| On Books: Peter Heck |
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TALES FROM EARTHSEA
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Harcourt, $ 24.00 (hc)
ISBN: 0-15-100561-3
Le Guin’s four previous Earthsea novels–a series that began with young readers in mind, but ended with a book very much aimed at adults–are one of the modern landmarks of the fantasy field. Now, with a new Earthsea novel in the works, Le Guin has collected five shorter stories set in that universe, all of them written since the appearance of Tehanu, which the author originally thought was going to end the series. While revivals of a popular series often disappoint its original fans, these stories are likely to have the opposite effect.
Earthsea is a world where humans live on a large archipelago in a world-wide ocean. The ability to wield magical power is a common, if not universal, gift among humans of the islands–and among the dragons who occasionally raid them. The first three books concerned Ged, a student and later a master at the magical academy on the isolated island of Roke. The doors of the institution are closed to women, who must find their own magical abilities without the help of the master wizards. That discrepancy became a significant theme in Tehanu, and returns to the focus in the final story of this volume.
Le Guin’s story-telling voice is perhaps most clearly marked by her constant awareness of the things of everyday life. Earthsea is a world where wizards keep chickens, and gather the eggs; where time is measured by the flowering of trees, and where country people have names like Otter, Silence, or Dragonfly. The simple surface of her stories grounds them in a firm reality that for most of us modern-day town-dwellers is already exotic–yet at the same time commonplace and calming. Then, when the real magic breaks loose, the impact is all the greater.
The stories here are presented in order of internal chronology. The earliest, and longest tale, is "The Finder," which takes place three centuries before the first of the novels; the latest, "Dragonfly," after the end of Tehanu. The book concludes with a brief but useful "Description of Earthsea," detailing the peoples of the islands, and their languages and cultures.
While all the stories are worth the price of admission, I was most impressed by "The Finder." The greater length allows Le Guin to build the world more fully here; the story benefits as well from its plot, the tale of a young wizard coming into his full powers. "The Finder" lays the groundwork for readers who may not remember all the lore of Earthsea–although the story takes place at a point when much of the traditional lore has yet to be established.
The fourth story in the book, "On the High Marsh," is a look at Ged, the protagonist of the original Earthsea books. Here he comes into a backward village and takes on an unglamorous but necessary task, exemplifying the spirit of subordination of self to community that runs through much of Le Guin’s work. The final tale, "Dragonfly," follows a young woman who is brought to Roke by a young wizard intent on a prank–that has consequences far beyond what he has foreseen. The author describes the story as a bridge to the next novel. This information will whet the reader’s already well-honed appetite. While you’re waiting, these stories ought to keep you happy. |
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SHIP OF FOOLS
by Richard Paul Russo
Ace, $12.95 (tp)
ISBN: 0-441-00798-8
Russo is probably best known for his "Carlucci" series–noir SF detective stories in a near-future San Francisco. This one’s a change of pace, a far-future SF novel set on a generation starship, the Argonos.
Not surprisingly, Russo’s interest in the grittier side of society remains at the center of his vision here. The starship is as big as a good-sized city, with its share of malcontents who have long since lost any say in the larger issues that face the shipboard society. Much of the plot involves tensions between diverse elements of the starship’s power structure, in particular Nikos, the autocratic captain (whose lieutenant, Bartolomeo Aguilera, is the novel’s narrator) and an extremely powerful–and largely corrupt–church. Unsure whether he wants to cast his lot with any of the factions, Aguilera is finally forced to act by a series of life-and-death decisions that concern the entire ship’s company.
The crisis arises with the discovery of a formerly inhabited planet. Not having made a planetfall in fourteen years, the ship is desperate for certain vital supplies. But the planetfall ends in horror when the supply party (including Aguilera and Father Veronica, a priest who has befriended him) finds evidence that the inhabitants have been systematically tortured and murdered. The ship’s officers, spooked by the discovery, make an unusually quick departure. This sets off an attempted rebellion among the passengers, many of whom are fed up with shipboard life and wish to be put ashore on the planet. The officers quash the rebellion and throw the ringleaders–including Aguilera–in prison.
His imprisonment lasts nearly a year, in almost solitary confinement, until a new crisis arises. The ship discovers an enormous derelict spaceship, and in the process of exploring it several crew members are killed by what appear to be booby traps. With a difficult decision facing the ship, Aguilera is released from prison to help the captain decide what action to take: continue the exploration or leave the enigmatic derelict behind. As it turns out, they have fewer choices than they think.
