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Lord of All Things (2011)

by Andreas Eschbach

Other authors: See the other authors section.

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24410108,969 (4.07)10
Winner of the 2012 Kurd-La witz-Preis They are just children when they first meet: Charlotte, daughter of the French ambassador, and Hiroshi, a laundress's son. One day on the playground, Hiroshi declares that he has an idea that will change the world. An idea that will sweep away all differences between rich and poor. When Hiroshi runs into Charlotte several years later, he is trying to build a brighter future through robotics. Determined to win Charlotte's love, he resurrects his childhood dream, convinced that he can eradicate world poverty by pushing the limits of technology beyond imagination. But as Hiroshi circles ever closer to realizing his vision, he discovers that his utopian dream may contain the seeds of a nightmare--one that could obliterate life as we know it. Crisscrossing the globe, from Tokyo to the hallowed halls of MIT to desolate Arctic islands and Buenos Aires and beyond--far beyond--Lord of All Things explores not only technology's dizzying potential, but also its formidable dangers.… (more)
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» See also 10 mentions

English (6)  German (3)  French (1)  All languages (10)
Showing 1-5 of 6 (next | show all)
This is not really a review, but an epiphany.

Spoiler alert: I just figured out a layer of meaning in Hiroshi's suicide. I didn't understand it fully until a day after I finished the book.

You remember of course that when Charlotte grasped the Japanese knife at the Island of Saints, she was overwhelmed with the painful memories of its owner's suicide. And you probably remember that when Hiroshi comes to visit Charlotte in Buenos Aires, Charlotte says she refuses to have any machine-made furniture in her apartment, because "a machine doesn't care if it builds a table or kills someone."

When Hiroshi kills himself, he orders the nanites to make a knife using the iron in his blood. (This should remind us of the scene when Hiroshi tries to make a magnet stick to the iron in his blood.) This knife is later given to Charlotte. We should expect her to feel nothing, as she did when she felt other nanite objects, like the scarf, since the object is machine-made. But because it is made of part of Hiroshi, she feels his love for her. It is an incredibly symbolic gesture: Hiroshi has given her something machine-made that is nonetheless imbued with human emotion. He has brought the two worlds together, just as he did by inviting the nanites into his brain.
( )
  stephkaye | Dec 14, 2020 |
Very unique, captivating story. Even months later, I find myself thinking of this book. ( )
  blueraven57 | Nov 25, 2017 |
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED HERE?

Andreas Eschbach’s ‘The Carpet Makers’ impressed the hell out of me. I’ve been going around for a few years now, recommending it to all and sundry. I was wildly excited that he had a new book coming out in English, and bought it the very first time I saw it up for sale. I even recommended it to others before reading it myself. I hereby rescind that recommendation.

I would never in a thousand years have guessed that this book was by the same author. There’s no similarity. It’s definitely not an issue of translation, either – it’s a matter of content.
I feel like the book aims at being ‘a thinking man’s thriller’ – but it fails both at introducing new and fascinating philosophical concepts and at being thrilling.

Hiroshi is the half-Japanese son of a laundress working at the French embassy in Tokyo. He’s a precocious robotics genius whose skills lead him to befriending the ambassador’s young daughter, Charlotte. His situation leads to an early awareness of class differences and wealth disparity, which instills in him the ambition to someday eliminate poverty from the world. And he has a plan as to how to achieve this goal! (Don’t hold your breath though – the author is coy about what this idea is for over half of the book, and when it’s finally revealed, it’s quite underwhelming and unoriginal.)

After a slow and didactic exposition of these younger years, deus ex machina in the form of a previously-absent billionaire father allows Hiroshi to move to the United States, experience culture shock, and attend MIT.

Then, in a third section, an unlikely concatenation of coincidences causes Charlotte to be present at the discovery of what seems to be super-powerful alien technology – technology that Just Happens to look just like what Hiroshi, now an eccentric recluse, has been working on.
The first two parts of the book are slow-moving personal drama, mixed with occasional didactic insertions of Liberal Thoughts. The third part comes off more as an attempt at a Michael-Crichton-style thriller. In striking contrast to the didactic insertions, the actual subtext of the book is very, very conservative and offensively sexist. Charlotte, a main character, seemingly exists only to be Hiroshi’s Muse (explicitly stated). Without him, she wanders around lost and accomplishing nothing, looking enviously at the women around her who have become personally fulfilled by bearing children, doing housework (yes, really), and caring for their men.

