ALL too often, science fiction and fantasy are dismissed as mere genre reading, beneath contempt for the literati. That may be true of some titles, but not all. Most SF writers have left the pulp days far behind. Some of these despised 鈥済enre鈥� writers can show the likes of Ackroyd, Amis and Rushdie a thing or two about being 鈥渓iterary鈥� while remaining intensely readable 鈥� and that鈥檚 while exploring some of today鈥檚 most important scientific and moral issues.
Both Simon Ings and Neal Stephenson have taken virtual reality way beyond the cyberpunk fathered by William Gibson. Ings is a young British writer with an assured future. Hotwire (HarperCollins, 拢4.99 pbk, ISBN 0 00 647724 0) is his third novel, and a more than worthy sequel to his first, Hot Head. Its action takes place in a near-future world, and is a powerfully written thriller about a young professional hitman鈥檚 efforts to steal the 鈥渨etware鈥� from an old space station. The wetware is half-human, half-AI, and more than half-crazed.
Neal Stephenson鈥檚 The Diamond Age (Viking, 拢9.99 pbk, ISBN 0 670 86414 5) is a glorious blend of the mannered neo-Victorian and an imaginative future. In a world where most people belong to a 鈥減hyle鈥�, or self-chosen nation that transcends geographical boundaries, a nanotechnologist designs the ultimate teaching aid: a fully interactive book. The book bonds to its owner, 鈥済rowing up鈥� with her as a storybook and an encyclopedia, a companion and teacher. The primer鈥檚 fantasy quest told throughout The Diamond Age, mirrors the action of the harder SF world of the outer book. This is metafiction without the usual self-congratulatory archness. It鈥檚 also a rattling good yarn, and its social and scientific extrapolations from our own world are all too believable.
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Set in real Victorian times, Christopher Priest鈥檚 The Prestige (Simon & Schuster, 拢15.99, ISBN 0 671 71924 6) is beautifully written. Two magicians vie with each other to create the perfect illusion: vanishing from one part of the stage and reappearing instantaneously in another. It鈥檚 a story of utter fakery and scientific audacity. The pioneer of electrical power, Nikola Tesla, appears in a supporting role; to say more would reveal too much. Priest masters the merging of SF and mainstream, and The Prestige is his finest novel to date.
Michael Moorcock is an enigmatic rarity. He churned out a prodigious number of pulp fantasy novels in the 1960s to finance the influential SF magazine New Worlds. He has written for and performed with Hawkwind and Blue Oyster Cult 鈥� and he has won major literary awards for his later, more serious fiction.
Fabulous Harbours (Millennium, 拢15.99/拢8.99 pbk, ISBN 1 85798 408 0/409 9) is, like its predecessor Blood, a study of the eternal battle between chaos and law, between entropy and stasis. Either may destroy humanity. 鈥淥ur role,鈥� says one character, 鈥渋s to create Order without losing the creativity and fecundity of Chaos,鈥� a moral, political, social and scientific issue perhaps more vital to our present time than to any other. Fabulous Harbours is a collection of Moorcock鈥檚 recent short stories on this topic 鈥� plus one from 1966 that emphasises the significance of this theme throughout his career. I found it quirky, but it will be more accessible to a newcomer to SF than some of Moorcock鈥檚 work.
For fantasy aficionados and computer games addicts, the plot of Jonathan Wylie鈥檚 Other Lands (Orbit, 拢16.99, ISBN 1 85723 309 3) will come as nothing new: a young woman finds herself, through hypnosis-induced 鈥渄reams鈥�, in a parallel world. It is the medieval, magical, fantasy version of the rural Norfolk where she lives. Her task is to solve problems there to save her real-world husband from his coma. But this variation on a well worked theme is a lot better than most. The 鈥渁uthor鈥� is in fact a married couple who turned from being SF and fantasy editors to being very capable writers. I would not call this novel literature, but for readers new to the genre its combination of ancient and modern, of magic and computers, of love and hate and terror and courage, makes for a well-written, thoroughly enjoyable tale. It is also highly recommended for weaning teenagers off genre pap onto the real stuff.