Fleet of Worlds
Fleet of Worlds
Larry Niven and Edward Lerner
Every once in awhile, I get the urge to revisit Known Space. Larry Niven’s popular future history is the kind of future I want to be reborn in, with its high technology, weird but basically non-threatening aliens, strange worlds, and off-beat humor. I am almost through all of the classic Known Space stories, but I’m a little less excited by some of his newer additions. For whatever reason, Niven seems to have lost a step in the last decade or so. His books aren’t as sharp and there is a sense that he’s coasting a bit on past glories. There’s quite a bit of glory to coast on, but still one hopes for a new milestone, one more shining tale to add to his illustrious library. Perhaps the forthcoming collaboration with Greg Benford? My hopes are up.
Anyway, I approached Fleet of Worlds with some trepidation. The latest Ringworld books have garnered mixed enough reviews that I have stayed away, but his series with Edward Lerner has promise. After all, who can resist a few hundred pages with Pierson’s Puppeteers? The Puppeteers are one of Niven’s finest creations; no matter how bad the book may be, it’s still a deeper look inside the cowardly society of advanced, two-headed herbivores. Fortunately, the book isn’t bad, and it delivers its Puppeteers in spades. (Is anyone really reading this for the humans? I thought not.)
First, a warning for readers. Nobody should start Known Space with Fleet of Worlds. There are plenty of great places to start (N-Space, Ringworld, Protector), but this is definitely not one of them. While it won’t be incomprehensible (I think), most of the enjoyment comes from a working knowledge of Puppeteers and human future history. There are a few easter eggs tucked here and there that Niven aficionados will smile at and the kind of detail and background that only fans will truly appreciate. Likewise, what you see is what you get with Niven. Anyone who doesn’t like him now won’t find reason to change that opinion, while long time fans will come away satisfied.
There are two concurrent plot lines in Fleet of Worlds that will presumably run throughout the series. The first concerns internal Puppeteer politics, opens a large picture window into Puppeteer society, and shows us Nessus before his days harassing Louis Wu. The second follows a hardy band of humans from a heretofore unknown colony that the Puppeteers have indentured for food production. The latter is far less interesting than the former, but I imagine it will have serious repercussions as the books progress. Since this book basically sets the table for 300 pages, I can only assume that the banquet is yet to come. The plot isn’t bad or boring, but it is clearly a bit of groundwork laying in preparation for something much bigger, or at least that is the assumption I have to make based on what I read.
Beyond this, there isn’t much profound analysis waiting to happen. Fleet of Worlds is a fun but non-essential addition to Known Space, written with fans in mind. Later volumes may change my perspective, but so far it is a pleasing diversion. There is a hint of possible greatness to it all, so we will have to see what Niven and Lerner conjure up next.
Rating: A mid-season, mid-table match. Likely to contain some elements of excitement and long-term importance, but probably not something the casual fan will be gripped by.
Usurper of the Sun
Usurper of the Sun
Nojiri Housuke
I am slowly working my way through the Haikasoru catalog, as quickly as the library here adds titles. Their most recent acquisition is Nojiri Housuke’s Usurper of the Sun, an expansion of three earlier short stories. The original short story won a Seiun Award in 2000, the book won a second Seiun in 2002. It is one of the first novels that Haikasoru published, and more to my taste than some of their other titles. Why? Because Usurper is the first full-on Hard SF I have read from Japan. No anime, no otaku, no giant robots, no tentacles, just a bunch of scientists and a big mysterious object. It’s probably not the only Hard SF out from Haikasoru, but it’s the only one I’ve found so far.
Nojiri mixes and matches his science throughout. His BMO is a thin ring that blooms out of Mercury, blocking an increasing amount of Earthbound sunlight on its eventual way to becoming a Dyson sphere. Earth is plunged into a catastrophic freeze as scientists worldwide struggle to figure out why the ring is there, who put it on Mercury on the first place, what it is supposed to do, and how humanity is to survive the seeming assault from the stars. The book touches on astronomy (of course), the nature of AI and consciousness, nanotech, first contact and alien communications, climatology, and a bit of the softer sciences as we watch Earth dismantle itself in panic. I have to confess that some of the discussion of introverted and extroverted consciousness sailed above my head, but I caught just enough for the conclusion to make sense. This is Hard SF, so the science is the focus as much as, or more than, the characters, but that’s kind of a subgenre given at this point.
Usurper differs a bit from other Japanese SF I have read in the general exclusion of Japan. The main character, Aki Shiraishi, is Japanese, but she spends most of her time in California, in Texas, or in space. Her interactions are also primarily with Westerners, so thematically there is very little to differentiate Usurper from any other science fiction. This is not a critique of course, just an observation. In the real world, any large scale space effort would be based in the United States as a matter of economic course, so it is entirely natural that Nojiri’s book would also spend most of its time dealing with the US, the EU, and the UN. There are however two points that stand out, though whether they are intentional or just a product of cultural background noise is not a question I am prepared to answer.
