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Memory Wire
Raymond Keller volunteers to become an Eye, an unfeeling recorder, in order to forget, but he meets Teresa, a young artist who uses alien dreaming jewels in order to remember
219 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
3 people are currently reading
296 people want to read
About the author
Robert Charles Wilson
96 books1,672 followersI've been writing science fiction professionally since my first novel A Hidden Place was published in 1986. My books include Darwinia, Blind Lake, and the Hugo Award-winning Spin. My newest novel is The Affinities (April 2015).
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
July 5, 2024
Quite a unique take on the impact of memory on our lives. I loved the premise but the story is so bleak it's depressing. I liked it, I like everything RCW writes, but I didn't love it.
July 22, 2019
What did you have for breakfast three Mondays ago? Was it raining that day? Can you remember?
What about a trauma you experienced or witnessed? Is it fuzzy edged, made indistinct by adrenaline and fear? Is it perhaps better that you don’t remember all the details?
Imagine everything you ever saw was recorded, stored in a memory chip in your brain and able to be reviewed later, or played back, edited and shown to others. Nothing would be forgotten, your highs and lows could be relived at any time.
How would this change you?
The main character of Robert Charles Wilson’s Memory Wire, Raymond Keller, has such a chip, and through him Wilson tells a fascinating story of memory, forgetting and trauma, in a story that is very much worth your time.
Keller is an off-the-books freelance news videographer in a dark and messed up future. Parched, water-rationed communities dot the USA. Vast floating barrios of hawsered-together boats sprawl off the coast of California, filled with the poor, South American migrants, and Indian refugees from a nuclear accident on the subcontinent.
Advanced tech is slowly changing the world, tech based on alien knowledge that has been slowly leaking from Brazil, where in an area of the Amazon strange extraterrestrial stones nicknamed ‘Oneiroliths’ have been discovered, each strange gem containing clues to the existence and lives of an alien race, and the keys to a science beyond our own.
But these stones are more than just tech repositories. Just holding one can cause people to re-experience their own lives as though they were living their memories over again, something that has led to them being traded on the black market, where they are used as a pseudo drug by people desperate remember loved ones and re-experience happy times.
Keller fought in a war over these stones, an invader on Brazilian soil, fighting guerrillas in a merciless asymmetric conflict. It was in Brazil where he was made into an ‘angel’; a soldier whose brain is packed with recording equipment that stores everything he sees and hears for later review by his superiors.
Being an Angel required more than just implants. To be able to force a soldier to film everything, even the most horrific, most incriminating things a person could see in war, required psychological changes too, the cultivation of an impassive, outsider-looking-in mindset isolated from the world and the people around you. Personal connections, love or friendship could destroy you – at any moment you might have to record the death of your friend or lover.
As you would expect, living through a war in a state like this has marked Keller deeply, and irony of ironies, he is a man who cannot forget desperately trying not to remember the things he has seen.
When an old comrade, himself once an Angel, introduces Keller to Teresa - an artist and Oneirolith addict - and involves them both in a plan to visit Brazil and steal a new, more potent type of stone that global authorities are trying to suppress, Keller’s studied detachment is threatened.
The wall he has built between himself, his memories and his emotions begins to fracture, and as he faces both his past and his unfeeling, lonely present, the reasons for the alien stones being left on Earth slowly begin to become clear.
Robert Charles Wilson is a hell of a writer, and Memory Wire is a rapid-fire, pacey novel that I gobbled up in a matter of hours. Wilson paints a vivid and convincing picture of a disrupted, unequal world, and the tortured internal lives of his protagonists really sucked me in, keeping me on edge as they get closer and closer to the mental and existential edge.
Wilson has been writing a long time, but even here, in one of his earlier works, his talent for concept and character is evident. His 1999 book Bios is a favorite of mine – it’s a stunning work of extraterrestrial eco-SF that I recommend to any fan of the genre. Memory Wire is now another I would recommend to fellow Sci-Fi fans – it’s a great read full of interesting and well-developed ideas and a fascinating character study in memory, trauma and psychological healing.
