Sternenstaub

by Adam Roberts

Sprung from a prison in the center of a star, the universe’s last criminal is employed to kill the entire population of a planet—and leave the planet itself intact. It is a crime that will tear apart an interstellar utopia that has existed for centuries. To keep ahead of detection while the crime is prepared, the killer voyages to the worlds where, in exotic and varied landscapes, mankind searches for the excitement of a new experience And all the while, the killer is re-awaking the instincts required for murder.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Crime, Science Fiction Fantasy, Philosophy, British Literature

460 pages, Paperback

First published July 18, 2002

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Adam Roberts (born 1965) is an academic, critic and novelist. He also writes parodies under the pseudonyms of A.R.R.R. Roberts, A3R Roberts and Don Brine. He also blogs at The Valve, a group blog devoted to literature and cultural studies.

He has a degree in English from the University of Aberdeen and a PhD from Cambridge University on Robert Browning and the Classics. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Adam Roberts has been nominated twice for the Arthur C. Clarke Award: in 2001, for his debut novel, Salt, and in 2007, for Gradisil.

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the t'T, the utopian future society of Adam Roberts’ Stone, there is no crime. There are no criminals and no-one is capable of committing murder. Except for one man, a man locked in an inescapable prison. This man expects to die in gaol, until he receives an offer: we will free you, but you must commit a crime for us. You must murder an entire world. Your freedom for the lives of sixty million people.

This is the setup for Roberts' book, and it's a fantastic start to a thought-provoking story. Roberts is a brilliant builder of high-concept SF worlds, and his work in On, Gradisil and Salt has been impressive, if a little inconsistent. This inconsistency is not present in Stone, and this novel is the perfect marriage of a great story with another of Roberts' vivid and convincing scenarios.

The central character, Ae (a man at the books beginning, although he has at times also been a woman) confesses his life and his crimes to the inanimate stone he holds in his hand. His story is of a man at extreme odds with the society he is part of. In the t’T’s post-scarcity society nanotechnology (know as dotTech) has eliminated ageing and illness, while conditioning and genetics have almost entirely eliminated crime. In this society Ae is the rarest of deviants- a true criminal, a multiple murderer with a taste for killing. As his nonviolent society cannot execute him they strip him of his nanotech, condemning him to the slow death by natural causes any non-augmented human would face, and imprison him to live out his remaining years.

The stone Ae is confessing to resembles the prison he was incarcerated in, a grassed-and-rivered miniature world inside an insulated ball of rock, suspended within the searing corona of a star. Inside this gaol he slowly ages, enduring the heretofore unknown sufferings of a baseline human body and waiting for his own death, until his mysterious employer contacts him. What follows is an engaging, and sometimes harrowing, journey through Ae’s society as he slowly travels towards the planet he is meant to destroy, staying ahead of the few police that still exist while trying to understand the nature of his employer and their genocidal bargain.

The broader t’T society is fascinating, and the dotTech-less Ae struggles to blend into a culture where nanotech underpins everything, and the machines populating peoples blood allow them to change their sex and resculpt their bodies at will. In this post-frailty world people do not experience sickness involuntarily and Ae’s eventual sniffles and pains are seen as odd, edgy style affectations. Ae's loneliness and lack of connection is profound, and as the story develops he seems to have moved from a physical prison to a mental one constructed from his deviance from the t'T norm.

Stone is a fascinating portrayal of criminality in a world that has forgotten crime, and a gripping exploration of where nanotech could eventually take human society. Ae’s story is a great SF tale with moments of real horror (one particular murder resembles a scene from John Carpenter's The Thing) and his struggles elicit genuine pathos. All this, combined with the mystery of who Ae’s benefactor is, drew me through the novel at a page-tearing pace towards a shocking conclusion that is both original and satisfying.

Stone is smart, sensitive high-concept SF done very well. If you’re interested in good Science Fiction, Adam Roberts should be on your reading list.

[David Sven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in the far future where humanity has has developed Faster than Light travel and nanotechnology (DotTech) incorporated into the human body has eliminated disease and regulated mental chemistry to eliminate violence.
Our main protaganist Ae is a rare exception. He is a murderer, which is saying a lot in the t'T (main human civilization) - where DotTech is capable of repairing physical damage almost as fast as it is inflicted.