There are two responses to the aliens trying to, er, usurp the sun. Many see it as a preemptive attack on humanity, or at the very least blithely ignorant genocide, and agitate to fight back. Others frame it as a big misunderstanding and push for a peaceful first contact. Even if this is a misunderstanding in the same way that, say, the Great Leap Forward was a multi-million fatality economic misunderstanding, it is obvious that the aliens are so technologically superior that “war” would probably be more like “swatting gnats.” “Not so!” argue the militants. “We could probably get a good lick or two in. Besides, we might as well go down fighting.” The pacifists are not convinced by any of this reasoning and take their own steps towards talking with the aliens. Considering the nationality of the writer, I will give readers exactly one guess as to which countries take each position. Give up? Here’s a hint: George W. Bush had just taken over the White House when Usurper was published. (To be fair, this was pre-9/11, so the Invade Iraq drumbeat had yet to begin. Still, we Americans had been seen as warmongers for many, many years before toppling Saddam.)
The second point could be entirely of my own imagining. Midst the discussion of consciousness, there is a lot about minds focused entirely inward, uncommunicative because they either don’t notice or don’t care about anything outside. I don’t think it spoils anything too much to say that the aliens blocking out the sun’s light are doing so because they feel this way about Earth and its inhabitants (or don’t feel, as the case may be). I wonder if Nojiri isn’t offering subtle commentary about Japan, a nation often accused of being uninterested in the outside world and overly focused on itself. I could be making this up, especially in light of recent domestic media hysteria about Japan’s insularity. Still, this is hardly a new topic and I think there are certainly comparisons that can be made. Japan isn’t actively harming anyone else right now (that I know of), but how much more good could the Japanese be doing if they turned outward a little more and engaged the rest of the world? This was the message that lingered for me after I turned the last page; I probably owe it to myself to dig into some Japanese reviews of the book to see if anyone else thought so. Perhaps this is a project for later.
Beyond these messages, Usurper is pretty typical Hard SF. Lots of science, lots of talking about science, a mix of respect for and distrust of the military, awkward romance, and partially developed characters, usually engaged in science. The reader’s reaction to this book will depend almost entirely on preconceived notions of Hard SF; non-fans will probably want to skip it. Anime fans may come away disappointed unless their minds are open to a little more science than giant robots provide. Those who prefer Clarke, Benford, or Niven will likely enjoy Nojiri’s book more than other, squishier Haikasoru titles. I’m a huge fan of both first contact and big mysterious objects, so I hope that more of this sort makes it into English. I’ll be the first to read and review it when it does.
Rating: The Kashima Antlers. Clinical and efficient, they are Japan’s most successful club team.
Mining the Oort
Mining the Oort
Frederick Pohl
I had a sudden craving for a Fred Pohl story recently. I’m not sure what triggered it, but these things happen once in awhile and I’m not one to turn down such urgings. So off to the library I went and grabbed something that sounded like utterly obscure Hard SF. When the title of a novel can be mistaken for a NASA policy paper, I know I’m on the right track.
Mining the Oort is true throwback SF, nothing neo- or -eqsue about it. It was published in the early 1990s, but I was certain it was twenty years older before checking. In fact, the only part of the book that betrays it as post 1969 is the prominence of the Japanese. (Nobody really noticed the Japanese until the late 1970s. Oddly enough, this went to press in 1992, just after Japan’s Bubble burst, but before anyone noticed them spiraling into an economic morass.) The book is short, the characterization light, the plot somewhat of an afterthought, and the world and science behind it thoroughly constructed. I’m having trouble right now remembering the main character’s name, but could explain in detail how and why the Oort comets are winging their way into the book’s Solar System. A certain type of reader will hate this sort of thing.
Pohl is his usual cheery self throughout. His books generally demonstrate a low opinion of humanity, little hope for anything better than a muddled future, and a society teetering on the edge of collapse. Oort isn’t as satirical as Space Merchants, neither is it as grim as A Plague of Pythons, but this is no rosy future. The typical critiques of Anglo-American capitalism, corporatism, and our inability to get along with each other are all present. On the other hand, he also sends his main character through Martian education, with its bizarre Docility Training. This is like Japanese communitarian education on steroids, but the main character laps it up. Of course it’s easier to train docile Martians, because the harsh environment demands cooperation. Earthlings, on the other hand, basically have Angry Hour every day, where they get to call each other terrible names, wrestle out their aggression, and agree to leave all the hate in the Angry Classroom so they don’t kill each other during the rest of the day. Pohl is not subtle with his opinions.
While the plot takes a back seat to Science, the author at least has the decency to avoid tacking it on randomly at the end. While nothing actually happens until the last 30 pages or so, there is sufficient foreshadowing throughout that the reader is well aware that Something Is Happening. When things finally get underway, nobody is surprised except our erstwhile hero. I still haven’t decided how Pohl feels about him. The protagonist is technically right, and even gets to utter some oddly hopeful words at the last, but one gets the feeling that he is a naïve bumpkin, and that Pohl is fully aware of it. Still, he is sympathetic and I cheered for him, even as I wished he’d grow up a bit.
Finally, Mars fulfills its usual role, often shared with the Moon or the Asteroid Belt, as the oppressed and restive colony. I suppose there is little reason to expect anything different, but I wonder if we will find a new way of relating to the frontier by the time Earthlings finally make it off our rock. Anyone who reads science fiction knows that colonialism will only breed inter-system war; from there it is a short slide to lobbing rocks down gravity wells. Will we learn in time?
Mining the Oort is a perfectly acceptable diversion. It will never be mistaken for an immortal work, though it’s a good way to pass a few hours. It doesn’t belong on a list with Pohl’s essential books, but there’s no reason not to check it out when delving into his more obscure catalog.
Rating: Wolverhampton. A middle of the road, unremarkable team in one of the world’s great leagues.
