Science Fiction Reviews.

Robert Reed, Marrow (2001) 

Robert Reed’s a bit of a veteran of the short-story branch of Science Fiction, having written about a bazillion of them, and although he seems to have tried his hand at a longer piece before, this is really his first book that has been widely published and given a bit of marketing. Orbit Publishing seemed to market this firmly towards the ‘New Space Opera’ movement, whatever that is, and the recently popular ‘dark’ writings of authors like Alastair Reynolds. Can Reed pull off a big success and transcend the boundaries of sub-sub-genre stagnation? Unfortunately, the answer is largely ‘no.’

What we do get a lot of is Big Ideas. We’re on a vast ship, seemingly with a degree of sentience, in which millions of alien species live, temporarily or otherwise, as high paying tourists on a never ending galactic cruise. Platoons of Captains, who live for indefinate thousands of years, play host to them, led by their Master Captain, an artificially huge woman stuffed full of electronics used for monitoring the ship. There are even a race of vacuum inhabiting mutants, evolved from rogue Captains, clinging to the outside of the hull. It’s all commendably imaginative and large, although not entirely fresh, which makes it even more dissapointing when Reed begins to slip up in his narrative.

Things, naturally, don’t stay calm for very long, and before we’ve even had a proper look at the ship or the central characters they’re diving headlong into disaster. There’s a few more impressive ideas, including his best, a metal enrished biosphere complete with golden trees and ruddy insects, but without the time to catch our breath Reed fails to make the most of these. There isn’t a likable character among the protagonists; the ones I suspect you were supposed to like are too dull to be attractive, and even the ambiguous, manipulative ones are never interesting enough to care about. This renders things a little confusing – why would a group of allegedly strong willed people follow these uninspiring, and too obviously menacing folk? As decades, and sometimes centuries, peel away without heed I found myself plowing through to get to the next Big Idea, empathising or caring about nothing else.

Then there is the prose style.

Reed is obsessed with the one sentence paragraph.

It can, like many structural devices, work wonders if used judiciously, something Reynolds has got right many times in fact. The first few times Reed uses them it sometimes works, or is forgivable, but by the time we furrow into the middle of this lengthy novel he seems to be sticking them pretty much anywhere just for laughs. That I didn’t care about any of the characters, or indeed the ship, and therefore didn’t really care about the element of danger they’re in, these attempts to imbue the narrative with weight just look cynical and, even, embarrasing.

On the plus side, Reed’s writing, when it avoids cliches, is actually quite good. He isn’t very clear when describing fast action, but I suspect he’s just gone a bit too far down the ‘disorientating readers to mirror the confusion of the characters’ road that seems quite fashionable at the moment, so at least he’s trying. Also, as I say, the Big Ideas are very good, and very, very, big, although this does make it more dissapointing when he fails to make the most of them. The ship, for example, while a good idea, only ever feels like a slightly larger version of Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine. Also, potentially interesting themes like faith and the construction of religious figureheads appear briefly, but flit out of view too quickly to offer any insights. The whole thing is really rather frustrating to read.

Maybe Robert Reed should stick with short stories, they’re probably perfect for his ideas and prose style. In a novel, however, ideas have to be grown to fruition, and drama must come from empathy, not a one-sentence paragraph.

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Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel (1954) & The Naked Sun (1957)

With the exception of the Foundation series, these two novels are probably Asimov’s most famous and acclaimed. They form a part of the ‘Robot Series,’ and feature heavy use of the ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ as a theme and backbone to the mysteries our detective hero must solve. These books are, essentially, crime novels set in a future society where humans on Earth have evolved to live in overcrowded, underground cities, uncomfortable but safely mothered by their environment; their lives only antagonised by the apparently perfect Spacers, humans who broke away centuries ago to live seemingly enlightened lives alongside robots away from Earth. The jealous enmity that Earthlings feel for their self-proclaimed superiors form the background, and most interesting part of these novels, for the crimes and the mysteries associated with them never really gripped me.

The Caves of Steel is set entirely in a future New York, entombed under the steel of the title, and it is a wonderful setting that Asimov elaborates brilliantly as we follow detective Elijah Bailey on his case; sweaty, grimy and packed with people living off yeast byproducts in tiny apartments with communal showers. Their existence is endlessly uncomfortable and selfish, but each of them loves it in a way, comforted by the walls and the busy, constant noise like babies wrapped in blankets. Bailey’s comfort in broken, however, by a shocking murder in the usually peaceful Spacer encampment; one that the Spacers insist must have been committed by a New York Earthling. Bailey is forcibly partnered with a robot, Daneel Olivaw, who cannot be told apart from a human, and with a combination of Bailey’s human instinct and Olivaw’s robotic logic they form an effective and entertaining ‘odd couple’ to solve the case. Bailey’s inherent, instinctive dislike and suspicion of Olivaw is the greatest acheivement of the novel, and the situations that result from it are extremely memorable. However, while getting to the solution of the murder is entertaining and thematically interesting; the solution itself is not particularly accomplished. It’s fairly obvious who Asimov is establishing as the culprit, even if you can’t figure out how, and the final piece of evidence is a little rediculous, but nevertheless, it’s a very good novel.

