Gollancz, 2012, 506 p.

Global warming and sea level rises have altered the political landscape of Earth drastically. Africa is bounded by walls to keep out the sea and has become a global power house. People in this future have internal augmentation for long distance information and communication. Very few environments are beyond the reach of this Surveilled World, run by the Mechanism, which by overseeing everyone’s implanted augmentation prevents crimes occurring. Brother and sister Geoffrey and Sunday Akinya are two of the grandchildren of Eunice, the founder of the prominent industrial company Akinya Space, but are detached from this family enterprise; cousins Hector and Lucas are very much involved in its running.

Geoffrey is using aug to study elephants in the Amboseli region of Africa, Sunday is an artist in the Descrutinised Zone, an area of the Moon where, for privacy reasons, the Mechanism doesn’t operate. When Eunice dies both Geoffrey and Sunday are drawn into a search for something she may have left behind which Hector and Lucas fear may impact badly on the company’s fortunes.

The action roams from the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro to the Moon, under the Indian Ocean in the realm of the United Aquatic Nations, on to Phobos, then Mars, out to the Kuiper Belt and back. An array of instruments known as the Ocular, spanning vast areas of the Oort Cloud, has allowed imaging of extraterrestrial planets at high resolution and detection of a structure known as the Mandala on Sixty-one Virginis-f.

In this vision of a future where humanity is scattered over the Solar System Blue Remembered Earth is reminiscent of Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312. That novel, though, was to a large extent plotless, and its hero was really the Solar System. Blue Remembered Earth’s plot is intricately and cleverly meshed – like whatever passes for clockwork these digital days. And therein lies a problem. The characters are drawn all over the system by the plot’s exigencies. It is over-engineered, with complications that inspire “hold on a minute” moments. Its heroine is in effect Eunice, and she never makes an appearance except by way of machines imprinted with versions of her personality.

It’s still good SF though.

Pedant’s corner: overlaying for overlying. There was also a scene set on Mars where an abandoned Russian site on Mars had a faded hammer and sickle flag and Reynolds also mentions a former Soviet submarine. Is he still lost somewhere in the Cold War?

Gollancz, 2009, 440p.

In the aftermath of The Quiet War, the Outers -€“ humans altered to cope better with living in the further reaches of the Solar System – have been driven beyond the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Parts of Gardens of the Sun are set in bubble habitats round Uranus, Neptune and Pluto or on wandering asteroids but the action, such as it is, also ranges back to Earth. This division of humanity – which also includes so-called Ghosts who follow a mystic claiming to have messages from the future – is the source of conflict in the novel. There are several sub-plots including the ongoing search for the gene wizard Avernus, one of the many characters from The Quiet War to reappear here, along with others such as Sri Hong-Owen, Macy Minnot, Loc Ifrahim, Felice Gottschalk and Cash Baker. The gardens of the title turn out to be habitats gengineered by Sri Hong-Owen to allow life to be easier amid the harshness of space.

Despite there being enough in this book to fill a whole series of novels, reading this one was hard going. The different characters’ stories are too remote from each other, even if some do overlap by the end, and are not in any case the main focus of the narrative which often reads like a history of the future (except with use of the pluperfect – usually a sign more is being crammed in than the story can bear.) It is in effect one long info dump and the scenes where the characters interact seem like addenda.

McAuley’€™s future environment is impressively detailed, though, as indeed was Kim Stanley Robinson’€™s in his 2312 which tended to neglect plot. It’€™s a pity we’re told most of it instead of being allowed to experience it.

Last year it was Chris Priest who incited controversy over the Clarke Award, this year it seems to be the judges themselves – for not including a book by a woman on their shortlist.

The contending books are:-

Nod by Adrian Barnes (Bluemoose)
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett (Corvus)*
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway (William Heinemann)
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (Headline)
Intrusion by Ken MacLeod (Orbit)*
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)*

I’ve read the last two of these and Dark Eden is on the TBR pile.

The overlap with this year’s BSFA Awards novel short list is strong (asterisked titles) but only 2312 is also up for the Hugo.

I’m a bit surprised that M John Harrison’s Empty Space didn’t make the list, it’s the sort of book that Clarke Award juries tend to like.