Permanence
Permanence
Karl Schroeder
Karl Schroeder is another author of which I’ve read one major series, Virga in this case, but am ignorant of any other work. Permanence is his second novel and, if lacking some of the deft touch of the Virga books, is overflowing with the kind of mad inventiveness that characterizes that series. Schroeder uses one of my favorite tropes, the Big Mysterious Object, as the foundation for the plot, but the book is really about one of his pet topics, brown dwarf civilizations. Then, just because he can, Schroeder creates a new religion, tosses in some interstellar geopolitics, and ruminates on various first contact possibilities. He is nothing if not fearless.
Schroeder starts with the recent scientific theory that the universe is rich with free range brown dwarf stars, many capable of supporting colonies that fill the spaces between the bright stars we are more familiar with. In Permanence, these colonies are The Cycler Compact, brown dwarf worlds held together by sub-light ships that follow circular trade routes through the stars. Then Schroeder adds the Lit Worlds, with their FTL capabilities and ability to hop from bright star to bright star, bypassing the Compact. This has predictably dire economic consequences for the brown dwarf worlds, similar to the way people are choosing Tampa and San Diego over Cleveland and Detroit. The Cycle Compact was one of my favorite parts of the book, because there is a dearth of sub-light, interstellar universes out there.
The aforementioned BMO kicks off the plot, but Schroeder handles things a bit differently. If we’re going to pick nits, it’s more of the Space Hulk sub-trope at work here, though not of the “Face hugging aliens terrorizing everyone” variety. The origin, nature, and purpose of the BMO is pretty clear by the second quarter of the book; what occupies everyone is figuring out what that means politically and socially in the already unstable Compact – Lit World relationship. The BMO presents a clear challenge to the prevailing political economic theory in the Lit Worlds and offers hope to the Compact economically, but also has deeper ramifications for the way humanity interacts with the universe. This is also where Schroeder slides in NeoShinto, a religion he has pieced together that has its own mostly benign agenda.
NeoShinto, while not utterly crucial, is something that kept me engaged with the book. I suppose this is inevitable, because while NeoShinto has nothing to do with Japan, it is built on two major Japanese belief systems. It is not a religion in the Western sense, with churches, afterlives, commandments, rituals, and hierarchy. Instead, it is a vehicle for enlightenment and inner peace through meditation and an attempt to stabilize the reeling Compact. This is facilitated by kami, the Japanese word for gods, that are captured as a digitized essence. While Shinto kami reside in rivers, trees, rocks, and whatnot, NeoShinto takes theirs from the feelings generated by places. The more remote and exotic the location, the more power the kami allegedly has. Japanese Shinto is traditional animism; the gods are known to bestow favor in response to human pleas, but are not themselves the subject of meditation, nor is enlightenment a Shinto concept. Indeed, the peace through meditation part of NeoShinto comes from the Zen Buddhist tradition, which is wholly separate from Shinto, though they coexist without any contention in contemporary Japan. NeoShinto is never a main player in Permanence, but one of its kami gatherers is a viewpoint character and his beliefs flow subtly through the narrative. I have no illusions as to why I spent so much time thinking about this aspect of the book, but make no excuses for thinking that it added a deeper dimension to the story.
At something close to 400 pages, Permanence is crowded with these ideas. In addition to the above topics, he also spends some time addressing the Fermi Paradox and potential issues of alien contact. Unlike some optimistic books, the characters in Permanence are more or less resigned to the idea that the aliens in the universe are so completely alien that communication is well-nigh impossible. The groups Schroeder introduces are plenty fascinating on their own, but contact with them is necessarily infrequent. (For example, one race is photosynthetic and finds carnivorous humanity so barbarous as to be unworthy of conversation.) The hard part of having so many fascinating things to say is finding out how to say them in a concise, coherent manner.
This is, I suppose, where Permanence falls apart a little. The plot happens in the first and last 50 pages or so, with everything in between acting more as a travelogue. In fact, the switch from reader exploration to climactic action is abrupt enough that I didn’t catch up for several pages. A lot of time is spent with Michael, the NeoShinto kami gatherer. He is interesting and sympathetic, but also slow moving and somewhat tangential to the plot. (That’s not entirely fair. He is central to the plot, but he didn’t need to be. Things would have happened with or without him.) There’s so much happening and so many ideas to process that each of them feel somewhat shortchanged. This is a book that could easily have been expanded, or at the very least followed up on. For the time being, Permanence appears to be standalone, which seems like a lot of world building for not much story.
I feel like this is a quibble though. Schroeder is wildly ambitious, something I generally accord the benefit of the doubt. I would much rather read a book that swings grandly for the fences and misses here and there, than a book that is safe and predictable. The Cycler Compact is a refreshing change from the Solar System Only or FTL Ahoy dichotomy inherent in SF, the conflict between the Lit Worlds and the Compact is a logical and inevitable political development. No maniacal bad guys with death rays here. And this doesn’t even get into the different political systems involved, history of Elder Races, characters with tormented souls, etc. Permanence is Big Idea SF in concentrate. Virga demonstrates a much tighter, action-oriented writing style and tames Schroeder’s tendency to intellectually explode on paper, but Permanence is a heady hint of what he is capable of.
Rating: A defense-splitting, audacious pass met with a bicycle kick that sends the ball caroming off the post. Another couple of inches and it’s a goal of the year; as it stands, a highlight to be shown for its sheer exuberance and daring.
