If an author has gone to the effort to sit down and write a book, probably involving some or all of the following: blood, sweat tears and probably some alcohol, and produced a piece of work that they are proud of it doesn’t seem fair to slate a book because you don’t like it. This is why I not a fan of snarky reviews. In the case of this book, Light Music, I really couldn’t get along with it. It might have been me, but reading the few reviews that are out there makes me think I am not alone.

There were a few things wrong with it, the plot was barely visible in the writing the very disparate threads that didn’t seem to tie together at all and it really could have done with editing to within an inch of its life. It wasn’t totally dire, there are a few good ideas hiding amongst the voluminous writing; but neither was it good. That is a few hours of my life that I won’t get back. 1.5 Stars ( )

Another one of Goonan's characteristically fascinating novels. Packed full of her intriguing ideas about the next stage of human evolution, boasting a great range of diverse characters and with a strong focus on the importance of stories, it was nevertheless a disjointed read. And while the bittersweetness of the climax was appropriate, it felt like a somewhat rushed finish, in which a lot of character threads just disappeared and we heard from other sources what had happened to them. Ultimately, a little disappointing. ( )

Last of the series. I'm not really sure i really can do it justice here, considering that it's really about complexity. All i can say is go read it, if you have any interest in the literature of ideas, and you'll see. It also kinda reminds me of the spirit of Samuel Delany's Dhalgren, which is no bad company to be in. Especially whenever Peabody ambles into view, he who was once Chief Nanotech Engineer of the Flower City of Chicago, and then The Engineer in Crescent City, and then Radio Cowboy (after being hijacked by a Western Library {g} - his six-guns decimate the enemy with tunes from old musicals), and ultimately the radio astronomer who goes rogue and Johnny Appleseeds the Everything, while Dania travels with the Nows.

Nanotech remains a pretty abstruse subject to wrap one's head around (unless you've been lucky enough to dip into mathematician Rudy Rucker's delirious sf Ware series and hit paydirt), but it has been a popular subject in late-cyberpunk circles, and the worlds we mostly see portrayed in it are dystopic. But both Rucker and Goonan are post-cyberpunk because they are interested in the whys of the worlds they build and pick apart. So Goonan's interest, like Rucker's, centers in the possibilities of nanotech bringing about an evolution of consciousness. We move, then, in the book, from Godel to Bach, deliberately, in considering how change can be occasioned, and also read.

The subject matter of Goonan's series spans topics like complexity theory, and M-theory as a dimensional key. she makes extensive work of stuff like Brian Greene's Elegant Universe to move her narrative, positing a not-far future world in which breakthroughs in these areas will literally change both consciousness and the world from Newtonian into Einsteinian space and on beyond zebra. So from an already fascinating but conventionally dystopic future of mutating worlds and stagnating humankind (i'm particularly fond of the image of the flower cities) she eases the book and the series into a sea of possibilities, reseeding mankind.

The part that we might well find exciting is how she chooses to frame the ways in which these connections might ultimately be organically made: she uses music as a key to mathematics and she uses story as the ultimate connecting link to make the leap. These are both exciting metaphors to see applied on the ground, and they are central to her themes so they are well-developed, as she elaborates on their meaning throughout the work.

Both quoted therein: "Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists." (Marcel Proust) "Art is a lie which tells the truth." (Picasso)

It is by the Storyteller's ordering of story into comprehensible patterns that the world ultimately is changed. And when people begin to inhabit and interpret story from the inside - stories of emotion, stories of science - they learn to transcend themselves. These are huge, huge metaphors and it's really nifty to wade in and join with her in playing them out. I think i've made it sound a lot less colorful than it really is, talking about the ideas in it, but i recommend it to anyone who is interested in these issues. Angelina the Storyteller is first infected by stamps within the pages of Cortazar's Hopscotch, and before she knows it she's full of Octavio Paz, Borges, and Garcia Lorca, hot jazz and Heidegger, Max Planck and Neruda. Story is an infection, that mutates as she crosses between the pages of the book.

"Stories are the folded-up dimensions in string theory. Stories are how humans unfold time."
Essentially, human consciousness makes the Bridge that drives the Change, that sends the ship into the stars, that becomes the calculus, that is the Map. A complex portrait of a system that is multi-dimensional. "She opened the book. FROM THIS SIDE, she saw; and later on, FROM THE OTHER SIDE." Similarly, Su-Chen plays, and the city-ship is launched. They all begin to move to the tune of Light Music.

"The stories of emotion began to blend with the stories of science. The stories of science were stories that kept on making sense as one built on them, test after test. They explained reality reliably." "And one of the stories she learned was the story of the curled-up dimensions. Realities which might never be. But dimensions which were ineffably part of physical reality, a necessary and supporting part. A place of doorways, and portals, much as her own human mind seemed to be." ( )