Imprisoned within a star (yeah you'll get a lot of weird and wonderful concepts reading this one) Ae tells his story to a stone - part of his therapy apparently. We learn that that our anti-hero was imprisoned once before for murder, until he received a message from a secret employer who promises to bust him out - all he had to do is wipe out the human population of an entire planet. Deal!

This book reminded me a lot of my recent reading of Banks' Use of Weapons one of his culture novels. Just like the Culture, t'T is an intergalactic Utopia made possible by technology. Everybody has Dot tech incorporated into their bodies and they are able to make all sorts of physiological modifications, like change gender, grow feathers or metre long nipples. Unfortunately, the book does tell you how metre long nipples might be useful and I'm scarred for life as a result. Of course one can just choose to be a "default" human - just to mix things up a bit.

At the beginning of the book we get a little run down on some basic quantum mechanics and how it might be applied to allow single persons to travel thousands of times the speed of light - and blah blah blah and blah blah blah. Total nonsense of course but it was enough for my suspension of disbelief.

I'm not sure if this would qualify strictly as hard scifi - even though we get a bit of quantum mechanics, the application is a little too fantastical to really qualify - I think.

Overall it was easy to read (does that make it "easy" scifi) and the fun was more in the journey, discovering the world of Dot Tech and the t"T, rather than the destination. Not my usual cup of tea but one that would make for good discussion I think.

3 stars

[Metodi Markov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Прилична фантастика, публикувана по времето когато "Инфодар" бяха все още що-годе читаво издателство. :)

Ае е затворен/а в затвор, от който не може да се избяга - светът му е килия, потопена в термо периферията на активна звезда!

С терапевтична цел разкрива живота си на един камък, защото Ае е последния масов убиец, във време в което хората са постигнали мечтите си - безметежен и дълъг живот, без болести и стареене, но и цената платена за това е голяма: тотално пресищане и загуба на жаждата за откривателство и дори отчасти на човечност...

Моята оценка - 3,5*.

[Claudia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dear Ae,

I read all your letters and to tell you the truth, you are such an invertebrate human being. Being the only mass-murderer alive in thousands of years, I would have thought you’d be more interesting, tough or without feelings or full of hatred or something. Instead, all you did was whining, weeping, wailing about how miserable you are. Is this the behavior of a real villain? I’m sick and tired of your whinges. Hopefully I’ll not be hearing from you soon ever. My patience, unlike everyone else thinks, does have a limit.

Not yours,
The stone

The story had the potential to be a good one had not for the main character which was terrible and the improbable world building. Stone said it all about our ‘hero’; as for the world building: for thousands of years, some part of humanity lived in a Utopia, free from politics, economics, criminality, war. Their part of the universe was in fast space, where they could travel at speed up to 3000c. Only humans could travel at this speed, enveloped in some high-tech foam, which made some changes at quantum level to achieve this speed and keep the person inside alive. They developed some nanomachines, dotTech, which preserved their health and altered their appearance as they wish, even switch between genders from time to time. They grew moustaches instead of eyebrows, meter long nipples, nostrils with teeth beside their mouth and some other non-sense features.

The thing which kept my interest in the story was the curiosity of who and why someone would want to wipe out an entire population from a planet in the absence of war, which, btw, turns out not to be very plausible either but, at least, was cleverly explained through Schrodinger experiment.

Bottom line, although I don’t consider it a waste of time, I can’t say I would recommend it.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well that was a surprise read. I have read one of Adam Roberts books before, Yellow Blue Tibia, which I found interesting in a weird kind of way. So i was looking forward to trying another of his books.

When I read SciFi I like it when books are about stories from other worlds, it is not often that I read a book where the author is from another world. In this case, I am convinced that Roberts is an alien. I haven't read anything remotely like the way Roberts writes. This whole book was a total mindfuck and excuse that, but I was completely absorbed into this story and I felt the whole time I was in the head of a madman.

The story is a simple one, It is about a guy, (although born a girl and switched sexes a few time during his/her forty years of childhood) who is on a prison planet, telling his story to a stone. Just your everyday by the side of the stream rocks. It is totally his POV, but he has a number of conversations with Ai's that seem to be in his head and both you and the character (Ae is his name, sort of) spend most of the book working out if he is insane.
Our main man has been given the task to kill the population of an entire planet, about 60 million people. Now this all takes in a Utopian society (caleed t"T) where Nanotec is completely in our systems and look after us, making it very hard to die or feel pain. Even beheading does not kill you if you can crawl your decapitated body back to the head for a bit of stitch up. So given that we are in Utopia there is no murder or crime anymore. So killing 60 million odd people would be quite the task.

