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    Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart
    Unavailable
    Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart
    Unavailable
    Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart
    Ebook520 pages8 hours

    Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart

    By Steven Erikson

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A provocative, beautiful and visionary novel of first contact by New York Times bestselling author Steven Erikson.

    Imagine a First Contact without contact, and an alien arrival where no aliens show up. Imagine the sudden appearance of exclusion zones all over the planet, into which no humans are allowed. Imagine an end to all violence, from the schoolyard bully to nations at war. Imagine an end to borders, an end to all crime. Imagine a world where hate has no outlet and the only harm one can do is to oneself. Imagine a world transformed, but with no guidance and no hint of what's coming next. What would you do? How would you feel? What questions can you ask – what questions dare you ask – when the only possible answers come from the all-too-human face in your mirror?

    On the day of First Contact, it won't be about them. It will be about us.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPromontory Press Inc.
    Release dateOct 16, 2018
    ISBN9781773740133
    Unavailable
    Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart
    Author

    Steven Erikson

    STEVEN ERIKSON is an archaeologist and anthropologist and a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His Malazan Book of the Fallen series has met widespread international acclaim and established him as a major voice in the world of fantasy fiction. The first book in the series, Gardens of the Moon, was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award. The second novel, Deadhouse Gates, was voted one of the ten best fantasy novels of the year by SF Site. He lives in Canada.

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    Reviews for Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart

    4/5

    37 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5

      Like Brust's The Skill of Our Hands and Stross's most recent books, both Landry File and World-Walker, this is a speculative fiction response to the current political situation (with a healthy block of attention paid to the environmental situation here, as well, which is what ratchets up the real stakes). Internally, it's a surprisingly optimistic one, but it casts a large shadow as regards a downside for the planet and for human society, as the optimism is a result of a deus ex machina (which is legitimate enough, when the novel's whole focus is a first contact scenario). It also has some internal-to-SF aspects which recall Niven and Pournelle's Fallen Angels, although it is a considerably better book.

      This is also a response to, and a rejection of, Campbellian first-contact stories -- the ones where humans are shown as better, more successful, tougher, than any aliens who might be out there. It doesn't go as far as Watt's Blindsight -- in this case, the aliens' motivations are at least comprehensible; Watt's novel is to my mind a better first contact novel because the aliens are so completely incomprehensible. In Rejoice the politicians and SF writers who take a Campbellian attitude to the alien appearance are implicitly held up to ridicule. The aliens are far enough ahead of us that no human ever sees them: we communicate only with an AI who represents three (we are told) alien races with a much, much higher level of technology. For all practical purposes it's as if the Arisians moved in with a shorter timeframe and more limited agenda as far as practical resistance goes.

      It's also a novel where Erikson's Canadianness comes out clearly. Not only is a significant block of the novel set in Canada, but the social and political views the novel represents are far more at home in a Canadian context than in a US context.

      In fact, the US is the problem child among nations in this novel. This is, as I said, a response to current politics; it is very clearly a book born out of alarm and irritation at the policies and views of the Trump administration. As such it should be read with an awareness of its being litterature engagée.

      All that being said, it's well written and moves quickly, with the pacing of a thriller (punctuated, it is true, by an ongoing dialogue regarding principles between a human representative (who happens to be an SF author) and the AI who represents the aliens) While, from my perspective, it's not the masterpiece the blurbs make it out to be, it's well worth reading.

    • 4/5
      well. Steven Erikson is a brilliant writer of epic fantasy i have loved and followed for years. this sf novel about human nature and how to fix it, within a framework of first contact, is something very different. it's a parable, a broadside, an encomium, a diatribe. i'm all for original narratives about first contact (so many of which are all too standard), so this shakes up the form, and i'm largely onboard with the politics of the world as he describes it, so i've got considerable sympathy for the argument. but the practical application of the argument in the world, within this book, that part seems to me pretty shaky, and short on details. that's just not the part that interests him, and it shows. and it made me think about how much more Iain M. Banks does in his Culture books with more or less the same set of premises.
    • 5/5
      Excellent story and great new environmental ideas...mixed in with alien first contact! A bit slow in parts.