Four suppressed memories out of five.
What about a trauma you experienced or witnessed? Is it fuzzy edged, made indistinct by adrenaline and fear? Is it perhaps better that you don’t remember all the details?
Imagine everything you ever saw was recorded, stored in a memory chip in your brain and able to be reviewed later, or played back, edited and shown to others. Nothing would be forgotten, your highs and lows could be relived at any time.
How would this change you?
The main character of Robert Charles Wilson’s Memory Wire, Raymond Keller, has such a chip, and through him Wilson tells a fascinating story of memory, forgetting and trauma, in a story that is very much worth your time.
Keller is an off-the-books freelance news videographer in a dark and messed up future. Parched, water-rationed communities dot the USA. Vast floating barrios of hawsered-together boats sprawl off the coast of California, filled with the poor, South American migrants, and Indian refugees from a nuclear accident on the subcontinent.
Advanced tech is slowly changing the world, tech based on alien knowledge that has been slowly leaking from Brazil, where in an area of the Amazon strange extraterrestrial stones nicknamed ‘Oneiroliths’ have been discovered, each strange gem containing clues to the existence and lives of an alien race, and the keys to a science beyond our own.
But these stones are more than just tech repositories. Just holding one can cause people to re-experience their own lives as though they were living their memories over again, something that has led to them being traded on the black market, where they are used as a pseudo drug by people desperate remember loved ones and re-experience happy times.
Keller fought in a war over these stones, an invader on Brazilian soil, fighting guerrillas in a merciless asymmetric conflict. It was in Brazil where he was made into an ‘angel’; a soldier whose brain is packed with recording equipment that stores everything he sees and hears for later review by his superiors.
Being an Angel required more than just implants. To be able to force a soldier to film everything, even the most horrific, most incriminating things a person could see in war, required psychological changes too, the cultivation of an impassive, outsider-looking-in mindset isolated from the world and the people around you. Personal connections, love or friendship could destroy you – at any moment you might have to record the death of your friend or lover.
As you would expect, living through a war in a state like this has marked Keller deeply, and irony of ironies, he is a man who cannot forget desperately trying not to remember the things he has seen.
When an old comrade, himself once an Angel, introduces Keller to Teresa - an artist and Oneirolith addict - and involves them both in a plan to visit Brazil and steal a new, more potent type of stone that global authorities are trying to suppress, Keller’s studied detachment is threatened.
The wall he has built between himself, his memories and his emotions begins to fracture, and as he faces both his past and his unfeeling, lonely present, the reasons for the alien stones being left on Earth slowly begin to become clear.
Robert Charles Wilson is a hell of a writer, and Memory Wire is a rapid-fire, pacey novel that I gobbled up in a matter of hours. Wilson paints a vivid and convincing picture of a disrupted, unequal world, and the tortured internal lives of his protagonists really sucked me in, keeping me on edge as they get closer and closer to the mental and existential edge.
Wilson has been writing a long time, but even here, in one of his earlier works, his talent for concept and character is evident. His 1999 book Bios is a favorite of mine – it’s a stunning work of extraterrestrial eco-SF that I recommend to any fan of the genre. Memory Wire is now another I would recommend to fellow Sci-Fi fans – it’s a great read full of interesting and well-developed ideas and a fascinating character study in memory, trauma and psychological healing.
Four suppressed memories out of five.
August 10, 2020
Robert Charles Wilson does cyberpunk, but with extraterrestrial artifacts.
In this near future thriller, Ray Keller is ex-military, now using his implanted recording technology to create marginally legal newsvideo. He's drawn into a high-stakes smuggling run to Brazil with former war buddy Byron, and Teresa. She's a young artist from "The Floats" addicted to oneiroliths, alien technology being mined in the Amazon. These artifacts enable some individuals to access detailed the detailed past on a personal level, even if memories have naturally or deliberately been lost. Painfully, both Ray and Teresa must confront their own pasts.
