I'm a big fan of J.O. Morgan's long poem books and it makes perfect sense that he has now made the transition to novels. In many ways Appliance reads like a re-working of the scientific and philosophical themes evident in The Martian's Regress, but with a wider cast of characters and familiar landscapes. There is an unnerving simplicity in the way he depicts and unpicks technological progress, and how his language and images signal the complete normality of an evolving horror. I'm glad I've added this book to my collection of his work.

It’s starts slow, then you really get into it, but the ending was somewhat of an anticlimax and leaves you hanging. It’s thought provoking for sure but it lacks bite and clarity at the end.

This is not a set of stories; it is all one connected narrative with (as another reviewer has pointed out) a central, sinister character -- the appliance, the unit that transports first things, then people, from one place to another in a matter of seconds.

Through eleven chapters, developing chronologically (for the most part) different human beings (often, but not always couples) encounter and reflect on the new technology. As the chapters progress across a period of about thirty years, so the appliance develops until it is everywhere, cable-free, changing the world. And yet ... 'nothing ever really changes'.

It is beautifully written, with the kind of clarity and immediacy that sometimes had me putting the book down, taking a deep breath, and then reading the paragraph again, just to savour it. Here's a cup of tea, for example:

"The tea Mrs Carter poured was pale and yellowish. As its level rose inside the cup Emma saw the dimples turn to a faint green. Milk and sugar were added without question, but only a drop of milk and barely a few granules of brown sugar; hardly anything at all; hardly worth it. The milk flowered downwards through the yellow tea. The dark crystals of sugar punctured this inner pluming as they fell."

The truly magical detail here resides in ordinary things, rather than the extraordinary machine that is transforming lives (apparently not for the better). And although this book centres on technology, the damage done to some of the human characters is often heart-breaking. There's the fate of the young hacker who spots a fault in the machine, and there's Anji whose 'data' is lost forever. And there's the wife of the man (never named) who is the originator of the whole technology.

Often, but not always in this novel, it is women who query what is going on, women who resist. And Mrs Pearson, in chapter 1, may have a lot to do with some of the 'anomalies' that occur later on. But whatever happens, whatever technology does, information cannot be changed. Data 'is always retained'. The bits that make up the universe stay the same bits, no matter how you assemble them. And what is a human being but a set of data?

An incredible book this, with a complex web of ideas about change, transformation, translation and humanity. It doesn't take long to read (read it twice -- the second time is even better!) but thinking about it is going to take me years.

This collection is concerned with the social impact that tech ("beam me up, Scotty") would have now and in the longer term on people's sense of place or matter. The under-pinning doubt about how the machines work at all (impossible) reflects our modern dilemma with technology based on science (e.g. quantum) and technology (e.g. chips) that are well beyond most peoples's understanding. As well as doubt, all sense of reality comes into question, but written in each tale in such a way as to make it very personal. I like this quite a lot, although I think questioning tech-solutionism has been depicted elsewhere often and sometimes better.

Harry Harrison, one of the great classic SF writers (and editors) wrote a beautiful collection of 9 stories (published as One Step from Earth - available still 45 years on) - in it, he depicts a very long future, from the first stumbling steps of the tech, through to a universe where the old idea of a "door" has become a legend, lost in the past. That collection, too, was not panglossian.

Teleportation has long been a favourite idea of science fiction. But what if it was actually invented? What effect would it have on our lives? What issues would it raise – is a work of art still the same after you’ve broken it into its constituent atoms and reassembled it, for example? What indignities would people be willing to accept in return for convenience? That’s the premise here.

This isn’t a novel so much as a series of short stories exploring the development of the technology. In that sense it’s reminiscent of Asimov’s I, Robot. But where I, Robot develops a framework of regulation, in the form of the Laws of Robotics, Appliance simply raises questions. That makes for quite a frustrating read, more so as it sometimes takes a quite oblique approach too.

I’d have enjoyed this more had it used a more conventional story narrative and perhaps also told us more about the rather shady ‘Institute’ behind the technology.

Read this because I had come across J. O. Morgan's Martian's Regress and enjoyed it very much. This is another really exquisite jewel of story telling. Each sentence has a sort of perfection other writers simply don't achieve. That's not to say it doesn't add up to a great story over all. I really liked the way that it upended the usual novel thing of character development in that the machine was the main protagonist and in each new iteration it became more insidious and frightening. It's a really worth candidate for the Orwell Prize.

A strange, steam-punk inspired, collection of linked short stories. Looks at how new technology initially scares us but then becomes the norm…and the frighteningly quick pace at which this happens.

Ostensibly about teleportation, this book is about so much more. Definitely worth a read.

Very good stories, but some seem unfinished...

çok interessant

An interesting examination of the effect of Star Trek transporter technology on society. Each chapter is a short story dealing with the progress of the technology and it’s impact on individuals and while the chapters effectively manage the progression of the new invention, they do not form a coherent whole and are rather disparate episodes.

Sehr schön in Sprache und Dramaturgie - erinnert mich an die Hochzeit der SF in den 50er und 60er Jahren…

Spannende unkonventionelle Science Fiction Geschichten einer anderen Art.