I will not forget this book any time soon and will be rereading it shortly. I could not put it down. It certainly didn't feel like a book originally published in the '90s.

The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed was originally published back in 1996 and it's incredible to witness just how far the publishing industry has progressed since! What was once a ground-breaking book, now fits in nicely with it's contemporary queer counterparts, never feeling outdated by topic or language.

This book was either slightly too sci-fi-y for me or my brain was functioning too literally to have a full understanding of the plot - but there is absolutely no denying just how beautifully it is written! Jo Walton's Introduction mentions that once readers finish The Fortunate Fall, there's a pull or desire for them to circle back and start the novel all over again; I can certainly see that the more times this novel is read (and re-read), the more readers would gain and understand from the nuanced metaphors.

The audiobook narration by Frankie Corzo was really well done! Voices used by Corzo represented the characters and their feelings well. My only complaint was an instance when a robot voice was mentioned within the narrative, and I wished Corzo's voice reflected that a bit more.

Thank you NetGalley, Tor Publishing Group, Tor Books, Dreamscape Media and Dreamscape Lore for the complimentary copies to read and review.

I appreciate that Tor keeps republishing out-of-print books under the Tor Essentials.

This is one where I really liked the premise. Published back in 1996, I love that the author really predicted the vloggers of today.

The story was fairly well paced with some exciting intrigue and action. I think it holds up so well in comparison to the new releases. It was an enjoyable easy read that plays with some timely concepts.

Regardless, I am always grateful for the opportunity to read a released title that would otherwise be unavailable to me. I will have to look up more by this author.

Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Also I was just recently at a picnic with the author, so that’s nice.

Some of you may have read this book when its author was writing under her previous name. This is a Tor Essentials rerelease with a new introduction written by Jo Walton saying why she liked it so much the first time around.

One of the things that’s astonishing to me about The Fortunate Fall is how clearly it thinks about the internet compared to a lot of cyberpunk preceding it. The political and social mores of having some people telling stories, others filtering those stories, and still others receiving without knowing what’s gone into either part of the process–that’s something that’s so well-done in The Fortunate Fall, something that’s less the mirrorshades cool of early cyberpunk and more the scarred and lumpy reality we actually got.

Maya Andreyeva’s life as a “camera” is not a glamorous one. Like everyone else who has been wired to record, she’s hustling to convey the most compelling sensations and impressions of whatever it is she’s covering, in hopes that it be safe and yet daring enough to broadcast. She got the job she got at the beginning of the book–covering a forgotten genocide–by sheer trickery, and that’s more or less status quo. Her new “screener” Keishi seems familiar and inexperienced at the same time, and Maya has constant difficulty trusting her.

That’s before they get to the whale, or the technological pan-African empire, or the swapping of hardware to get around different kinds of repression…there’s a lot going on in this book, and it’s fascinating, and one of the things that’s really fascinating is that the stuff that was then-unusual and is now-usual is still written well. I’m thinking in particular of the same-sex relationship that’s the center of the book. Cameron wrote toward a world where no one would have to pat your hand and tell you not to be scared of the lesbians, and partly as a result of that we got to that world. And because it’s not hand-patting about it, the core of the relationship holds up beautifully. It’s a wonder to behold. And now you can behold it! Because it’s available again.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher, Tor Publishing Group, for an advance copy of this reissue of a science fiction novel that is over thirty years old, and discusses a world, and ideas about technology that startling accurate today.

The problem with publishing is that while they say it is a numbers game, publishers still have no idea what to do with many of their books. If a book is not a bestseller, and something that chain bookstores can put on a monthly table, well it falls into backlist, and maybe even obscurity. Usually through no fault of the author or the subject matter. There are many books that are hard to get but booksellers, like myself champion, saying if you can find it grab it, treasure it, and share it. That's why the Tor Essentials line from Tor Publishing Group is so important. Books that have been unfairly forgotten, are given another chance on the shelves. The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed is such a book. Written over thirty years ago, Reed seemed to see many of the things that were coming in technology, world affairs, and even more telling in the world of science fiction.