Wilson explores the nature of memory, and its role in evolution and human affairs. This was an interesting counterpoint to Milan Kundera's take on it in his recent novel Ignorance, that I finished just before this.
An interesting story in an interesting world.
In this near future thriller, Ray Keller is ex-military, now using his implanted recording technology to create marginally legal newsvideo. He's drawn into a high-stakes smuggling run to Brazil with former war buddy Byron, and Teresa. She's a young artist from "The Floats" addicted to oneiroliths, alien technology being mined in the Amazon. These artifacts enable some individuals to access detailed the detailed past on a personal level, even if memories have naturally or deliberately been lost. Painfully, both Ray and Teresa must confront their own pasts.
Wilson explores the nature of memory, and its role in evolution and human affairs. This was an interesting counterpoint to Milan Kundera's take on it in his recent novel Ignorance, that I finished just before this.
An interesting story in an interesting world.
August 15, 2022
An early well written RCW novel, often cited as cyberpunk, though I believe that is mostly post-Neuromancer success marketing - RCW had a great aptitude for his craft early on, however, the overall story line and subject matter was not up to par with what he would come up with later on. A worth while read just the same if you can get a hold of a copy of this not so easy to find paperback.
February 4, 2021
I’ve read a lot of 1970s and earlier (some much much earlier) SciFi, and I’ve read a bunch from the 90s until present. This story comes from my gap (specifically 1987) and it seems very different from either group. In some ways (especially the ending) it is very predictable (sigh!). But in terms of world-building and main element it feels different. I wonder if it is typical of 1980s SciFi or an outlier….
Quotes that caught my eye
There was talk of the Three Pillars: great faith, great doubt, great perseverance. They were setting aside the mind. (13)
It was, he wanted to say, a strange combination of clarity and confusion. Like those nights when the fog comes in so thick you might as well be blind, but sound carries with great intimacy over startling distances. You can’t see your feet, but a buoy clanging out in the bay comes to you with that high, sad tonality all intact. He was able to register the distant bell-ringing of events, commerce, politics. He was good at it. but the fog concealed love. The fog concealed hate. (96-97)
Brazil had astonished him. It was huge in every dimension. He had never guessed a single nation could contain so much variety of wealth, poverty, landscape. (104)
But there were certain things for sale.
Drugs, for instance. Well, drugs were everywhere. It was a truism that the economy could not function—or at least compete—without the vast array of stimulants, IQ enhancers, and complex neuropeptides for sale on the street of by prescription. Oberg had done time with the DEA and understood that it was a traffic no one really cared to interdict. Most of the field agents he knew were either neurochemically enhanced or skimming money from the trade. Or both. It was called free enterprise. (175-76)
The past was gone, the dead were dead and did not speak, and everybody dies; one day Oberg would be dead and silent, too, and that was as it should be: the broad and welcoming ocean of oblivion. It made life bearable. It was sacred. It should not be tampered with. (179)
He felt quite firmly embedded in his Angel training now, gliding over this memory landscape around him, an archeologist among the ruins of his own experience. (187)
…the gauzy and pleasant territory of not-caring, which people like Keller rendered as “objectivity.” (189)
Something I wasn’t sure about
In ‘…sent little back-EMF blips surging into Keller’s brain’ (9) is EMF electromagnetic field or electromotive force?
Quotes that caught my eye
There was talk of the Three Pillars: great faith, great doubt, great perseverance. They were setting aside the mind. (13)
It was, he wanted to say, a strange combination of clarity and confusion. Like those nights when the fog comes in so thick you might as well be blind, but sound carries with great intimacy over startling distances. You can’t see your feet, but a buoy clanging out in the bay comes to you with that high, sad tonality all intact. He was able to register the distant bell-ringing of events, commerce, politics. He was good at it. but the fog concealed love. The fog concealed hate. (96-97)
Brazil had astonished him. It was huge in every dimension. He had never guessed a single nation could contain so much variety of wealth, poverty, landscape. (104)
But there were certain things for sale.
