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Stations of the Tide
Stations of the Tide
Stations of the Tide
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Stations of the Tide

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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The Nebula Award-wining novel from Michael Swanwick—one of the most brilliantly assured and darkly inventive writers of contemporary fiction—a masterwork of radically altered realities and world-shattering seductions.

The Jubilee Tides will drown the continents of the planet Miranda beneath the weight of her own oceans. But as the once-in-two-centuries cataclysm approaches, an even greater catastrophe threatens this dark and dangerous planet of tale-spinners, conjurers, and shapechangers.

A man from the Bureau of Proscribed Technologies has been sent to investigate. For Gregorian has come, a genius renegade scientist and charismatic bush wizard. With magic and forbidden technology, he plans to remake the rotting, dying world in his own evil image—and to force whom or whatever remains on its diminishing surface toward a terrifying and astonishing confrontation with death and transcendence.

This novel of surreal hard SF was compared to the fiction of Gene Wolfe when it was first published, and the author has gone on in the two decades since to become recognized as one of the finest living SF and fantasy writers.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 1, 2011
ISBN9781429989497
Stations of the Tide
Author

Michael Swanwick

MICHAEL SWANWICK is an institution in both science fiction and fantasy literature. He has served as an influence on genre fiction as a whole as well as an inspiration to many leading authors. He has been a finalist multiple times for every major award in science fiction/fantasy, from the Nebula to the Hugo. Michael is the author of The Mongolian Wizard novels as well Stations of the Tide, The Dragons of Babel, and Chasing the Phoenix.

Read more from Michael Swanwick

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Reviews for Stations of the Tide

Rating: 3.765402843601896 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    More of a 4.5 (please, Goodreads, give us a finger grain for judging!)

    As I read it reminded me of a less impenetrable Gene Wolfe--and once I finished, and read the back cover, sure enough Mr. Wolfe was quoted in praise of the novel. Beautiful writing, a lot of elision, at times very disturbing, somewhat funny, very phantasmagorical, but always extremely well-written and attention-holding.

    Knocked it down to 4 rather than up to 5 as 5 is for my all-time favourites, and while I think this is a pretty wonderful, pretty special book, I didn't feel emotionally invested in the characters enough to find this a favourite. But will happily seek out more from the same writer, he's a pleasure to read.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Not sure what this was supposed to be, but it didn't strike a cord with me in the least. I could have gone the rest of my life not reading this book, and I'd have been just as happy. Odd, because I normally like books from this author. (Well, at least the stories I've read in the pages of analog), but I think I'll be very cautious of reading more by this author in the future. Definitely not my cup of tea.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Exquisitely written, profound and perplexing "literary" science fiction novel.

    I found it hard at times to tell which parts of the narrative were "real", which were drug-induced visions, and which were taking place in cyperspace. The author forces you to figure this out, just as he forces you to piece together the details of the far-future, space-based setting without much exposition (and even as the protagonists is forced to sort through his moral and psychological conundrums.)

    A lot of effort, but ultimately worth it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    More coherant than [book: Dragons of Babel], less emotionally wrenching than [book: The Iron Dragon's Daughter], but just as stuffed with innovation and imagination as all of Swanwick's work. An unnamed bureaucrat is sent to a Miranda to investigate possible stolen technology. Miranda is a colony world, forbidden to have any advanced technology, which has led to intense resentment and a thriving subculture of bush wizards.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A futuristic mystery where an unnamed bureaucrat is dropped on a seasonally flooded world to confront a magician accused of smuggling forbidden technology. A product of the times, rather male dominated. The world building isn't comparable to other ecological science fictions classics, the likes of Dune, Hothouse and The Word for World is Forest. Nonetheless, the writing is good and does not put me off more Swanwick.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I honestly didn't enjoy reading this. It has some interesting concepts - but there was too much.... other stuff to make it enjoyable. I found the book a bit dragging and rather pointless.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5

