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mark5327's review against another edition
4.0
Really gorgeous and queer space heist. Super aching and sad, I kind of got a bit lost towards the end but I could totally imagine it being 5 stars on a reread.
morgandhu's review against another edition
4.0
Elizabeth Lynn's 1978 novel A Different Light is science fictional in form and content, but it is at its core a novel about the artistic vision.
Jimson Alleca is one of the great artists of his time. His work is shown and sold across the known galaxy, but he is trapped on his home planet. In a future where almost all physical illness is treatable and people can live for hundreds of years, Jimson is dying from a rare incurable cancer - one that will almost certainly mutate and kill him even faster if he tries to travel in hyperspace ("the Hype").
Eventually his yearning to see and create art in the light of a different sun leads him to take that risk and to make a new, if temporary, home for himself on Nexus - where he is also reunited with his former lover, Russell, now a starcaptain known as Pirate. Russell had been hired by a wealthy art collector to traverse a dangerous section of the Hype and steal an artifact from a world unlisted on any starmap. Jimson decides to go with him and his crew, even though the adventure will kill him.
Lynn's ability to put visual art and the sight that inspires it into words is remarkable, and the story she tells about art, love, longing and identity is a powerful one.
Jimson Alleca is one of the great artists of his time. His work is shown and sold across the known galaxy, but he is trapped on his home planet. In a future where almost all physical illness is treatable and people can live for hundreds of years, Jimson is dying from a rare incurable cancer - one that will almost certainly mutate and kill him even faster if he tries to travel in hyperspace ("the Hype").
Eventually his yearning to see and create art in the light of a different sun leads him to take that risk and to make a new, if temporary, home for himself on Nexus - where he is also reunited with his former lover, Russell, now a starcaptain known as Pirate. Russell had been hired by a wealthy art collector to traverse a dangerous section of the Hype and steal an artifact from a world unlisted on any starmap. Jimson decides to go with him and his crew, even though the adventure will kill him.
Lynn's ability to put visual art and the sight that inspires it into words is remarkable, and the story she tells about art, love, longing and identity is a powerful one.
lordofthemoon's review against another edition
3.0
In a world where most diseases are curable, the artist Jimson Alleca has incurable cancer. He has the choice to stay on his homeworld, receiving constant medical attention and live a roughly normal lifespan, or fulfil his dream and go out into the galaxy and be dead within the year. He chooses the latter and eventually finds himself on a dangerous journey with his former lover Russell, now a starship captain.
The plot in this book feels like a framework for Lynn to hang her characters from. We see the world through the eyes of a dying artist and this is what Lynn really wants to explore. The plot to recover the artefact from a dangerous world is one lens through which to see Jimson, and sort of fizzles out, although there is a twist to Jimson's inevitable death that was quite nice.
So lots of good bits, I thought, but they didn't fully gel into a whole for me.
The plot in this book feels like a framework for Lynn to hang her characters from. We see the world through the eyes of a dying artist and this is what Lynn really wants to explore. The plot to recover the artefact from a dangerous world is one lens through which to see Jimson, and sort of fizzles out, although there is a twist to Jimson's inevitable death that was quite nice.
So lots of good bits, I thought, but they didn't fully gel into a whole for me.