédéliques, science-fiction). Très tôt, il devient également un fervent lecteur de Nietzsche et Gilles Deleuze. À la fin des années 1970, une fois le bac en poche, il débute des études de lettres modernes qu'il abandonne rapidement pour fonder les groupes de rock « État d'Urgence », puis "Artefact" . Durant les années 1980, il continue ses aventures musicales tout en travaillant en tant que concepteur-rédacteur dans la publicité.
Après avoir créé, en 1991, sans succès, une société de communication multimédia, il décide de se « mettre à écrire sérieusement », tout en travaillant dans une agence de télémarketing. Sur recommandation de Jean-Bernard Pouy, il soumet en 1992 à Patrick Raynal, directeur de la collection Série Noire, un « volumineux et impubliable manuscrit de cinq cents feuillets de deux mille signes » : l’éditeur , qui voit en lui "les signes d'un phénomène littéraire", l’encourage alors vivement à lui livrer un autre ouvrage.
Maurice Georges Dantec was born in Grenoble, France on June 13th, 1959, within a communist family. His father was a scientific journalist and his mother a dressmaker, employees in the service of the City of Ivry-sur-Seine. He spent the majority of his childhood in the "red" suburbs. At the age of 5 years, a series of violent asthma attacks awakened his mind with the dreadful anxiety of imminent death, a memory that haunted him into adolescence. These health problems greatly affected him, along with the separation of his parents, and he lived with his mother and sister for more than 5 years in Alps, near Grenoble, his home town.
After primary schooling, Maurice entered the secondary school Romain-Rolland in 1971, where he met Jean-Bernard Pouy, future creator of the Octopus, who amplifies his growing attraction towards American "marginal" literature (black novel, mind-expanding writings, science fiction). Very early, he also became a fervent reader of Nietzsche and Giles Deleuze. At the end of 1970’s, once the receptacle in pocket, it starts studies of modern letters which he leaves fast to found the groups of rock " urgent State ", then "Artefact". During 1980s, it continues its musical adventures while working as concepteur-editor in advertising.
Having created unsuccessfully, a society of multimedia communication, while working in an agency of telemarketing , in 1991, he decided to write seriously. On recommendation of Jean-Bernard Pouy, he submitted some of his writing in 1992 to Patrick Raynal, manager of the collection Thriller. It was a huge, unpublishable handwritten manuscript of five hundred pages. Instead of rejection, the editor saw in Maurice "the signs of a literary phenomenon" strongly encouraging him to create other works.
Après une scolarité brillante, il entre en 1971 au lycée Romain-Rolland, où il rencontre Jean-Bernard Pouy, futur créateur du Poulpe, qui amplifie son attirance déjà bien ancrée envers les littératures "marginales" américaines de l'époque (roman noir, écrits psychédéliques, science-fiction). Très tôt, il devient également un fervent lecteur de Nietzsche et Gilles Deleuze. À la fin des années 1970, une fois le bac en poche, il débute des études de lettres modernes qu'il abandonne rapidement pour fonder les groupes de rock « État d'Urgence », puis "Artefact" . Durant les années 1980, il continue ses aventures musicales tout en travaillant en tant que concepteur-rédacteur dans la publicité.
Après avoir créé, en 1991, sans succès, une société de communication multimédia, il décide de se « mettre à écrire sérieusement », tout en travaillant dans une agence de télémarketing. Sur recommandation de Jean-Bernard Pouy, il soumet en 1992 à Patrick Raynal, directeur de la collection Série Noire, un « volumineux et impubliable manuscrit de cinq cents feuillets de deux mille signes » : l’éditeur , qui voit en lui "les signes d'un phénomène littéraire", l’encourage alors vivement à lui livrer un autre ouvrage.
Maurice Georges Dantec was born in Grenoble, France on June 13th, 1959, within a communist family. His father was a scientific journalist and his mother a dressmaker, employees in the service of the City of Ivry-sur-Seine. He spent the majority of his childhood in the "red" suburbs. At the age of 5 years, a series of violent asthma attacks awakened his mind with the dreadful anxiety of imminent death, a memory that haunted him into adolescence. These health problems greatly affected him, along with the separation of his parents, and he lived with his mother and sister for more than 5 years in Alps, near Grenoble, his home town.
