The Child Garden
A Low Comedy
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3.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards.
"An exuberant celebration of excess set in a resource-poor but defiantly energetic twenty-first century."—The New York Times
"A richly absorbing tale—with a marvelous premise expertly carried out."—Kirkus Reviews
"Excellent. . . . Dark and witty and full of love, closely observed, and sprinkled with astonishing ideas. Science fiction of a very high order."—Greg Bear
"One of the most imaginative accounts of futuristic bioengineering since Greg Bear's Blood Music."—Locus
In a future London, humans photosynthesize, organics have replaced electronics, viruses educate people, and very few live past forty. But Milena is resistant to the viruses. She's alone until she meets Rolfa, a huge, hirsute Genetically Engineered Polar Woman, and Milena realizes she might, just might, be able to find a place for herself after all.
Geoff Ryman is the author of the novels The King's Last Song, Air (a Clarke and Tiptree Award winner), and The Unconquered Country (a World Fantasy Award winner), and the collection Paradise Tales. Canadian by birth, he has lived in Cambodia and Brazil and now teaches creative writing at the University of Manchester in England.
Customer Reviews
To many directions
This book started off good. The main premise of viruses implanting information and curing disease I can get behind. Then this book goes in to many directions. Main character falls in love and makes live to a genetically engineered polar bear. Um, ok. Said polar bear writes a lot of music and Main character’s life mission is to put on a opera. People start forming hives and growing things from their skin. Angels and gravity lines going into space, men being pregnant, space ships that are alive, underground live organism that steals billions of peoples memories...it goes on and on.
Hard to follow and just does not make sense in a lot of places. Everything is not well explained and left me saying to myself “what is this?” With no answer in the ending.
Pretty Exceptional
This is a really fun, heart wrenching, and unforgettable book. Ryman spins out so many wonderful threads of plot and imagination you may wonder how he's ever going to make sense of them all—or indeed if they'll all get resolved. His magic is that you hardly notice when all the strings start getting tied up in the perfect knot and when you get to the end, it's hard not to start the book over immediately. It's quite a complete world he's created and the characters and their stories are full of life and vibrancy.