One of the living German speaking, Austrian born sci-fi authors I know besides Andreas Eschbach, Andreas Brandhorst, Philipp P Peterson, and others inOne of the living German speaking, Austrian born sci-fi authors I know besides Andreas Eschbach, Andreas Brandhorst, Philipp P Peterson, and others in military sci-fi I can´t remember at the moment, who are comparable to the ingenious UK and US authors.
I have seen this story before, no more electricity and the consequences over different periods of time, and Elsberg mixes some plotlines and thriller elements together for an entertaining read. It´s his only good work, his second, Helix is already far less compelling and I possibly won´t read his third one, Gier, because of the bad ratings.
But how does it come that there is no real European sci-fi, fantasy, and comedy market that is similar and especially competitive to the UK and US? There is no industry, no Hollywood, no great European sci-fi behemoth, no culture of progressive, good writing styles, no college bachelor and master degrees in creative writing, and a terrible book market focused on redundancy, repetitions, and boredom.
And, because the writers have close to no epic meta worldbuilding, no education in creative writing, and seem to strongly focus on letting characters tell the story with one rudimentary plotline in the background, it´s often like a normal novel about characters with some sci-fi elements, not a future world with characters living with the conditions of this world, fusing plot and protagonist to the full enjoyment of the US and UK sci-fi giants that let one live these lives in hundreds and thousands of years in the future. Eschbach is the same as Elsberg, just better writing, but if someone changed the sci-fi elements with horror, fantasy, or, yuck, fantastic realism, there would be no difference because the novel stays the same, average everyday literature camouflaged as sci-fi.
I have the suspicion that these authors are just successful because the conservative European readers and book market see the unbelievable potential of sci-fi the first time in their works while staying with the 85 to 95 percent average characterization storytelling on earth, to not having to leave their comfort zone with real, cool, amazing sci-fi.
As already said before in other reviews, the only real exception is Andreas Brandhorst, not just noticeable for his works comparable to Brin, Banks, Hamilton, and Corey, but because he is the ingenious German translator of Pratchett´s works too. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... I´ve read 2 to 4 of his works and he owns everything else on the European book market. The irony is, of course, that others are much more successful with their superficial and trivial works, but that´s the familiar injustice of fate against truly creative and extraordinary people in places as boring and conservative as Central Europe.
Mario the lone bookwolf
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Books:
elsberg-marc
(3)
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