After primary schooling, Maurice entered the secondary school Romain-Rolland in 1971, where he met Jean-Bernard Pouy, future creator of the Octopus, who amplifies his growing attraction towards American "marginal" literature (black novel, mind-expanding writings, science fiction). Very early, he also became a fervent reader of Nietzsche and Giles Deleuze. At the end of 1970’s, once the receptacle in pocket, it starts studies of modern letters which he leaves fast to found the groups of rock " urgent State ", then "Artefact". During 1980s, it continues its musical adventures while working as concepteur-editor in advertising.
Having created unsuccessfully, a society of multimedia communication, while working in an agency of telemarketing , in 1991, he decided to write seriously. On recommendation of Jean-Bernard Pouy, he submitted some of his writing in 1992 to Patrick Raynal, manager of the collection Thriller. It was a huge, unpublishable handwritten manuscript of five hundred pages. Instead of rejection, the editor saw in Maurice "the signs of a literary phenomenon" strongly encouraging him to create other works.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 23, 2014
A novel that starts as a standard cyberpunk/dystopian future - though a rather unusual one as befitting a French author - with an assassin and his mission, takes a very unexpected left turn into deep metaphysical territory without negating what came before.
I am reasonably sure that there will be dismissals of this book as fraud, humbug and post-modernist French nonsense, but that is another reason to read it. Masterpiece or fraud? Boring and unreadable or live-wire plotting and musical humming? Read and decide. Highly, highly recommended.
I am reasonably sure that there will be dismissals of this book as fraud, humbug and post-modernist French nonsense, but that is another reason to read it. Masterpiece or fraud? Boring and unreadable or live-wire plotting and musical humming? Read and decide. Highly, highly recommended.
November 22, 2016
Roman profond et puissant, difficile à suivre, mais à l'écriture dynamique et vivante. De nombreuses références s'y télescopent, tant dans la narration que dans le style, ou même l'emploi de certaines expressions. Se basant sur la science-fiction, Dantec va au-delà du genre, l’utilisant pour continuer son questionnement sur la place de l’homme et sa conversion à Dieu, sur le rôle de la fiction et de la réalité, sur les devoirs liés à la liberté de Créateur (et non uniquement les droits, ces devoirs étant particulièrement lourds), liberté chèrement acquise. Dantec joue avec la lumière de son écriture pour révéler, mais aussi pour chercher les ténèbres qui s'y cachent. C'est pourquoi il dévoile beaucoup, prend le temps d'expliquer, tout en usant d'un vocabulaire parfois difficile (dont les références sont théologiques, de la Kabbale au tsimtsoum en passant par les Évangiles), c'est pourquoi il révèle et dissimule, pour mieux mettre son propos en évidence, suivant l'exemple de Philip K. Dick.Par moments, son écriture est quasi « automatique », machinique, usant, de cette manière, des armes de l'adversaire (à savoir la Machine, l'Unimonde Humain). Beaucoup de références à la littérature, à la philosophie, au rock des années 70 et 80, aux personnages de fiction, à la théologie catholique, ainsi que des auto-références (voir ses Théâtres des opérations), participant ainsi activement aux processus qu'il décrit. La métafiction, la réécriture du Monde décrites ici sont précisément illustrées tout au long du livre, Dantec ne se contentant pas de présenter un roman (si l'on peut considérer son ouvrage comme un roman, et non pas comme un objet littéraire difficilement identifiable), une thèse qu'il démontre, il utilise cette thèse et l'illustre au travers de son écriture, au travers de son processus narratif, évoluant, obligeant le lecteur à le suivre de manière active.Autre influence non négligeable que Dantec cite à plusieurs reprises, « Nous fils d’Eichmann » de Gunther Anders. Celui-ci a entrepris d’écrire au fils d’Eichmann pour échanger (sans succès) sur les horreurs perpétrées par son père, et comment la technique a « permis » d’aboutir à Auschwitz, par la machinisation du monde, à la certitude de la répétition du monstrueux. Cette machinisation, symbolisée par un enfant-machine, point central et pourtant nœud du réseau global de la Machine et des réseaux terrestres, est donc combattue par Plotkine, qui fera tout pour éviter son avènement, décrivant l’affrontement d’une figure christique et de son double négatif, ou plutôt l’affrontement de ce qu’ils représentent. Dantec a également réussi des descriptions des lieux, de l’environnement, faisant sans cesse référence à la technique, mais également aux camps, d’un monde déliquescent, en état de décrépitude avancée.
