by vol 25 no 09
Roughly the first half of the novel, divided into four sections, sets the scene and establishes what is at stake as each section describes a different strain of humanity in the far future. “Le Mécanisme,” the Mechanism, details a warrior society modeled in part upon Shogun-era Japan and on the Aztec Empire. Enfranchised males—with names like Hualpa, Chetelpec, Iztoatl, and Xuyinco—exist in a hierarchical, military order with three castes of females, including a geisha caste, fully subordinate to them; this dominance is maintained in part by the physically and mentally enhanced, permanent, sentient Armor in which warriors are encased. Rivalries between branches of the political and military-industrial complexes lead them to assert their hegemony over all the branches of humanity and even space itself. They believe they can do so because of a new ship they have created:
The Zero Plus returned from its first trial run, a round-trip of a billion kilometres at a speed so close to that of light that at least twelve of its engineers began dreaming of defying Einsteinian physics, a trajectory barely interrupted by two immersions in the Ban. It hadn’t exchanged, it had transduced, as only the AnimalCities knew how to do, by sliding into a link that connected two very close knots. The knots were really close, barely a half-parsec apart, and the vessel had consumed its entire load of fuel in that trip. (n.p.; all translations my own, from the Kindle French edition of Étoiles mourantes)
With it, they hope to break the AnimalCities’ monopoly on jumping through space.
The mechanisms of this dystopian society are described through the perspective of Tecamac, a young hero who wears the next generation of Armor, which—unbeknownst to his superiors—has been sabotaged by the more utopian society of the Organics. The authors’ description of the developing relationship between Tecamec and his Armor offers a prime example of the intensity and rigor of this novel:
[He had to] learn to command the most formidable machine in all of the Mechanists’ creation, a recalcitrant machine which pardoned nothing and which, for its part, must learn to use the human system that pretended to pilot it just to stay functional. Then, one morning, the thirtieth, he had to learn to communicate with the machine because the machine tried to communicate, to transcribe through intellection this personality that it had gorged upon since Tecamac had locked on the Armor. First, this consisted only of sensations, but not those that the machine transmitted to the adolescent’s senses allowing him to understand the milieu in which he circulated during his training. These new sensations resembled spectacular demonstrations as if the Armor ran its fingers across the keyboard of a new piano. Then, the machine tested different configurations, linking sensations to emotions, then refined the emotions to the point which it could find the exact nuances in the only palette it could access, spurred on by Tecamac’s personality. Finally, it assumed the form of an external consciousness and spoke [to the youth].
The spartan Mechanists, whose entire bodies, including face and genitals, are permanently covered with a reactive metal alloy called carbex, are disgusted by the biologically intense Organics but need their superior nanotechnology to develop tecamec, the prototype whose human wearer adopts its name. The Organics have also developed a form of symbiosis that problematizes notions of monadic identity through genetics and biochemistry; not only do they exercise control over their own physical self, revealed through the use of palliative metamorphosis, they also experience a certain loss of control on a regular basis. Once they reach puberty, all Organics experience the generation of symbiotic growths, which if not removed and given away can consume and take over the human personality. Having raised the excretion of goiters and tumors into an art form, the novel’s third part, dedicated to the description of this society, is thus called “Artefactions.” Highly social and cultivated but also described as vain, precious, and decadent, the illusion of utopia in this official anarchy is undermined by the revelation of a secret, governing junta and the participation of the novel’s young heroine, Érythrée, in a revolutionary movement.
The novel’s second part describes “La Fédération Originelle,” governed by a dictator who has extended his reign beyond the parameters of a normal life and refuses to accept the natural course of life after death in this society: the transfer of the personality into a cyborg “Personae.” Janos Koriana, whose official title is Charon (after the boatman of the Styx), rules with totalitarian power over the twenty-eight-world federation organized around Old Earth, the least genetically or technologically altered branch of humanity. The authors seem the least interested in describing Old Earth, focusing only on its leader and one other essential figure, the Passeur des Morts (the Passer of the Dead), Gadjio, who assists the process of transfer from a biological body into a technological one, which the authors explain as follows:
Death, as Gadjio often repeated to his rich clients, was the fate that the universe reserved to everything, including itself. Survival, in any form, was intelligence’s response to entropy. Many men found it easier to leave knowing that they had left behind them a simplified, immutable, immortal, and garrulous copy of themselves. Thus, the personae were born. At first they were nothing more than an artificial intelligence linked to an animated hologram, enriched by a carefully selected collection of memories of the deceased and a sort of primary personality form based on his or her principal character traits. Then the technology improved. Memory crystals of gallium arsenide allowed for the storage of the equivalent of two centuries of life in an urn measuring fifty square centimeters, leaving just enough space for the ashes and bone fragments.
The Charon’s unnatural obsession with life has led him to negotiate for a suit of Armor from the Mechanists; unfortunately, his plans go awry when a conflict with the Passeur leads to the division of the armor and its partial fusion with each of the old men.
