shopping cart
Call us: 800-878-7323 HELP
McAfee SECURE helps keep you safe from identity theft, credit card fraud, spyware, spam, viruses and online scams.
Guests | October 20, 2009

Vincent McCaffrey: IMG A Practical Matter

2 comments By Vincent McCaffrey

It was in a letter of 1897, about his cousin James Ross Clemens, that Mark Twain famously noted that "the report of my death was an exaggeration." He... Continue »
  1. $16.80 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

    Hound: A Mystery

    Vincent McCaffrey
Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$16.95
List price: $24.95
Used Hardcover
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
Qty Store Section
1 Burnside Science Fiction and Fantasy- A to Z

More copies of this ISBN:

This title in other formats:

Implied Spaces

by Walter Jon Williams

Implied Spaces Cover

ISBN13: 9781597801256
ISBN10: 1597801259
Condition: Standard
Dustjacket: Standard
All Product Details

Only 1 left in stock at $16.95!

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Aristide, a semi-retired computer scientist turned swordsman, is a scholar of the implied spaces, seeking meaning amid the accidents of architecture in a universe where reality itself has been sculpted and designed by superhuman machine intelligence. While exploring the pre-technological world Midgarth, one of four dozen pocket universes created within a series of vast, orbital matrioshka computer arrays, Aristide uncovers a fiendish plot threatening to set off a nightmare scenario, perhaps even bringing about the ultimate Existential Crisis: the end of civilization itself. Traveling the pocket universes with his wormhole-edged sword Tecmesssa in hand and talking cat Bitsy, avatar of the planet-sized computer Endora, at his side, Aristide must find a way to save the multiverse from subversion, sabotage, and certain destruction.

Review:

"In this grandly scaled space opera from bestseller Williams (Hardwired), swashbuckling computer scientist Aristide explores pretechnological 'pocket' universes in search of interesting 'implied spaces,' the unintended regions that come into existence between deliberately designed structures. Then he uncovers evidence of a dark collective that's kidnapping people and sending them to pockets where a virus co-opts their minds and turns them into willing spies and assassins. Evidence implicates one of the Eleven planet-sized quantum computers, somehow corrupted in spite of its 'Asimovian safeguards.' Armed with a wormhole-edged broadsword and accompanied by his sidekick, Bitsy, an avatar of one of the Eleven in the form of a talking cat, Aristide finds himself hunted, brainwashed, killed and resurrected more than once before he learns the truth. Williams tells the tale with enthusiasm and a crisp, dry wit well suited to this entertaining blend of high adventure, intrigue and postsingularity technology. (July)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
back to top

What Our Readers Are Saying

Add a comment for a chance to win!
Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Jvstin, July 19, 2008 (view all comments by Jvstin)
It's not often that you read a novel which creates a subgenre, sui generis. Implied Spaces, by Walter Jon Williams, manages that feat with the inauguration of the "Sword and Singularity" subgenre of SF.

For those who don't know what a Singularity is, in brief, its the idea that when trans-human intelligences (be it computer, cyborg or what have you) come into existence, life and history as we know it will be utterly transformed, and life after it will be as alien to us as our modern technological existence is alien to our ancestors in the Paleolithic era.

In Implied Spaces, Walter Jon Williams creates a "sword and singularity" novel. What this means is, pace S.M. Stirling, is that fantasy ideas, tropes and even settings are convincingly melded with the high technology of a post-Singularity environment. We start off the novel in a fantasy world environment that, if it were just a random tidbit found on the internet, would at first look like a well written but ordinary fantasy novel. Aristide has a talking cat, sure, but in a world of trolls and monsters, that's not unusual.

When his sword comes out, and starts acting like Morgaine Chaya's Changeling, complete with a wormhole, the reader starts getting an inkling that there is much more to the universe than meets the eye. We soon get ever grander vistas and situations as, with Aristide as our guide, we meet A.I.'s, post-human characters, wormhole technology, mass drivers using wormholes as weapons, and technology capable of affecting the most fundamental elements of reality.

As Keanu Reeves famously once said: "Whoa!"

The book is philosophical, comic, action packed, thoughtful and stunningly well written. I've been a fan of Williams work for a long while, and he hits all cylinders here. This novel is precisely for people who can read good fat fantasy, and yet strongly appreciate the High-tech SF of, say, Charlie Stross.

Highly Recommended.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(1 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
back to top

Product Details

ISBN:
9781597801256
Author:
Williams, Walter Jon
Publisher:
Night Shade Books
Subject:
Science / General
Subject:
Science Fiction - General
Subject:
Science fiction
Copyright:
2008
Publication Date:
May 2008
Binding:
Hardcover
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
265
Dimensions:
9.28x6.78x.98 in. 1.15 lbs.
back to top

Other books you might like

  1. $10.50 Used Trade Paper add to wish list

    Matter

    Iain M. Banks
  2. $18.50 Used Hardcover add to wish list

    Anathem

    Neal Stephenson
  3. $11.95 New Trade Paper add to wish list

    Ensign Flandry, Volume 1: The Saga of Dominic Flandry, Agent of Imperial Terra

    Poul Anderson
  4. $19.95 New Trade Paper add to wish list

    The Arabian Nights

    Robert Irwin
back to top

Related Aisles

  • back to top

Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.