Schroeder's secret weapon is that his exposition has only gotten better over the years, and in this case the exposition is matched with a nifty piece of world-building. The setting gives the book a great deal of its confidence: we are thrown into a world that seems to be zero-gravity mixed with a regular breathable atmosphere, and it's not until page 83, and a considerable amount of action, that we learn the world's exact nature, this from a character who has come from outside of it and has some perspective.
The world of Virga, as its called, is essentially a giant gas balloon, over five thousand miles in diameter, with an artificial sun at its centre—everything follows from this proposition, and any further details are always integrated into the flow of the story. So there's a lump of exposition to satisfy the curiosity of those who want to know at the book's quarter point. The other main item, just a few pages later, that lets the reader in on the secret of the world is a virtuoso passage that follows a bullet, fired in one location, all the way along its travels until an inevitable intersection with a person. It's like all that footage of people shooting into the air on the eleven o'clock news: the practice is dangerous enough on our world, but in Virga, it's positively deadly. And with this amount of action, it's going to be happening to other people too.
That stuff is almost all background, thankfully. Schroeder gets the big picture stuff note-perfect, but he also focuses on telling a story, in the best pulp tradition. So we have a hero, and the book rests on the capable shoulders of Hayden Griffin. The book opens with an attack on his town, Aerie, that wipes out of most of what he holds dear. The story picks up again a few years later: he has infiltrated the ships of the navy (so to speak) that blew up Aerie, ships belonging to a nation called Slipstream. But he is all-too-human and once he gets to know the ordinary Slipstreamers, he realizes that they are only human too. Is this enough for him to forget his vengeance? Maybe.
Slipstream, meanwhile, is facing an even bigger threat, and the Slipstream admiral, Chaison Fanning, and his wife, Venera Fanning, have planned an only-slightly-insane escapade that will give Slipstream an advantage in the coming conflict. The escapade functions partly as a tour of some the more interesting locales in Virga. Schroeder has all the possible Virgan variations worked out, and maximizes the sense of wonder with each episode. I particularly liked the escape from a principality in Candesce (the closest area to the sun that's livable) that is trying to keep them in town. I also liked the sargasso expedition: there's an area of Virga where a giant fire destroyed a civilization. No air circulates through the burned mass, and all the oxygen is gone, making it very dangerous.
But this particular expedition, which takes up the bulk of the storyline, exposes one weak spot in the book: the motivations of the main character. Now, I understand that Hayden is not a stereotypical hero, and I liked the fact that his motive of vengeance was not as pure and sociopathic as, say, an action movie hero. But I was never entirely convinced as to why he would go along with the Slipstream expedition—the book piles on the explanations, this way and that, and it's a case of protesting too much. If his decision has been a logical one, Schroeder would not have had to expend so much narrative energy defending it.
Two other characters make an impression: Venera Fanning, a strong, capable woman who is determined to make the most of her political marriage to the admiral, and Aubri Mahallon, a woman who comes from outside of Virga. Venera's plans and secret knowledge drive all of the actions of the Slipstream fleet, and she's a forceful presence at all of the key moments in the book, just as much as Hayden. In a more simplistic book, she would form the opposing binary of the protagonist/antagonist split, against Hayden. But Schroeder treats Venera's deviousness (and occasional bursts of murderousness) with an unusual dryness, as if she is only a logical outcropping of the social structures around her. More on that in a minute.
Aubri is an enigma for most of Sun of Suns, for the very good reason that she has some kind of chip or trigger implanted in her head and she simply cannot reveal her mission. She was exiled into Virga by the world outside, which is controlled by a culture called Artificial Nature. I won't say more about Aubri or Artificial Nature, but it's worth noting that her background is part of a lineage in science fiction where an advanced culture loses track of reality and becomes enervated and essentially self-destructive. See Greg Egan's Diaspora, Charles Stross’ Accelerando, and Schroeder's own Lady of Mazes.