Throwdown! Singularity Sky vs. Lord of Light
Singularity Sky
Charles Stross
Lord of Light
Roger Zelazny
I have mentioned before that I often, through the blindest of coincidence, read books in quick succession that inexplicably share themes, despite a superficial lack of any similarity. This happens enough that I am inaugurating a brand new, irregular column called “Throwdown!” where I combine the books into one improbable review. As part of the fun is my stumbling on these crazy connections, “Throwdown!” is by necessity an unplanned, whenever it pops up kind of post. This time I’m tossing one of SF’s hottest newer voices in the ring with an acknowledged master of the art, as Charles Stross and Roger Zelazny pick apart anti-technological authoritarianism.
These two may not seem like a natural pairing. I’m sure Stross has read Lord of Light at some point, as it is widely hailed as a classic of speculative fiction, but I would not place him in the Zelazny clan were I to create SF geneologies. Stross is Hard SF, with a smidgen of zany space opera, while Zelazny is, well, Zelazny. He’s kind of his own subgenre, where New Wave meets The Sixties and casually subverts the hazy border of science fiction and fantasy. Nobody was more surprised than I when both sets of characters started arguing about the exact same things, setting up a bizarre dialogue across several decades and subgenres.
I read Singularity Sky first, so it gets to fire the opening salvo. Stross is one of those authors that exploded on the scene during the ten year break I took from SF. (High school, college, and living out of the country always conspire against reading for pleasure.) I’ve been racing to catch up since discovering him a year ago, reading things in random order as I come across them in the library. He is part of the UK Invasion that occasionally leaves me despairing that US science fiction is going the way of US manufacturing. We may have to institute non-tariff barriers lest the brilliance across the pond do the same thing to our once proud SF industry that the Japanese did to our TV sector. Sky is apparently his first published novel, but I saw little of the awkward rough edges that often populate debuts. Stross is nothing if not confident; fortunately his books live up to the bravado.
Like Vernor Vinge, his literary godfather, Stross is deeply concerned with the Singularity, that moment when either a) technological change reaches critical mass and blows far beyond what society is prepared for, b) the emergence of AI, or c) some combination of the two. In Sky‘s case, the Singularity happened once on Earth, which triggered the events that set the stage for the book, and then another Singularity happens on a distant colony planet and triggers the events recorded in the book. Said events are intensely political, because every political system we have ever tried is built on an economy with scarcity at the heart of it. The Singularity ushers in a post-scarcity economy, which explodes whatever political system is in place. Where Stross crosses the streams with Zelazny is in his target society.
The New Republic is an authoritarian semi-empire encompassing several worlds, within which there are strict rules on technological advance. Innovation breeds instability, which in turn threatens the ruling elite, so technology is carefully controlled and suppressed with the aid of a reactionary religion. The Festival, about which the less explained the less spoiled, stumbles upon a backwater Republic world, drops a rain of mobile phones on the unsuspecting populace, and unleashes a technological fever dream on feudalists and their Marxist antagonists. As the New Republic Navy scrambles to regain control, a pair of observers/agents from post-Singularity Earth tag along for the ride and attempt to influence the outcome. Throughout, the characters argue over stability, suppression, and control versus innovation, opportunity, and entropy.
Lord of Light is a very different animal. Hugo winner, respected classic, and genre bending product of the Sixties, this book has probably never been paired with a Charles Stross work before. Zelazny being what he is, I’m certain that there have been theses written about him in general and this book in particular. I doubt that I have anything new to add to a critical discussion whose page count must run to several multiples of the original book. I grabbed it on the same day as Sky during a trip to an unfamiliar library branch in town, deciding that it was high time I put another notch in the Hugo Winner tally; I even read them back to back. I almost fell out of my bus seat when, in the middle of a wild story about men who have taken on the identity of Hindu gods and oppress the colonists they delivered to a planet far from Earth, a character who had chosen to re-enact the founding of Buddhism starts debating with Brahma whether or not to encourage technical development among the plebes.
It goes without saying, or at least it should, that the authors come down on the side of Science. No gazing fondly into the mists of time for Stross or Zelazny, it’s full speed ahead with industrial revolution and goodbye (eventually) to cholera. Stross in particular is honest about the human cost of development, because there is always a cost, but neither of them see any romance in peasants grubbing around in the dirt when technology could provide them with machines, soap, sandwich presses, and other trappings of civilization. This is an obvious clue to those who can’t decide if Lord of Light is fantasy or science fiction, as few self-respecting fantasy authors would be so gleeful about leaving gallant knights, fair maidens, swords, and serfdom behind.
Aside from this shared theme, there is little tying the two books together. Stross writes a brash, fast-paced tale with a solid base of both science and political economy, plus a whiff of Iain M. Banks nuttiness. Zelazny is the poet laureate of SF, somehow packing enough story, humanity, barely hinted at history, and philosophy to last at least a trilogy, all in the word count that some authors spend in their introductory chapters. He accomplishes, without ever seeming to try, the level of literary depth that so many other fantasy authors reach for, but ultimately fall short of. They strive in rather obvious fashion to Say Something, while Zelazy gives the impression that he tossed off the chapter before breakfast. This is all important, because, as any artist knows, it is the illusion of effortlessness that elevates a work to greatness. His book is full of the Sixties, with its anti-authority tropes, pacifist moments, and the mysteries of both India and Buddhism, while Stross is plugged into the latest debates about AI, economics, and the limits of empire. In spite of this, both arrive at the same conclusion, finding consensus in a conversation they might not even realize they were engaged in. Onward, indeed, to sandwich presses.
