Rosebud, by Paul Cornell

[mrissa]

Review copy provided by the publisher.

The blurb on the front cover, from the genre's most cheerful man, Peter Watts, suggests that this is "A scream disguised as a giggle." If so, it's the worst disguise ever, something along the lines of a plastic Groucho Marx nose and glasses. This is the kind of writing that reminds you that "hysterical" means not just "quite funny" but also "on the edge of a breakdown."

There are five digital sentients crewing a spaceship together for hundreds of years--being part, more or less, of that spaceship. And they encounter a black sphere in their travels and must decide, collectively, how to continue--whether to take on physical form within their shape's capabilities, for one thing, and what to do with their physical forms as they investigate. But the black sphere reveals to them things about their own personal and collective selves that they must process as best they can, within the limitations placed on them by their glorious savior, the all-powerful Company.

Look, if you're in a book with an all-powerful Company and feel like things might be a good time with perhaps lemonade and a picnic, I don't know what to tell you. It's not just Paul Cornell, it's that I think you're probably new here--and some of you are new here, we get new people all the time, they're making them every day, welcome, hi, Paul Cornell might as well warn you about all-powerful Companies and how they treat motley, bantering crews of digital found families as anybody. But for the rest of you, this novella is going to have some screamy moments that you should not need Peter Watts to tell you are coming. (You Shouldn't Have Needed Peter Watts To Tell You It Was Coming But Here We Are I Guess: A Story of the Twenty-First Century. Ahem. I digress.) So are there whimsical moments, sure, is it in space, sure, is this a happy tale of lucky spacefarers, well, you were warned, you were absolutely warned.

Comments

[arkessian]

O...K....

If it has Peter Watts on the label, or on the ghost of the label, or handing around casually somewhere near the label printers: consider me warned.

Not what I'd expect from Paul Cornell after a succession of novels set very locally to me that had my eyebrows raised as far as the hairline at the nape of my neck (hence having dipped out of that series after the first one).

So, torn.

Read?

Don't read?

Looks at reading queue.

Defers decision.

If it had Peter Watts as author, I'd be there pretty quickly (while hiding behind the sofa).

[mrissa]

It is night and day from the Lychford books tonally.

[arkessian]

Useful.

Still postponing a decision.

[carbonel]

Honestly, after reading London Falling, I would approach anything by Paul Cornell with great suspicion -- that one was just too close to the edge of horror (not sure which side, in fact) for my comfort.

[maribou]

"(You Shouldn't Have Needed Peter Watts To Tell You It Was Coming But Here We Are I Guess: A Story of the Twenty-First Century. Ahem. I digress.) "

AHAHAHAHAHA. That was pretty great.

[mrissa]

:)

[thanate]

So as a book is it everything is horrible horror, or is there room for optimistic interpretations/possible outcomes? Did you come away from it having enjoyed the reading? (I am definitely interested in non-human family people, probably in for dark but ultimately constructive or possibly hopeful, but overflowing on my capacity for existential screams of a screwed-up universe.)

[mrissa]

I would say that it is more flicker than bright light of hope.