Drugs, for instance. Well, drugs were everywhere. It was a truism that the economy could not function—or at least compete—without the vast array of stimulants, IQ enhancers, and complex neuropeptides for sale on the street of by prescription. Oberg had done time with the DEA and understood that it was a traffic no one really cared to interdict. Most of the field agents he knew were either neurochemically enhanced or skimming money from the trade. Or both. It was called free enterprise. (175-76)
The past was gone, the dead were dead and did not speak, and everybody dies; one day Oberg would be dead and silent, too, and that was as it should be: the broad and welcoming ocean of oblivion. It made life bearable. It was sacred. It should not be tampered with. (179)
He felt quite firmly embedded in his Angel training now, gliding over this memory landscape around him, an archeologist among the ruins of his own experience. (187)
…the gauzy and pleasant territory of not-caring, which people like Keller rendered as “objectivity.” (189)
Something I wasn’t sure about
In ‘…sent little back-EMF blips surging into Keller’s brain’ (9) is EMF electromagnetic field or electromotive force?
October 8, 2013
A very cleverly structured novel by Wilson which revolves around various aspects of memory, set in a dystopian future where alien 'stones' have been discovered in South America.
Keller is an 'angel', a futuristic reporter whose memory wire inserts allow him to record everything he sees or hears, although angels, having a need to be dispassionate and removed from the object of their observations, must study a zen-like discipline to control their emotional involvements. He can therefore 'remember' everything.
Teresa, an artist, can remember nothing beyond a few years ago, but has constant dreams of a young girl asking her for help. She has a copy of one of the alien stones, which for her can retrieve memories of some of her customers if she is in physical contact with them. It also gives her brief visions of the aliens themselves, blue-skinned winged creatures whose thoughts and motives are unfathomable.
Byron is an ex-angel and an old colleague of Keller's. He is in love with Theresa and aware that she is slowly destroying herself through an addiction to drugs. Stories are emerging of new stones being found in the South American mines, stones with more powerful effects than the first ones found. Byron is planning a dangerous expedition to obtain one of the stones, in order that it may help Teresa find her memory and wean her away from her deathwish.
Meanwhile, a rogue intelligence officer, Oberg, is on a mission to prevent the stones being disseminated into the world. He has been driven psychotic by his own memories of war, and has a twisted insane logic that somehow makes sense in the context of what the stones are and what they are capable of doing.
It's an early novel, but one that is well-crafted and very well characterised. The setting is detailed and credible and nothing is there that doesn't need to be there. There's no padding out with vicarious bits of flashy technology just to make the story shiny. It's very dark in tone, but elegantly constructed. Very impressive.
Keller is an 'angel', a futuristic reporter whose memory wire inserts allow him to record everything he sees or hears, although angels, having a need to be dispassionate and removed from the object of their observations, must study a zen-like discipline to control their emotional involvements. He can therefore 'remember' everything.
Teresa, an artist, can remember nothing beyond a few years ago, but has constant dreams of a young girl asking her for help. She has a copy of one of the alien stones, which for her can retrieve memories of some of her customers if she is in physical contact with them. It also gives her brief visions of the aliens themselves, blue-skinned winged creatures whose thoughts and motives are unfathomable.
Byron is an ex-angel and an old colleague of Keller's. He is in love with Theresa and aware that she is slowly destroying herself through an addiction to drugs. Stories are emerging of new stones being found in the South American mines, stones with more powerful effects than the first ones found. Byron is planning a dangerous expedition to obtain one of the stones, in order that it may help Teresa find her memory and wean her away from her deathwish.
Meanwhile, a rogue intelligence officer, Oberg, is on a mission to prevent the stones being disseminated into the world. He has been driven psychotic by his own memories of war, and has a twisted insane logic that somehow makes sense in the context of what the stones are and what they are capable of doing.
