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Vainglory
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★★★1/2Synopsis: Stonesculptors carve gigantic pieces of art out of asteroids and moons. Artist Loti Hung gets a visit from a private investigator Vanya Ingvar on Triton. They reflect on an assignment to copy the head Michelangelo's David on a asteroid and the influence of this client.
Review: Those gigantic sculptures bring back a sense-of-wonder which I sometimes miss in contemporary SF. It raises questions of the price of fame, the arrogance of wealth. It isn't a great mystery story but shines at the believable interaction between the two 80 year old ladies, the idea, and setting.
No surprise Reynolds tells an excellent story.
Apparently after future humanity has reached all the planets, established a few outposts, and started mining the outer solar system but some serious effort, it's also time for Art to migrate out as well. Most of the story is told in a flashback as a private investigator catches up with an artist talk about a commissioned piece that hardly anyone ever had a chance to see: the head of Michelangelo's David chiseled out of a kilometer-wide asteroid. A bravado statement that was quickly trumped by the sponsor's own sense of art.
We have a pair of relationships, one between artist and sponsor, and one between artist and investigator, both are pretty interesting.
On a side note, it took me three pages to suss the artist, Loti, the first person narrator, was a woman. ("I realize she's got the wrong woman.") I guess Loti should've been a clue, but my default gender for first-person narrators by male authors seems to be male.
4 stars ****
Apparently after future humanity has reached all the planets, established a few outposts, and started mining the outer solar system but some serious effort, it's also time for Art to migrate out as well. Most of the story is told in a flashback as a private investigator catches up with an artist talk about a commissioned piece that hardly anyone ever had a chance to see: the head of Michelangelo's David chiseled out of a kilometer-wide asteroid. A bravado statement that was quickly trumped by the sponsor's own sense of art.
We have a pair of relationships, one between artist and sponsor, and one between artist and investigator, both are pretty interesting.
On a side note, it took me three pages to suss the artist, Loti, the first person narrator, was a woman. ("I realize she's got the wrong woman.") I guess Loti should've been a clue, but my default gender for first-person narrators by male authors seems to be male.
4 stars ****
"Vainglory" by Alastair Reynolds
This story is part of the Edge of Infinity group anthology discussion.