The front cover proclaims this Book One of Virga. Virga is a very promising setting, so Schroeder can go in any number of directions with this. Especially since the first adventure is largely self-contained: some of the characters get away, some battles happen, but the main storylines are wrapped up. The immediate sequel, Queen of Candesce, is on bookshelves soon—Schroeder has been busy—and it follows the adventures of Venera Fanning. A ruthless pragmatician like Venera has already shown that she can tear through the pseudo-medieval power structure of Virga like nothing, so this promises to be an equally interesting and exciting book, with a definitive shift in tone. The bar is set quite high!
* * * *
Blindsight, Peter Watts, Tor, 2006, 384 pp.
* * * *
I guess the easiest way to describe Blindsight, the latest novel by Peter Watts, is to say that it's the exact opposite in nearly every way from Widdershins. De Lint tries to offer reassurance that things can work out and that there's hope, and also tries to give us some very familiar characters to spend some time with. Whoo boy, Watts has no patience with anything like that. The universe doesn't hate us, per se—more that life exists in an impersonal universe and the more we can comprehend that, the easier it is to deal. And as for characters, Watts pushes that as far as it might be possible to go in the direction of unfamiliarity. The antagonists have approximately zero similarity to human intelligence (not to reveal any big secrets!) and the narrator has had half of his brain removed, which means that a main challenge in understanding the book is to figure out how far away from human the narrator actually is.
Ironically, a lot of the plot seems like window-dressing, and the book itself rests on its characterization. Yes, the characters are not familiar, but I find when I'm thinking about the book, I have a one-line summary of the plot, but that the list of characters is where Watts has focused his energy. In a weird way, it entirely serves Watts’ point to locate the scientific and philosophical speculation within the fleshy bodies of the protagonists.
The plot, then, briefly, before moving on to the characters. There's another big dumb object, but in this case, it's an alien spaceship heading towards Earth, possibly with hostile intentions. An existing space mission is diverted to investigate. Hilarity doesn't ensue. In fact, first contact is when the deaths start.
As I mentioned, Blindsight is narrated by someone with half a brain: Siri Keeton had the medical procedure done as a child to save him from a form of epilepsy. He is alive, quantifiably, but is he part of society in any meaningful way? We get some flashbacks to his previous life experiences, including a relationship that he messes up spectacularly. But he simply doesn't have the ability to act “human"—he's modelling the processes of socialization and empathy with whatever got stuck in the empty half of his skull. If we consider this as a literalization of the way that we are alienated from each other, it's cheeky and devastating in equal measures, and Watts plays it to the logical extremes. A finely judged literary performance, but still one that repels as much as it attracts.
Four other characters are on the ship, none of them particularly human. There's a soldier named Amanda Bates who has her mind pretty much distributed through drones and other military devices. There's a scientist named Isaac Szpindel who is also augmented through mechanical and technological means. A linguist named Susan James has a brain that has been tampered with just as severely as Siri's brain, but this time for the functional purpose of splitting hers into four separate personalities. Supposedly it helps her on the job.
The fourth character is the ostensible captain, Jukka Sara
sti. He's a form of human that has been brought back from extinction—the vampire. Watts has fun with this one, but he never cracks a smile. This is no pop culture cheesefest or romance novel wannabe, like most manifestations of the vampire in television or books. The captain is the least squeamish and sentimental of the bunch, which is a hard feat to pull off, and just because the other crew members see how he is pushing them around like pawns on the board doesn't mean they can do anything about it.
So a narrator that demonstrates to us the futility of human contact (or human contact as a taunt of the cold impersonal universe just before random events squish us all like ants), a crew that has desperately thrown humanity aside and still discovers that the gesture is not enough, and a first contact scenario that goes further to define our very small status in the ultimate order of things ... Apparently we are an unfortunate detour in the process of evolution—lovely stuff!