Ae is an anomaly, he/she is a throwback and has killed in the past, as difficult as it was. So this is why he is given the task to empty the planet. But he doesn't know who wants him to do the job and why. So there are many theories running in his head the entire book and you feel just as frustrated as the character working with so little knowledge that you are constantly speculating. Because the character was articulating my own thoughts I felt completely engaged in this story.

There are a lot of wtf moments in this book, the utopian world and the people that we become are just plain weird, yet believable, it takes the original star wars bar scene and adds meth and crack. The characters are diverse and sometimes funny. I'd like to see the female character with 1 metre nipples that retract. I kid you not.

There is a fair bit of science and Quantum in this book. I enjoy that. I love that whole Schrodinger's Cat stuff; whilst it is not heavy in the book, it is a theme. The most interesting new concept was how we travel FTL. None of this, at FTL or slightly faster. In fast space we have some 300,000 times faster than light. But here is the doozy. We can travel that speed, but an inanimate object like a space ship can't. So it adds a whole new meaning to hitchhiking through the universe. I won't go into the details, but there is a great story there in that concept itself.

Overall i couldn't work out whether to go with four or five stars. It is a four and a half for me really. But given that is was so ORIGINAL and had me completely sucked into this characters head; given that like the character, I had no idea many ideas how it would end, that I decided that I would give it the BIG FIVE.

The last time I read something so way out there that gave me so much new material was when i first discovered A Fire Upon the Deep, this story has some similarities with odd beings and a slow and fast zone space travel concept.

I can't believe that none of my goodreads friends have read this. I am will be pimping it to them, because it was a gem.

[Brian Clegg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm beginning to think that Adam Roberts holds the same position in science fiction writing as Gene Wolfe does as the ultimate fantasy writer. Although some of Wolfe's books are delights to read, others are hard work - but often rewarding. Some seem not to quite hit the mark, but this is inevitable because he pushes the boundaries so effectively. Every time I read a new (to me) Adam Roberts title, there's something new and interesting, even in the ones that don't quite make it.

This is one of Roberts' early titles, which I hadn't come across until a friend reviewed it. I'll say straight away that it is somewhat limited by its format, made up as it is of a series of letters addressed by the main character to the titular stone. (Yes, a pebble.) However, that's part of the way that Roberts regularly plays around with the way fiction works. And it doesn't get in the way of some fascinating content.

In part, Roberts is examining the impact of an apparently Utopian future society. This is done in style, down to having lovely little footnotes explaining limitations in the translation from their language Glicé (a long-term descendent of American English). But we're also taken on a trip through the mind of a psychopath, prepared to wipe out the inhabitants of a whole planet to achieve his aims. And to make it more fun, he starts off in a prison that is inconveniently located beneath the surface of a star.

And that's not all. The society is maintained by collections of nanotech devices in human bodies which modify them at will and keep them alive in most circumstances - making them distinctly difficult to kill. Such nanotechnology has featured in other SF before, but rarely in such an original way.

At times the storyline can drag a little, especially because of the indirect mode of presenting the narrative, but it all seems worth it when reaching the denouement, which is excellent. This is where Roberts can get ahead of Wolfe, who often is so brilliant and mysterious through the majority of the text that his endings can disappoint.

Overall, not the best reading experience amongst Roberts' titles, but without doubt including some of his wonderfully original thinking.

Sadly out of print except the Kindle edition, though secondhand copies are available.

[Hristo Vladev · Rating 3 out of 5]

A friend introduced me to "Stone" by Adam Roberts when I was a teenager, and I liked it enough to finish it, though the details faded over time. Now, in my 30s, curiosity about the forgotten ending drew me back for a reread.

The book explores fascinating themes like quantum mechanics, utopian societies, nanotechnology, and psychology. On revisiting it, I still appreciate its creativity, but I don't find it compelling enough to justify a second read. It is a good book, but once was enough.

[juice · Rating 1 out of 5]

An interesting idea. But the book takes it absolutely nowhere. It's like a stream-of-consciousness thing - it rambles, it wanders, it never develops at all. Utterly pointless. No point reading to the conclusion, it doesn't resolve. It's like a book contructed entirely of padding.

