The Memory of Fire

Science Fiction Weekly

...a beautifully written novel.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Foy's latest novel expands the gritty, high-tech near-future setting of his Contraband (1997). Soledad MacCrae is a young Mexican musician and composer on the run following the brutal destruction of her cruce, or node, of Bamaca, an anarchic community of artists, writers and musicians who chose to live outside the mainstream in their own small enclave and to dedicate their lives to creative pursuits, funded with money earned by smuggling drugs. Escaping north to San Francisco, Soledad searches for another node she's heard about in Oakland, but she quickly discovers that her past isn't so easy to leave behind. It looks as if the same megaorg corporate security forces who annihilated Bamaca may have trailed her here. Even more chilling, her arrival at the Oakland node seems to herald increased threats against the node from the local authorities, assisted by BON, the federal Bureau of Nationalizations. Danger escalates as Soledad discovers she is pregnant with the child of her Bamaca lover and lyricist, poet Jorge Echeverria, who died during the attack on that node. Now Soledad must come to terms with her past as well as her present, accepting the influence Echeverria had over her, even as she discovers that the music they created may hold the key to saving her new home. Foy sets this story of memory and love in a finely detailed setting resonant with the Borges-style recursion that life is "a story we tell ourselves about who we wish we were. And because we are the story we tell ourselves, we in turn become the story, the story itself." (Feb.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT

Within a dark future world, where most of the populace is addicted to virtual reality, there are small enclaves, called "cruces," of artists, musicians, and poets. The world government, the Bureau of Nationalizations (BON), is committed to wiping out these cruces, and attack the South American one in Bamaca. One musician, Soledad MacRae, survives the attack, and, speechless, she flees to California, in search of the American cruce. She used to compose music to accompany her lover's poetry, but Jorge was killed in the attack. Soon after arriving in America, Soledad learns that she is being hunted by the BON, that her music and Jorge's poetry are considered revolutionary and dangerous. The plot shifts between Soledad's present and her past, as she examines her memories of her time with Jorge, trying to figure out why she is being hunted. She finds the American cruce, and the inhabitants take her in. Soon, she sees that she is a danger to the cruce, and determines to leave, but some of the group go with her. This is a dark novel, about a bleak future where imagination is criminal, and music is the route to safety. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2000, Bantam/Spectra, 371p, 24cm, 99-40439, $13.95. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Gail E. Roberts; Coordinator, Youth Scvs., New Bedford P.L., New Bedford, MA, July 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 4)

VOYA

Escaping the conflagration of her Bamacan cruce on the South American coast, Soledad MacRae seeks refuge in a northern California Yanqui node. Americans are addicted to virtual reality, with vidscreen, envirocams, pushwalls, and face-suckers providing the synapses of perception and communication. The nodes and cruces are anarchist communities of people choosing to live outside the society's organizations. They use the media psychologist Fernsehen's teachings to uphold their order, constructing and maintaining the Wildnet while refusing the miltary control of the governments. Soledad is traumatized, speechless, and plagued by nightmares of her cruce's last hours. She moves between flashbacks of her life in the cruce and how she came to be there, and her new life as a survivor, where her flashbacks represent the apocalyptic prophesies of how the American bureaucracy will decimate her new community. Ultimately traversing her rite of passage into the dawning of a new maturity, Soledad finds strength in her music, her dead lover's poems, the stories she tends, and the new life she carries. An intricate, dark vision of a near future world that builds catastrophically on existing reality, The Memory of Fire presents a plausible glimpse of tomorrow. Foy creates a new world with just enough remnants of today to be recognizable, masterfully drawing the proficient reader into a vicarious imprinting of the memory of fire and the passion and humanity that stand in opposition to it. VOYA CODES: 5Q 3P S A/YA (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Will appeal with pushing; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12; Adult and Young Adult). 2000, Bantam Spectra, Ages 16 to Adult, 384p, $13.95Trade pb. Reviewer: Kim Carter

Library Journal

In a world controled by bureaucratic governments that suppress free expression and creativity, musicians and poets gather in armed enclaves to protect their artistic visions. Fleeing the destruction of her sanctuary on the coast of South America, musician Soledad MacCrae journeys to San Francisco in search of a new refuge, unaware that she carries within her the knowledge of how to win--or lose--the battle for nonconformity. Foy (The Shift) brings to life a dark, dystopic future in this story of one artist's struggle to remain true to her principles. Thoughtful and disturbing, this grim portrait of an all-too-possible future belongs in most sf collections. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.