Having said all that, I have a great deal of admiration for Watts. He has the courage of his convictions, and he doesn't back down. His voice is always consistent, always taking the presuppositions that the rest of us pay lip service to, and taking them to their logical conclusions. If science fiction sometimes succumbs to happy myths to make things easier for the reader, Watts has no patience for that crap. However, I'm not sure if I could handle it if every writer was like Watts! It's a noble thought experiment, this book, and science fiction is clearly his home, but we all still have to get through our days somehow. That's why I like a diversity of books, like this most recent batch of Canadian volumes.
* * * *
James Schellenberg lives and writes in Ottawa.
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Rarely do any of us sit down before a table of facts, weigh them pro and con, and choose the most logical and rational belief, regardless of what we previously believed. Instead, the facts of the world come to us through the colored filters of the theories, hypotheses, hunches, biases, and prejudices we have accumulated through our lifetime. We then sort through the body of data and select those most confirming what we already believe, and ignore or rationalize away those that are disconfirming.
—Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things
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Freya's Flight by Andrea McDowell
"Are you ready, dear?” said Bae, dressed in her priestess robe of red, white and grey feathers, as she entered Freya's room. She found Freya seated on the edge of the stone bench that was also her bed, so worn in the middle by centuries of sleeping girls that it more resembled a bowl.
Freya exhaled loudly. “Yes. No. Yes."
Bae laughed. “You sound like I did. Come on then."
"Wait,” Freya said. Her voice was loud and strained. “Wait—how do I—how do I do this?"
Bae smiled gently. “You'll know when the time comes."
Freya's stomach clenched and cramped, and her head felt curiously light, as if it were detached from her body. The sharp light angling steeply through the high narrow window in the stone wall made everything seem queer this morning, slightly off. “What if I fall?"
Bae came forward and put a hand on her shoulder, then sat beside her and gave her a hug. “We are all scared at our flying ceremonies. I was."
"Is there something—should I—am I supposed to drink something?"
"What, like a magic potion?” Bae laughed. “No, dear girl; it's time to go. They'll be waiting."
Freya rose and followed Bae from the room and down stone hallways rutted by centuries of feet, lit by flickering sconces, and scented by ages of smoke and incense—a scent so familiar she no longer noticed it. They walked up the stone stairs, the centre as sloped and smooth as a ramp. Freya put a hand to the wall to steady herself. Bae led her through the double stone doors to the entrance of the labyrinth, a maze of sumac, maple and shrubs that almost looked like a forest from the outside. Branches intertwined several feet above their heads, but the paths and walls were as smooth and well maintained as stone, though here and there fresh green shoots showed where new branches were likely to grow across the path. Robins and finches sang and their wings flapped loudly above them, hidden in the trees, but their own steps were noiseless on the sandy soil. She saw the impossibly small, spotted blue shell of a robin's egg and stopped to get it.
"We can't stop, my dear,” said Bae, still walking.
"I'm sorry.” Frey hurried to catch up. “May we speak?"
"Yes."
"May I ask you questions?"
"Yes, but I might not be able to answer them."
Freya followed silently for a minute. “I don't know how to fly."
"You will."
"But what if I don't?"
Bae did not reply—the answer was obvious: She would die.
"Can't someone tell me?"
Bae sighed. “No, dear; if you don't see to the heart of this mystery yourself, you will fall."
Freya's hands balled into fists; she relaxed them. “I saw—two year's ago, I saw Scarlet.” Scarlet had been her best friend Surilyn's older sister, third eldest in a house full of girls. Their mother, a hard and angular woman named Ada, unable to provide a living for them all, had sent Scarlet to join the Huntress’ Order in the hopes of eventually gaining influence with the Queens. It had been an open secret that Scarlet had not wanted to join, but had followed her mothers’ ambitions. Ada had repented bitterly since then, and blamed the Temple for what followed. “It's all politics,” she'd spit whenever given the chance. “They knew my Scarlet would be Head Priestess one day, and couldn't stand to have a mere merchant's daughter in the post. Oh no!"
"That was a great tragedy,” said Bae.