As in the Carlucci books, Russo uses the extremes of human experience to explore central moral issues. The result is a strong novel by a writer who has been doing fine work for years. Russo is overdue for a breakout book; maybe Ship of Fools will give him the larger audience his work certainly deserves. |
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THE SECRET OF LIFE
by Paul McAuley
Tor, $25.95 (hc)
ISBN: 0-765-30080-X
Biotechnology is the key science in this near-future thriller. A Martian organism is accidentally released in the Pacific ocean. Soon the slick (as the rapidly growing organism is known) begins to threaten the entire ocean biome. Its threat is made more dangerous by its ability to evolve defenses to the various poisons arrayed against it. No longer able to keep the menace secret, the U.S. government decides to send a team of scientists to Mars to verify its origin and seek a means of containing it.
Mariella Anders, an expatriate Scottish biologist, has been waiting half her professional life for this opportunity. A maverick who refuses to play along with the corporate entities who rule Big Science in the 2020s, she almost immediately butts heads with Penn Brown, a scientific power broker in the employ of Cytex, a biotech multinational. At the same time, radical Greens attempt to recruit her to their cause. Committed to finding out the truth, Mariella refuses to sign on with either side–until Brown traps her into a security breach, then faces her with a choice between signing a Cytex contract or being bumped from the mission. Not wanting to miss the chance at Mars, she signs.
The middle third of the book takes place on Mars, where Mariella is part of a mission to the North Pole. After a series of violent episodes, she returns to Earth on a hijacked Chinese space ship, bringing samples of the Martian organism to a Green underground base in Mexico, whence she will lay the groundwork for breaking the government/Cytex stranglehold on the knowledge inherent in the organism’s genome.
McAuley manages very effectively to interlace a hard-SF surface with a romantic anti-establishment viewpoint. Mariella is an appealing protagonist, who combines a burning commitment to the truth with a refusal to play by others’ rules. The ride is so much fun that it seems almost a shame to note that most of what we see of earthside society could have just as easily been set in the 1970s–dope-smoking back-to-the landers, uptight corporate baddies, ruthless third-world guerrillas, and so forth. There are a few surprises, but this is at bottom a very clear-cut good-guys/bad-guys story–and there’s not a lot of question who the good guys are. Throughout the novel I could figure out who was on the right side by looking at their taste in clothes or music. Mariella likes old-time country blues. . . .
On the other hand, McAuley has a better eye for American culture (both official and underground) than many of his British compatriots, and the scenes on Mars are convincing and well-paced. A solid SF adventure, with enough cutting-edge science to raise it above the pack, and an engaging protagonist. |
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MANIFOLD SPACE
by Stephen Baxter
Del Rey, $24.00 (hc)
ISBN: 0-345-43077-8
Baxter takes Reid Malenfant, the lead character of last year’s Manifold Time, and throws him into a different universe for an adventure that takes him to far worlds and confronts a major threat to the continuation of human life. In other words, this is galaxy-rocking, sweeping adventure, with the fate of the entire human race at stake, and plenty of scientific wonders to anchor the entire structure to reality.
The ride begins with the discovery that some entity is at work in the farther reaches of the solar system, strip-mining the resources of the outer worlds. The predictable human reaction has to be reined in by the fact that nothing we can do is likely to affect the poachers, dubbed Gaijin by Nemoto, the Japanese astronomer who first detects their presence. But worse is to come, with the discovery that the Gaijin are only the first wave of invaders–and that the successive waves plan to bring about the total destruction of the sun.
This sets off a long-term struggle to find what can be done to save the human race. An astronaut nearing the end of his career, Malenfant travels to the edge of the solar system, where he discovers a gateway connecting him to the Gaijin’s previous home system. This begins an odyssey across the galaxy, visiting system after system to see the damage wrought by the aliens. He returns to Earth at increasingly long intervals, taking other human observers with him, and using the time dilation effect of relativistic travel to extend his life beyond all expectations.
Meanwhile, on the Moon, Nemoto has begun her own secretive research program, looking for a way to avoid the apparently inevitable. It is already clear that even the Gaijin are so far beyond our technical capabilities that opposing them is futile. But that doesn’t stop Nemoto–or Baxter, who has clearly inherited the super-science mantle of his Golden Age forebears.
The climactic scenes are effectively built up, the saving coup is convincing, and there are plenty of far-out wonders along the way, from the terraforming of the moon to the evacuation of Earth. The ending is as exciting as anything in Doc Smith. If you thought they didn’t write that kind of stuff anymore, here it is–updated and as much fun as ever. |
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WHAT IF OUR WORLD IS THEIR HEAVEN? The Final Conversations of Philip K. Dick
edited by Gwen Lee and
Doris Elain Sauter
Overlook, $26.95 (hc)
ISBN: 1-58567-009-X
The cult of the late Philip K. Dick persists in this rambling collection of interviews taped a short while before his death. Whatever your opinion of Dick and his work, you’ll find something here to confirm it–and, likely as not, something else to challenge it.
