{"id":13,"date":"2010-09-21T22:43:59","date_gmt":"2010-09-21T21:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/?p=13"},"modified":"2011-01-16T13:56:48","modified_gmt":"2011-01-16T13:56:48","slug":"mini-review-ken-macleod-the-stone-canal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/?p=13","title":{"rendered":"Mini review: Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Ken MacLeod<\/strong> <em>The Stone Canal<\/em> (Legend 1996; \u00a315.99 hb, 322pp)<br \/>\nFollow-up to the highly successful <em>The Star Fraction<\/em> from the West Lothian based author. Both witty <em>and<\/em> funny, zestful, and written with extraordinary panache, this confirms MacLeod as a great white hope of British sf. There&#8217;s a joyous relish in this tale &#8211; which brackets <em>The Star Fraction<\/em> in its telling &#8211; of a coming-of-age in contemporary Scotland (1995&#8217;s Glasgow Worldcon is an off-stage locale) through to a working anarchy on a colony planet via a European revolution. There&#8217;s much play with such current sf icons as AIs, nanotech, VR, resurrection of the dead, information science and cosmology, but all properly subservient to a cracking story with engaging and convincing characters. It&#8217;s all reminiscent of the excitement generated by John Varley in the 70s (without the dreary Heinlein-worship; when <em>will<\/em> American authors throw off his dead fist?), though MacLeod writes from a very British perspective and with a most welcome political intelligence. <em>Very<\/em> highly recommended, and my book of the year back in 1996.\u00a0 Buy! Read!<br \/>\nAmazon UK link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/1841490601?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=roast-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=6738&amp;creativeASIN=1841490601\">The Stone Canal<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\" bzzizxjiqizvbmktpror bzzizxjiqizvbmktpror\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.co.uk\/e\/ir?t=roast-21&amp;l=as2&amp;o=2&amp;a=1841490601\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ken MacLeod The Stone Canal (Legend 1996; \u00a315.99 hb, 322pp) Follow-up to the highly successful The Star Fraction from the West Lothian based author. Both witty and funny, zestful, and written with extraordinary panache, this confirms MacLeod as a great white hope of British sf. There&#8217;s a joyous relish in this tale &#8211; which brackets &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/?p=13\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mini review: Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}