Void Star
A journey through artificial intelligence and human memory
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:27th Apr '17
Should be back in stock very soon
In Void Star, three characters navigate a future shaped by rising seas and societal divides, exploring themes of memory, artificial intelligence, and survival.
In a future where the seas have risen and the wealthy thrive while the poor are marginalized, Void Star explores the intertwining lives of three distinct characters. Irina, equipped with an artificial memory that grants her perfect recall, navigates the complex world of her affluent employers and their enigmatic AIs. Her unique ability allows her to serve as a bridge between human desires and artificial intelligence, all while maintaining her youth through expensive medical treatments. The world around her is tumultuous, filled with both opportunity and danger, as the societal divide deepens.
Kern, on the other hand, exists on the fringes of this society. A refugee living in drone-built favelas, he leads a life defined by survival, honing his martial arts skills while resorting to thievery and enforcement to make ends meet. His path crosses with Irina's and Thales's in unexpected ways, revealing the harsh realities of life for those without privilege. Thales, a member of a politically influential family, has fled to Los Angeles after a devastating attack that changed his life forever. His journey is marked by loss and the search for identity in a world that feels increasingly hostile.
As these three characters are drawn together by unseen forces, Void Star delves into themes of artificial intelligence, memory, violence, and the fragility of life. The narrative unfolds in a vivid, propulsive manner, capturing the reader's imagination while prompting reflection on the nature of existence in a technologically advanced yet deeply divided society.
Sentence by sparkling sentence, Zachary Mason’s Void Star is [a fine] novel… Void Star is an aesthetic joy, with a chilling style often reminiscent of Don DeLillo. -- Michael LaPointe * Times Literary Supplement *
A computer scientist by day, Mason deploys serious literary chops in a cyberpunk escapade that should have the producers of Total Recall or Inception drooling… Mind-bendingly engaging and most definitely not for nerds only. -- Jeffrey Burke * Mail on Sunday *
An enjoyably driving techno-thriller with literary ambition, and as such it may be read as being in close dialogue with the work of SF demigod William Gibson, admirers of whom may see in this novel a lot of influence, even outright homage. -- Steven Poole * Guardian *
Void Star is an extraordinary novel. The hallucinatory beauty of the prose is matched only by the book’s velocity and mystery, and the story – of mortality, memory- and what it means to be human – holds all the force and power of mythology. -- Emily St John Mandel
Zachary Mason's magisterial new novel is a passionate immersion in science fiction, sure to delight even the most hardcore devotees of Delany, Mieville, and Dick. The greatest speculative writing intoxicates and terrifies us in equal measure with the visions it offers, and in this Void Star is no exception. A dazzling book. -- John Wray
One of the most richly complex novels of the year. -- Chelsea Hassler * Yahoo! UK and Ireland *
Highly ambitious: an epic tale of future alternative realities that straddles the genre line between high-tier science fiction and formally inventive literary fiction… There is at times a hallucinatory quality to the book, which shifts cleverly between dreams, simulations and digital hinterlands between life and death. But as well as being a philosophical work of speculative fiction, Void Star is also a sprawling multi-viewpoint thriller, in which individuals flee capture or death, battle rogue computers and corrupt humans, and traverse continents to seek answers… Mason, as both computer scientist and prose stylist, is well placed to render opaque concepts in ways that we not only understand but find beautiful. -- Jonathan McAloon * Financial Times *
ISBN: 9780224098243
Dimensions: 240mm x 162mm x 35mm
Weight: 665g
400 pages