Solar Flare: Science Fiction News

This is the third Ken MacLeod book I’ve read and the first one he wrote. I read the back to front for no obvious reason. The previous two which I read were both awarded 10 out of 10, so this has a high standard to live up to…


Buy The Star Fraction

This doesn’t read like a first novel in any way. It’s vibrant, well written and gripping. The story is more cyberpunk than MacLeod’s other books. Set in the near future, it features the internet and AIs more directly than the others. Like all MacLeods work, politics is never far away. This time though the emphasis is on “real world” politics.

The story focuses heavily on the beginnings of a revolution. The central characters in the book are thrown together by a twist of fate and struggle to find a direction as the ground moves under their feet. The central character is Moh Kohn, whose father was a computer programmer who was killed in the “restoration”. He finds himself on the run from a strange alliance of fundamentalists, the STASIS police and computer loonies when he accidentally awakens what appears to be a true Artificial Intelligence. As this is happening, the “Black Plan” is getting ready to start the revolution. And just where does the Star Fraction fit into all this?

This book is packed with ideas as MacLeod’s writing always is. You may well find yourself disagreeing fervently with the viewpoints of some of the characters, but those viewpoints are entirely convincing and consistent for the people who hold them. This is most definitely not a book of cardboard cutouts. Knowing that this was MacLeod’s first novel and having read his later work, I tried really hard to spot some rough edges here. I largely failed. His background as a computer programmer shows up a bit more in this book than in his later writing, but thats about it.

This book is probably slightly more accessible than “The Stone Canal” in that it has less history to draw on. But it is very firmly rooted in Britain and British politics, which might be a little confusing for those unfamiliar with them. I think that of the three books, my favourite is probably “The Star Fraction”, but these are all top class SF novels and I strongly recommend reading them or anything else by MacLeod.