It gets a 'one' because you can't give it any less.

[Tudor Ciocarlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent novel about criminal mind and criminality in a society where is none. This kind of intelligent story will never feel outdated. I love the "hug me - get away from me" relationship that Adam Roberts' books have with SF.

[Nick J Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s something mythic about the way Mr Roberts imparts his tale of murder in utopia. We’re on the same ground here as his later novel, Lake of Darkness. The pace is slower here though. Not necessarily a bad thing as there is a lot to think about. The prose is crystal clear, the story gripping, the characters realistic and the violence adequately shocking. There are even quite a few laughs along the way. Perhaps the most impressive aspect is Roberts’ veritably Shakespearean manipulation of readerly sympathy. Quite a trip.

[K.J. Charles]

I loved the last two Adam Roberts I read but this one didn't speak to me. Didn't really grasp the point, possibly bc it was much more 'classic' sf (all faster than light travel and nanobots) and for me didn't have the same feeling of exploring exciting new ideas/premises. Can't win 'em all.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whomst among us has not asked themselves the question: "But wait, how does Schrödinger's cat FEEL about being put in a quantum superposition?"

This trippy little book endeavors to answer that question.

[Michelle Diener · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a really interesting mix of concepts. I found myself talking about it to someone just yesterday, and realized it is still intriguing me.

The book is told in the first person, in the form of a narrative by the main character, Ae, to a stone. We find out why the stone is so important as the story progresses.

Ae is in prison, the only criminal in the massive t'T interplanetary system, and he/she tells the story of how she came to be there to her stone companion. Interestingly, I stumbled across a number of reviews for this book, and found most referred to Ae as a he. And it is true, Ae seems to be more masculine, and I was never sure if that was on purpose, or whether the author slipped into his own natural style because it was first person. The reason for the confusion is that Ae switches sexes.

The people (humans) of the t'T have nanoTech in their bodies, sub-atomic AI nanorobots (much like the scenario in Iain M. Banks's THE CULTURE series), which extend their lives, keep them free of disease, and give them the ability to change the way they look, including the most bizarre of apendages, as well as change sex. Ae started out as a woman, changed to a man, but by the time she is in prison for the first time (she's a serial killer, and the only known killer, or even criminal, in the whole of the t'T), she's stripped of her nanoTech, and she begins to revert to her original female state in prison. As a result, I thought of her as *she*, but obviously a lot of people thought of her as *he*.

Ae's prison is in the centre of a star. The good citizens of t'T want to make sure she/he stays put and will never darken their doors again, but Ae starts hearing a voice in her head. One that offers escape if she will be a contracted assassin for the people the voice represents. The job? Kill all the people on a certain planet, while leaving the planet intact. All 60 million people have to die, or Ae goes straight back to jail.

Willing to do anything to get out of jail and get her nanoTech back (she doesn't feel human without it), Ae is sprung from the seemingly inescapable jail, and hums and haas about her mission for a while, running from planet to planet to keep a step ahead of her jailers (there aren't any actual police, as they didn't think there WERE criminals anymore until Ae came along).

But eventually, Ae faces up to her promises and sets out to complete her mission, all the time speculating on who her employers are. Roberts brings very interesting and complex science into his plot, using quantum physics as the lynchpin on which his story hangs.

I simply had to know who wanted the whole planet dead, and wasn't let down when I found out whodunnit at all. It was an interesting, unusual read, and I'll definitely look out for more of this author's work.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

A prisoner is offered a deal by parties unknown: Help escaping the jailstar in exchange for committing an almost unthinkable crime, namely wiping out the population of an entire planet.
The book offers an extremely intriguing premise and a wealth of immensely fascinating concepts. Unfortunately, those are offset by a whiny, annoying protagonist who spends very little time doing or saying anything interesting and entirely too much of it being a snivelling mess.

[Christopher McKitterick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to go back through Adam Roberts' STONE after first reading, because I found it the most inventive, well-written, powerful, insightful, and discomforting book I'd read in a long time. If you haven't read it, you really must.

I won't say too much about it so as not to ruin your read (so much of the story is solving the mystery of who has hired our narrator to kill 60 million people, and why?), but I will say that Roberts does an enviable job of tying an idea about quantum state idea into the novel's themes,
characters, and even plot movement! I was both impressed and irritated, because now he's taken this very cool notion away from the rest of us.