Rating: Continuing with the Old Meets New theme, Maradona coaching the Argentine National Team, perhaps? But without the cocaine, frenetic emoting, arguments with the media, or a be-suited Slip’N'Slide maneuver after a critical goal.
Mathematicians in Love
Mathematicians in Love
Rudy Rucker
Mathematicians in Love is an utterly mad book. Hal Duncan only wishes he was this crazy. I haven’t read any other Rudy Rucker, but if this book is any indication, he is pretty bonkers. This is a good thing too, nestled between the deathly serious fantasy I’ve been reading lately; I need some madcap shenanigans to lighten the mood on my way to work each morning. (All the moreso when people are being laid off around me. Stern Vikings and emo deities are just not the way to go when the company turns south.) First of all, some background.
Math, though it turns out to be not the least bit cyberpunk, is part of my ongoing campaign to educate myself in the standard works of the subgenre. Rucker’s name is spoken with the same kind of reverence as Gibson and Sterling; my choice at the library was between a lengthy omnibus and a short romp. Considering the recent size of my library pile, I went with the short romp. The cover is pretty straight up about what to expect, so there was no shock when I found the book to be a story about two Berkley math Ph.D students rather than leather-clad hackers with mirror shades. I was, in fact, slightly apprehensive of the insanity promised within.
I needn’t have worried. Yes, the narrator and his friend are exceedingly nerdy, as most math Ph.D students probably are, but we are spared most of the coming of age angst that books about college seem to ooze with. Instead, there is wild, abstract math, dysfunctional families and friends, commentary about the banality of life in the Internet age, sidelong digs at Republicans, alien math nerds, and Scandinavian heavy metal. There is also a brilliant scene involving a common household appliance, some punks, and a precipice.
All of this is taking place in a parallel California, in the Bay area city of Humelock. UC-Humelock is the flagship UC campus, a prestigious university, and the deadly rival of Stanford. (It probably also has an underachieving football team and a reputation for crazy liberals and/or naked students.) Our hero is Bela Kiss, a Chinese-Hungarian mathematician who is struggling with his Ph.D. He teams up with his roommate Paul and their hostile advisor to create a system that predicts the future accurately. Bela’s girlfriend Alma introduces an element of entropy into their lives that, paired with inter-dimensional alien mathematicians, lead Bela and Paul to warp the fabric of space time. In his spare time, Bela is a video blogger and rock guitarist, the latter providing the vector for the aforementioned Scandinavian metal bands to invade the story.
Explaining much further would ruin the fun of the story, but there are a couple of observations I can safely make. First, this is kind of a companion piece to Vernor Vinge’s Rainbow’s End. They don’t share much in tone, but each is a look at near future California. (San Diego in Vinge’s case, and the Bay Area for Rucker.) Math is almost a cyberyuppie story, but ends up spending more time on math or rock music than the interwebs. Second, Rucker is surprisingly optimistic. I don’t know how this compares to his other books, but I didn’t expect the more or less content tone of the story. He mocks people quite freely, but in the end remains upbeat about life. This is a feel-good book, even though it’s a very quirky good feeling. Finally, I have to give him credit for the music bits. Bela’s road to stardom is a little too easy, but Rucker has a handle on the chaotic nirvana that is a good gig. (Even my most explosive bands fall far short of the rock lifestyle, but I can easily extrapolate.)
To sum up, Math is a quick, fun read, with enough below the surface to please the dour end of SF fandom. It might not be the ideal commute read, because one is likely to get weird looks from fellow passengers for various stifled snorts and guffaws.
Rating: Anytime Monty Python plays football.
Terminal World
Terminal World
Alastair Reynolds
There is a certain pleasure that comes from watching a master at work: a Brecker or Steely Dan CD, Steve Nash or Xavi directing the offense, Iron Chef Morimoto making something insane. I get this feeling sometimes reading books by Alastair Reynolds, a favorite of both the British sci-fi invasion and the Space Opera Renaissance. He is (justifiably) best well-known for the Inhibitor universe,, but does have other ideas to explore. Terminal World made waves when it was published in 2010, as Reynolds dipped a toe into steampunk, or something somewhat like steampunk, and kept his characters firmly on our home planet. No more aliens, starships (FTL or otherwise), nebulas, or beam weapons. Instead we have dirigibles, trains, doctors, some horses, and a cyborg hooked up to a steam powered calliope. I am not making the last one up.
That Reynolds is a science fiction writer surprises no logical being, but his creations never fail to. A Welshman with a PhD in astronomy and a former employee of the European Space Agency, Reynolds is the archetypal Hard SF author. Anyone raised on a steady SF diet would see this background and expect to read about competent white men rationally solving questions about a Big Mysterious Object, possibly with some awkward romantic interludes or cringe-inducing treatment of minorities. Not so fast, as my favorite football announcer likes to say. I don’t know what they taught in his astronomy classes, but the fevered imaginings that creep out of Reynolds’ PhD brain never cease to amaze me. He also has an uncanny knack for plots that peel back layer after layer to reveal whole worlds inside of what should be a small and uncomplicated box, as well as characters strong enough to somehow keep all of the insanity human. (This is no small feat when said characters are lesbian bodyguards afflicted by Tourette’s, coroners who are inexplicably growing wings out of their backs, or the aforementioned cyborg hooked up to a steam calliope.)
