Only Forward Michael Marshall Smith Smith’s debut novel is one of my favourite science fiction books of all time. It starts of as a far future noir detective story with the lead character, Stark, full of wisecracks and “I’m smarter than you” confidence. That it ends up being an incredibly moving piece is testament of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,13,4,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-2","category-books","category-fantasy","category-rated","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Only](\"http:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/only_forward.thumbnail.jpg\")
<\/span>Smith’s debut novel is one of my favourite science fiction books of all time.
\nIt starts of as a far future noir detective story with the lead character, Stark, full of wisecracks and “I’m smarter than you” confidence. That it ends up being an incredibly moving piece is testament of Smith’s ability to shift the story around underneath the reader without them ever feeling cheated.
\nPart of that is the fact that it is made plain within the first couple of pages that Stark is a rather unreliable narrator, more than willing to lie, omit facts or completely fabricate things if he thinks it’s amusing or suits his needs.
\nBy the end when the layers have been stripped away and there are no more falsehoods you are in no doubt of how brilliantly the tale has been told.
\nAfter more than a decade, after numerous re-reads, this is still a remarkable piece of work.
\nI have no hesitation whatsoever in recommending it to anyone to read.<\/p>\n