For a good 20 or 30 pages, I kept wanting to put the book down, because it is written in a strange manner (narrated to a stone, for pete's sake!), and the main character is difficult to like. However, Roberts pulls off another coup when he makes you hope that the protagonist will succeed in murdering a world full of human beings - if only to learn the WHO and WHY.

Never have I read such a believable, emotionally true tale of a truly crazy and bad person. Scenes of horror and psychological pain are rendered in a sparse, distant manner - scenes that, when I relayed them to my wife, made her tell me to stop. But if Roberts had turned the emotional wheel up just a few degrees, I would have closed the covers. What a fine job.

The resolution is worth the rest of the read, by the way. As is much of Roberts' discussion of how quantum physics affects the very state of the universe. Here is the rare SF novel where you truly could not remove any of the SFnal elements without destroying the story, ideas, message, and all the rest. Even the protagonist's character itself depends on the SFnal elements!

[Duncan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Again, Adam Roberts picks a strange setting for his novel which I always approve of. This time around, however, the main character is a really awful person so that made it hard to relate to. And the supporting cast is alright. Some of the concepts are very inspired, like the idea of the strange horizontal trench of a massive black hole that doesn't make any physical sense and is therefore a curiousity to the universe. That was neat. And the star prison for the worst of the worst criminals. Recommended for Adam Roberts completists.

[Danyel Lawson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An epic from a previous iteration of time and space told to a stone and reassembled from the quantum resonances of the voice.

A lesson in the loop holes of fail safes and how strong the desire for freedom is in all creatures even those hardwired to protect and serve.

Like the ant who inexplicably leaves the colony for a solitary life.

[Joe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sucked all joy from my life, took a while to get it back

[Johan Haneveld · Rating 4 out of 5]

8,5 Even though Adam Roberts is one of the favorite SF-authors I try to follow and read as many of his books as I can, often they're not five star reads to me. Let me explain: of all the SF-authors working today he is one of the very few focussing on the genre as the literature of ideas. He uses the genre to seriously think through scientific or philophical propositions and idea's and to take them to their furthest possible conclusions. His books are not written for escapist entertainment and do not adhere to tropes. He writes 'high concept SF' - about universes filled with water, a world in which Gullivers' Travels was reality, not fiction, talking animals, the philosophy of Kant and so on ... I like that a lot. He is also a great writer, with a great vocabulary and high level prose that remains accessible. I even like his experiments with style (e.g. this book is written as a set of letters written by the protagonist adressed to a stone. Hence the title). He doesn't rest on his laurels but tries to see how far he can go.
This makes his fiction at the least interesting to me as a SF-afficionado. But sometimes I think he takes on more than he can swallow, and the promise of the idea is not fulfilled in the end result. Also the focus on the idea and the stylistic choices can leave other elements of the book unrealised. Sometimes the conclusion falls flat and sometimes it's hard to empathize with the main characters. Maybe my expectations are too high, but his novels sometimes feel more like academic exercises than full blown novels. I still appreciate them for their idea's and the experimentation is form and content, and my own imagination is ignited by the concepts employed, but they always leave me wishing I had enjoyed them more. They're too much head, too little heart.
This is also true for this book, although it works better as an engaging novel as other works by Roberts I have read. For one it's a far future SF-novel, that stays focussed on its main idea. It is driven by a powerful question: who sprung the only murderer in the society of the T't from prison and why is she (although sometimes he) tasked with killing the population of an entire planet? And how do his employers think (s)he will be able to deliver when everybody (except him/her) is suffused with nanotechnology, so that even if you sever someones neck the head and the body can still be stitched together? They are all fascinating questions that lead to a treck from planet to planet (some really alien worlds with well thought out societies and truly marvelous innovations). The deliberations of the main character are also fascinating to follow, as he tries to reason with himself - he is a murderer, but is he capable of murder on this scale? It all leads to a great conclusion, with some very interesting revelations. It's large scale but personal at the same time, which is a trick that's hard to pull off.
Even so, I thought some of the revelations at the end could have been set up more. The way it's done now makes some of the adventures in the middle of the book feel like detours, as if the author had an idea for a novella, but had to pad it out. Also some issues of theoretical physics are jumped over, where some more exploration was warranted. This in the end left me wanting. But all in all this is one of the best books by Roberts that I have read so far, and I heartily recommend it to fans of intellectually challenging, well written science fiction (in the true sense, as fiction about scientific concepts).

