READ these six books at one go and you risk drowning in a sea of words and ideas. Single voices begin to blend, their worlds mesh, uniting around a distrust of authority, and the urge to unmask the holders of power and outwit or overthrow them. It鈥檚 an anarcho-syndicalist future: no one, it appears, should trust the state, now or ever.
But recall the books a week later and their strengths separate, and become clear. All six are full of people, properly fleshed out, individual, hideous, amiable, driven and diverted. They even live in worlds of believable other life forms. The fox lurking and fading in the brain of the hero of Jon Courtenay Grimwood鈥檚 Pashazade (Simon & Schuster), is a companion and mentor. And it shares a spark with the Mappaware designed to live in and control the brains of people in Justina Robson鈥� Mappa Mundi (Macmillan)鈥攂ut no more than a spark. But the worlds they live in, an alternate Alexandria and the future East Coast of the US, are pin-sharp, distinct.
Peter Hamilton鈥檚 Fallen Dragon (Macmillan) and Paul McAuley鈥檚 The Secret of Life (HarperCollins) have alien life forms that blur the line between technology and life. Both are the target of greedy capitalists, but gloriously different. Connie Willis looks for messages at the edge of death in Passage (HarperCollins), Gwyneth Jones takes the messages from music to construct a state teetering on the brink of nihilism in Bold as Love (Orion). I enjoyed them all鈥攎y only cavil was the appearance of the Titanic. The ship plays a key part in Willis鈥檚 book, but cultural overload about the disaster makes you think: not the Titanic, not again.
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And the winner? I鈥檇 hedge my bets between Bold as Love鈥檚 wonderful writing and Pashazade鈥檚 unpredictable, unputdownable slice of city life. Hard choice this year鈥攐ne reviewer neatly summed up Hamilton鈥檚 book as 鈥淪tarship Troopers written by Charles Dickens鈥�. In a less stellar year, he鈥檇 have been a winner.