John Barnes's Mother of Storms is a great big romp of a quasi-cyberpunk disaster novel. Imagine that William Gibson's characters grew up, got jobs with the government, and found themselves smack in the middle of Lucifer's Hammer or any other vast, sprawling easy-on-the-brain novel about large-scale destruction.
It's great fun and full of amusing and alarming ideas. Barnes plays the sci-fi writer's what-if game very well. What if virtual reality supplants TV? What if the deep ecology movement becomes mainstream? What if countries around the world cede their sovereignty to the UN? What if someone builds a community of robots and they develop their own economic system?
Of course, it's not a perfect book. All of the characters seem to have the same sense of humor, whether heroes or villains. Key plot elements hinge on vital information being transmitted on the Net without security precautions; it's hard to believe that Barnes has never heard of encryption.
At least Barnes is square with you from page one. Mother of Storms promises solid middlebrow entertainment, and it delivers.
Mother of Storms , by John Barnes, US$22.95. TOR/St. Martin's Press: (800) 221 7945, +1 (212) 674 5151.
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