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Lizer Biggs
Lizer Biggs, the inventor of the Gravity Engine, is on a top-secret interstellar mission to save Earth from a deadly alien invader. Tunneling through spacetime in his ship Quick Fire, he reaches The Garden, the original seat of Humanity. Here he befriends Holly Graham, The Garden's chief fire-officer and her AI sidekick Meatballs - a sentient fire engine. Together they return to Earth to battle The Tiger.
119 pages, Paperback
Published October 18, 2020
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November 14, 2019
This slim novella from debut author Peter Carroll packs a great deal into its 61 pages, not least a lot of physics that fans of hard science-fiction will no doubt appreciate.
It tells the story of Lizer Biggs (great name), an explorer who leaves Earth on his spacecraft Quick Fire to find somewhere quiet to think and do his scientific research. But instead he comes across a world much like our own, and apparently populated by human beings just like himself, something the misanthropic Biggs regards at first as a major disappointment. However, after he meets the "incredibly beautiful" Holly Graham and her all-powerful AI sidekick, Meatballs, he quickly changes his mind, becoming an instant celebrity on the planet known as the Garden, and also the target of terrorists who regard him as a threat.
This, in a nutshell, is the plot, and anyone familiar with Ursula Le Guin's Hainish cycle won't be surprised by the twist about the "Gardeners" - and the instant attraction the young and pert Holly feels for the middle-aged Biggs felt unconvincing to me - but Carroll puts enormous energy into his tale, and as well as the science (there is a lot, perhaps too much, about time dilation, wormholes and skein space, and the author sometimes seems over-keen to prove how much research he has done, impressive though it is) there are plenty of ideas here to sustain the series of which this book is projected to be the first part.
However, it is very short, and reads more like a story you might find in "Interzone" than epic sci-fi - personally, I would like to see the author flesh out some of the characters and ideas a bit more. The reason why Lizer Biggs is leaving Earth, for example, is never explained in detail, so it's difficult without this context to get a handle on him as a character; there could be more detail and build-up, too, to his first contact with the Gardeners - the story moves so fast that it feels a bit rushed; likewise, the reason why the Gardeners might feel threatened by one man from Earth whose technology is so inferior to theirs is not something the author really explains. Also, the god-like powers of Meatballs could be used for evil as well as good - is this something the author might explore in future instalments? What is the relationship between the Gardeners and their powerful AI (something Iain Banks's Culture novels examined)?
But the author has ideas to burn, and I hope that he gives them free rein in his future books, which I greatly look forward to reading.
It tells the story of Lizer Biggs (great name), an explorer who leaves Earth on his spacecraft Quick Fire to find somewhere quiet to think and do his scientific research. But instead he comes across a world much like our own, and apparently populated by human beings just like himself, something the misanthropic Biggs regards at first as a major disappointment. However, after he meets the "incredibly beautiful" Holly Graham and her all-powerful AI sidekick, Meatballs, he quickly changes his mind, becoming an instant celebrity on the planet known as the Garden, and also the target of terrorists who regard him as a threat.
This, in a nutshell, is the plot, and anyone familiar with Ursula Le Guin's Hainish cycle won't be surprised by the twist about the "Gardeners" - and the instant attraction the young and pert Holly feels for the middle-aged Biggs felt unconvincing to me - but Carroll puts enormous energy into his tale, and as well as the science (there is a lot, perhaps too much, about time dilation, wormholes and skein space, and the author sometimes seems over-keen to prove how much research he has done, impressive though it is) there are plenty of ideas here to sustain the series of which this book is projected to be the first part.
However, it is very short, and reads more like a story you might find in "Interzone" than epic sci-fi - personally, I would like to see the author flesh out some of the characters and ideas a bit more. The reason why Lizer Biggs is leaving Earth, for example, is never explained in detail, so it's difficult without this context to get a handle on him as a character; there could be more detail and build-up, too, to his first contact with the Gardeners - the story moves so fast that it feels a bit rushed; likewise, the reason why the Gardeners might feel threatened by one man from Earth whose technology is so inferior to theirs is not something the author really explains. Also, the god-like powers of Meatballs could be used for evil as well as good - is this something the author might explore in future instalments? What is the relationship between the Gardeners and their powerful AI (something Iain Banks's Culture novels examined)?
But the author has ideas to burn, and I hope that he gives them free rein in his future books, which I greatly look forward to reading.
Displaying 1 of 1 review