Cosmos Inc. est donc une véritable profession de foi catholique, où les personnages n'existent, finalement, que par leur croyance en un au-delà, reconnaissant la « petitesse », d'une certaine manière, de l'homme, réduit à la technique, et donc d'autant plus éloigné de la spiritualité. Cette profession de foi passe par le baptême, la reconnaissance de la présence de Dieu, ce que feront les personnages. Elle passe également par la reconnaissance du fait que l’homme a un Créateur, est une créature, qui ne pourra elle-même créée qu’en accédant au Très-Haut.
Son écriture, son style m'ont paru moins lourds que dans son roman précédent; non pas cyberpunk, mais d'une certaine manière post-cyberpunk, dans le sens où il ne se « contente » pas d'utiliser le vocabulaire informatique et celui des réseaux informationnels, mais prend en compte les données récentes de la biologie, de la physique quantique, pour écrire, décrire, comparer, allant au-delà du cyberpunk.
Par contre, Dantec use de tics d'écriture, répétant trop régulièrement les mêmes idées à court intervalle – même si cela est parfois difficile à comprendre, il n'est pas forcément utile de se reprendre aussi systématiquement. Mais cela crée un mouvement dans la lecture, un peu comme des vagues se recouvrant les unes les autres, ou des plis se positionnant les uns par dessus les autres, apportant chaque fois un peu plus d'informations, tout en conservant une certaine transparence sur ce qui précède. Il y a donc beaucoup à dire sur ce roman, ses qualités et ses défauts.
Cosmos Inc. est donc une véritable profession de foi catholique, où les personnages n'existent, finalement, que par leur croyance en un au-delà, reconnaissant la « petitesse », d'une certaine manière, de l'homme, réduit à la technique, et donc d'autant plus éloigné de la spiritualité. Cette profession de foi passe par le baptême, la reconnaissance de la présence de Dieu, ce que feront les personnages. Elle passe également par la reconnaissance du fait que l’homme a un Créateur, est une créature, qui ne pourra elle-même créée qu’en accédant au Très-Haut.
Son écriture, son style m'ont paru moins lourds que dans son roman précédent; non pas cyberpunk, mais d'une certaine manière post-cyberpunk, dans le sens où il ne se « contente » pas d'utiliser le vocabulaire informatique et celui des réseaux informationnels, mais prend en compte les données récentes de la biologie, de la physique quantique, pour écrire, décrire, comparer, allant au-delà du cyberpunk.
Par contre, Dantec use de tics d'écriture, répétant trop régulièrement les mêmes idées à court intervalle – même si cela est parfois difficile à comprendre, il n'est pas forcément utile de se reprendre aussi systématiquement. Mais cela crée un mouvement dans la lecture, un peu comme des vagues se recouvrant les unes les autres, ou des plis se positionnant les uns par dessus les autres, apportant chaque fois un peu plus d'informations, tout en conservant une certaine transparence sur ce qui précède. Il y a donc beaucoup à dire sur ce roman, ses qualités et ses défauts.
March 29, 2013
I don't know what the hell this book is trying to do. I gave up halfway through.
It starts out with a sort of latter-day-cyberpunk, updated-PKD style, with a hired, memory-hacked assassin sneaking through airport security in a decaying, overly-restrictive, decaying world government. Did I mention decaying? Apparently the world just sort of beat itself up for the first half of the 21st century, with terrorists and religious factional wars and civil wars and resource exhaustion, and now everything sucks. The author makes a great point of saying how science is being abandoned and technology is in retreat; he doesn't *show* it, but he talks about it a lot.
For the first third of the book, nothing happens. The assassin sits around his hotel and reconnoiters, as the author delivers canned history lecture after canned history lecture. Then we find out who manipulated, or rather invented, his mission and memory: a pair of super-powered reality-hacking twins who are living in the same hotel. This plot twist is not as well-handled as it sounds.