    Odd sex scenes, drugged dream sequences and hippie mysticism and symbolism do not (in this case) a good book make. The plot elements are seemingly just thrown in to se if something fits and the entire read feels unsatisfactory
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Audiobook re read, then reread again. Incredible work of imagination. Beautiful writing. Great characters. Extremely complex. Weird and profane.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Nicking the plot description from Wikipedia: the story of a bureaucrat with the Department of Technology Transfer who must descend to the surface of Miranda to hunt a magician who has smuggled proscribed technology past the orbital embargo, and bring him to justice before the world is transformed by the flood of the Jubilee Tides.This won the Nebula in 1991, and I can see why. I'm sure if I'd read it in 1991 I would have thoroughly enjoyed it. But reading it for the first time in 2011, I find the psychedelic scene jumps merely irritating and tedious. I admire the world-building, which is painted in light strokes that don't succumb to the temptation to explain all, and I liked the characterisation. But reading it was more work than I really cared for, for the amount of payoff I got.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A kind of 'Civil servant' is dispatched to a watery world to track down illegal technology. While there he is sucked down into a backwoods bayou of superstition, folklore & murder spiced with local tensions and erotic storms.Overarching the 'Bureaucrat' and his mission is a swath of interstellar civilization hinted at in mundane bits, ordinary words and glimpses painted onto the reader's mind in thousands of little meaningful dots until you gradually realize you are walking through a deeply textured universe filled with histories. I first saw this book in the early nineties, but the cover art turned me off-- A man floating in a ocean surrounded by fishes. It didn't make sense to me. Then a second incarnation a little later had a picture of a man in a business suit standing atop a drowned building in the middle of a flooded city. The picture merely implied a weird Apocalyptic tale but not much more.The cover art for this latest incarnation of the story FINALLY hits the spot. The Artist captured the sense of what the Story is about. This is Cover art that finally made me buy the book.A last point-- This Story moves at a sedate pace. I never bothered with the book in my earlier years because it had no space battles or massive action tracts. It's a detective story touching upon a deeper conspiracy. . .and because it's a Detective story, it moves at a personal level.This book is a treat for the intelligent, mature reader on a long Summer Weekend.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The blurb at the back of the book describes this as "a tightly plotted futuristic detective novel, magical and fantastic, exotic and strange, yet thoroughly grounded in cutting edge science. Michael Swanwick's volatile cocktail of surrealist ideas and invention, high technology and basic humanity explodes with insight and wonder." This is, in fact, a spot-on description of this book. It won the Nedula Award back in 1991 and its easy to see why.The setting is the world of Miranda - a planet which after many years is about to enter its winter season - which means the ocean levels will rise and inundate much of its land, necessitating mass evacuations of the settler colonies that are located below the high-tide level. Its flora and fauna have evolved and adapted to cycles of life on land and underwater. After technological experimentation wiped out the native sentient life years ago (called haunts), high-level technology was proscribed and is tightly controlled by the off-world Technology Transfer Division. When a self-proclaimed magician shows up advertising that he can help people alter their bodies to live in the water, the Division sends a bureaucrat down to investigate whether he has illegally smuggled high-level technology on to the planet, or he simply a fraud, or... something else.The style of the writing is more remnescient of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun than anything else, with its blend of science, myth and magic. the reference in the blurb to surrealist ideas is appropriate as is the reference to high technology. This is a book bursting at the seams with ideas and some spectacularly haunting scenes. For example, [very minor spoilers] offworlders can download their personalities into short lived agents and send them off to accomplish different tasks which may need to be accomplished simultaneously. At one point its mentioned that the reason why information and technology is so tightly controlled by the offworld bureacracy is because of a previous disaster on Earth where an independant AI effectively took over the entire planet by assimilating all life on it within itself. So the moment we encounter an Agent in the form of a giant earth-mother figure sent by the Earth/AI to the rest of humanity which is being held captive and interrogated is simply stunning in its power. There are so many moments and images and ideas replete with symbolism.This is the third book I've read by Micharl Swanwick and he is fast becoming one of my favourite SF&F writers. Stations of the Tide is an outstanding novel and one to return to down the line I think.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I got halfway through & just didn't care if I read another page or not. I'm not sure if the writing wasn't up to snuff or it was the plot - maybe it was the characters. I think it was. I didn't like the hero much & there wasn't a single supporting character that was more than a caricature. The hero was a self absorbed bureaucrat. There were also some sex that just seemed to be put in there to add interest. They didn't. Everything about the book seemed slightly out of place & phase. Anyway, it didn't click for me at all.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I dimly remember reading somewhere that this is the best Nebula Award winner that nobody ever heard of. It's certainly one of the few science fiction novels that I return to again and again, even during periods of time when I've pretty much lost interest in science fiction. The novel is set on Miranda, a planet where ocean tides periodically inundate large portions of the land area. Native life forms transform themselves from terrestrial to aquatic, but the planet's human colonists must abandon the flooded areas until, a few generations later, the tides recede. For reasons only gradually revealed, the interplanetary government has banned certain forms of technology on Miranda, to the great resentment of its citizens.The protagonist, identified only as "the bureaucrat," is an official of the technology-regulating agency. He's been dispatched to Miranda to investigate Gregorian, a self-proclaimed "wizard" who might be a mere con artist -- or might have smuggled forbidden, near-magical technology onto the planet's surface. As he chases the McGuffin-like Gregorian, the bureaucrat learns about Miranda's history and psychology through encounters with a series of fascinating characters. He takes in a lot of local color, has some erotic encounters, and - being a bureaucrat - gets entangled in office politics. He keeps in touch with the home office through its elaborate virtual reality system, where civil servants routinely delegate tasks to digital copies of their own personalities. He finds evidence that Miranda's native sentient species isn't as extinct as everyone thinks it is. And he reveals himself to be much more than the ineffectual, procedure-bound civil servant he at first appears to be.On the surface there's a lot of reference, or at least resemblance, to Gene Wolfe's _The_Fifth_Head_of_Cerberus_: the concern with personal identity by way of cloning (physical or mental), the human-mimicking alien species that may or may not be extinct, even the vaguely French-Creole feel of Mirandan culture. Ultimately, though, _Stations_ is a very different book. _Stations_ isn't for everyone -- it's telling that many online "reviews" of it aren't reviews at all, but complaints about its stealing the Nebula from that year's conventional space opera du jour. But if you're willing to try something a little different, _Stations_ is highly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A strangely impersonal novel that follows a character referred to only as "the bureaucrat", but which tells the story of the remarkable characters he interacts with in his effort to confirm reports about the illegal use of proscribed technology. Beautifully surreal, and sometimes funny.