The interviews took place in early 1982. Dick was bathing in the glow of the imminent release of Blade Runner, the film version of his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Not surprisingly, the film (which Dick had not seen in its entirety) and the book serve as one focus of their discussion. The other focus was his forthcoming last novel, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, a "mainstream" work based in part on maverick Episcopal bishop James Pike, a friend and spiritual mentor of Dick.
Dick’s thoughts on these subjects–and various others–are transcribed pretty much verbatim from the tapes, with a bare minimum of editing. What is immediately evident is that Dick was not so much a conversationalist as a monologist; the interviewer often gets only a word or two in edgewise before Dick is off on another page-long riff on whatever subject has caught his interest. The results are both fascinating and frustrating. As Larry Niven once observed in the course of an interview, talking is always first draft. And Dick is definitely winging it here.
What comes through first and foremost is his enthusiasm about almost everything that comes to his attention. Not just the film, or the new book–anyone not half dead would be expected to show considerable enthusiasm about those. But Dick goes on at length about religion, music, writing, cognac, ex-wives, the publishing industry, mysticism–making connections at blazing speed. At one point, he outlines the book he’s thinking about writing next–one that combined his fascination with music with the transplant of an alien mind (from a race unable to hear sound) into a human being’s brain. Reading his description, one wishes he’d gotten the chance.
Although it might be unthinkable to make editorial changes in Dick’s comments, the book could use a few footnotes on Dick’s numerous references and allusions. These are frequent: some learned (to Josquin Deprez or Leucippus), others to people and events in the author’s own biography that few of us are likely to get. Nor should the editor have been afraid to correct Dick’s occasional factual errors (for example, his almost-right description of a Golden rectangle). Dick may have been winging it, but readers should have the benefit of the editor’s research.
An extremely interesting portrait of Dick, full of fascinating insights. But it is the work of his admirers, not of objective scholars, and has both the strengths and weaknesses that entails. On balance, this is a book that will most reward fans and scholars of Dick’s work; others would be better advised to look at the man’s own writings, especially the ground-breaking novels he turned out so prolifically during the 1960s. |
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THE BOTANY OF DESIRE: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World
by Michael Pollan
Random House, $24.95 (hc)
ISBN: 0-375-50129-0
The human race has spent a fair amount of its history growing and modifying plants to fit its needs. Surprise: all along, the plants have been encouraging us to meet their needs, as well. Pollan, whose botanical essays have appeared in the New York Times magazine, uses apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes to show us four different ways the plants have made themselves indispensable to humans. Along the way, an alert reader can get a clear picture of the state of agriculture and botanical science in the modern world.
Pollan gives us the history and lore of the various plants he discusses: for example, the career of Johnny Appleseed, or the Dutch tulip craze of the early eighteenth century. It may surprise many readers that "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" is a relatively modern marketing slogan. Until the rise of the temperance movement at the end of the nineteenth century, most apples grown in this country were destined for conversion into hard cider. (Johnny Appleseed got most of his seeds from the waste dumps of cider mills.) Nor do apple seeds breed true–each seed is a genetic mix, likely to produce fruit different from that of its parent tree. (Commercial varieties are propagated by grafting.) So Johnny Appleseed was not just planting orchards; each of his trees was a genetic wild card, potentially a completely new variety of useful fruit.
A theme that recurs throughout the book is how far modern varieties of these useful plants have diverged from their wild ancestors. The ur-potato is a poisonous weed that still grows on the fringes of cultivated fields in the Andes; the Incas, who first domesticated it, raised dozens of varieties tailored to different mini-niches in the mountainous environment. Nowadays, it is difficult to find more than two or three varieties in your local supermarket–and by far, the most widely farmed variety is the Russet Burbank, prized by fast-food chains for its ability to be cut into perfect fries.
But this loss of diversity invites disaster–the Irish potato famine, Pollan observes, was in part the result of the dependence of Irish farmers on a single vulnerable cultivar. Apples, too, are sold in only a few highly profitable varieties, the offspring of lucky genetic accidents that produced unusually tasty fruit. On the other hand, today’s tulips are far less dramatically colored than the bulbs that commanded enormous prices at the height of the tulip boom–most of which achieved their exotic flame-like color patterns because of a virus that has been eliminated from the species.
Pollan combines a winning style, a broad range of research, and an eye for the telling detail. This look at the interaction of plant and human reminds the reader that, far from being the master of nature, Homo sap remains very much a part of it–despite all our science and technology. We play a role not much more exalted than that of the humble garden bee. Recommended. |
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