| On Books by Peter Heck |
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IMPLIED SPACES
by Walter Jon Williams
Night Shade,
$24.95 (hc)
ISBN: 9781597801256
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Walter Jon Williams, who has written everything from sea-going historicals to far-future space opera, turns his hand to a genre-stretching adventure. The story is set in a future in which the human race has decided to take full advantage of the ability to carry on a virtual—and all but immortal—existence. The trouble begins, predictably enough, when someone decides to subvert the status quo.
The novel starts with the protagonist, Aristide, wandering across a desert world, accompanied by his faithful talking feline companion Bitsy. Soon they enter a caravan-serai, where several caravans are stalled by news of a powerful bandit coalition preying on anyone who ventures forth. With a few clever words and suggestions, Aristide convinces the assembled merchants and their guards that safety lies in numbers, and they set out in a well-armed group. They meet and defeat the bandits and their masters—strange “priests” who cause their victims to disappear from the world.
By that point, several things have gradually become clear: the world on which the story so far has unfolded is a sort of role-playing game scenario. Aristide has powers beyond what anyone else on the world can control. The “priests” are agents of some outside power that has designs on the entire larger civilization of which this world is one small enclave. Bitsy is Aristide’s personal link to a giant supercomputer. In short, instead of a medieval fantasy world, we are in a post-singularity world, and its very existence is about to be put to the test.
Aristide returns to his home base, a megalopolis that is the center of Earth’s government. Here we begin to learn the real dimensions of the problem—and of the universe in which it is set. The “priests” are sending their victims into a pocket universe with the help of tiny wormholes, a feat only possible if they are being backed by one of the ten Jupiter-sized super-AIs that orbit the sun. Aristide recruits help, including Daljit, a woman who knew him under his former name Pablo.
Aristide and Daljit devise one method after another to take on the mysterious villain who has taken over the AI—only to find their every move countered. The enemy strategies include everything from a plague of zombies to an insidious scheme to reprogram everyone upon their rejuvenation following an accidental death.
Eventually the conflict breaks into all-out superscience warfare, on a scale that would’ve made an oldtimer like Edmond Hamilton proud. With the solar system expanded to many times its present size by the addition of pocket universes maintained by the controlling AIs, the scope of action is impressive—as are the weapons deployed by the two sides. At the same time, Aristide and the villain carry out their conflict on a one-on-one level, with genuine ferocity.
In short, Williams plays with the possibilities of a post-Singularity society and shows it can reproduce almost all the favorite tropes of SF and fantasy, from RPG fantasy to space opera to monster movie. Add on a healthy dose of irony, often in the form of Bitsy’s comments, and a critique of the joys of virtual living from the mouth of the villain, and you have not just a rip-roaring adventure, but a thoughtful look at larger issues.
All in all, the author is clearly having fun. So, I suspect, will most readers.
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THE COMMONS
by Matthew Hughes
Robert J. Sawyer Books,
$24.95 (hc)
ISBN: 9780889953895
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Matthew Hughes, whose sophisticated adventures remind many readers of Jack Vance, here turns his hand to an original idea: a group of researchers who enter and explore the collective unconscious, known as “the Commons.”
We first meet Guth Bandar as a student on a research project with his faculty advisor. The two of them travel to a distant planet where, according to reports, a tourist attraction has sprung up around the Bololos, quasi-bovine natives who can apparently be made to act out tales from the human Commons. This is more than a curiosity to the Institute scholars; it may be the first example of the archetypes of one species being transferred to the minds of another.
At first, this is amusing—the tourists come flocking. Then the Bololos take on the nature of conquering hordes from human legend, and begin to attack the spectators. Bandar manages to avert the attack, but at the cost of leaving his mentor a gibbering idiot. Bandar returns to the Institute, attempting to tell the professors of his discoveries, but his data goes against all doctrine. Instead of being promoted, he is sent away for a year while things quiet down.
Upon his return, he locks horns with an archrival, Didrick Gabris, who manages to curry favor with the orthodox professors while cheating at every turn and working full time to undermine Bandar. The following chapters find them competing over and over again, with Bandar struggling against the odds to complete assignments and Gabris conniving to put obstacles in his way. Almost every adventure ends with Bandar somehow muddling through, only to find his latest discoveries rejected by the Institute. His only consolation is that Gabris is usually shot down along with him, but the two are destined to keep knocking heads.
Hughes sends Bandar through a series of adventures that show the Commons in all its complexities, from minimal settings where nothing is ever expected to happen to rich tapestries of action and meaning. But as Bandar continues to visit the worlds of the unconscious, he finds himself interacting more and more with the denizens of that world. One telling episode is his venture into the world of the three pigs—where he inadvertently shows the wolf a way out of the endless circle of the constantly retold story, and learns that the consequences reach far beyond this simple archetypal tale.