Book preview

Stations of the Tide - Michael Swanwick

1

THE LEVIATHAN IN FLIGHT

The bureaucrat fell from the sky.

For an instant Miranda lay blue and white beneath him, the icecaps fat and ready to melt, and then he was down. He took a highspeed across the stony plains of the Piedmont to the heliostat terminus at Port Richmond, and caught the first flight out. The airship Leviathan lofted him across the fall line and over the forests and coral hills of the Tidewater. Specialized ecologies were astir there, preparing for the transforming magic of the jubilee tides. In ramshackle villages and hidden plantations people made their varied provisions for the evacuation.

The Leviathan’s lounge was deserted. Hands clasped behind him, the bureaucrat stared moodily out the stern windows. The Piedmont was dim and blue, a storm front on the horizon. He imagined the falls, where fish-hawks hovered on rising thermals and the river Noon cascaded down and lost its name. Below, the Tidewater swarmed with life, like blue-green mold growing magnified in a petri dish. The thought of all the mud and poverty down there depressed him. He yearned for the cool, sterile environments of deep space.

Bright specks of color floated on the brown water, coffles of houseboats being towed upriver as the haut-bourgeois prudently made for the Port Richmond incline while the rates were still low. He touched a window control and the jungle leaped up at him, misty trees resolving into individual leaves. The heliostat’s shadow rippled along the north bank of the river, skimming lightly over mud flats, swaying phragmites, and gnarled water oaks. Startled, a clutch of acorn-mimetic octopi dropped from a low branch, brown circles of water fleeing as they jetted into the silt.

Smell that air, Korda’s surrogate said.

The bureaucrat sniffed. He smelled the faint odor of soil from the baskets of hanging vines, and a sweet whiff of droppings from the wicker birdcages. Could use a cleansing, I suppose.

You have no romance in your soul. The surrogate leaned against the windowsill, straight-armed, looking like a sentimental skeleton. The flickering image of Korda’s face reflected palely in the glass. I’d give anything to be down here in your place.

Why don’t you, then? the bureaucrat asked sourly. You have seniority.

Don’t be flippant. This is not just another smuggling case. The whole concept of technology control is at stake here. If we let just one self-replicating technology through—well, you know how fragile a planet is. If the Division has any justification for its existence at all, it’s in exactly this sort of action. So I would appreciate it if just this once you would make the effort to curb your negativism.

I have to say what I think. That’s what I’m being paid for, after all.

A very common delusion. Korda moved away from the window, bent to pick up an empty candy dish, and glanced at its underside. There was a fussy nervousness to his motions strange to one who had actually met him. Korda in person was heavy and lethargic. Surrogation seemed to bring out a submerged persona, an overfastidious little man normally kept drowned in flesh. Native pottery always has an unglazed area on the bottom, have you noticed?

That’s where it stands in the kiln. Korda looked blank. This is a planet, it has a constant gravity. You can’t fire things in zero gravity here.

With a baffled shake of his head Korda put down the dish. Was there anything else you wanted to cover? he asked.

