Acts Of Conscience by William Barton is in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle!
Acts Of
Conscience
by
William Barton
is in
The Philip
K Dick Award Storybundle!
This is the story of
Gaetan du Cheyne, Class 10 Spatial Machinery Mechanic at the great spaceship
refit station known as Stardock. Gaetan du Cheyne. No mother, no father, no
children, no wife, no friends, no home, no nothing. Just a job. An empty man, a
hollow man, paid well enough for his complex skills that, when he's not consuming
a steady diet of net porn, he gets to play the stock market. Until, one fine
day, he finds himself in possession of a prototype FTL starship, and goes out
among the worlds in search of... something. Anything. Maybe only the lost,
empty dreams that were all he had as a child, dreams that deserted him as an
adult.
What he finds, in the end, if you can understand the man, if you can
understand his lost dreams, may change you forever, if you're lucky.
Amazon.com Review
Science fiction and fantasy have antiheros aplenty. Think Thomas Covenant,
Frankenstein's monster, or Alex from A Clockwork Orange. Add Gaetan
"Don't Call Me Gae" du Cheyne, the protagonist of Acts
of Conscience, to the list. Gaetan is an ordinary, self-involved,
maybe-misogynistic orbital mechanic. He drinks, obsesses about women (as
objects of his impotent lust), and irritates people. But oh, how realistic
Gaetan is--a masterful characterization by William Barton. In fact, Gaetan's
thoughts are almost too human and scattered, and Barton relies on
ellipses rather heavily ... when writing what's going on in Gaetan's head.
When Gaetan's forgotten
investments turn him into the sole owner of a faster-than-light spaceship, he
flees his pathetic life and heads to planet Green Heaven to seek out the adventure
and excitement he's craved. Instead, his journey reveals only the intergalactic
depredations of men just like himself--brutal rapes, senseless killing,
eradication of cultures and ecologies. He also discovers an ancient alien
civilization contemplating the eradication of humanity. What's an honest
antihero to do?
Acts
of Conscience received a special mention in the 1997 Philip K. Dick
Awards.--Therese Littleton
With insight and
intelligence, Barton (When Heaven Fell) describes a series of
moral dilemmas with no easy solutions confronting Gaetan du Cheyne, his bored,
troubled 26th-century protagonist. The fortuitous beneficiary of a stockmarket
power play, du Cheyne becomes the proud owner of a faster-than-light prototype
spaceship with which he plans to explore the starry skies. Wisely, however,
Barton resists the urge to turn this into another celestial picaresque,
creating instead a deeply disturbing tale of a young man whose past troubles
stand in the way of his ability to know or do what is right. In fact, in spite
of the spaceship device, Gaetan's journey is a psychological, not a physical
one. The ethical challenges he faces all occur on the ironically named world of
Green Heaven, where he must decide what, if anything, to do about the
systematic destruction of the planet's intelligent species and his discovery of
another species' own plans for humanity. There is an intense and intensely
pleasurable display of erudition, writerly tact and hard psychological realism
as du Cheyne confronts difficult questions about exploitation and survival,
evolutionary reality and moral righteousness. There are no obvious answers, but
there is a fascinating work of science fiction that easily rises above the
stock-in-trade.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc
William Barton was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1950, during the first year
of the Korean War, and not long after Edgar Rice Burroughs left for Barsoom,
and it was all downhill from there. He grew up in Marumsco Village, one of
those wonderfully empty-looking suburbs concealing strange nooks and crannies
the developers had failed to bulldoze under, places that became a host of
imaginary worlds. Having more or less grown up, he tried college, flunked out,
tried again, flunked out again, married a few times, at least one child, etc.
Became a marine machinery mechanic (nuclear submarines were involved), quit
that at the dawn of the modern computing era to become what's called a software
architect, and... well. Somewhere along the way, fell back into those imaginary
worlds that were so much more satisfactory than real life. His first novel, Hunting
On Kunderer, was published in 1973, followed by dozens more novels and
short stories over the ensuing years, including Hugo Award finalist “Age of
Aquarius.” If you like Acts of
Conscience, he wishes you would read Crimson Darkness,
the story he first dreamed of telling while lurking in the woods near Marumsco
Village a half-century ago. Kaor.
Links:
main website:
http://williambarton.com/
Conlang Website:
http://venusworld.conlang.org
Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/William-Barton/e/B000APTDZ8/
Discussion Group:
http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=xover&group=sff.people.william-barton&from=-10
main website:
http://williambarton.com/
Conlang Website:
http://venusworld.conlang.org
Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/William-Barton/e/B000APTDZ8/
Discussion Group:
http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=xover&group=sff.people.william-barton&from=-10
So
there you have it, my friends. The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle includes Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand (PKD Finalist), Life by Gwyneth Jones (PKD Winner), The Cipher by Kathe Koja (PKD Finalist), Points of
Departure by Pat Murphy (PKD
Winner), Dark Seeker by K. W. Jeter
(PKD Finalist), Summer of Love by
Lisa Mason (PKD Finalist), Frontera by Lewis Shiner (PKD Finalist), Acts of
Conscience by William Barton (PKD
Special Citation), Maximum Ice by
Kay Kenyon (PKD Finalist), Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams (PKD Finalist), and Reclamation by Sarah Zettel
(PKD Finalist).
The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle runs only until October 15. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Download yours today at http://www.storybundle.com/pkdaward and enjoy world-class,
award-winning reading right now and into the holidays.
Thanks, Lisa. So many talented and accomplished authors in this Storybundle.
And for more kick-ass sci-fi, check out my novel EYE CANDY. It's a sweet, romantic, daring adventure with an ensemble of characters you'll love. And follow me on Instagram for daily writing inspiration and sneak peeks of my work.
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