Archform: Beauty | 
| Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
Category: EBooks
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $6.99
You Save: $7.01 (50%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 61302
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
Publication Date: September 9, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Technology, philosophy, politics, and mystery combine in this well-told tale of murder and corporate machination. Archform: Beauty weaves together the stories of five people in 24th-century North America who find themselves involved in a political conspiracy that spawns a string of murders. An old-style singer despairs over graceless contemporary music that uses overlaid resonances to emotionally manipulate the listener; a police investigator identifies a disturbing pattern of suicides and murders; a powerful senator and an equally powerful corporate tycoon pursue their own agendas toward a potentially violent collision; and a news researcher with a flair for background finds himself drawn into all of their affairs as pieces of various puzzles begin to come together. Modessit handles the five voices well, particularly those of the detective, singer, and researcher, and sets their stories against a well-realized social and political background, incorporating interesting philosophical questions about reality and beauty into the action without slowing the pace. --Roz Genessee
Product Description
It's always a special treat when this bestselling fantasy writer turns his hand to SF and Archform: Beauty is no exception. Five people tell their stories and the many parts become one story of justice and truth in a world beset by technological challenges, drowning in apathy and attacked by devious evil. Four centuries in the future, nanonmachines watch the health of the wealthy and manufacture food and gadgets for everybody, but social problems persist. A singing teacher suffers for her music and fights bureaucracy and apathy. A news researcher can't help wondering about the real story behind the grim incidents that make the headlines. A police investigator, assigned to study trends, begins to see a truly sinister pattern in a series of seemingly unrelated crimes and deaths. A politician pursues his agenda, aids his constituents, fights the good fight and tries to get re-elected without compromising his principles. A ruthless businessman pursues his goal of making his family powerful, wealthy and independent. Their disparate stories overlap, interchange, combine and build into a tour de force of storytelling. L.E. Modesitt, Jr. asks difficult questions, sets himself unlikely challenges and, once again, delivers an absorbing tale that enlightens, entertains, and uplifts all at once.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Not Free SF Reader September 3, 2007
Another riff on the whole music teacher thing. Unfortunately this one is pretty dull. It looks at a very commercialised world of music where being a classically trained music teacher is not all that financially rewarding. e.g. not necessarily a lot different to know.
He has made up another genre of music to be the 'rap' of the time.
Underlying all this is some dodgy goings on. Needed to be a bit more of that to be interesting.
If you are a music teacher type, you might enjoy it more.
 Beauty in Action August 31, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Archform: Beauty (2002) is a standalone SF novel set about four centuries in the future. After the collapse of the Commonacracy, North America was re-unified, with the capital in Denv. The political climate is very different, however, as are the laws and enforcement. A major change is the privacy laws.
In this novel, Luara Cornett is an Adjunct Professor of Music at the University of Denv. She teaches two classes in Music Appreciation and has six private students in Voice. Still, university pay is not enough even for her rather frugal lifestyle. She also does backsinging for rez-based net commercials and occasionally she is hired for art song recitals.
Lieutenant Eugene Tang Chiang is Trends Analysis Coordinator for the Denv District Department of Public Safety. His staff is finding signs of social disturbance, but not in any particular location. The new strain of Ebol14 from the West Asian biowar labs is causing some of the unrest, but the unexplained overdoses and suicides among the young are the most unsettling.
Jude Parsfal is a senior researcher for NetPrime. He searches out historical data and interesting angles to current news stories. He is working on the background of water diversion within the southwest, but his editor diverts him to the McCall death. While the initial investigation concluded that this death had resulted from an accident, the Regional Advocate now claims that her husband had reprogrammed the electral's defense screens to crush the car.
Eldon Cannon is the Senator for Deseret District. He is Chairman of the Economics and Commerce Committee. In the upcoming elections, Cannon is facing a strong bid for his seat by Hansen. His campaign consultant has discovered that Hansen will be depending heavily on a new type of rez-ad tailored for each genotypical group. Cannon decides to anticipate his opponent by using the new techniques early in the campaign and with a positive message.
Christopher Kemal is the new family head since the death of his father. He had been running the family business for ten years, but the death will now make it official. He moves from the office of the President to that of the CEO after the funeral and then continues his normal routine. He has a private conversation with Evan McCall about the death of his wife and the DPS suspicions, then discusses his father's will.
In this story, Luara performs art and classical songs at a private party and gets into a conversation with an older man about music. She passionately argues that music is an essential element of civilization. It promotes rational thinking and accelerates learning. When the older man points out that rezrap and rezpop have widespread followings, Luara declares that they are not music in the same sense as classical works.