Maya Andreyeva is a living camera, recording to the Net her life and experiences while pursuing stories for the News One network. The future she lives in is very uncertain, with religious and technology groups controlling most of the world, America a giant slum, and Africa the beacon of hope in a dark world. Maya has been doing this job for years but has never had a big story until now. In Russia Maya is looking into a massacre, one that happened years ago, and yet is still unknown in many ways. Maya works with a screener, a sort of producer, who filters what Maya reports, keeping the personal stuff out, and working on sources for Maya's story. They find an old survivor, one who has a an interesting tale to tell, and one that suddenly plunges Maya into an uncertain world of false memories, false friends, finding herself a fugitive, all while chasing a story that seems bigger than she expects. A story as big as a whale.

Reading this book was a wonderful case of déjà vu, as I had read this before ,maybe when it first came out, but maybe later. And I have to say I loved this book even more, the second time. I remember at the time thinking wow, this is pretty out there. Now I see that the world is stranger than fiction, and I am afraid of what else Reed might get right. The story is big, dense and full of so much wonderful world building, and ideas that just stun. That said a lot of this might make a reader go, oh this isn't new this is just like blah blah. No this was first. One can see many ideas the rise of Christians in government, the lose of rights for LGBT people, cryptocurrencey. Even the scary Weaver who patrol the web seem like Agents from the Matrix. Again this was all Reed. The writing is very good. One is thrust into a dark future, with different ideas, and yet in a few pages, things make sense. The world unfolds slowly, and while there is a lot going on, one doesn't get lost. Actually this reader wants to know more, and really enjoyed the time I spent there.

A really great story very far ahead of its time. The introduction by Jo Walton covers this far better than I can. With ideas that still are ahead of the curve, even after thirty years. A book that fans of science fiction will love, and role playing players and designers can learn a lot about world building and story telling.

This book is amazing and the fact that Tor is reprinting it and I therefore found out about is a very, very good thing.

"The whale, the traitor; the note she left me and the run-in with the Post Police; and how I felt about her and what she turned out to be - all this you know."
As first sentences go, that's breathtaking.

It seems from Jo Walton's introduction to this edition that the people who read The Fortunate Fall when it first came out all loved it... but that 'all' was super limited, for whatever reason. And that's just an absolute tragedy, because this book should absolutely be seen as a classic and it should get read by everyone and it should be discussed in all the conversations that are had about gender, sexuality, AI interactions, the use and purpose of the media, human/animal interactions, medical ethics... and probably a whole bunch of other issues that I missed.

It was originally published in 1996, and certainly some of the technology feels a little dated; the idea of a dryROM is amusing, and moistdisks are fascinating and gross. But honestly (as Walton points out) it also feels incredibly NOW. The main character, Maya, is a 'camera'; when she's broadcasting, people can tune in and see what she sees, hear what she hears - and experience her memories and reactions as well. This is mediated by a screener, who basically works to help amplify or minimise parts of the experience, as well as doing the tech work behind the scenes. For all that it's from the very early period of the internet, this aspect feels prescient in terms of using social media, the difficult lines between personal and big-business media, and a whole host of other things that, again, are being thought about and talked about now. Not to mention the question of how much we actually know someone from their public-facing presentation.

And really? this isn't even the most meaty part of the story. There's the relationship between Maya and Keishi; that could have been the whole book. There's Pavel Voskresenye and his experiences with genocide, being experimented on, surveillance - which could also have been a whole book by itself. And the whale. It's honestly hard to talk about everything that is packed into this book: and it's not very long! The paperback is 300 pages! How does Reed manage to fit so much in, and still make me understand everything that's going on, and bring it all together such that I know it doesn't need a sequel, and I know Maya in particular more than she would be happy with - and it's only 300 pages in length??

I want to shove this into the hands of basically everyone I know. And then, like Walton says in her introduction, we can all talk about the ending.