Finally, the fourth branch of humanity, the “Connectées” (the Connected Ones) described in the chapters of “Symbiases,” reflects characteristics of all of these other groups. While the Mechanists represent one type of a cyborg identity with the biological human covered by the technological Armor, the Connected represent the development of the inverse of a cyberpunk society. Rather than lose their physical bodies through their connection and then insertion into a virtual world, the Connected use a caudal appendage, referred to as a Flagella, to jack in to a network that links their entire society. Their need for vast quantities of new information and for a sense of connectedness to a hive mind has become so acute that it is physical: this section’s heroine, Nadiane, suffers a horrible withdrawal when she is sent alone into space, and her ship’s AI also proves incapable of surviving on its own without the constant input and approval of others. The last described—apart from the AnimalCities themselves—this society seems like the one that the authors would most like to be a part of. While it is clearly flawed, it seems the most utopian.
These focal individuals—Tecamac, Gadjio, Érythrée, and Nadiane—will meet in deep space at the site of the supernova for a reunion of humanity engineered by the AnimauxVilles referred to as the Retrouvailles (“Rediscoveries”). Their arrival involves both instantaneous transportation by individual AnimauxVilles and two highly advanced space vessels, the Mechanists’ Zero Plus and the Connecteds’ Nexarche. However, the most scientifically “hard” passages—also arguably the novel’s most poetic ones—involve the extended description of the supernova itself.
The binary system was in the process of devouring itself. At its origin, KDT 1822+17 consisted of two neighboring red giants, but the primary star had been transformed into a Wolf-Rayet star in the final phase of its combustion. All that was left was a dense core fed by matter stolen from its massive sister star, which spilled over its Roche’s lobe. The result was an immense accretion disk whose center was occupied by the compact primary star, surrounded by wreaths of incandescent gasses. On the other side, in relation to the Zero Plus, the hot stain engendered by the impact of the disk with the gaseous current torn from the secondary star shone like the interior of a
n alchemist’s crucible.
While I enjoyed a number of Dunyach’s short stories and found Étoiles mortes a relatively compelling read, the collaboration with Ayerdhal for Étoiles mourantes allows his talent to reach another level. Its richly developed characters, particularly the female ones, and its scientific and imaginative rigor exceed that of his other works. In particular, I found some of Dunyach’s early work guilty of precisely the sins that Anglo-American critics have used to attack (and then ignore) non-English-language sf. Besides the technical problem of translations (their paucity and sometimes their poor quality), the largest obstacle for international sf to gain a wider readership in the English-speaking world remains a perception that “foreign” sf is a pale imitation of the “real” thing. A corollary notion argues that, as imitation, non-Anglo-American sf is always already doomed to being behind the curve in the genre’s developments. Sadly, this sometimes appears the case with French sf from the 1950s through the 1980s, as Bradford Lyau’s study of The Anticipation Novelists of 1950s French Science Fiction (2011) reveals. While Dunyach’s work largely exceeds in quality your “average French sf” writing of an earlier generation, his early novel, Roll Over Amundson, particularly fell into this trap. Published in 1993, it appears more appropriate to 1973 with its puerile rock star protagonist and objectification of female characters. Perhaps, though, this might be the result of the successful writer dusting off that old first novel manuscript written during his teenage years.
Étoiles mourantes, in contrast, does not disappoint, holding its own with contemporary novels like M. John Harrison’s Light (2002). But until it becomes available in English, I encourage readers to discover the relatively uncharted territory (for English speakers that is) of contemporary French sf, beginning with the many stories of Jean-Claude Dunyach now available.
Amy Ransom lives in Alma, Michigan.
Works Cited
Evans, Arthur B. “Good News from France.” Science Fiction Studies 121 (2013).
Lyau, Bradford. The Anticipation Novelists of 1950s French Science Fiction: Stepchildren of Voltaire. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2011.
Vas-Deyres, Natacha. Ces Français qui ont écrit demain: Utopie, anticipation, et science-fiction au XXe siècle. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2013.
Vonarburg, Élisabeth. Conversation with the author. September 23, 2013.
—. “Review of Nivôse et Aigue-Marine (Étoiles mortes I et II) by Jean-Claude Dunyach.” Solaris 99 (1992).
—. “Review of Les Voleurs de Silence by Jean-Claude Dunyach.” Solaris 102 (1992).
Barbara Bengels
Writing Outside the Box: Advice from Science Fiction Writers about Nurturing Gifted Children—and Their Writing
There’s a classic New Yorker cartoon showing a rather austere businessman admonishing his cat, “Never, ever, think outside the box.” This may be fine advice for cat owners (if such “ownership” is possible) but it certainly doesn’t—or shouldn’t—apply to parents of children, especially that challenging breed categorized as gifted, the ones most likely to always be thinking outside the box. It’s not my intention to define giftedness—but as the mother of three girls who were always intensely interested in diverse, sometimes bizarre, subjects (and right now I’m thinking of my daughter Jessica’s third grade obsession with slugs), I learned in various PTA gifted committees that a parent frequently is the first person to identify a child’s giftedness due to their unusual and excited way of observing the world around them. (As James Gunn was quick to point out, though, when his son sat in a chair and pretended he was the Lincoln Memorial after seeing its picture, he assumed that his first child’s behavior was the norm.)