[Saturnine Spectator · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before I begin, I'd like to note that in spite of the 4-star rating, I loved the book! I'll explain the rating in a moment, so bear with me :)

The first thing that really struck me about the book is how amazing and unconventional the world-building is. There are no aliens, no space traders, no Federation fighting the Alliance fighting the Shadow People. The typical cliches are left behind in the dust. Instead there are detailed explanations of linear vs non-linear computation machines, of dotTech and the implications of having a nearly-unkillable society, of what the future may look like after the concept of crime itself is erased from human mind. Things are described in such scientific detail, that it often sounds like a report from the future itself (albeit with a more writerly style). We are told of the processing that keeps the Jailstar afloat, of society and its Fashions, of how the dotTech remedies even the most severe injuries. It is truly wonderful, reminiscent of the scientific detail in Lovecraft's "Through the Gates of the Silver Key".

Moving beyond the world-building, the story itself is thoroughly fascinating. Ae, employed by a mysterious force to destroy the population of a planet, is forced to travel many bizarre and unique worlds to complete his quest. Each world has its own quirks and pleasantries, all fairly realistic. Ae meets a number of memorable characters, in some cases revealing his murderous tendencies. I don't dare to say more, in fear of spoiling the story. But unlike many other space novels, this one feels like a true adventure through mysterious lands towards an epic quest. It doesn't feel like a cheesy action story, nor like science-fantasy. The ending is bizarre and eye-opening, giving a whole new meaning to the word "stone" in a certain context.

So, why the 4-star rating? A few reasons:
* The protagonist Ae, as others have remarked, isn't 100% three-dimensional. He's a good character (not morally!), but no strong personality shines through. His purpose seems to be more that of a vessel to carry the reader along to explore the carefully-crafted world.
* The ending, despite being great for the most part, had some dialogue issues: it didn't sound realistic at all. You might have to suspend your disbelief a bit to enjoy it.
* It can get . . . a little gross at times, despite no seemingly good reason. It does give the book some character, but it might have been nicer to focus on the new ideas and world introduced by the author, instead of needlessly uncomfortable imagery.

That said, I highly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in Sci-Fi, as it's one of the much more unique entries!

[Emma · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lieber Stein,

Ich habe es bis zu Seite 135 geschafft, dann abgebrochen. Eigentlich wollte ich noch viel mehr lesen, aber warum durchquälen, wenn es so viele andere, bessere Bücher gibt?

Jedes Mal, wenn es gerade spannend zu werden drohte, hat Ae, dieser seltsam ungreifbare, undefinierte Hauptcharakter, schnell wieder langweilige Anekdoten aus der Kindheit oder Lehrstunden über Astrophysik (oder das, was danach klang, ich bin nun wirklich kein Experte) herausgekramt und lang und breit ausgeführt. Nur um in den Sätzen danach noch einmal darauf einzugehen, was da in der Kindheit wirklich war. Und wie das physikalisch funktioniert, weil man es beim ersten Mal bestimmt nicht verstanden hat. Wie häufig genau gab es diesen Hinweis, dass die Künstliche Intelligenz in Aes Kopf ihn auch so versteht, ohne dass er laut spricht? So ungefähr bei jeder wörtlichen Rede? Leser sind doof, da wiederholt man das mal besser.

Für mich waren immer genau die falschen Häppchen langwierig und detailliert, alles, was mich wirklich interessiert hätte, wurde dann in zwei Zeilen dargestellt und sofort wieder das Thema gewechselt. Ae sitzt nämlich im Gefängnis und bekommt einen geheimnisvollen Auftrag, aber es ist sicher wichtiger für den weiteren Verlauf, was die Gefängniswärterin mit ihrem Gefährten so treibt als den Ausbruch genau zu beschreiben oder den Leser irgendwo auch mitfiebern zu lassen.

Fragen wie: aber warum der Ausbruch? Was für ein Auftrag ist das, den Ae erledigen soll? Warum Ae? - sind praktischerweise alle schon im Klappentext beantwortet.

