(1960- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Spectral Expectations" for Analog in April 1987, and who rapidly established a reputation for swiftly told, shapely, Internet-savvy Hard SF tales set in worlds drenched in Nanotechnologies. The Bohr Maker (1995), which won a Locus Award for best first novel, sets a chase thriller story in a complexly delineated Near Future Earth where orbital centres of civilization are reached by an array of Space Elevators; nanotech is strictly controlled, though it inevitably escapes First-World constraints, proliferating into impoverished environments where those who represent or embed it are thought of – and think of themselves – as being possessed by supernatural powers. Like her later books, The Bohr Maker, complexly inhabited by Androids and Avatars and outcasts, presents a powerful cluster of images with which to conceive the planetary future and its possible extensions outwards. In this, her work resembles that of David Marusek and Paolo Bacigalupi. Her second novel, Tech-Heaven (1995), set in something like the same universe, focuses on a world-wide dispute involving Cryonics and Overpopulation.
The Deception Well sequence, comprising Deception Well (1997) and Vast (1998), much expands the already voracious reach of Nagata's first two novels, with a possible Forerunner species dominating from its Time Abyss an immensely complex tale set somewhere past the Near Future in a solar system beset by Berserkers unappeased by the ending of their war aeons earlier; and much else. Some of the Cosmology is reminiscent of more sober authors, like Olaf Stapledon; but the exorbitant Space-Operatic inventiveness of the sequence is perhaps more evocative of early Larry Niven. Limits of Vision (2001) focuses on nearly microscopic artefacts (hence the title) that in conjunction act like a distributed Computer net, a non-conscious Hive Mind that adumbrates the non-conscious galactic civilization depicted in Peter Watts's Blindsight (2006). Memory (2003) – which has not yet been followed by a sequel to tie together its many incomplete strands – is set on an artificial planet (> Macrostructure) whose inhabitants may (or may not be) Avatars of figures lurking inside the great artefact, or not. There is a strong sense that a Godgame is being played and replayed – characters die and are perhaps reborn, constantly, in order to perfect their performances – and the narrator of the tale, as in many stories by Gene Wolfe, cannot be trusted and speaks from a coign of vantage we cannot comprehend. More than her previous work, though none of her tales seems to come to a permanent halt, Memory calls for Nagata's career to continue. Her later series – the Stories of the Puzzle Islands sequence comprising The Dread Hammer (2011) as by Trey Shiels and Hepen the Watcher (2012) – is a fantasy considerably detached from her previous concerns; its Feminist reading of a demon-haunted "primitive" world is powerfully couched. [JC]
Linda Nagata
born San Diego, California: 7 November 1960
died
works
series
Deception Well
- Deception Well (New York: Bantam Spectra, 1997) [Deception Well: pb/Bruce Jensen]
- Vast (New York: Bantam Spectra, 1998) [Deception Well: pb/Bruce Jensen]
Stories of the Puzzle Islands
- The Dread Hammer (Kula, Hawaii: Mythic Island Press, 2011) as by Trey Shiels [Stories of the Puzzle Islands: pb/]
- The Dread Hammer (Kula, Hawaii: Mythic Island Press, 2012) [Stories of the Puzzle Islands: pb/Sarah Adams]
- Hepen the Watcher (Kula, Hawaii: Mythic Island Press, 2012) [Stories of the Puzzle Islands: pb/Sarah Adams]
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