Brass Man

[Rodders]

Apologies if there's already a thread on this book, but i couldn't find one. I'm just starting this Novel today. I haven't read any of the other Agent Corman novels so i'm hoping that it's not going to affect my enjoyment of this book by much.

Great cover:

 

[Vertigo]

Ah... I think I would recommend reading them in order. The Brass Man himself is first introduced in the previous two Cormac books. Also there is an overall story arc that runs through all the Cormac books.

 

[Neal Asher]

Some have done alright reading them out of order, some not. Certainly the brass man himself first appears in Gridlinked which, along with many more of my books, you can get signed.

 

[Ursa major]

I would definitely read them in order, if only because, while each is a self-contained episode, there's enough going on to support the much longer story arcs of the series. Note that later books do contain information about various issues that arose in an earlier book; I can't say whether this is sufficient for those entering, say, half-way through, but only because I'm reading the books in order. (But the best reason to start at the beginning is that the earlier books are well worth reading. )


Brass Man is, if anything, an even better book than the two 'Cormacs' that come before it in the series. The reader, though, does need to be patient. Issues don't just pop up to be almost instantly dealt with: actions have consequences, and the author doesn't let the latter disappear in a two-dimensional way. Through the series (I'm well into Polity Agent, the fourth book), there's a nice sense of momentum growing in the series' story arcs. Even so, each book I've read comes to a satisfying conclusion. It's just that there has been no feeling (for me, at least) of the next book merely being tacked on to keep the series going.

Basically, the author has done a good job writing individual books that mesh together really well, which is all one can ask when reading a series.

 

[Vertigo]

Must agree with your comments there, Ursa. Individual books in so many series end with the overriding story arc left on a cliff hanger, even if the issues of that particular book have been resolved. Neal Asher manages to end his books with a satisfying conclusion both to the individual story and to that phase of the greater story. Makes reading the series enjoyable and unhurried with each book standing on its own merits but expanding the greater picture.

 

[Ursa major]

In effect, one is left wanting to read the next book, not having to (in a bad way).

 

[kenpat]

In effect, one is left wanting to read the next book, not having to (in a bad way).

Agreed, that is one of my great peeves. Neal handles it well making his books a good read and satisfying.

 

[Vertigo]

Nicely put and dead right!

 

[J-Sun]

I also like and agree with Ursa's formulation. That said, I've read Cowl, Line of Polity, and now Brass Man (2007 Tor (US) trade paper - spoilers for same) just since Christmas and, while I want to read the next one, I'm beginning to not want to read them so close together. The weird alien ecologies and flying body parts are starting to blur together. Which is no criticism of Asher in that the books came out separated by a year or more, but just saying that it's hard to read them in close proximity.

As far as some of my complaints regarding Line of Polity (which I liked quite a bit overall), I believe this one was shorter and seemed to do a slightly better job localizing me from scene switch to scene switch and went back to the variety of "Encyclopedia Galactica" entries for chapter headers like Gridlinked had and I thought it did a really good job of having an extended "main ending sequence" (but not overly extended) even though the very end was also a little abrupt even with epilogue. It's important in long books to have proportional climactic sequences. So I think it was arguably better executed than LoP.

On the other hand, some characters got stupider (though Skellor claimed to want "aesthetic correctness" at one point) and it still dragged in the middle a little. More importantly, Cull's social structure and lifeforms weren't as fascinating as Masada's and, while Crane returned, we lost the dracomen. So I think the second one[1] is still my favorite but Brass Man is still definitely recommended.

Couple of stray striking quotes:

Gant glanced over. "The brazen bull--particularly nasty. It's hollow and the victim was placed inside to be roasted. They put reeds in its nostrils to alter the sounds of the screams, so that it seemed the bull was bellowing."

"You know," said Thorn, "I'm glad I don't live in any system run by humans."

"F***ing A," said Gant. (138)

and

Reaching them, [Crane] grabbed both by their heads, then slammed them together. His hands met, palm to palm, in a wet explosion. (151)

I don't know how widespread the children's song is but the above made me think of twisting it to, "If you're crazy and you know it, clap your hands!"

Generalized thoughts and a question: I forgot to mention it when babbling about LoP but Asher seems to almost never actually kill off any really important character despite all the characters getting killed. And it's a very small universe as they keep running into each other. And one thing puzzles me - why do AIs need Mika and the gang to help analyze the Jain stuff and how can they possibly help? Mika may be a really smart and knowledgeable human but how does this compare to giant ship AIs? Just a different perspective?