The Naked Sun sees Bailey and Olivaw reunite, but this time Bailey is forced to face his eternal fear of leaving his beloved city, and being reborn into the outdoors on a Spacer world where robots outnumber humans by thousands to one, and yet still a murder was commited, something the robotic laws should strictly forbid. The theme elaborated on here is the specifics of those laws, and again, it’s extremely entertaining and successful to watch Bailey think his way around these apparently irrefutable truths. His reaction to the naked sun is also well realised, if a little conveinient in places, and his dealings with humans who have been taught never to interract, apart from with robots, are also brilliantly conceived. Once again, however, the actual murder investigation itself is left wanting, the killer easily identified and accused as, seemingly, an after thought.

Asimov does an awful lot right with these books, but he isn’t perfect either. For starters, he is clearly very left-brained, and the way he writes humans is a little bit simplified, each character confirming to his or her role all too perfectly; Earthling humans are all as rough and antiquated as the next; Spacer humans are steralised and aloof; every individual reduced to a product of their society. Asimov treats character as a social science. Not only that, but women get a particularly short shrift, being either sexually provocative, lustful waifs, or worrying, motherly, panicy idiots. It’s an understandable shortcoming for a writer working in the early 50’s, yet still jarring for a 21st Century reader. There are other naive assumptions about the future as well; Asimov’s far-future Earth is profoundly overcrowded to bursting, but he states that it only contains 8bn people, where at last count we were already up to 6.5bn, and we’re nowhere near to moving underground. Also, a continuing use of things like glasses suggests a not particularly forward thinking future, but I suppose it was only the mid-20th century. Bless ‘em.

Overall these books are good reads and enjoyably retro sci-fi, required reading but really only for the presentation of robots and of the womb-city. The scene where Bailey is reborn into the comforting arms of steel covered New York is worth it alone. Just don’t be too dissapointed by the detective stories tacked on to get Asimov’s themes across.

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Alastair Reynolds, Pushing Ice (2005) 

Reynolds loves his big, dark science fiction, and the vast, gothic canvas on which he writes has made him one of the most popular and acclaimed writers of ‘New Space Opera,’ with it’s universe wide conceptions and zillions of characters. His books are extremely enjoyable and captivating, with many fascinating, detailed ideas, and he is undoubtedly accomplished in his style; but like most of the other authors who fit into that hastily constructed genre, he has a few niggling problems that give slight reservations. Pushing Ice is his sixth novel, although only the second not set within his Revelation Space universe, and he is beginning to iron out some of those issues, although in this novel, much like the characters he throws to the mercy of fate, for every step forward Reynolds takes another one back.

The novel begins on Rockhopper, a labouring ship built to drag ice filled comets back to the corporations who use it for fuel. We meet captain Bella Lind and her crew as they struggle with the boredom and difficulty of working in space, and in such close proximity. Their routine is broken, however, with reports that one of Saturn’s moons, Janus, has launched itself from orbit and is barreling mysteriously out of the solar system at huge speeds. Rockhopper is, naturally, the only ship in the system that can catch up with the moon before it goes too far out of range, and the crew are tasked with the mission to study it on the fly before returning home. From there, paranoia, disagreement and proximity increase tensions on board to melting point, and as the ship approaches Janus it becomes clear that their fates are being taken far out of Lind and her officers control.

Pushing Ice begins very slowly, and takes it’s time as we get to know Lind, her crew, and the operation of Rockhopper. A reader used to Reynolds’ technique of future shock might even find this opening a little tedious, but there is enough care put into the character development to grip and you soon care about these people. The tensions on board are also well constructed, and Lind’s attempt to hold things together effective emotionally, accomplishments that are new and refreshing to see in Reynolds’ work. Later, as the ship inevitably reaches Janus, however, the pace quickens considerably, which is both a relief for the excitement starved reader, and quite a jarring juxtaposition. Reynolds falls back on his chief talent; describing a dark, bizarre landscape with untold mysteries awaiting it’s new, human occupants, and his imagery is, as usual, skillfully done and very absorbing. But the increased pace leaves character development adrift, and as years are stripped away between chapters, the people we became attached to start to feel like strangers.

Later still, mysteries deepen, aliens begin to appear, strange events begin to add up to a solution decades in the making. It’s all very good science fiction; a huge canvas, great descriptions, imaginative ideas and creatures; but it almost feels like a different book to the one we started reading, and the early promise of a more emotional, tense, restrained Reynolds is broken. The conclusion to this new book is very satisfying, and in many ways surprising, another great step forward to Reynolds who has had problems closing his books in the past, notably with Absolution Gap. But again, there is a step backwards here too, as a couple of explanations don’t quite make sense, if a reader is inclined to think through them, an affliction that has never troubled Reynolds before.

The book ends on a fatalistic, but hopeful note that succesfully resonates, and I was left satisfied, but Reynolds is yet to pull off the perfect novel that I’m still convinced his talents could conceive.