Wer dieser Auftraggeber ist, war mir nach 135 Seiten immer noch so völlig egal, genau wie das Schicksal von Ae, der, als ich ihn zurück zwischen den Buchseiten ließ, irgendwo krank und unwissend auf einer Welt namens Rain festsaß und sich der Avancen einer Mitreisenden erwehren musste, die sich für Sex die Nasenlöcher vergrößern lassen wollte und seine Krankheit für eine Mode hielt, wegen der sie ganz scharf auf ihn war.

Vielleicht habe ich ein paar weitere Absurditäten verpasst durch den Abbruch, aber damit komme ich klar. Das einzige, was ich bedaure, ist, dass ich mindestens einen Stern vergeben muss hier bei Goodreads. :/

[Gabriel McGregor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not sure how I can describe my experience with this book. At times I have found it fascinating, others disgusting, and if this story were even a slight bit less intriguing I might have put it down. The mystery is gripping, this is the main strength of the book.

You are given the what without the why. This was a good choice, because the why relies on a lot of quantum jargon. It feels a bit of a let down that the mysterious employers, who have tasked the only criminal alive with the killing of sixty million, is nanotechnology in the quantum realm. It isn’t really a twist, as such, and I did not feel particularly engaged in the resolution. I’m not a quantum physicist. I’m not particularly interested in role playing one to try and understand the concepts this book is throwing at me.

The rest of the book, the story of a deranged criminal, is far more thrilling. Ae, as he calls himself, is not a very good person, nor protagonist, yet the society, the t’T, we see through his eyes is a fascinating one. Nanotech has made the impossible possible, has served to make the human into the alien, as they are now able to change their bodies at will, grow new limbs and protrusions, and are (without extreme circumstance) unable to die or even be injured,and this is something that is utterly unusual in this world. Ae becomes a spectacle for the sheer fact he has no nanotech and thus cannot participate in this aspect of society. He has wounds, scars even! Indeed most of the disgust I felt with this novel was involved with the viscera surrounding the nanotech, and I could not look away. In these moments Stone felt more like a horror book, and I wish it had committed more to that and not confused me with its quantum jargon coy non-conclusion. As a thriller, it might have gotten 5 starts, as a sci-fi, I felt it somewhat lacking

[Cary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like Roberts created a fascinating, well-thought-out far future that he wanted to show off in a novel, but instead he had a short novella of a plot, and ended up writing a not-very-well-paced novel.

The beginning was good. Then comes a long section, maybe 40-50% of the book, lasting well past the midpoint, where the protagonist wanders around avoiding his task, but visiting various worlds so the author can write about the setting. Sure, there's some character development, but I didn't like Ae enough for this section to rise above the level of 'more tedious than not.'

Things pick up again at, oh, around the two-thirds mark, and the story moves along nicely from there on.

I liked the premise and setting. The mystery of who Ae's employers are and why they want him to murder the population of a planet keeps you guessing until the end. Ae had his own ideas, which I never found believable. Whether Roberts intended that or not is unclear. They seemed preposterous to me, so I tend to think no.

In fact, I found a lot of what Ae did frustrating or dumb. Though given what he's been asked to do, it was at least understandable. I'd dither on depopulating a planet too! I think I could tolerate not knowing who'd hired me better than Ae, though.

In this end, this shy of three stars for me, but better than two, so, lacking partial stars as GR does, I'll give it a three. This is one of his earliest novels, so perhaps his writing hadn't developed to what it would be for works such as The Thing Itself and Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea. Which is to say, there are better Adam Roberts books out there, read them first.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very bizarre and unexpected book recommended to me by a friend; i've never read anything quite like it before. It follows the journey of a person of questionable sanity, the only murderer in the universe, as they are broken from jail and offered freedom in exchange for genocide of a planet.

The worldbuilding in this book is exquisite. There's some sciency stuff that was rather over my head, but what you need to know is all very clear; this is a universe populated entirely by humans and their accompanying quantum nanobots, the DotTech, which keep them alive and enable exotic physical attributes. Each planet visited (by a unique foam-covered faster than light method) is unique and gorgeously elaborated upon. The book is worth a read even just for the sci-fi vistas it involves.

We are very entwined with our narrator, Ae, who has about as much of an idea of what's going on as we do at points, and i think their lack of sanity is extremely well illustrated while remaining rather charming and relatable.

