From Publishers Weekly
In SF veteran Broderick's brain-stretching stand-alone, 20-something August Seebeck enters a mysterious game, the Contest of Worlds, in which some of the godlike players are his brothers and sisters, battling against terminatorish "deformers." August discovers superhuman powers of his own and falls in love with a heartbreakingly beautiful female player, Lune. But the game's ultimate purpose remains unclear while the context of the action keeps changing, as August zips through multiple universes. The more he learns of other worlds, the less he can be sure of—but the more his decisions matter. As things get increasingly serious for August, the story's tone remains wry, packed with offhand literary references and bookish puns. Broderick (The Dreaming) pays homage to Fritz Leiber's tales of alternate histories and to Roger Zelazny's Amber series; the narrative also resembles Robert A. Heinlein's The Number of the Beast in its cheerful trashing of comfortable but undependable certainties. In a universe where nothing can be taken at face value, scientists and SF readers need to be ready to move on, to ask the next question. Broderick shows that the effort needn't be a grim duty but actually fun. (May 3) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Book Description
August Seebeck is in his twenties, a man of average looks and intellect. Then comes the claim of his great-aunt Tansy that she has been finding corpses each Saturday night in her bath (they vanish by morning). August dismisses this tale as elderly fantasy until he stumbles upon a corpse being shoved into the second-floor bathroom window of his aunt's house. Even that wouldn't faze him, but then someone steps out of the mirror.... August suddenly discovers he is a Player in the multi-universe Contest of Worlds and that his true family is quarrelsome on a mythic scale. His search for understanding follows a classic quest pattern of the Parsifal kind, except that August is nobody's fool. An epic quest that is funny and engrossing, Godplayers is in the best tradition of Zelazny, Van Vogt, and the Knights of the Round Table, from one of science fiction's hottest up-and-coming writers.
Godplayers FROM THE PUBLISHER
August Seebeck is in his twenties, a man of average looks and intellect. Then comes the claim of his great-aunt Tansy that she has been finding corpses each Saturday night in her bath (they vanish by morning). August dismisses this tale as elderly fantasy until he stumbles upon a corpse being shoved into the second-floor bathroom window of his aunt's house. Even that wouldn't faze him, but then someone steps out of the mirror. . . . August suddenly discovers he is a Player in the multi-universe Contest of Worlds and that his true family is quarrelsome on a mythic scale. His search for understanding follows a classic quest pattern of the Parsifal kind, except that August is nobody's fool. An epic quest that is funny and engrossing, Godplayers is in the best tradition of Zelazny, Van Vogt, and the Knights of the Round Table, from one of science fiction's hottest up-and-coming writers.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
In SF veteran Broderick's brain-stretching stand-alone, 20-something August Seebeck enters a mysterious game, the Contest of Worlds, in which some of the godlike players are his brothers and sisters, battling against terminatorish "deformers." August discovers superhuman powers of his own and falls in love with a heartbreakingly beautiful female player, Lune. But the game's ultimate purpose remains unclear while the context of the action keeps changing, as August zips through multiple universes. The more he learns of other worlds, the less he can be sure of-but the more his decisions matter. As things get increasingly serious for August, the story's tone remains wry, packed with offhand literary references and bookish puns. Broderick (The Dreaming) pays homage to Fritz Leiber's tales of alternate histories and to Roger Zelazny's Amber series; the narrative also resembles Robert A. Heinlein's The Number of the Beast in its cheerful trashing of comfortable but undependable certainties. In a universe where nothing can be taken at face value, scientists and SF readers need to be ready to move on, to ask the next question. Broderick shows that the effort needn't be a grim duty but actually fun. (May 3) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Multiple-universe jaunt from the author of Transcension (2001), etc. August Seebeck, medical student and cattle/sheepherder in the Australian outback, lives with great-aunt Tansy, a psychic whose powers wax and wane according to some indecipherable schedule. When August arrives home, Tansy tells him he can't use the upstairs bathroom because it's Saturday-there'll be a corpse in the bathtub! August investigates, finds no corpse and waits. The window vanishes; two young women drag a corpse through the opening and deposit it in the bathtub. One, Maybelline, turns out to be a long-lost sister (August will later observe her having sex with a sentient Venusian vegetable); the other is Lune, an expert in computational ontology, with whom August falls instantly in love. The feeling's mutual; end of love story. The corpse, August will learn, is a part flesh, part machine deformer, avatar of the K-machines who wish to destroy August, the huge family he never suspected he had and everyone like them. They are Players, you see, in the Contest of Worlds, and have the ability to move into alternate realities, or cognates. Across the multiuniverse, Players and K-machines try to exterminate one another. The weird markings August bears on his foot are Vorpal implants allowing him to access the Schwelle gateways between the cognates. Soon, he will acquire a sun-powered blaster in his palm and the ability to raise the dead. Packed with-or, better, built of-reputable scientific theories, extrapolations, speculations, SF in-jokes and knowing references; in places frankly unintelligible; everywhere uncomfortably reminiscent of Roger Zelazny's Amber chronicles. Often fun, sometimes challenging, but could haveused less in-your-face cleverness and more old-fashioned plot.
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