From here the storyline shifts over to delivering hallucinatory quasi-scientific mumbo jumbo. I am, to be sure, sometimes up for a good mumbo jumboing! But it works best in small doses. Climactic scenes. This book just doesn't let up. And it's delivered in the breathless, importunate, exhausting tone of a die-hard crackpot filling up his very first 1990s web site.
(I'd quote some choice paragraphs, and you'd laugh at them, but they wouldn't convey the experience of *entire chapters* of woo-woo scrolling past.)
I don't mean to imply that the author believes this stuff. I haven't read his other books. Maybe he's doing a brilliant job of inventing a lunatic, techno-eschatological worldview for his book. Maybe he writes down exactly what the voices in his head tell him to. I don't care. It goes over the top on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis, it's damnably tedious, and if anything *happens* I couldn't muster the energy to pick it out of the fireworks.
(Interest: the protagonist's last name is Plotkin. I wondered if this would affect my reading experience, but it didn't.)
It starts out with a sort of latter-day-cyberpunk, updated-PKD style, with a hired, memory-hacked assassin sneaking through airport security in a decaying, overly-restrictive, decaying world government. Did I mention decaying? Apparently the world just sort of beat itself up for the first half of the 21st century, with terrorists and religious factional wars and civil wars and resource exhaustion, and now everything sucks. The author makes a great point of saying how science is being abandoned and technology is in retreat; he doesn't *show* it, but he talks about it a lot.
For the first third of the book, nothing happens. The assassin sits around his hotel and reconnoiters, as the author delivers canned history lecture after canned history lecture. Then we find out who manipulated, or rather invented, his mission and memory: a pair of super-powered reality-hacking twins who are living in the same hotel. This plot twist is not as well-handled as it sounds.
From here the storyline shifts over to delivering hallucinatory quasi-scientific mumbo jumbo. I am, to be sure, sometimes up for a good mumbo jumboing! But it works best in small doses. Climactic scenes. This book just doesn't let up. And it's delivered in the breathless, importunate, exhausting tone of a die-hard crackpot filling up his very first 1990s web site.
(I'd quote some choice paragraphs, and you'd laugh at them, but they wouldn't convey the experience of *entire chapters* of woo-woo scrolling past.)
I don't mean to imply that the author believes this stuff. I haven't read his other books. Maybe he's doing a brilliant job of inventing a lunatic, techno-eschatological worldview for his book. Maybe he writes down exactly what the voices in his head tell him to. I don't care. It goes over the top on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis, it's damnably tedious, and if anything *happens* I couldn't muster the energy to pick it out of the fireworks.
(Interest: the protagonist's last name is Plotkin. I wondered if this would affect my reading experience, but it didn't.)
February 16, 2013
One of the greatest openings i've read lately. gets a little slower and metaphysical in the end.
August 30, 2022
Well this was interesting read.
This is probably book with the best start. Entire scene, pace, world - very interesting, very noir and very cyberpunk. Slow but very visual presentation of UHU, new planetary authoritarian government that keeps everyone in check is truly upsetting (especially when one takes into account what happened in last two years and later in the book when some years start to pop up). Besides these highly controlled areas there are rogue, independent and highly criminalized/corrupted areas like Grand Junction - areas where everything is possible and where dream of leaving Earth for space colonies is used to control the people. Acting as special economic zones, areas like Junction offer glimpse in the world before the planetary wars.
Our main character (Plotkin) ends up in Junction, uncertain why he is there but led by the advanced augmentations that reveal next step after a certain time period. Without memories but with good instincts and some [what seems to be] intrinsic knowledge of what is going on he starts to get more and more interested about the people residing in his motel (Laika Motel, entire Grand Junction is a giant monument to humankind's space adventures from 20th century).
And after these really beautiful 35% of story reader will hit the speed bump and then incline of about 80 degrees. Author's style is very verbose at this point and assumes a lot on behalf of the reader. If you have not read some mid to hard level philosophical works, with loops in definitions that require a very high level of concentration this part of the story will be not just slow but snail paced at best.