Steampunk is a bit of a strong term for the book, though Reynolds uses it in his own description. The word is accurate for the technology in play for much of the book, but not so much for the society or time period in question. In some ways, Terminal owes more to Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep and its Zones of Thought than any neo-Victorian tale. Like Vinge’s Zones, Reynolds’ Spearpoint, and really the rest of the world, is divided into zones where certain technologies work and certain people can live. Circuit City, Neon Heights, Steamville, and Horsetown are easily understood, descriptive names for the zones. People are wary of zonal shifts because their bodies are also affected; just like a computer stops working in a lower zone, a computer user’s cells go haywire as well. There are drugs to help people stay temporarily in other zones, but few are able to withstand repeated change.
Speaking more of the zones, why they exist, and how they change, would drift far into spoiler territory, since reading a Reynolds book is all about discovering the unknown. Suffice it to say that he arrives at dirigibles somewhat by default, but the world is flexible enough for all sorts of crazy stuff to appear. But again, all this crazy stuff is not really the point of the book. Making my way through Terminal, I figured something out about Reynolds. (Or at least I think I did. He might read this and cry, “Bollocks!”) Let’s back up a few years, to the end of Absolution Gap, an end that not just betrayed expectations for an inevitable, climactic galactic battle, but threw them absent mindedly in the composting toilet, mulched a field of brussels sprouts with them, then roasted the resulting sprouts deliciously in olive oil and salt without ever paying heed to the reader’s feelings that fertilized the evening’s dinner. How could he do this?
Fast forward back to Terminal World, where things are not quite so abrupt, but the ending leaves the characters with a purpose and some possible answers, but further from an ultimate resolution than most authors start their characters with. Reynolds writes on his website that he has no plans to write a sequel, despite the fact that in some ways the story is just beginning. What to make of this? To my eyes, it’s not the story that’s the thing for Reynolds. At least, not as we think of it, with the Three Conflicts, Three Acts, Campbell’s archetypes, and whatnot. At the end of Terminal, the characters have a road map to overcome their problems; the bulk of the book is spent learning what their problems are. The author is, in fact, world building right before our eyes, doing the same things that other authors do in advance, then hide from the reader in order to tell their story. This is, in spite of the complete departure from the usual cliches, the purest form of Hard SF. The plot is simply the characters, and the readers for that matter, learning about the world around them and finding the answers to the mysteries in place from the beginning.
I would go so far as to say that Reynolds is writing Science, as a Platonic ideal. The formulation and execution of plans is Engineering, which he finds much less interesting. Science, as an ideal, is the bold discovery of the unknown, while Engineering is problem solving the known on the way to a solution. Thus, knowing the nature of the Inhibitors is enough, showing the ensuing battle is superfluous. Understanding what Spearpoint is wins out over restoring a world on the brink. Looking at things through the Science – Engineering lens makes everything much clearer.
Setting aside rumination for recommendation, it’s time to make the call on Terminal World. Somebody, somewhere may not like Alastair Reynolds, but I can’t imagine many discriminating SF readers holding that opinion. I’ve liked everything of his that I’ve read, and Terminal is no exception. It’s a bit less daunting that the Inhibitor universe, but no less rewarding. Any serious SF fan should definitely check this one out.
Rating: Those guys that look at the football pitch and see not human beings kicking a ball, but chess-like strategies in motion.
Heavy Planet
Heavy Planet
Hal Clement
Heavy Planet is an omnibus of Clement’s best known series. It includes Mission of Gravity, Star Light, and some supplementary short stories and articles. The first is widely credited as being an early benchmark of Hard SF; the stories related to Mesklin, the strange planet where Gravity takes place, are reputed to be his most popular works. Coming to this after a run of books that push the cultural envelope of SFF, there was something comforting about 400 pages of competent, two-dimensional white men acting rationally. Clement does indeed fix the pattern for most Hard SF with these books, so how one feels about Hard SF in general is probably a good indication of how one will feel about Heavy Planet.
Star Light takes place on a different planet, but the other stories are all on Mesklin. Clement reasoned carefully through his odd creation, which orbits a double star, has an 18 minute day, and has gravity ranging from three times Earth normal at the equator to 700 times Earth at the flattened out poles. The Mesklinites are 15 inch long centipede-like creatures, the protagonist of which bravely sails the methane seas of his planet with his hearty crew of merchants. Barlennan, for that is his name, meets with space-faring humans while he is settled in for the equatorial winter, who employ him to travel across Mesklin to help them retrieve an unresponsive space probe. This is about as deep as the plot goes, since the focus really isn’t on the story, but on Mesklin and its inhabitants.
Clement’s world is a quintessential science fiction creation: brilliant, odd, unforgettable, and yet utterly plausible. Mesklin is what places like Ringworld would later be, fantastic lands that dazzle the reader, even as details of plot and character slip away. The Mesklinites too are complete creations. Little details that might go unnoticed otherwise, like their transparent roofs or lack of a jumping reflex, are carefully planned and explained. (When under 700 gravities you live, jumping will you too avoid.) All of these make Barlennan’s journeys a source of adventure and discovery for the reader too. The Mesklinites also show some traits of Clement’s ideal people. As a race, they are hardwired without feelings of panic or impatience; the Mesklinites are calm under virtually all circumstances and able to carefully reason their way through problems. Perfect engineers, though I am sympathetic to Clement’s unvoiced wish that people were a bit less flighty. However, like much of Hard SF, the invention starts and stops with the universe and its scientific justifications.
