OK, so I’m reading this after it was made into “a major motion picture”;
blame Unity, my main supplier of crackHHHH^Hbooks for not having
Christopher Priest’s most recent effort on the shelves until it now.
I’m very fond of Priest; I started reading his early stuff like _Real Time
World. and _Fugue for a Darkening Island; a signatue of his work is that
he’s fond of presenting narratives about worlds that differ markedly from
our own; they start out seemless, solid, with the reader seeking to
understand the alternative universe. Even as you do, you begin to see
chinks and cracks which are the keys to deciphering the puzzle of what’s
really going on.
In that sense, Priest’s favour of sci-fi is rather whodunnit flavoured, or
perhaps more accruately, howdunnit.
Something I have noticed is that his earlier work tends to be embedded in
more orthodox science fiction; his two most recent books, The Separation
and Prestige are more concerned with the mystery and the story than the
devices used to enable them; indeed, I read one short review of the movie
of Prestige that suggested it was more fantasy than sci-fi, since the
mechanism of one of the mysteries might as well be magic as science.
Certainly it’s the classic soft sci-fi where we are not meant to worry too
much about the mechnisms, but more their effects.
I enjoyed the way Prestige plays with multiple views of the same
incidents, starting with contemporary perspectives and then segueing into
diaries to tell the events of the past. We’re treated the points of view
of each of the protagonists in turn, and as we see through their eyes, our
views of the characters shifts; one account will leave us in sympathy with
one character, the next will lead us to hold him in contempt. It’s a well
executed example of the technique, and kept me on my toes.