Eventually, Bandar’s troubles reach the point where he drops out of the Institute and takes a job as a shop assistant. To his dismay, the Commons is not done with him –-he finds himself dragged into a scenario where he is clearly cast as the Hero’s helper. Knowing the likely fate of such, he bails out of the scenario—by the skin of his teeth.
But more adventures await Bandar when he takes a space journey to the scene of a long-ago battle against ruthless aliens. Suddenly he finds himself being drawn into the Commons yet again, very much against his will. And this time the stakes are a good bit larger.
Hughes has taken what in other hands might have been just a cute idea and turned it into something considerably richer. His exploration of the various archetypes of the collective unconscious is thought provoking as well as amusing. And Hughes has shown in previous novels that he has a firm grasp of nuanced, witty prose.
The individual episodes of which the novel is made up appeared as short magazine pieces. The concluding episode, “The Helper and his Hero,” was nominated by the members of SFWA for a Nebula for 2007 in the Novella category. Nebula or not—the winners aren’t yet known as this column is being written—Hughes has certainly earned recognition as one of our most accomplished writers.
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FALLEN
by Tim Lebbon
Bantam Spectra,
$12.00 (tp)
ISBN: 9780553384673
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This one’s a fantasy quest adventure that eschews the pseudo-medieval setting for a more primitive world that carries much of the feeling of alien-planet SF. It also carries a hard edge reminiscent more of horror than most epic fantasy.
Ramus Rheel and Nomi Hyden, are adventurers—explorers of the unsettled parts of their world, Noreela. One of them has learned of a map showing what, to the best of their knowledge, is the end of the world: a giant cliff that rises at the south end of their planet’s single continent, blocking access to anything beyond. It is rumored that the gods live atop the Great Divide, as it is called. Determined to explore this anomaly, they join forces, acquiring the map, gathering a company of guards, and set off to the south.
At first, the story unfolds like a conventional fantasy quest. The guards, from a rugged hunter-warrior culture, lead the two adventurers through the landscape, pointing out dangers, telling their stories around the campfire at night. But everything falls apart one night when the cook for the night makes a hallucinogenic dessert, and suddenly everyone’s inhibitions are gone. Nomi makes love to the leader of their guard company, a charismatic man named Beko. This sends Ramus into a jealous rage that results in a vicious fight that escalates to where it is impossible for the group to remain together. Ramus and a woman of the guards, Lulah, leave the group, planning to make their way to the destination by themselves.
What they will find at their destination remains a puzzle. Ramus has interpreted one image from the map as a “Fallen God,” although he is not entirely certain what to make of that. But Lulah lets him know she is deeply afraid of such a being. None-theless, she will continue on the journey.
Separately, the two parties travel toward the huge cliffs, dodging strange, often deadly flora and fauna. They encounter occasional evidence that other humans have preceded them, although it is clear that none have thought it worthwhile to settle in these lands. It is what lies ahead that draws them forward: the challenge of the cliffs, and what they may find at the top.
The ascent of the cliffs takes a harsh toll on the climbers, who still travel in two separate groups. But the climactic scenes come after the protagonists reach the top, where they face their ultimate tests. The fallen god is there, of course; but a more immediate threat is the god’s followers, including one that Ramus is quite surprised to find there.
Interesting world-building (even if the exact parameters of the geography don’t bear close examination), non-conventional characters, and interesting twists on the conventions of the quest fantasy. Worth staying with.
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A fantasy set in an alternate world that bears a passing resemblance to Elizabethan England—right down to Queen Lorraine’s red hair.
The plot begins with a royal marriage—which in this world, as in our own history, is motivated by political concerns rather than romantic foolishness. Sandalia, the sister of the king of Essandia, marries the king of Lanyarch, where the true faith prevails despite the efforts of the neighboring kingdom of Aulun to impose Protestantism upon them. When the king dies without begetting an heir, she is married again—this time to the king of Lutetia, who goes off to war after impregnating her. Luck is against her again: he is killed in war, and she miscarries. The only thing to do is find a substitute child—which she does. And this is just the prologue.
Jump years ahead to Aulun, where a young girl named Belinda Primrose is growing up in an isolated castle, motherless. Her father—a powerful man whose role in the kingdom keeps him away much of the time—has her brought up by servants, and sees to it that she learns unusual skills for a young woman—swordsmanship and reading. The point behind her training becomes clear when her father takes her to court, where she meets the queen—and assassinates a foreign agent her father has pointed out to her.
She also learns her own role in the world—and her father’s great secret. After that, she is sent on several missions; we pick her up at a Khazarian palace, where she is playing the role of a servant. Her mission is to eliminate Count Grigori, a vicious, dissipated man who somehow threatens the interests of Aulun. She pulls off the assassination, and escapes hurriedly after one of the other servants accuses her of witchcraft. She is in enough of a hurry that she leaves her Khazarian lover, one of the guards, alive instead of eliminating him as a possible witness. After all, she is unlikely to be in this part of the world again.