"Scarlet's mother had a feast laid out,” Freya said. “Sponge cakes, ice wine, peaches, pastries. We were all there, eating and drinking and laughing, waiting for her to fly. And then she didn't.” Freya remembered Scarlet climbing the steps of the Temple, a distant small figure in a blue robe trimmed with black feathers. She jumped quickly and fell too fast; Freya would never forget Surilyn's sharp indrawn breath or Ada's agonized cry, how she had fallen to her knees in the street, as they watched Scarlet fall, her blue robe snapping around her. When Ada heard that Freya was planning on joining the Order, she sent a grim card of mourning to Freya's mother. “In deepest sorrow on your daughter's death,” it had read. Freya's mother had laughed and shrugged it off, though she was obviously uncomfortable.
"Why did Scarlet have a Flying Ceremony if she wasn't Called?” Freya asked.
"She was Called."
Freya stumbled on a slightly exposed tree root. “But if she was Called, why did the Goddess let her fall?"
"The Goddess didn't let her fall."
"I don't understand."
Bae said nothing. Freya shivered in the shady heat. “Do we have much farther to go?"
"No."
Her heart jumped. “I'm not ready.” Her voice was too fast.
"You will have all the time you need at the top."
They walked on in silence, until at last they left the labyrinth. Before them the broad old granite stairs of the pyramid angled sharply up. Freya gasped—it did not look this steep or high from beyond the Temple grounds. Bae walked inexorably on and began to climb the stairs. Freya followed.
The Temple was built in two parts: the underground, which had been carved into the granite bedrock, was where the initiates and novices lived. There was no way to wire it with electricity, or to put in pipes for plumbing, so one lived in it almost exactly as initiates had thousands of years ago. Most people were unaware of the existence of this ancient stone warren—they knew only of the granite, sodalite and quartz pyramid built on top.
The visible Temple, the pyramid, was immense and nearly as ancient as the stone caverns and hallways underneath it. Its base was broad and the slope shallow, which was why it looked less tall from beyond the temple's generous overgrown grounds. However, it was nearly as tall as one of the newer skyscrapers, almost twenty stories, and built within of grey granite with sculptures
and facings of sodalite and windows of quartz. When Freya was a young girl, she had watched the priestesses step from their windows and float up or down. The pyramid had seemed like a distant mountain with feathered dragons flitting about it all day and night, the quartz catching the sun.
There were hundreds of gods and goddesses worshipped in the city, and each Order had its own power—a gift bestowed by its deity. But none of them seemed to Freya as magical as flight, not even the fire-dancers of the Love God. Back in her comfortable feather bed in her mother's mansion she had often drifted off to sleep, wondering what flight was like—floating, like a leaf? Flying, like a bird? Or like an insect? Drifting like dust motes?
At the moment, trudging up the side of the pyramid like an ant up a mountain, it felt like none of these. The sky was an oven; the sun baked Freya's shoulders through the thin cotton of her dress. Her breath came in short gasps. Sweat ran down her face and made tracks in the silvery powder. “Bae, I think maybe ... we should have had ... some lessons ... in stair-climbing."
Bae laughed shortly. “I thought so too. But after ... my Ceremony ... I never climbed again ... Well, except ... for others’ Ceremonies."
Each step was broad and took three steps to cover; Freya fell into a patterned gait, step-step-step-stair, and it began to feel as if it would never end. She almost hoped it wouldn't, this day she had waited for her whole life—the day she would become a priestess, or die. The day she had had to beg her mother for, plead with her father for, and defend herself against her whole family for.
Well, not her whole family. Her younger brothers Second and Third had been excited. Third, only ten years old, would come into her room and bounce on the bed. “It's thirty days until you leave,” he'd say. “Do you think Mum will let me take your room over?” Second would roll his eyes. “I'll get it,” he'd say. “I'm older than you.” Then they'd have a passionate discussion about whether the lack of any male High Priest was really because the Huntress never called men to it, or if there were politics at play, until at last Freya would become so agitated that she'd shoo them both from her room. “I have to pack, you know,” she'd say. “And for goddess’ sake stop listening so much to your brother!"
Challenging Destiny #24: August 2007 Page 13