It's an early novel, but one that is well-crafted and very well characterised. The setting is detailed and credible and nothing is there that doesn't need to be there. There's no padding out with vicarious bits of flashy technology just to make the story shiny. It's very dark in tone, but elegantly constructed. Very impressive.
March 15, 2017
This is clearly early RCW. There were times when I wanted to see what would have happened if he had written this more recently, after more experiences. Interesting store, but left much to be desired.
October 5, 2025
The Exotics left the dreaming stones - oneiroliths - buried on Earth to be used when humanity reached the appropriate stage, but they proved to cause almost perfect memory and in some people an addictive euphoria. They became a new source of slavery in the fields of Brazil where they were mined and were extraordinarily valuable for the information they contained and so a lucrative and deadly smuggling trade ensued. Into this world of floating barrios come three seekers of a special 'lith - Ray Keller, an ex-military Angel (a human recorder of audio and video), Byron, who was once an Angel but has since been stripped of the equipment, and Teresa, a young woman whose memories of her childhood are so horrific they cannot be examined sanely. Together they negotiate the Brazilian ungle and secure a stone, only to be ruthlessly hunted by an unhinged security officer, Oberg, who will do anything to get the stone back - except touch it - for he too has memories blak and dreadful. Robert Charles Wilson has constructed a neat story of memory and how terrible and cathartic it can be. The Exotics did not use memory the way humans do... Well worth a read!
October 4, 2022
I can't believe I read 150 pages of this before giving up.
I just turned the next page one day and realised that I did not give a damn about any of the names that I was reading - I hardly knew anything about the characters, what as their purpose, motivation, and role in the narrative?.
Where was the book going? Did I care?
On the positive side, the writing is clear, and the central idea of the book intriguing. But the book is just about running about in small towns round the rain forest, whilst others run about trying to find them. ad naseum
I just turned the next page one day and realised that I did not give a damn about any of the names that I was reading - I hardly knew anything about the characters, what as their purpose, motivation, and role in the narrative?.
Where was the book going? Did I care?
On the positive side, the writing is clear, and the central idea of the book intriguing. But the book is just about running about in small towns round the rain forest, whilst others run about trying to find them. ad naseum
April 17, 2022
This book was hinted to be similar to Johnny Mnemonic. It really wasn't except for the main character carrying recording equipment in his head to save everything he sees. The idea of the alien memory stones was interesting, but their history and origin was not covered in much detail. The ending came rather abruptly.
March 29, 2021
Hints at the brilliance of ideas to come in Wilson's later novels. Characters -- not so much.
July 4, 2012
As if A Hidden Place weren't enough of a triumph, Wilson actually managed to top himself in his second novel.
At first glance, Memory Wire appears to be simply another cyberpunk entry, but 25 pages into the novel it becomes apparent that this is no mere derivative vision. Wilson's technological and militaristic future bears passing similarity to that portrayed in cyberpunk, but Wilson populates this desolate landscape with real people who feel and cope and grow, as well as think and act. Although comparisons with William Gibson are inevitable, Wilson is clearly the better author. Gibson's novels are slickly done, but he is ultimately content to settle for a thriller that says little beyond rubbing our noses in the coming/current corporate dystopia. Wilson goes beyond this primitive level of social commentary to produce a thriller that is also psychologically profound. Where Gibson says the future is shit, Wilson tells us what it will smell like, how we'll feel about it, and what we'll do to cover up the stink.
Thematically, Memory Wire is a vehicle for Wilson to discuss the nature of memory: how our personal pasts shapes the people we become, how it blocks or frees us, and how we sometimes have to struggle to come to grips with who and what we are. On all these subjects Wilson has something important to say, and he says it with style and feeling. Not only do the characters experience growth in this book, I think I did. Much as I enjoyed Neuromancer, and much as it may have caused many people to change their thinking about the future, it had little impact on me as a person. Wilson, in contrast, makes you think about your life, your values, and your own emotional health.
