A debut novel of remarkable beauty and invention, The Fortunate Fall is back in print for the first time in almost three decades as a Tor Essential, with a new introduction by Jo Walton
Tor Essentials presents new editions of science fiction and fantasy titles of proven merit and lasting value, each volume introduced by an appropriate literary figure.
On its first publication in 1996, The Fortunate Fall was hailed as an SF novel of a wired future on par with the debuts of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. Now it returns to print, as one of the great underground classics of the last several decades in SF.
Maya Andreyeva is a "camera," a reporter with virtual-reality-broadcasting equipment implanted in her brain. What she sees, millions see; what she feels, millions share.
And what Maya is seeing is the cover-up of a massacre. As she probes into the covert political power plays of a radically strange near-future Russia, she comes upon secrets that have been hidden from the world...and memories that AI-controlled thought police have forced her to hide from herself. Because in a world where no thought or desire is safe, the price of survival is betrayal - of your lover, your ideals, and yourself.
This new Tor Essentials edition of The Fortunate Fall includes a new introduction by Jo Walton, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards.
About the Author :
Cameron Reed is a science fiction writer and the winner of the 1998 Otherwise Award (then the James Tiptree, Jr. Award). She is an avid dragonfly-watcher, a moderately skilled insect photographer, and a hopeless birder. After a long and complicated path through gender, she has come to rest as a nonbinary trans woman and uses the pronouns she or they. She lives with her found family in an old duplex full of books and cats.
Review :
"Heartbreakingly beautiful...prose as rich and textured as the characters and society it describes. [Cameron Reed] combines William Gibson's dazzling talent for technological extrapolation with Theodore Sturgeon's unerring knowledge of the human heart." --Susan Palwick
"The voice of The Fortunate Fall is by turns ironic and vulnerable, clear and strong." --Maureen McHugh, author of China Mountain Zhang
"Vibrant, sweet, and tragic, The Fortunate Fall is a tailored virus that rewrote some of my code....Attempts impossible things and succeeds brilliantly."--Jonathan Lethem, author of Gun, with Occasional Music
"The best novel about wired culture since the SF debut of Neal Stephenson."--Lisa Goldstein
"Confrontations reminiscent to me of nothing so much as the 'Grand Inquisitor' sections of The Brothers Karamazov... it isn't often that we find a book which tackles dead-on the central conflicts between personal and political life, not to mention the question of the nature of the soul. Complex, strong and ambitious."--Suzy McKee Charnas, author of The Furies
"If there's a better first novel published this year, I'll eat my hard drive."--Emma Bull
"As good as books get." --Jo Walton
"A stunningly imagined and developed backdrop ... an assured, noteworthy, auspicious debut." --Kirkus
"This highly literate, grim and gripping example of latter-day cyberpunk counts as one of the most promising SF debuts in recent years." --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"'Warm and human even as it's post human, ' as Jo Walton observes in her introduction, Reed's remarkable debut skillfully blends mind-bending speculation with riveting intrigue, alluring romance and harrowing drama, set in a prescient de-souled future."--Library Journal, Starred Review
"One of the most brilliant sf debuts in years" --Booklist
