From the brilliant author of The Dragon Waiting and Growing Up Weightless, a novel that saw the cyberpunk future with stunning clarity, years before anyone else.
WEB OF ANGELS
by John M. Ford
Tor/St. Martin’s Press, April 2024
Originally published in 1980, the legendary John M. Ford’s first published novel was an uncannily brilliant anticipation of the later cyberpunk genre—and of the internet itself.
The Web links the many worlds of humanity. Most people can only use it to communicate. Some can retrieve and store data, as well as use simple precoded programs. Only a privileged few are able to create their own software, within proscribed limits.
And then there are the Webspinners.
Grailer is Fourth Literate, able to manipulate the Web at will—and use it for purposes unintended and impossible for anyone but the most talented Webspinner. Obviously, he cannot be allowed to live.
Condemned to death at the age of nine, Grailer must go underground, hiding his skills, testing his powers- until he is ready to do battle with the Web itself.
With a new introduction from Cory Doctorow, written especially for this edition.
John M. Ford was, in his lifetime, a favorite author of many writers better known than he was, including Neil Gaiman and Robert Jordan. He won World Fantasy Awards for both his novel The Dragon Waiting and his poem « Winter Solstice, Camelot Station, » and he won the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel, Growing Up Weightless. His Star Trek™ novel, The Final Reflection, essentially created the nuanced Klingon culture seen later in the feature films, and his other novel in that universe, How Much For The Planet?, was a Star Trek™ tale told as a Gilbert & Sullivan musical, complete with songs. He was a genius. He died in 2006.
Matthias Ronay has grown up in the low gravity and great glass citadels of independent Luna―and in the considerable shadow of his father, a member of the council that governs Luna’s increasingly complex society. But Matt feels weighed down on the world where he was born, where there is no more need for exploration, for innovation, for radical ideas―and where his every movement can be tracked by his father on the infonets.
Enter the halls of Parliament with Varic, Coron of the Corvaric Coast. Visit Strange House with the Archmage Birch. Explore the mountains of Lady Longlight alongside the Palion Silvern, Sorcerer.