What elevates Wilson to true genius, however, is that he manages all this without detracting from a driving narrative. This is an edge-of-the-seat thriller, complete with smugglers, drug dealers, secret police and a moving love story. The plot twists and turns around a number of brilliant sf concepts, any one of which could have stood on its own as the basis for a complete novel. Wilson's handling of setting is equally marvelous, particularly the South American scenes based on Brazil's Sera Paladé gold mine.
This is very nearly a perfect novel. Go get this book. Special order it if you have to, but this is a "must read".
At first glance, Memory Wire appears to be simply another cyberpunk entry, but 25 pages into the novel it becomes apparent that this is no mere derivative vision. Wilson's technological and militaristic future bears passing similarity to that portrayed in cyberpunk, but Wilson populates this desolate landscape with real people who feel and cope and grow, as well as think and act. Although comparisons with William Gibson are inevitable, Wilson is clearly the better author. Gibson's novels are slickly done, but he is ultimately content to settle for a thriller that says little beyond rubbing our noses in the coming/current corporate dystopia. Wilson goes beyond this primitive level of social commentary to produce a thriller that is also psychologically profound. Where Gibson says the future is shit, Wilson tells us what it will smell like, how we'll feel about it, and what we'll do to cover up the stink.
Thematically, Memory Wire is a vehicle for Wilson to discuss the nature of memory: how our personal pasts shapes the people we become, how it blocks or frees us, and how we sometimes have to struggle to come to grips with who and what we are. On all these subjects Wilson has something important to say, and he says it with style and feeling. Not only do the characters experience growth in this book, I think I did. Much as I enjoyed Neuromancer, and much as it may have caused many people to change their thinking about the future, it had little impact on me as a person. Wilson, in contrast, makes you think about your life, your values, and your own emotional health.
What elevates Wilson to true genius, however, is that he manages all this without detracting from a driving narrative. This is an edge-of-the-seat thriller, complete with smugglers, drug dealers, secret police and a moving love story. The plot twists and turns around a number of brilliant sf concepts, any one of which could have stood on its own as the basis for a complete novel. Wilson's handling of setting is equally marvelous, particularly the South American scenes based on Brazil's Sera Paladé gold mine.
This is very nearly a perfect novel. Go get this book. Special order it if you have to, but this is a "must read".
September 21, 2008
Heureusement que j'ai lu ce livre après [title:Meddik], ça m'a permis de le trouver meilleur.
Parce qu'on ne peut pas dire qu'il soit réellement bon. La raison en est à mon sens très simple : les personnages, malgré toutes les descriptions qu'en fait l'auteur, sont terriblement creux, et dénués du moindre potentiel d'empathie.
En même temps, l'auteur choisit le défi dans ce roman, puisque le personnage central de ce roman à sciement choisi de s'éloigner de l'humanité en devenant une espèce de caméra vivante, dont le seul travail doit être de filmer ce qu'il voit, pour la postérité, ou d'autres buts. Hélas, il tombe amoureux. Hélas ? Oui, parce qu'on ne ressent hélas pas grand chose de cet amour, ni de son point de vue, ni d'ailleurs du point de vue de sa conquête, qui fait d'ailleurs la couverture de l'édition de poche. Et comme si ça ne suffisait pas, les autres personnages sont tout aussi creux. Le "méchant" de l'histoire est une espèce de sociopathe capable de massacrer tout le monde sans rien en ressentir, et les autres personnages, qui auraient pu avoir une vie, ne sont qu'un décor.
Si au moins l'intrigue tenait la route ... Las, elle doit pouvoir tenir sur un micro post-it.
Quant à l'argument science-fictif, il nous garantit des décors dépaysants (les flottes, la mine d'onirolithes), quelques innovations marrantes (comme les anges, justement), mais ne change pas grand chose à ce qu'aurait pu être le même roman traité dansun pur univers de roman noir.
