Reviews and Comments

A good contemporary fantasy story set in Malaysia involving local spirits. It also serves as an introduction to the world of spirits in the region. As a former Malaysian now in Singapore, the non-fantasy aspects of Malaysian society and culture featured in the book ring true, while the fantasy aspects do have solid roots in how spirits are worshipped by local people. But on to the actual review. :-)

The book centres around Jessamyn Teoh, who is reluctantly moving back to Malaysia from the US with her parents. But from the start, strange things happens when a voice in her head begins to speak to her. This turns out to be her maternal grandmother, who has a bone to pick with a wealthy Malaysian who is developing land on which a shrine that is the home to the spirit of Black Water Sister is sitting.

Jessamyn reluctantly agrees to help her grandmother, if only to be rid of her. But as the story develops, clues are dropped, by both her grandmother and the relatives she meets in Penang, Malaysia (the main setting of the story) that begin to show that she may be involved in more than just a battle over a shrine. It would centre over the murky past of her grandmother and also the chilling spirit that is the Black Water Sister, whose influence may cause Jessamyn to lose her own self, if she is not careful over who is in charge of events: sometimes violent events.

The book features a lot of local slang, and I find it surprising that the book has found an audience in the West, judging from the praise it has received. But I suppose this lies in the skill of the author, being able to produce a book that captures the atmosphere of actually living in Malaysia while still being appreciated by others.

I look forward to reading her other works, especially those set in the local culture.

A collection of stories selected by Greg Egan, it showcases some stories that have made people, like me, who enjoy the genre of 'Hard SF' (speculative science fiction based on the rules of nature) pay attention to what he has to say about the nature of the world around us. Some stories here overlap with another of his collection, "Instantiation", which I have already read, so the individual review for those stories are the same.

"Luminous" was the story that got 'hooked' on Egan: a wonderful tale about regions of the universe that obey different mathematical rules and what it says about the people who will fight against corporations that are eager to take advantage of the situation (by manipulating the mathematical rules that drive the stock market).

• Learning to Be Me: people are fitted with a 'jewel' in their head that emulates their brain, in preparation for taking over the job of the brain in the future for eternity when the brain expires. One man wonders on the nature of the jewel inside him that must learn to become him, and discovers what may happen when the process didn't work as expected.

• Axiomatic: a man buys an implant that can alter his basic beliefs. For what he wants to do to is confront the man who killed his wife, discover why he did it, and act on his modified convictions.

• Appropriate Love: when an accident leaves her lover near death and in need of a new body, she becomes the host for his brain while a new body is being prepared. But the experience world leave her feelings for him mixed up.

• Into Darkness: a wormhole appears, and it's the job of rescuers to enter it, rescue who they can in it, and make it to the centre. In the wormhole, time moves forward towards the centre, making it impossible to move back, or to see ahead, so the rescuers are always running into darkness.

• Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies: two wanderers navigate a strange future where belief systems can reach out from person to person, attracting people into believing in them. The two wanderers have managed to weave a path between belief systems in a city, but now they find out that their wanderings may not be as free is belief as they thought.

• Closer: a man is obsessed with the idea of really understanding another person's viewpoint to become closer to them. The journey he would take would lead to swapping of bodies and a melting of minds, but may not lead to the answer he seeks.

• Chaff: a man has to enter a bioengineered jungle in Colombia to find and retrieve a researcher who has run there. What he finds is a man who had found a way to change the way people's brain work and is willing to use it.

• Luminous: a fantastic tale involving mathematics and mathematical statements. A conversation about mathematics being physically manifested and whether a different system of mathematics could also exist leads to a discovery of a weapon that could be used to corrupt financial systems that depend on maths: and a whole new universe.

• Silver Fire: an investigator goes on the hunt for Silver Fire, a virus that is slowly spreading and killing its victims. Her investigation leads to a series of villages building dance parties, and she would find the cause of the outbreak is tied to New Age spiritualism that has also being taking over the world.

• Reasons to be Cheerful: an overly happy young boy learns he has brain cancer. He undergoes an operation to get rid of the cancer, but the operation accidentally destroys all feeling of pleasure. Later on, he learns of a possible way to restore the feeling of pleasure, but after so long, can he control how much pleasure he should be feeling?

• Oceanic: on a world thousands of years in the future, humans lived and worshipped Beatrice for giving up Her life to save theirs. One person discovers embraces the faith after being nearly drowned, but would discover years later that his faith in Beatrice may only be an accidental interaction. But will it cancel a person's faith?