Author's constant repetitions, looping back to the beginning of definitions (again something that is common in philosophical works), referencing works from Greeks to Averoes and then to Christian theologians and philosophers and ending with Leibniz and Guenther Andres, coupled with heavy use of philosophical terms (did not come across the mention of monad for at least a decade) can cause an effect of wall of text - believe me I managed only maybe 10-20 pages per day during this period. It is just too much information - for some reason some definitions would end up getting repeated in almost every chapter and just fog the brain.
At the end persistence payed off. If we put aside terms and phrases like carbon-carbon, constant meta etc (something that annoyed me a lot in Metabarons, another European/French SF epic) style is very catchy, and once author exits the marshes of philosophical explanations, story has a very fast pace and keeps you interested to the end.
This is a novel of apocalypse, novel about the relation between technology and humans, humankind's desire to avoid any thinking and communication during [lets call it] easy times, and relegation of oneself to just being a cog in a wheel (equivalent of Matrix's human battery) in order to obtain security. This of course culminates in the total dehumanization.
It contains SF elements (in domain of technology and human augmentations) with mystical element (reason for the above mentioned philosophical texts). It is a weird combination, but I gotta admit it is done very well. To me it was a very well executed mix of Matrix and Inception - very trippy and playing with reader's perception of reality [within the novel story-line of course] and keeps intrigue alive through entire novel.
While there are technical marvels everywhere in this world - both body augmentations and technical devices - this world is devolving in every way and further technological progress is either suppressed or just plainly lost because of lack of communication and transfer of knowledge (machine optimization - what is not required is not remembered). This is civilization at the end of its life, heavily wounded by religious and civil wars 50 years before establishment of UHU and it's omnipotent and ever controlling planet-wide government.
What is required is spark of life, of soul, of true human inquisitive and exploratory nature to awake the humankind. And this spark is mystical part of the novel that is classical approach to way legends are structured. Ending is mix of disaster and hope and very well done.
All in all very interesting SF novel that is [unfortunately] too heavy with philosophy. If these philosophical parts were made shorter or at least without constant repetitions, story would be more effective (at least for me).
I had no issues with translation, again only downside being parts of the book with philosophical discussions - not something that is result of translation but the very subject (trust me it is rare to find philosophical works in general that wont pop up in your dreams where you will ask yourself what did I just read? :) and philosophical subject in this book is very complex).
Highly recommended to fans of SF novels and thrillers/detective works. Trust me, going through the slow parts of the story does pay off.
I am now on the lookout for the sequel (Grand Junction). Really wondering how will the story end.
This is probably book with the best start. Entire scene, pace, world - very interesting, very noir and very cyberpunk. Slow but very visual presentation of UHU, new planetary authoritarian government that keeps everyone in check is truly upsetting (especially when one takes into account what happened in last two years and later in the book when some years start to pop up). Besides these highly controlled areas there are rogue, independent and highly criminalized/corrupted areas like Grand Junction - areas where everything is possible and where dream of leaving Earth for space colonies is used to control the people. Acting as special economic zones, areas like Junction offer glimpse in the world before the planetary wars.
Our main character (Plotkin) ends up in Junction, uncertain why he is there but led by the advanced augmentations that reveal next step after a certain time period. Without memories but with good instincts and some [what seems to be] intrinsic knowledge of what is going on he starts to get more and more interested about the people residing in his motel (Laika Motel, entire Grand Junction is a giant monument to humankind's space adventures from 20th century).
And after these really beautiful 35% of story reader will hit the speed bump and then incline of about 80 degrees. Author's style is very verbose at this point and assumes a lot on behalf of the reader. If you have not read some mid to hard level philosophical works, with loops in definitions that require a very high level of concentration this part of the story will be not just slow but snail paced at best.
Author's constant repetitions, looping back to the beginning of definitions (again something that is common in philosophical works), referencing works from Greeks to Averoes and then to Christian theologians and philosophers and ending with Leibniz and Guenther Andres, coupled with heavy use of philosophical terms (did not come across the mention of monad for at least a decade) can cause an effect of wall of text - believe me I managed only maybe 10-20 pages per day during this period. It is just too much information - for some reason some definitions would end up getting repeated in almost every chapter and just fog the brain.
