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Bloom
by Wil Mccarthy
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Gollancz (2000-05-11)
ISBN: 1857988566
EAN: 9781857988567
Dewy Decimal #: 813.54
Paperback: 320 pages
Edition: New Ed
SKU: B468-1126u
Condition: Like New
Comments: UNREAD but may have minor imperfections such as a crease or mark. In stock - quick dispatch, from an efficient and professional leading British bookselling firm.
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Editorial Reviews
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Amazon.co.uk Review
In the distant future, nanotechnology has got out of control. The inner solar system has been overrun by Mycora, atom-sized machines that devour everything they touch. Humanity has long since fled Earth for the cold reaches of the outer system, where the lack of heat and sunlight make it difficult--but not impossible--for the Mycora to bloom. Life in the Immunity is hard, and the survivors of humanity face the constant onslaught of the ever-evolving Mycora. But if they are to survive, the remaining humans must try to learn what happened to Earth, and whether the Mycora are finding ways to overcome their susceptibility to cold. When the Immunity mounts an expedition to plant probes on Earth's polar caps, shoemaker and aspiring journalist John Stasheim is asked to come along to chronicle the journey. He soon learns that the trip will be fraught with as many political dangers as nanotech ones, and that the Mycora are both more and less than they seem. An excellent SF novel along the lines of Greg Bear's Blood Music, but with more action and plot. Wil McCarthy is a writer to watch. --Craig E. Engler, Amazon.com
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Customer Reviews
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Good but underdeveloped
Rating  (4)
Date: 2004-03-15
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
This high-tech adventure has few slow spots and speeds through mysteries, plots, counter-plots, and politics. I want to revisit this scary but eerily probable future of humanity, as the fictive universe created by the author seems ripe for more stories that could be quite good. Character development is slightly less than ideal, especially for the supporting characters. The book is short, and could have benefitted from some "fleshing-out" so that we could feel we know the people as well as we got to know their universe. The plot itself was good, but just not developed as much as would be ideal.
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Good concept - but drawn out
Rating  (3)
Date: 2002-07-15
3 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
Some great ideas - but takes a while to get to the real story - then the first part of the book a bit pointless.all the real action in the last fifth of the book - but its worth waiting for - some great ideas and concepts - which is why we read Sci-Fi in the first palce. Is it not?
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Decent
Rating (3)
Date: 2001-05-16
The wryly amusing narrator leads us through his hair-raising adventure with some aplomb, and the plotting is taut enough, the ideas sufficiently intriguing, to make this a highly enjoyable read. Just maybe the ending is a bit rushed, although I had kind of 'foreseen' it anyway so wouldn't have cared to linger. Recommended if not life changing stuff.
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Almost a sequel to Blood Music, very well written.
Rating (4)
Date: 2000-06-07
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
There are a few books I've read that always affect me the same way, 'hard to put down' doesn't really describe them. Life & commitments slip, when I'm not reading 'the' book, where the plot is going is always on my mind. Not being able to guess the plot always plays a factor in this. Bloom is one of these books. Similar concepts to Greg Bears Blood Music, however this book stands on it's own and takes your imagination further still. It's the kind of book that has you thinking how the plot & characters would continue after the book has ended.
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A fast paced scary sci fi Götterdämmerung
Rating (4)
Date: 1999-06-28
This is hard science fiction, and the guy seems to know what he's talking about, especially in the space flight passages. I also liked the "ladderdown" technology, complete with economic considerations. The book has a simple story but the descriptions of the bloom itself are worth the price of admission. In retrospect I realized that the author ignored the heat problem (all that fancy chemistry would surely cause fires) and fudged the question of where the bloom was getting all its information from (in the sense of negative entropy), but what the heck. I wonder, will the world end like this? Maybe this, and not nukes, is what quashes sentient life before interstellar flight becomes possible.
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