Also, I was vaguely disappointed with the ending in the sense that, while I knew Dragon started with four spheres and we had a lot to cover in general, I was kind of hoping the Dragon/Jain/Skellor stuff would be a trilogy and then 4 and 5 would be more separate cases/assignments/adventures. Apparently they're all connected like the first three. This isn't a bad thing, but I was just liking the idea of a completely self-contained storyline. We'll see - I just picked up 4 and 5 but I think I'm going to hit Prador Moon first. The story that got me into Asher was "Alien Archaeology", which was really good (obviously), so I'm looking forward to it.

---

[1] Why does the cover shot in the OP say Brass Man is the "second" Cormac book? It was the second published in the US because Tor US has gone stupid (had to order LoP from the UK) but it's the third Cormac book and relies heavily on knowing what happened in both LoP and Gridlinked. That looks like a UK book, though, unless it's the 2011 US edition.

I'd say Asher does a good job not leaving you lost if you jump into the middle while not boring you with repetition if you've read them in order but I'd definitely recommend starting with the first and going in order.

 

[Vertigo]

Looking at my database I've been reading Asher's books at intervals of at least 3 months and I think I'd agree with you, J-Sun, that they probably need that sort of interval. Actually I think most series benefit from taking a break between books. Give you a chance to absorb and think on the book just read, before moving on to the next.

Your queries regarding why the AIs need Mika and others to help analyse stuff has come up for me in a number of books with other authors. Like the Minds in Banks' Culture novels. I can only come up with the same slightly unsatisfactory answer; they give a different perspective.

For some of my own ideas on AIs I have my own solutions to that issue. One might be that AIs lack the 'eureka' effect; they can't make the almost intuitive leaps that humans often seem to make when coming up with scientific breakthroughs, the AIs might be massively intelligent but is seems to me that they are likely to be massively pedantic. Another idea I have had is to limit the intelligence if not the speed of AIs. So maybe there is a limit to intelligence; try to go beyond that limit and you go over the edge into madness. This does seem to apply to our own intelligence. However neither of those explanations really apply to either Asher's or Banks' AIs. This question is one that I think is frequently glossed over by books containg super intelligent AIs.

 

[Ursa major]

I think, J-Sun, you're right to read Prador Moon before the last two in the Cormac series.


I want to respond to some of your comments, but I think that would best be left to a thread which assumes** those reading the posts have also read the last book in the Cormac series.





** - Didn't you know that threads were AIs...?

 

[J-Sun]

Looking at my database I've been reading Asher's books at intervals of at least 3 months and I think I'd agree with you, J-Sun, that they probably need that sort of interval. Actually I think most series benefit from taking a break between books. Give you a chance to absorb and think on the book just read, before moving on to the next.

Yep - unfortunately, the way I stacked up Asher books and the way my reading pile generally stacks up, it looks like I'm going to have to read a few closer together than I'd now like, but still farther apart than I'd originally expected.

Your queries regarding why the AIs need Mika and others to help analyse stuff has come up for me in a number of books with other authors. Like the Minds in Banks' Culture novels. I can only come up with the same slightly unsatisfactory answer; they give a different perspective.

Yep, I guess that's the most reasonable idea.

For some of my own ideas on AIs I have my own solutions to that issue. One might be that AIs lack the 'eureka' effect; they can't make the almost intuitive leaps that humans often seem to make when coming up with scientific breakthroughs, the AIs might be massively intelligent but is seems to me that they are likely to be massively pedantic. Another idea I have had is to limit the intelligence if not the speed of AIs. So maybe there is a limit to intelligence; try to go beyond that limit and you go over the edge into madness. This does seem to apply to our own intelligence. However neither of those explanations really apply to either Asher's or Banks' AIs. This question is one that I think is frequently glossed over by books containg super intelligent AIs.

That's an interesting thought. "AI" would mean a variety of things such as passing the Turing test and so on, but it still wouldn't necessarily equate to human intelligence. One of the reasons computers can be so good at chess is that they can process large numbers of moves in short spans of time and retain extended move sequences but one reason humans can be so good at chess is that they can intuitively disregard the millions of useless moves so that they don't have to do brute processing of that magnitude. I'd always thought of AIs as similarly having that capability of understanding what really mattered out of the flood of garbage possibilities but maybe not. So it's still "perspective" in a sense, but in a deeper "different modes of thought" sense.

But, yeah - this is one thing I think Egan does really well and others do less well - Egan presents comprehensible post-human and non-human intelligences but does a great job conveying the "iceberg effect". You can understand the surface presented in the fiction but get a strong sense of most of the alien-ness and ultra-intelligence being there, but out of sight. With many others, the AIs and whatnot don't seem sufficiently smart or strange.

I want to respond to some of your comments, but I think that would best be left to a thread which assumes** those reading the posts have also read the last book in the Cormac series.

Okay - it won't be too long before I'll be able to play in such threads - see you there.

** - Didn't you know that threads were AIs...?

As the sayings go, information wants to be free! And it hates to be anthropomorphized.