The book features a number of different geographical and cultural locations. None of them are portrayed convincingly. I find myself doubting whether the author has ever visited Japan or the United States, let alone the Arctic. The Japanese and Louisianan settings were just nonexistent and neutral. The Boston setting – especially to someone who’s actually been on both the Harvard and MIT campuses plenty – is just flat-out wrong. I feel like the author did his research by watching some 1980s frat-house comedy movie. He also has the definite opinion that ANY woman enrolled at MIT or Harvard is there to “achieve her MRS. Degree” and once she catches the right husband, she’ll be happy. No one at these schools seems to put much thought or time into their studies.

The worst part (or maybe just a bit that epitomizes and illustrates the whole attitude of the book): Ok, there’s an Artic research expedition going on. Two men, two women. One of the men is taking photos for the media. He says: “Ladies! … Could you do something that looks like you’re working? From over here it looks like Adrian [the other guy] is doing everything and you two are just standing watching.” The ‘girls’ giggle and respond “Well, that’s what’s happening, isn’t it?” Then the guy directs them what to do so it *looks* like they’re competent researchers, for the press. Throughout the book, it’s like this. Men are the ‘doers.’ Charlotte has a special talent, but it’s just something she’s born with, not something she works at or uses effectively. Over 650 pages, this gets really aggravating.

I’m adding one star for a cool (and devastating) theory as to why, in a galaxy filled with planets, we’ve never been contacted by alien life. But that’s one worthwhile paragraph in a book that overall, is not worth the time.
( )
  AltheaAnn | Feb 9, 2016 |
Overall Satisfaction:
Intellectual Satisfaction:
Emotional Satisfaction:
Bechdel Test: Pass
Johnson Test: Pass
Will I read more by this author? Maybe. Definitely not with this translator.

I loved Andreas Eschbach’s previous novel, [book:The Carpet Makers|171125], currently his only other novel translated into English. It was very much an idea-driven science fiction novel, old-fashioned in a very good way, fitting nicely in the tradition of Arthur C. Clarke and Larry Niven and Isaac Asimov. And the translation by Doryl Jensen was superb, the prose clear and spare and elegant in a way that made the eventual mystery reveal more powerful.

Unfortunately, I could not even finish Lord of All Things.

It is a much more modern novel. The Carpet Makers was episodic, each chapter essentially a short story of its own where the connection between them was simply that each story brought the narrative a little closer to the big reveal of the ending. Lord of All Things, on the other hand, is a continuous narrative, following Hiroshi Kato’s life from his childhood in Japan to his college years at MIT to what I assume will be his adult life as one of the world’s leading robotics experts.

The Carpet Makers’ strength was Eschbach’s (and Jensen’s) skill with building atmosphere, and with dispensing clues to the central mystery one by one at exactly the right pace to keep the dramatic tension rising. The strengths required by the story Lord of All Things seems to be telling are very different – this novel needs Hiroshi, at the very least, to be a compelling character, a character with charisma (for the reader, if not necessarily for the other characters around him). And with the number of words devoted to setting each scene it also really needs a writer with the gift of capturing a sense of place, the specific details that make it the French Ambassador’s compound in Tokyo or an MIT frat house instead of just a generic place where rich people live or place where college students get drunk. And for me, Eschbach failed at both of these elements, failed so miserably that I could not stand to read more than 160 pages of the 647 page novel.

(Read the rest of my review on my book review blog!) ( )
  PhoenixFalls | Mar 16, 2014 |
Showing 1-5 of 6 (next | show all)
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» Add other authors (6 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Andreas Eschbachprimary authorall editionscalculated
Willcocks, SamuelTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Winner of the 2012 Kurd-La witz-Preis They are just children when they first meet: Charlotte, daughter of the French ambassador, and Hiroshi, a laundress's son. One day on the playground, Hiroshi declares that he has an idea that will change the world. An idea that will sweep away all differences between rich and poor. When Hiroshi runs into Charlotte several years later, he is trying to build a brighter future through robotics. Determined to win Charlotte's love, he resurrects his childhood dream, convinced that he can eradicate world poverty by pushing the limits of technology beyond imagination. But as Hiroshi circles ever closer to realizing his vision, he discovers that his utopian dream may contain the seeds of a nightmare--one that could obliterate life as we know it. Crisscrossing the globe, from Tokyo to the hallowed halls of MIT to desolate Arctic islands and Buenos Aires and beyond--far beyond--Lord of All Things explores not only technology's dizzying potential, but also its formidable dangers.

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