Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #221
Page 16
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Seeds of Earth
Michael Cobley
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Reviewed by Peter Loftus
Seeds of Earth (Book One of Humanity's Fire) starts with a bang. The year is 2126 and the human race has finally made first contact. Unfortunately, the species in question are tearing through the solar system like a plague of locusts, hell-bent on wiping humanity off the galactic map. Faced with inexorable foes and with little or no success in battle, Earth's leaders are forced into a desperate gamble. Three colony ships are dispatched, each to a different part of the galaxy, in the hope that humanity will survive the extinction that threatens.
Fast forward 150 years. We learn that at least one of the ships was successful in their mission, establishing a colony on the planet Darien, a world of secrets, riddled with ancient ruins hinting at hidden powers from the past. The settlers, mostly of Scottish and Scandinavian stock, have befriended the locals, a mystical race called the Uvovo.
The status quo is rocked, however, when an unknown vessel appears in local space. Humanity on Earth survived the Swarm Wars and has dispatched the cruiser Heracles on an ambassadorial mission to welcome the citizens of Darien back into the fold. The Terran government, now part of the Earthsphere alliance, has befriended several alien races and is eager to introduce them to the people of Darien. The situation quickly becomes complicated by events beyond the colonists’ control, and we realise that Earth's new allies may not be as honourable as they seem.
Seeds of Earth is billed as a take on the classic tropes of space opera, and from the first page the author's love of the genre is evident. There are hints of Hothouse, Hyperion and the Seven Suns Saga. Cobley's greatest strength lies in his ability to conjure up and relate the most striking and memorable visuals. Nivyesta, Darien's forest moon, drips with lush greenery. The sacred sites of Darien itself are lit by glowing beetles beneath starmist and purple night skies. Every single setting is rendered in remarkable detail and with an artist's grasp of visual aesthetics.
Characterization is a little less consistent. One gets the sense that Cobley had more fun with some characters than with others, with the non-human characters generally winning the draw. While it would be overly harsh to state that some of the human characters feel a little by-the-numbers, the best of the non-humans far outdo them, fizzing with humour, creativity and verve. Seeds of Earth is told from the perspective of a number of different characters and the fact that some of these are not as successful as others influences how well each of the story arcs work, to the detriment of one or two of the threads.
One problem with Seeds of Earth is the amount of info-dumping that goes on in the early stages. Much of the information given serves to provide a background for the drama, highlighting the great lengths Cobley has gone to in crafting his universe. However, the sheer amount of information and frequency of interruption, along with the frequent changes of perspective result in Seeds of Earth being less accessible than one would wish. It is not until Kao Chih and Drazuma-Ha meet, almost a third of the way through the book, that readers’ perseverance is rewarded and the story becomes as absorbing as Cobley deserves.
As a stand alone novel, Seeds of Earth promises much and delivers with varying degrees of success. The better characters really are first rate, the setting is incredibly accomplished and, once you get over the initial hurdles, it does everything a good space opera should. As the start of a sequence it is an even stronger proposition. It lays the foundations for an engaging and well thought out drama set against a backdrop familiar enough to be comfortable and original enough to satisfy those craving an inventive and entertaining read.
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The Best of Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe
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Reviewed by Rick Kleffel
China confronts the future five years at a time. UFO in Her Eyes covers only three but offers much more than just the future, or aliens, or super-science. Guo's novel paints a hilarious and harrowing portrait of China today, in a world where the future has arrived and is not yet distributed evenly, then steps back and shows us what happens when our past arrives in China's future. Guo tells her story in an ingeniously written series of interviews, spurred by the sighting of a UFO. With Silver Hill in the crosshairs of the Chinese government, the residents of Roswell can finally grab a rest.
UFO in Her Eyes is a series of official documents, presented to the reader complete with paperclips, moonscapes and other typographic inventions that create an atmosphere of self-satisfied officiousness. The novel consists of four ‘Files', each a series of short interviews with one of the ‘List of Main Witnesses (Appendix 2)'. The event that kicks off the investigation is brief but significant: Kwok Yun, making her way home through a rice field, hears a loud noise then sees a silver disc overhead. Afterwards, she finds a wounded Westerner, who she helps, and who, in return, sends money to the village of Silver Hill.
In ‘File 1: The 09-11-2012 UFO Case', Beijing Agent 1919 (BJ 1919) and Hunan Agent 1989 (HN 1989) question the inhabitants of Silver Hill about both their lives and the incident immediately after it takes place. The interview transcripts reveal a village not long out of the Stone Age, peopled with crabby, angry, illiterate peasants. Guo's prose is to-die-for direct, and as a result quite funny. Most of the villagers profess to know nothing of the incident and use the opportunity to complain about their lives. In ‘File 2’ Hunan Finance Officer 8 surveys Silver Hill a year later, as a new five-year plan begins with the intent to turn Silver Hill into a modern town and tourist destination. ‘File 3’ brings back HN 1989 joined by HN 1978 to investigate the death of a villager. ‘File 4’ follows up three years after the original sighting three years later as the future arrives in Silver Hill village, with swimming pools, cell phone factories and ‘modernisation'.