At the end persistence payed off. If we put aside terms and phrases like carbon-carbon, constant meta etc (something that annoyed me a lot in Metabarons, another European/French SF epic) style is very catchy, and once author exits the marshes of philosophical explanations, story has a very fast pace and keeps you interested to the end.
This is a novel of apocalypse, novel about the relation between technology and humans, humankind's desire to avoid any thinking and communication during [lets call it] easy times, and relegation of oneself to just being a cog in a wheel (equivalent of Matrix's human battery) in order to obtain security. This of course culminates in the total dehumanization.
It contains SF elements (in domain of technology and human augmentations) with mystical element (reason for the above mentioned philosophical texts). It is a weird combination, but I gotta admit it is done very well. To me it was a very well executed mix of Matrix and Inception - very trippy and playing with reader's perception of reality [within the novel story-line of course] and keeps intrigue alive through entire novel.
While there are technical marvels everywhere in this world - both body augmentations and technical devices - this world is devolving in every way and further technological progress is either suppressed or just plainly lost because of lack of communication and transfer of knowledge (machine optimization - what is not required is not remembered). This is civilization at the end of its life, heavily wounded by religious and civil wars 50 years before establishment of UHU and it's omnipotent and ever controlling planet-wide government.
What is required is spark of life, of soul, of true human inquisitive and exploratory nature to awake the humankind. And this spark is mystical part of the novel that is classical approach to way legends are structured. Ending is mix of disaster and hope and very well done.
All in all very interesting SF novel that is [unfortunately] too heavy with philosophy. If these philosophical parts were made shorter or at least without constant repetitions, story would be more effective (at least for me).
I had no issues with translation, again only downside being parts of the book with philosophical discussions - not something that is result of translation but the very subject (trust me it is rare to find philosophical works in general that wont pop up in your dreams where you will ask yourself what did I just read? :) and philosophical subject in this book is very complex).
Highly recommended to fans of SF novels and thrillers/detective works. Trust me, going through the slow parts of the story does pay off.
I am now on the lookout for the sequel (Grand Junction). Really wondering how will the story end.
December 27, 2019
It started out intriguing and gritty in a Blade Runner-like way. I wish I could've gotten more into the existential fireworks that seemed to be going on, but the writing style and thin characters lost me.
September 10, 2016
I like Liviu's review (Jun 11, 2008), it sums up my reaction pretty well. I like this genre a lot, the author is quite imaginative, I do wish he knew a little more physics, and didn't use such broad, sweeping philosophical comments at times, but I see what he was working to accomplish, and it worked for me. The book definitely has its slow spots, but I found myself wondering where it was leading during idle moments, and looked forward to seeing how it all worked out. I think Dantec is still maturing as an author and shows a tremendous amount of promise. His imagination knows no limits. If you like Neuromancer and didn't mind a blend of French philosophy, quantum mechanics, and Christian theology, you might like this book.
January 28, 2016
L'enquête n'est pas compliquée, le monde SF dans lequel nous plonge l'auteur l'est. La narration se fait avec un amas de détails technologiques qui finissent par perdre le lecteur. En plus, les détails ne sont pas toujours utiles à la narration. J'ai trouvé l'histoire intéressante, le style lourd (de longues phrases interminables) et la chute.... n'en parlons pas.
J'avais lu "Dieu porte-t-il des lunettes noires" de Dantec et j'avais bien aimé. Après cette lecture, je ne pense pas avoir envie de lire Dantec pendant quelques temps. J'ai Liber Mundi tome 1 mais je vais attendre.
J'avais lu "Dieu porte-t-il des lunettes noires" de Dantec et j'avais bien aimé. Après cette lecture, je ne pense pas avoir envie de lire Dantec pendant quelques temps. J'ai Liber Mundi tome 1 mais je vais attendre.
April 7, 2013
Once again, a book I didn't finish. Maybe it's just where my brain's at right now but after just over 300 pages of pseudo-mystical philosophizing I had to bail out. I don't know if this says much about me, but I right after I gave up on this one I picked up a copy of Motley Crue and Neil Strauss' "The Dirt" and blazed through well over 300 pages in less than a week, on my third time through this book. So don't feel bad, Dantec, I'm a shallow dick who obviously can't appreciate real literature.
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July 25, 2011Bien.
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