Instead of a narrative arc, all of the stories are more like a procession of engineering problems. Barlennan and his crew run into trouble of some sort, reason their way through it, move forward, find a new problem, rinse and repeat. In Mission, these are sometimes trouble with other Mesklinites. The other stories are almost exclusively physical obstacles. Clement clearly enjoys these puzzles, as he gives detailed explanations of how something happened, the principles underlying it, the equipment used to solve the problem, and the final, step-by-step solution. The reader will learn much about ammonia-oxygen reactions and varying gravity effects. There is less insight into human psychology or the meaning of life. If one is looking for a book to give to the non-SF reader in one’s midst, Heavy Planet should not be at the top of the list. It is everything critics of Hard SF complain about: shallow characterization, thin plot development, and an obsession with scientific detail.
I will admit, however, that after recent forays into near-future San Diego, magical Tenochtitlan, Ho Chi Minh’s revolution in space, and Japanese mythology, I felt right at home on Mesklin. Something about the calm, Anglo competence, the complete absence of any demands made on me emotionally or philosophically, the carefully explained alien landscape, and the problems that answered to rational explanation were like a hamburger and fries for dinner. Mileage will vary, however, since everyone has a different background. I spent my formative years buried in Hard SF and Big Mysterious Objects, so I know how these stories are supposed to work. Golden Age SF is what it is; if the reader understands this and doesn’t demand more than the story is prepared to give, nobody will be dissatisfied. Heavy Planet is essential reading for Hard SF fans, but cautions go out to those who demand a little more depth with their aliens.
Rating: The Long Ball – a staple of the traditional English game, direct and unsubtle, much derided by advocates of “finesse.”
Cities in Flight
Cities in Flight
James Blish
I’ve been reading a lot of brand new, cutting edge type stuff lately, so it felt like time to dig into something old and moldy. Enter James Blish, a name I have heard several times but never read. He won a Hugo for A Case of Conscience and put out a small mountain of Star Trek novels, but I decided to go with Cities in Flight, a four book future history. Cities is a single-volume compilation that includes They Shall Have the Stars; A Life for the Stars; Earthman, Come Home; and The Triumph of Time. Together they cover the near future (at the time, now the past) through the end of the universe, though the latter occurs just a couple thousand years from now.
The title is a reference to spacefaring cities. Blish has his scientists discover a form of gravity control called “spindizzies,” that neatly answers the problems of lifting mass into orbit. Anti-grav pretty much renders spaceships obsolete. After all, why build a whole new expensive contraption when anti-grav can just lift Los Angeles into space? (It is a bit more complex than that, but the effect is the same.) And so in place of gleaming starships, we have cities large and small careening around the galaxy. The cities call themselves “Okies,” a nod to the Oklahoma farmers that lost their land in the Dust Bowl and wandered over to California in search of work. This is something like what the flying cities do – moving from planet to planet offering labor. Tom Joad in Space, if you will.
Cities is an interesting hodge-podge. I guess future history fits well in this case, since life rarely conforms to a three act story arc and Blish seems to feel no obligation to constrain his story either. The first book takes 150 pages to give the background of the two crucial discoveries that power his universe. Today it probably would have been a prologue, but Blish was allowed to use the whole book just to explain an Earth that would soon be completely irrelevant. The second book is a coming of age story set in a pair of flying cities, starting on Earth but leaving with the lovely Scranton, PA when the city launches into space. Third is a bunch of episodes that were probably short stories. The first of these could have come in pretty much any order and show what life is like in the flying cities. The last take a sudden turn for the epic and turn the universe on its head (again). Finally there is a long and crazy practical physics problem about the end of time, briefly interrupted by a planetary crusade. To rephrase, this is not something I would expect to be published now. Any real history that has a taut narrative and carefully plotted structure is probably not good history. But I would be surprised if any teacher or mentor recommended writing sprawling, random stories with no defined arc and a new cul-de-sac every fifteen pages. Wait, did I just describe The Wheel of Time? (A good comparison might be music albums now and then. A CD now is a tightly planned, executed, and marketed musical document, whereas 50 years ago, a bunch of available cats would wander into a studio, lay down whatever felt alright, and sell it warts and all. Is one better than the other?)
Now for some collected thoughts about Cities. The world of the first book is my second consecutive review (after Falkenberg’s Legion) to start in what is now an alternate history of the Cold War. Much like Pournelle’s Co-Dominion, the West gradually falls to the USSR not through military conflict, but by degrading its own society to support the war effort. In Cities, this leads first factories, then whole cities to uproot themselves and float off into space. Near future dystopias have evolved quite a bit, especially within cyberpunk, and the bleak, grinding Cold War future seems to have gone the way of the dodo. (Or the way of the USSR, I suppose.) Young people should be forced to read a few of these so they understand why their elders lack the Gen Y and Millenial perkiness.
Besides a dated setting (which I don’t mind at all), Blish falls victim to the most common curse of Old SF: awkward and cringe-worthy human relationships. Part of it is simply a function of language. We’re going to chuckle now anytime someone says, “By Jove, you’re beautiful and I shan’t hear anyone deny that you’re made for me!” There’s not a lot any author can do about this; I fully expect my counterpart fifty years from now to write, “Nothing dates fiction writing like, ‘hey, chill out dude.’ Did people really talk like that?” There is something to be said, however, for women and men not acting like animatronic creatures from Chuck E. Cheese when emotion enters the picture. SF has a long, illustrious history of portraying women awfully, though, so I can’t lay it all on James Blish.