Senator Cannon thinks on the subject and has his staff prepare a small prototype program to increase the amount of music appreciation in the colleges. He also suggests that the program will make good publicity for his campaign. Then he proposes a small documentary of the subject with an interview of Luara Cornett as the centerpiece. His campaign manager quietly laughs at the idea, then points out that Luara has been doing the backsinging for his rez-ads all along.
When Evan McCall seemingly commits suicide out of remorse by jumping off his sixth floor balcony, Lieutenant Chiang is asked to focus on the case. Certain aspects strongly suggest that the death was not suicide, but murder. He gets his friend Kama O'Doull of Westside Physical Systems to check the building systems with a couple of DPS techs. They find signs of tampering.
This story digs into the affairs of the Kemal family. Although they are protected by the privacy laws, physical evidence of wrongdoing provides a hole into these affairs. Then information about foreign influence in Noram corporations becomes available and the privacy barriers crack open a little further. Chris Kemal has been a very bad boy.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One person's beauty is another individual's noise. Still, some forms of beauty are admired widely and for a long time.
As the title implies, this story portrays each protagonist as creating or protecting beauty in their lives. It describes examples of beauty in music, politics, the media, problem solving and family guidance. Yet such efforts sometimes conflict with each other. In reality, the sense of beauty is a product of value systems, for that which is valued is seen as beautiful.
If beauty can be ranked, then the scope and duration of each form of beauty might be the key factors. Music is an abstract and universal form of beauty, although it is an acquired taste. Politics sometimes is a quieter, but still long lasting form of beauty. The media can convey a more restricted and fleeting sort of beauty, although recordings provide some persistence.
Problem solving is probably very constrained in scope and consequence, but can occasionally have rather widespread effects, especially when these solutions create new technology. Family guidance produces the most limited form of beauty in many respects and often is the most likely to conflict with similar efforts; still, raising a family is a very widespread artform.
The author is much like Senator Cannon in at least one respect. He is married to a woman much like Luara Cornett and obviously listens to her about music. One hopes that his wife approves of the portrayal.
Highly recommended for Modesitt fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of human relationships, political machinations, and true romance.
-Arthur W. Jordin
A Brilliant Sci-Fi Thriller January 2, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is my first time reading L.E. Modesitt, Jr.'s work, and I'm blown away by this author's creative melding of art, science, commerce, and politics into a highly entertaining crime story.
Proceeding slowly at first, Archform: Beauty explores the every day lives of 5 very different individuals (music teacher/singer, police investigator, powerful senator, proficient news researcher, and ruthless businessman). The story picks up steam as the police officer investigates a series of fatal accidents, and all five protagonists are connected in some way. Yet, the investigation is really secondary for the author, whose focus is more on what our world will look like in the 2400s. Mondesitt's prognostication for our future is both somber and inspiring.
Archform: Beauty is a fascinating read for sci-fi and mystery fans alike.
Interesting ideas, mediocre writing August 7, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ultimately, there's nothing original or effective enough in "Archform: Beauty" to set it apart from the SF herd. Modesitt creates a fairly convincing world and sets up an interesting web of relationships among his narrators, but the whole effort is undermined by poor writing. Descriptions are flat. Dialogue is artificial and stilted. Future-slang is unnatural -- in some cases, practically unpronounceable. Language naturally evolves in directions that are easier to speak aloud, not harder. "Counterfeit" would never evolve into "feit" (sounds too much like "fit," and many more colorful synonyms already exist), nor "Denver" into "Denv," nor the already well-established "condo" into "conapt." Maybe I've been spoiled by Neal Stephenson, but I like my science fiction to be good writing, not just good speculation.
Superb Future Thriller from L. E. Modesitt, Jr. December 28, 2004
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
L. E.Modesitt, Jr. explores the nature of art versus commerce in this spellbinding thriller, "Archform: Beauty", which is set four centuries from now, in a world that isn't too radically different from our own. Modesitt explores such issues as bioterrorism and Islamic fundamentalism while keeping his aim squarely on the notion of what exactly is art, successfully interweaving the lives of a classically-trained singer and professor of music, an Internet researcher, a detective, tycoon and politician, as they are plunged unexpectedly into a murder mystery. All of this is told in an engaging, well written thriller which never once lost its suspense or ability to surprise. Modesitt, one of our foremost writers of American science fiction, succeeds in writing a big novel of ideas coupled with engaging characters; this is exactly what excellent science fiction tries to accomplish. This is without question a fascinating exploration of the question, "Is there in truth, no beauty?", and a brilliant commentary on the issues which beset us now in the early 21st Century.
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