• Oracle: a man being confined in a cruel way is suddenly freed by a woman who turns out to be more than she appears, in a story of an alternate universe involving characters that would be familiar to those who know computing and fantastic children's literature in Britain after World War Two.

• Singleton: the decision to intervene and save a stranger from a beating sends a person down the path to creating a device that would ensure that there is only a single decision made at a time by an artificial person, even when the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics applies.

• Dark Integers: a follow-up to "Luminous", this involves the characters now communicating with those that live under a different system of mathematics discovered in the original story. But now, a new danger has emerged with a new discovery that could cause whole mathematical systems to collapse. Should such a weapon be controlled and be used, even for defending the mathematics on which your life depends on?

• Crystal Nights: a rich entrepreneur develops a computer on a crystal that is very powerful and fast. Then, he uses it for the task of evolving an AI civilization that would fulfil his dreams. But what he doesn't consider is that the AIs he evolves world have dreams is their own.

• Zero For Conduct: an Afghan girl who is very smart 'dabbles' in chemistry and creates a long sought after material. But now living in Iran, she has to resort to trickery and deception to get enough money first to secure a patent on it before she can earn her well deserved riches. This, she will have to do with the help of her relatives who recognize her cleverness amidst a society that does not pay much heed to the intelligence of women.

• Bit Players: what looks at first to be a strange world where the rules of gravity have gone haywire turns out to be a virtual creation, with characters who act out lives for the players who enter the world. But the characters, whose templates were scans of real people, have feelings and ambitions, and they want to push at the boundaries of their created world.

• Uncanny Valley: a famous scriptwriter uploads a copy of himself into another body. But for unknown reasons parts of his memory are left out of the copy, rendering it almost complete. Now, after his death, the copy wants to find out why some memories were left out; and it may involve it in finding the uncomfortable truth about a period in the past when the scriptwriter was just starting out and gets involved in a potential plagiarism case.

• 3-adica: a sequel to “Bit Players”, this story now has some characters in another game. They have discovered how to exploit flaws and bugs in the rendering software of the games' engine to transport themselves to from game to game, looking for the game called 3-adica, whose unusual mathematical rules may give them space to live out their own lives free from observation of the system administrators. But they first have to survive in this game while gathering the materials needed for that final jump, a game featuring vampires in Victorian times.

• Instantiation: a sequel to “3-adica”, the characters safely living unnoticed in a place of their own making among the game worlds now require an escape, for the company that runs the games is losing money and may shut down. But to do that, they need to lure a player who uses a gaming system with a known flaw back into a game, so they can exploit the flaw to move to other servers. Complications arise when they realize the player may be logging their data movements, so they need an audacious plan to deceive the player and hide their movements.

An interesting book on the Tasmanian Devil, the Devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) and the efforts by scientists to save the Devils.

The book starts with an introduction to the Devils themselves, followed by the discovery of DFTD and what makes it so different compared to other forms of cancer. The book then covers the various scientists in various locations doing different kinds of research in the race to save the Devils from the disease.

Some scientists are studying the Devil's biology and environment to learn how they live and breed. Others are looking at DFTD directly to learn what it is, how it spreads and what can be done to make the Devils immune to the disease. Others are working on conservation, making sure the Devil have places to live on Tasman island with the support of the local community.

For now, it appears that some Devils can survive DFTD, and they are adapting to it. The future of the Devil isn't yet certain, but you will get some optimistic answers about the future of the Tasmanian Devil from this short, yet comprehensive book on the Devils.

The Murderbot arc of stories concludes for now, with Murderbot returning to its clients in the first story, only to find their leader kidnapped and held for ransom by the company to force them to drop the case against the company. In the race to rescue her, Murderbot calls attention to itself, and now the company wants it for the information it has on the company on the alien synthetic artefacts that the company has been secretly digging up (and murdering people to keep them quiet about it).

With lots of drama, suspense and, of course, mayhem, Murderbot puts its rescue plan into action. But its major problems will not be with the company but with its former clients. For rescuing and interacting with them has put Murderbot's main question front and centre: what does it really want to do (besides watch entertainment shows). By the end of the story, it still hasn't really decided but for now, its future is in its hands, and it doesn't have to worry that it will end up as a 'pet robot' (its main worry).