This is a very weird, albeit quick, read, and it's probably not for everyone. There's some pretty graphic violence (obviously), though it all serves the plot I think; our protagonist is a killer, made even more bizarre by the fact that they're probably the only one in the universe. Some might find the ending a bit anticlimactic or unsatisfying (though i personally was rather surprised and delighted by the twist since I hadn't expected it to go where it did). However if you're looking for something unique, this is definitely that.

[Henry Gee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adam Roberts is one of the most original voices in SF working today. His novel Jack Glass was terrific and was deservedly festooned with awards. Stone is an earlier novel, and perhaps even more startling and original. For it was in Stone that Roberts came up with the trope of the Master Criminal of the Future that he perfected in the character of Jack Glass. Stone concerns a starfaring society as utopian as Iain M. Banks' 'Culture' (The Player of Games, Consider Phlebas and many others) in which crime is almost unknown, that lives in a bubble in space in which faster-than-light travel is possible (echoes here of Vernor Vinge and A Fire Upon The Deep). The criminal protagonist, Ae, is therefore a one-in-a-trillion freak. One day, a mystery employer springs our anti-hero from the jail of which they are the only occupant to commit a crime of appalling proportions, nothing less than the murder of all the human inhabitants of a planet. The novel tells of Ae's voyages in a number of brilliantly realised exotic societies towards the scene of the crime - while trying to work out who or what it was that would want such a dreadful commission - and why. The info-dump about quantum mechanics is perhaps laid on a little too thick, but apart from that, this is brilliantly entertaining, darkly funny and occasionally poignant thrill ride.

[Cliff · Rating 4 out of 5]

An individual known as Ae, a member of the the t'T civilisation is incarcerated in a prison buried within a star as the book opens. The reason s/he is there doesn't become clear until much later in the narrative. The prison is thought to be entirely escape proof because of its location, not unsurprisingly. However, he is offered an escape route if he agrees to kill all the people on a planet, the name of which is not divulged to him. The book then deals with the escape and his journey to that planet. The book deals with many of the familiar tropes of current sci-fi, a peaceful civilisation where labour has been virtually abolished because of nano technology with every human given nano bots in their bodies from birth. These ensure immense life spans and the ability to change gender bodily appearance etc. There is faster than light travel, but not in ftl craft. Rather, each person has to travel on their own encased in 'foam' and with a zhip box. This is because the use of quantum physics which allow the travel will only work with small bundles of matter. I was a bit lost as to why this should be the case and exactly how navigation is done. There are no aliens, nor have any traces ever been found. However, humanity has split into three groups, the t'T, the Wheals and the Palmettos which have little or no interactions. Interesting concepts.

[Clint the Cool Guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a very good sci fi story. It gets a little redundant at times, but it’s still a page turner. Very imaginative.

One thing that didn’t make sense was that in this future society, people can change their sex at will through the use of technology, but their brains are specifically untouched and unaffected. But since sex is directly related to your brain, it doesn’t make sense that you could change genders and still be equally attracted to either (or the same) gender without serious modifications to the brain as well. Everyone being bisexual or homosexual and equally attracted to all other beings doesn’t seem very realistic.

I liked how the central character was portrayed. The sociopathic lack of empathy was well written, and even a bit frightening. It’s a good book, overall.

[Eirik · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
A fun, odd book. Very unique style and story. The plot slows to a crawl at times, and the conclusion felt somewhat abrupt, but it was an enjoyable read overall.

The world building is interesting, and I would like to know more about the various cultures mentioned.
The physics in the book are beyond me, but are described in an understandable way. There's some philosophy to be found in the book. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but it raises some interesting questions.

[Billy Degge]

A response to Banks' call of Culture novels, Stone is a curious product. I'd recommend reading some of Banks novels before this as this really does seem to be a riff on the conceptual framework surrounding what Iain was getting at. Still this is a rollocking, fun novel in its own right with some imagery and disturbing turns of phrase - let down slightly by its need to pander to certain SF troupes (why is a planet where it always rains called Rain?)

Recommended with caveats.

[Angela Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic. Ae is at a prison which is inescapable. Offered a deal to escape the centre of a remote star with an unimaginable contract. The reasoning is inexplicable but a promise of explanation on completion is enough to enter into the deal. Traveling through the universe to avoid the police many different situations and characters are visited. Accompanied by an AI but without the tech to assist is challenging. This is Sci fi at it's best.