So what, I wondered, would it have been like to be a parent of one of the science fiction writers whose work I’ve been enjoying for the past fifty years? After a particularly animated session at the Intensive English Institute for the Teaching of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, I surveyed about seventy sf writers about their childhood memories; over fifty responded, and many also spoke about the advice they would give to parents of children who are unusually curious or divergent thinkers. This included general pointers, suggestions on how to encourage their interest in writing, and finally some really thought-provoking advice on parenting bright children.
Unlike a more conventional audience, science fiction writers never questioned the value of reading science fiction and even pointed out its virtues for children. For example, John Kessel felt that “SF is good for provoking thought about big questions.” Expanding on that idea, Eileen Gunn said,
Certainly one could make a case that science fiction is even more important for the child who is not exceptionally gifted, as it could spark an imagination that might otherwise remain unawakened. For gifted children, a key benefit of science fiction may be that it often deals with exceptionally gifted characters who are deeply involved in and curious about the world around them. It provides role models, and it tells stories in which these children can see themselves.
Perhaps the most obvious suggestions for nurturing bright children were voiced by Jim Gunn: “I suspect that reading and talking to them (and we certainly talked to them a lot) are the best methods ... helping them make the most of their gifts.” (I am reminded of a neighbor who asked me why I was talking to my infant daughter when she couldn’t possibly understand me yet. It never crossed my mind not to talk to her!) Ann Zeddies and Esther Friesner stressed making sure that children enjoyed reading and being read to, though Zeddies warned that you should only “read things ... you like yourself so they won’t hear deadly tones of boredom in your voice.” Friesner felt even comic books made for fine reading and warmly remembered her dad taking her on “expeditions to the comic book store.” John Kessel also encouraged reading whatever one’s children read.
Talk to them about it, and find out what their dreams and opinions are... If something troubling to you or them comes up, challenge them. (For instance, I think that one of the most popular sf books among young readers, Ender’s Game, is a work promoting and exhibiting psychological damage
Esther Friesner said her parents encouraged her “reading from a very early age ... by reading to me and telling me stories. When I clamored for more and more stories, I was urged to learn how to read so I could have all I wanted.”
Spider Robinson also felt particularly adamant about parents’ responsibility in fostering reading as a crucial part of a child’s education:
It will do no good merely to sing the praises of literacy to our children.... We must be more devious than that: we must con our children into reading. I can offer two stratagems in this regard. The first was devised by my mother and used upon me; the second my wife Jeanne and I developed and field-tested on our daughter, who is now 32.
My mother’s scheme was, I think, superior to my own, in that it required diabolical cleverness and fundamental dishonesty.... She would begin reading me a comic book—then, just as we had reached the point where the Lone Ranger was hanging by his fingertips from the cliff, buffalo stampede approaching, angry native peoples below ... Mom would suddenly remember that she had to go sew the dishes, or vacuum the cat, or whatever—and leave me alone with the comic book. I had to know how the story came out. There were pictures to assist me. Most of the words were ones I had just heard read aloud; I could go back and refer to them, again with visual aids. By the age of six, thanks to my mother’s policy of well-timed neglect, I had taught myself to read sufficiently well that on my birthday she presented me with a library card and sent me to the library with instructions to bring home a book....
From the day our daughter was old enough to have a defined “bedtime,” we made it our firm policy that bedtime was bedtime, no excuses or exceptions ... unless she were reading, in which case she could stay up as late as she pleased. The most precious gift any child can attain is a few minutes’ awar
eness past bedtime. She went for the bait like a hungry trout....
There was one “battle” where several authors recommended parents should surrender: the censorship of their children’s reading materials. Eileen Gunn pointed out that children “benefit from having parents who take an interest in what they read, [but] who allow them reasonable privacy and appropriate freedom to choose their reading material....” Anne McCaffrey expanded on that issue: “To gifted kids who love reading, let them at it ... and do not try to limit their selections. I went through a whole period of Westerns, but since I lived on the East Coast, it was a glimpse of another style of living. One never knows when something one reads will give you a clue or an idea....” Connie Willis agreed: “Point your kids at the library and let them discover it on their own. Don’t worry about them reading good books—I read astounding amounts of junk ... but they didn’t do me any harm, and kids who love reading eventually gravitate all on their own to good books. Besides, how do you know what’s a good book? Or what kind your kid will like best?” Gene Wolfe quoted Samuel Johnson’s statement about what a boy should read: “Any books he will read, sir! Let him read what he likes, and he will find better books for himself by and by.” And, Wolfe continued, that certainly goes for girls too.