I got the same frisson of discovery reading Tade Thompson’s ROSEWATER as I did reading William Gibson’s NEUROMANCER so many years ago. Cyber, xeno, bio, call it whatever punk you want–this is prose as VR tech, not predicting but simulating (im)possibilities of futures. And the simulation is oh so vivid–I was an addict for the duration. ROSEWATER retains the surreal narrative abstraction of humanity parsing the unfathomable (think Stalker, Solaris, Roadside Picnic, Annihilation) and injects it with the hyper-real urgency of a cyberpunk thriller. It’s bloody great is what I’m saying, and an instant classic. Imagine Wintermute as an alien intelligence and you might get an idea of what lies within the city of Rosewater. Go read, go visit. I can’t wait to go back in the sequel.