Bref, riend e bien folichon à se mettre sous la dent. Voire même rien tout court, en fait. Peut-être un roman de plage lisible ... peut-être
Parce qu'on ne peut pas dire qu'il soit réellement bon. La raison en est à mon sens très simple : les personnages, malgré toutes les descriptions qu'en fait l'auteur, sont terriblement creux, et dénués du moindre potentiel d'empathie.
En même temps, l'auteur choisit le défi dans ce roman, puisque le personnage central de ce roman à sciement choisi de s'éloigner de l'humanité en devenant une espèce de caméra vivante, dont le seul travail doit être de filmer ce qu'il voit, pour la postérité, ou d'autres buts. Hélas, il tombe amoureux. Hélas ? Oui, parce qu'on ne ressent hélas pas grand chose de cet amour, ni de son point de vue, ni d'ailleurs du point de vue de sa conquête, qui fait d'ailleurs la couverture de l'édition de poche. Et comme si ça ne suffisait pas, les autres personnages sont tout aussi creux. Le "méchant" de l'histoire est une espèce de sociopathe capable de massacrer tout le monde sans rien en ressentir, et les autres personnages, qui auraient pu avoir une vie, ne sont qu'un décor.
Si au moins l'intrigue tenait la route ... Las, elle doit pouvoir tenir sur un micro post-it.
Quant à l'argument science-fictif, il nous garantit des décors dépaysants (les flottes, la mine d'onirolithes), quelques innovations marrantes (comme les anges, justement), mais ne change pas grand chose à ce qu'aurait pu être le même roman traité dansun pur univers de roman noir.
Bref, riend e bien folichon à se mettre sous la dent. Voire même rien tout court, en fait. Peut-être un roman de plage lisible ... peut-être
May 1, 2016
Aprés avoir transcendé grave avec Spin et les Chronolithes, me voilà bien déçue par Ange Mémoire.
Si l'histoire est de prime abord alléchante et le thème de la mémoire attirant, j'avoue que l'engouement des premières pages a fini par laisser la place à une certaine perplexité.
Malgré un ensemble qui m'a paru survolé, aussi bien dans le traitement des thèmes que celui des personnages ou des personnages, on y devine la profondeur des romans futurs, l'humanité omniprésente qui m'avait fait si forte impression dans les autres livres.
Pour ceux qui n'ont pas encore lu Wilson, je déconseillerais ce livre, qui pourrait laisser un goût d'inachevé et qui n'est finalement qu'un avant-goût du talent de l'auteur.
Si l'histoire est de prime abord alléchante et le thème de la mémoire attirant, j'avoue que l'engouement des premières pages a fini par laisser la place à une certaine perplexité.
Malgré un ensemble qui m'a paru survolé, aussi bien dans le traitement des thèmes que celui des personnages ou des personnages, on y devine la profondeur des romans futurs, l'humanité omniprésente qui m'avait fait si forte impression dans les autres livres.
Pour ceux qui n'ont pas encore lu Wilson, je déconseillerais ce livre, qui pourrait laisser un goût d'inachevé et qui n'est finalement qu'un avant-goût du talent de l'auteur.
January 11, 2013
Early Wilson book with rather a cyberpunk vibe, as an Angel (a guy with a system wired to allow him to record all he witnesses) goes on an expedition to steal an alien artefact that is sort of a recording/memory device itself. Intrigue, love, good writing, but lacks the depth Wilson achieves in later works. Still, characteristic Wilson in several respects, notably in the ultimate incomprehensibility of the alien.
May 17, 2014
Early Wilson. It's till pretty rough, but still compelling. Probably not worth it unless you're a completest the way I am, but not a bad read.
April 13, 2017
I kept falling asleep while reading this book. Granted, I'm tired, but it is not like me to doze off within 10 minutes of opening a book, so I have to blame the book a little. I've enjoyed other books by Wilson, but in this one the plot was a bit diffuse, the characters were (deliberately?) flat, and the theme of our memories being the true protagonist (or antagonist) of our lives just didn't speak to me.
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