Guo's storytelling style is sparse but rich. Each interview offers a perfectly pixelated view from the ground, and from just one step up, via the questions of the interrogators. Guo knows how to create a character with a few deft stokes, with language that is quite funny to read but simultaneously poignant in its implications. The interrogators tell us nearly as much as those they question in a delightfully understated manner, while the irate villagers often curse like sailors. Readers put the pieces of China's future together as the novel unfolds, and it's not a pretty picture. Still, Guo's warm sense of humour and the comparatively light touch of her complex narrative allow readers to enjoy her raw portrait as a post-modern folk tale. It's a breezy joy to read, but Guo layers her work for a cumulative effect. UFO in Her Eyes is a powerful vision of China's future as our past.
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UFO in Her Eyes
Xiaolu Guo
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Reviewed by Rick Kleffel
China confronts the future five years at a time. UFO in Her Eyes covers only three but offers much more than just the future, or aliens, or super-science. Guo's novel paints a hilarious and harrowing portrait of China today, in a world where the future has arrived and is not yet distributed evenly, then steps back and shows us what happens when our past arrives in China's future. Guo tells her story in an ingeniously written series of interviews, spurred by the sighting of a UFO. With Silver Hill in the crosshairs of the Chinese government, the residents of Roswell can finally grab a rest.
UFO in Her Eyes is a series of official documents, presented to the reader complete with paperclips, moonscapes and other typographic inventions that create an atmosphere of self-satisfied officiousness. The novel consists of four ‘Files', each a series of short interviews with one of the ‘List of Main Witnesses (Appendix 2)'. The event that kicks off the investigation is brief but significant: Kwok Yun, making her way home through a rice field, hears a loud noise then sees a silver disc overhead. Afterwards, she finds a wounded Westerner, who she helps, and who, in return, sends money to the village of Silver Hill.
In ‘File 1: The 09-11-2012 UFO Cas
e', Beijing Agent 1919 (BJ 1919) and Hunan Agent 1989 (HN 1989) question the inhabitants of Silver Hill about both their lives and the incident immediately after it takes place. The interview transcripts reveal a village not long out of the Stone Age, peopled with crabby, angry, illiterate peasants. Guo's prose is to-die-for direct, and as a result quite funny. Most of the villagers profess to know nothing of the incident and use the opportunity to complain about their lives. In ‘File 2’ Hunan Finance Officer 8 surveys Silver Hill a year later, as a new five-year plan begins with the intent to turn Silver Hill into a modern town and tourist destination. ‘File 3’ brings back HN 1989 joined by HN 1978 to investigate the death of a villager. ‘File 4’ follows up three years after the original sighting three years later as the future arrives in Silver Hill village, with swimming pools, cell phone factories and ‘modernisation'.
Guo's storytelling style is sparse but rich. Each interview offers a perfectly pixelated view from the ground, and from just one step up, via the questions of the interrogators. Guo knows how to create a character with a few deft stokes, with language that is quite funny to read but simultaneously poignant in its implications. The interrogators tell us nearly as much as those they question in a delightfully understated manner, while the irate villagers often curse like sailors. Readers put the pieces of China's future together as the novel unfolds, and it's not a pretty picture. Still, Guo's warm sense of humour and the comparatively light touch of her complex narrative allow readers to enjoy her raw portrait as a post-modern folk tale. It's a breezy joy to read, but Guo layers her work for a cumulative effect. UFO in Her Eyes is a powerful vision of China's future as our past.
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1942
James Conroy
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Reviewed by Jim Steel
Alternate realities we expect, but alternate genres can cause surprise. In his acknowledgements, Robert Conroy states that “alternate history is a growing and very intriguing niche in the world of historical fiction.” This is Conroy's fourth novel, which, following the convention of his previous three, is named after a year of war in American history. There is a large readership for this sort of book in the SF world, but it is fair to say that the readers that Conroy is writing for are looking for different things in a book, and this leads to 1942 becoming progressively less interesting to us as it goes on.
There are other flaws, but Conroy has his strengths as well. In his introduction he effortlessly destroys the conspiracy theory that had Roosevelt allowing the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor in order to bring the States into the Second World War. Conroy is also very good on hardware and can concisely summarise a vehicle or weapon in a couple of sentences. Given that most of his readers will already be familiar with these things, maybe this is a necessity. However, when the same technique is applied to his characters, we get people who are painted in flat, primary colours. It's not a novel of character.
The turning point is the third air raid on Pearl Harbor, which never happened in our world, but so weakened the defences here that the Japanese were able to invade Hawaii. There then follows a multi-threaded adventure with plenty of rough sex, sadism and fighting. It comes on like a paperback adventure from another era, and one almost feels it should have a lurid, painted cover of a blonde in a pointy bra being ravished by a savage-eyed soldier. It soon becomes obvious that there can only be one outcome and normal history will be more-or-less resumed by the end. It is the journey, not the destination, that is the point.
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LASER FODDER—Tony Lee's DVD/BD Reviews
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