Tuesday 25 February 2014

Review of Arcanum, by Simon Morden (2014)

Chosen because: arrived in the village library

I'm not sure if this counts as a science fiction novel, but I enjoyed it so much that I'm reviewing it anyway. Because you have to love a novel in which a group of heroic librarians, dubious booksellers and assorted hangers-on, including hunters, princes and Jews, use their wits and research capacity to overcome disaster.

The kingdom of Carinthia exists in the Alps, about 800 years after the Roman empire was brought down by the rampaging Goths and their overwhelming magicians. Because this is a Medieval world in which, at the beginning, magic is all-powerful. With the aid of the mages of the White Tower, the Carinthians live without the aid of science or engineering, in houses lit by magic, with ploughs steered by spells, and wagons guided by runes. Until one day, the lights go out and the magic disappears...

Meanwhile, in the Jewish quarter of the town, magic is held as non-kosher, and the Jews have worked out their own technologies. It's down to the Jews, or at least, to one particular Jew, Sophia Morgenstern, daughter of a dodgy bookseller, to help the young Prince Felix and his subjects adjust to their new world. Unfortunately, the rival city states of Bavaria and Wien, not to mention the Dwarves, have their own plans for the tiny kingdom.

Simon Morden is apparently a rocket scientist in real life, which is no doubt what makes him so gleeful as his characters work out fundamental scientific principles - with a particular nod to the importance of gravity - all the time battling to keep Carinthia running. If this makes the novel sound overly worthy, it shouldn't. It's a tribute to the joys of libraries, of research, of finding things out for yourself, just as much as it is a discussion of the competing demands of rulership, and plain fantasy about the end of magic in a Medieval world.

Heartily recommended, particularly for fans of Lois Bujold McMaster and Diana Wynne-Jones.

Tuesday 4 February 2014

Review of Bellwether, by Connie Willis

A comic portrayal of a team of scientists struggling to continue their research despite hopeless bureaucracy, diminishing funding and romantic entanglements - not to mention the difficulties of getting a decent cup of iced tea.
 

Chosen: bought after being introduced to her novels via a friend

I'm not sure whether you can call this a science fiction novel in the mainstream sense - no aliens, no far-flung planets, no adventures, even - but it's certainly fiction about science.

Connie Willis is a hard writer to categorise. Her novels range from the very funny To Say Nothing of the Dog, a time-travelling romantic comedy, to much more serious but gripping looks at history, such as the duology Blackout and All Clear.

Bellwether is set in a reseach lab in fashionable Boulder, Colorado, where sociologist Sandy is trying to track down the underlying source of trends and fads of all kinds. Meanwhile, her colleague Bennett is struggling to find the funding he needs for his research into chaos theory, and Management is trying out yet another management strategy du jour.

It's much quieter and lighter than her other books, and as such was a bit of a disappointment to me when I first read it - it certainly doesn't have either the pace of Blackout / All Clear or the screwball comedy of To Say Nothing of the Dog. But it's one that I've come back to repeatedly.  Engaging characters, a very neatly worked-out plot (no suprise, as TSNotD is structured in the style of a classic 30's murder mystery), and most of all, an author who clearly has a topic she wants to explore. The increasingly bizarre fashions followed by the characters (particularly the duct-tape) are a recurring comic touch. And its a nice reminder that middle-aged scientists and sociologists are every bit as driven by trends as their younger, more obviously fashionable juniors.

It's quite an achievement to combine a discussion of scientific breakthroughs, the problems of blindly following the fashion, and romantic comedy. Well worth reading, if only to see how lucky you are not to work at HiTek labs with fashion conscious Flip as your personal assistant.

One minor but important point. Connie Willis is totally wrong about bread pudding in this novel - it is delicious and Sandy's on-off boyfriend is quite right to change his mind about it.

Where are all the women?

The mystery that we are supposed to be wondering about in Dan Simmons' Hyperion is the approaching end of the world, the nature of the all-powerful, unknowable Shrike, and the 7 pilgrims' quest to prevent Doomsday.

What I am actually wondering about is, 'where are all the women?'.

So far, across a planetary federation of what seems to be thousands if not tens of thousands of planets, we have been introduced to no fewer than four women. The first was a native who kindly nursed a passing missionary / anthropologist and so merited an entry in his diary. One was a nurse who smoothed a soldier's fevered brow and was exploded by aliens ten seconds later, leaving the solider to get on with the serious manly duty of stealing spaceships. The third turned out not to be a woman at all, but - after several pages of lovingly detailed descriptions of her naked body - a monster. (I know, that happens to me a lot too. You go for a coffee with a woman you happen to meet, and lo and behold, she turns out to be a monster with retractable spikes spinning out of her vulva. You can't go back to that cafe again.) We do still have one woman to be fully introduced to, so lets hope for the best.*

The best thing is that at one point, the missionary / anthropologist wonders how the tribe he is studying manages to reproduce themselves, given their total taboos around bodies. I think he should be wondering how his own galaxy-wide civilization has managed to keep going, given that there are apparently 3 women and 1 female-looking monster to reproduce the entire next generation. In fact, the Shrike needn't bother to kill anyone off - it can just wait for nature to take its course.

It's striking just how different men and women's writing can be. A friend's novel, set in the religious turmoil of the 16th century, includes powerful dukes, noblemen and soliders, but also the whole host of sisters, grandmothers, sisters-in-law, aunts, nuns, women just getting on with the shopping - in short, the type of mix of genders and ages that she and I see in real life. Lois McMaster Bujold, whose work I'm a great fan of, is another writer who thinks about the gender realities of life in the future, and tackles the mystery of the general lack of women in the future head on. Which leaves me wondering - do most men science fiction writers simply live in a woman free world?

* There is also a one week old baby girl on the pilgramage, but she mainly seems to play the portable role of a handbag or other arm decoration. Certainly she behaves like no other baby I've ever heard of.