But her next assignment turns out to be far more complicated than anything to date has prepared her for. She is to travel to the capital city of Lutetia, where rumor has it that Queen Sandalia is hatching plans against Lorraine. Belinda is to pose as a Lanyarchan exile, persecuted because of her adherence to the true religion, and use the pose to get close to the Lutetian queen. Belinda’s route leads through Sandalia’s son, supposedly fathered by the late Lutetian king. This son, Prince Javier, the reader quickly realizes has to be the “substitute” mentioned in the opening chapter.
Belinda maneuvers her way into Javier’s company. Then she learns something unexpected: the prince and she share a power she has only tasted hints of, the very power that led her to be identified as a witch in Khazar. Nor has Javier ever encountered someone with the power—they experiment eagerly, forming a closer bond than either has ever found with anyone else.
Eventually, though, Belinda must meet Queen Sandalia and discover what threat, if any, she poses to Lorraine. She discovers that the intrigues of the Lutetian court are more complex than she expected. A Khazarian diplomatic delegation arrives, and Belinda finds her cover story in danger of being ripped apart.
Murphy’s approach to historic material is reminiscent of Guy Gavriel Kay’s, and while very few writers are in a league with Kay, Murphy makes a good run at it. She has a good sense of how to build a plot, and several of her characters are interesting twists on their likely historic models. Lorraine is clearly Elizabeth I, but Sandalia is not really Mary Queen of Scots—and Javier is not even remotely James I. So much the better—too close an adherence to historical events is a recipe for predictability, and the book is charmingly unpredictable.
There is clearly a sequel (or two) to come, so those looking for a complete story won’t find it here. But actions does come to a satisfactory stopping place, and the journey there is enjoyable.
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In this YA novel, Enthoven turns loose a giant dinosaur and a feisty young protagonist in a future London. The results are highly entertaining.
Anna Mallahide is a bright, independent schoolgirl on a class trip to the British Museum, where she is teamed with her dorky classmate Chris on a sort of scavenger hunt. But Chris strays into the lower depths of the museum, where he encounters a strange woman who gives him an amulet and tells him he has been chosen as the channel of Earth’s Defender, whether he likes it or not. Anna is furious when he rejoins the student group—the last to return, and with no explanation where he’s been.
But Anna finds a bigger surprise later, where her father, Prof. Mallahide, arrives home uncharacteristically early. Anna doesn’t quite realize that her father is a mad scientist. Even worse, he has government funding—the Prime Minister has just given him an enormous budget to develop his ideas for a nanotechnology swarm. However, his project has gotten funded because the Prime Minister has canceled another: the one that created the giant dinosaur, T.I.M.—short for Tyrannosaurus, Improved Model.
That might not be a problem, except that T.I.M. needs to be gotten rid of—not an easy job, considering that he’s hundreds of feet tall, and still growing. His creator decides to do the job by filling his cavern with cyanide. But T.I.M. gets a cryptic mental message telling him to break free of his prison. When he gets the first whiff of the poison gas, he does just that—and breaks through the surface in the middle of Trafalgar Square. Panic time! The next section of the book is nothing quite so much as a “Godzilla stomps London” spoof.
Eventually, T.I.M. wanders down the Thames to deep waters offshore, and England takes a deep breath of relief. Not so fast—Prof. Mallahide’s nanotech swarm is poised to wreak its own version of havoc on the nation. Anna and Chris are in the middle of things, of course—as is T.I.M., once the young protagonists have things explained to them.
Rather than being a threat to civilization, T.I.M. turns out to have a crucial role to play in saving the world from an ultimate danger. As so many mad scientists have done before him, Mallahide finds himself caught up in the momentum of his own invention. It seems like a good thing to him, so it must be the best thing for everybody. So if people don’t voluntarily join his swarm of nanobots, more forceful measures must be necessary . . .
It’s up to Anna, Chris, and T.I.M. to save the world. Anna is of course conflicted about fighting her own father, and the swarm is a threat sufficiently powerful to stretch even a neo-Godzilla to the limits of his ability. And T.I.M. has the usual dinosaurian level of intelligence, so it’s up to the kids to save things in the end.
Enthoven plays a bit fast and loose with probability—what happens to all that cyanide once T.I.M. breaks out of his cave, for example? But given the initial premise and the playful atmosphere, most readers will let details like that slide, and enjoy the romp.
Keep this in mind if you’re looking for a gift for younger readers. Recommended for light-hearted grownups, too.
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Copyright
"On Books" by Peter Heck, copyright © 2008, with permission of the author.
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