I put in a Request For—

—Authority. Yes, yes, I have it on my desk. I’m afraid it’s right out of the question. Technology Transfer is in a very delicate position with the planetary authorities. Now don’t look at me like that. I routed it through offworld ministry to the Stone House, and they said no. They’re touchy about intrusions on their autonomy down here. They sent the Request straight back. With restrictions—you are specifically admonished not to carry weapons, perform arrests, or in any way represent yourself as having authority to coerce cooperation on your suspect’s part. He reached up and tilted a basket of vines, so he could fossick about among them. When he let it go, it swung irritably back and forth.

How am I going to do my job? I’m supposed to—what?—just walk up to Gregorian and say, Excuse me, I have no authority even to speak to you, but I have reason to suspect that you’ve taken something that doesn’t belong to you, and wonder if you’d mind terribly returning it?

There were several writing desks built into the paneling under the windows. Korda swung one out and made a careful inventory of its contents: paper, charcoal pens, blotters. I don’t see why you’re being so difficult about this, he said at last. Don’t pout, I know you can do it. You’re competent enough when you put your mind to it. Oh, and I almost forgot, the Stone House has agreed to assign you a liaison. Someone named Chu, out of internal security.

Will he have authority to arrest Gregorian?

In theory, I’m sure he will. But you know planetary government—in practice I suspect he’ll be more interested in keeping an eye on you.

Terrific. Ahead, a pod of sounding clouds swept toward them, driven off of Ocean by winds born half a world away. The Leviathan lifted its snout a point, then plunged ahead. The light faded to gray, and rain drenched the heliostat. We don’t even know where to find the man.

Korda folded the desk back into the wall. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding someone who knows where he is.

The bureaucrat glared out into the storm. Raindrops drummed against the fabric of the gas bag, pounded the windows, and were driven down. Winds bunched the rain in great waves, alternating thick washes of water with spates of relative calm. The land dissolved, leaving the airship suspended in chaos. The din of rain and straining engines made it difficult to talk. It felt like the end of the world. You realize that in a few months, all this will be under water? If we haven’t settled Gregorian’s case by then, it’ll never be done.

You’ll be done long before then. I’m sure you’ll be back at the Puzzle Palace in plenty of time to keep your sub from taking over your post. Korda’s face smiled, to indicate that he was joking.

You didn’t tell me you’d given someone my duties. Just who do you have subbing for me anyway?

Philippe was gracious enough to agree to hold down the fort for the duration.

Philippe. There was a cold prickling at the back of his neck, as if sharks were circling overhead. You gave my post to Philippe?

I thought you liked Philippe.

I like him fine, the bureaucrat said. But is he right for the job?

Don’t take it so personally. There’s work to be done, and Philippe is very good at this sort of thing. Should the Division grind to a halt just because you’re away? Frankly that’s not an attitude I want to encourage. The surrogate reopened the writing desk, removed a television set, and switched it on. The sound boomed, and he turned it down to the mumbling edge of inaudibility. He flipped through the channels, piling image upon image, dissatisfied with them all.

The Leviathan broke free of the clouds. Sunlight flooded the lounge, and the bureaucrat blinked, dazzled. The airship’s shadow on the bright land below was wrapped in a diffuse rainbow. The ship lifted joyously, searching for the top of the sky.

Are you looking for something on that thing, or just fidgeting with it because you know it’s annoying?

Korda looked hurt. He straightened, turning his back on the set. I thought I might find one of Gregorian’s commercials. It would give you some idea what you’re up against. Never mind. I really do have to be getting back to work. Be a good lad, and see if you can’t handle this thing in an exemplary fashion, hmm? I’m relying on you.

They shook hands, and Korda’s face vanished from the surrogate. On automatic, the device returned itself to storage.

Philippe! the bureaucrat said. Those bastards! He felt sickly aware that he was losing ground rapidly. He had to wrap this thing up, and get back to the Puzzle Palace as quickly as possible. Philippe was the acquisitive type. He leaned forward and snapped off the television.

When the screen went dead, everything was subtly changed, as if a cloud had passed from the sun, or a window opened into a stuffy room.


He sat for a time, thinking. The lounge was all air and light, with sprays of orchids arranged in sconces between the windows and rainbirds singing in the wicker cages hung between the pots of vines. It was appointed for the tourist trade but, ironically, planetary authority had closed down the resorts in the Tidewater to discourage those selfsame tourists, experience having shown offworlders to be less tractable to evacuation officers than were natives. Yet for all their obvious luxury, the fixtures had been designed with economy of weight foremost and built of the lightest materials available, cost be damned. They’d never recover the added expense with fuel savings; it had all been done to spite the offworld battery

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