Finally, one other bit stands out as a characteristic of the age: economy of prose. I’ve noticed this in plenty of other books from the age, but Blish covers more time, bigger action, and grander scales with fewer words than most writers today. I don’t know if it is a reflection of editorial realities at the time, or just a different fashion, but authors long ago did much more with less. The entire Cities saga is around 600 pages, or about the length of one best-selling fantasy doorstop now. This is probably jarring to someone used to the author explaining everything, as the action will skip ahead months or years in a single page.
Looking over the article, my tone seems to be a bit more dismissive and snide that the book deserves. The dust jacket features quotes from people like Brian Aldiss and Poul Anderson; if they say something is good, it is very likely good. And Cities is an ambitious, engaging work, worthy of the praise. It doesn’t occupy a place in popular imagination like Foundation or Ringworld, but is worthy of more attention.
Rating: Kenny Dalglish. I selected a name somewhat at random from football’s illustrious past.
Halting State
Halting State
Charles Stross
This one had me by the second sentence of the dust jacket. The book opens when Scottish police are summoned to a bank robbery. The baffled cops are completely unable to understand what the victims are saying until a video replay starts. In it, a troop of orcs and their dragon fire support walk into a bank, subdue the employees, and make off with a fortune in magical blades, armor and trinkets. The bank robbery took place in Avalon Four, a popular MMORG, and the company responsible for the virtual economy wants its treasure back. The cops have only one response: call in the nerd reinforcements.
A moment of subgenre nitpicking, which I promise is relevant, before moving on. Halting State is set in the near future, involves hacking and hackers, and features plenty of cyberspace capers, yet I refuse to call it cyberpunk. Why not? After all, what else could it be? Well, the obvious answers are thematic. Halting State takes place primarily in Edinburgh, which is better known for bad food, kilts, and claymores than for hard-edged techno-noir. There is also the jaunty nature of the story, which gets more serious than pixelated mischief, but stays just one step away from silly. The bad guys are also far from typical, but I can’t really talk about that without spoiling everything, so the discriminating reader will have to take my word for it. By themselves, these reasons aren’t necessarily sufficient; Snowcrash is a seminal cyberpunk work, but is loopy and hilarious. There is more to this, though a further detour is necessary to make my point.
It occurred to me early on in the book that I was reading a companion piece to the recent The Moon Maze Game. Both are mysteries with embedded games. Both have heroes that are gamers of one sort or another. Neither are cyberpunk, despite the trappings listed above. Despite these similarities, there is no mistaking one for the other; they couldn’t even take place in the same universe. The games, of course, are different. The Dream Park series is built on a logical extrapolation of LARP-ing and the SCA. (People running around with padded swords bashing on each other, with or without a plot.) The technology that Niven and Barnes cook up enables the games to continue in the Live Action realm, with all that entails. Stross, on the other hand, takes World of Warcraft and builds out a bigger and more impressive system of MMORPGs. The effects on the respective plots are clear, but I am more interested in the cause of the divergence, as it demonstrates a clear evolution of the science fiction landscape.
Western science fiction has long been intertwined with the twin touchstones of science and fandom. Larry Niven is, if not Golden Age, at least very old, predating New Wave, cyberpunk, the Space Opera Renaissance, and whatever else has happened in the last three decades. Science in Niven’s heyday meant physics and astronomy, and fans were, well, fans. Fast forward to the new century and the scene is different. SF is still tied to science and fans, but computer science joins the traditional disciplines and fans are now likely to be gamers as well. Why is this relevant to Halting State? Considering the author and audience, I think the book is best described as Hard SF. Niven and Barnes wrote their book following the old rules of Hard SF, but with the new generation of programmers, network admins, and security wonks, I think that Hard SF is changing before our eyes. Stross points the way here, with a cyberpunk-free book full of hackers, nerds, griefers, and virtual bankers. He explains virtual economies with the same care once given to FTL drives and neutron stars.
The rest of the book is hard to talk about without wandering far into spoiler territory. I may have to say that I love the identity and motivations of the “bad guys,” but leave it at that. There is one aspect of the book that demands attention. For whatever reason, Stross elected to have three viewpoint characters, but tell the story entirely in second person. I’m not sure why this is – I suspect that he made the call because it gives the book more of a game-like feel, with the reader as player. It may also just be his desire to do something unconventional. I know we all like unconventional stuff, but sometimes the conventions are there because they work. Not writing in second person definitely falls into that category. I confess to having an irrational hatred of second person, to having threatened my former students with fire and brimstone if they slipped even the smallest “you” into their research papers, and admit that it all may be clouding my judgment, but I really wish Stross had written this in an approved narrative voice. I had to actively ignore it and subdue my irritation until the story got exciting enough to override my revulsion.
Over-reliance on the word “you” aside, Halting State has much to recommend it. Like the Dream Park books discussed earlier, readers with strong feelings for and experience with computer games will probably enjoy the read more than others, but seeking out Charles Stross seems like a self-selecting process anyway. Enjoy the ride.
Rating: Oil sheiks taking over European clubs and changing the face of football.
