The Child Garden

Geoff Ryman's imagination is quite a force. In this book, he has imagined a bizarre dystopian future which he explains at the beginning in about four pages. Then he goes on to create a strange novel based on this world in the next four hundred. It's an interesting form, building a world quickly and then setting a story in it. The story however, is as complex as his world. This is not a quick book. It takes effort and concentration to understand what's going on, and in the end, I don't know if I got it all. But I found it to be beautifully written, and enjoyed what I could grasp of the complex plot. It won the Arthur C. Clarke and John W. Campbell awards for science fiction in 1990.

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