The Dark Is Rising [Review: Mother of Eden]

Several generations after John Redlantern and his followers left the Circle to find new places to live, John's own story has become part of the accumulating mythology of Eden, and the colony has become divided into two main tribes - the adventurous Johnfolk who and the conservative Davidfolk who still wait by the circle of stones for the promised return of the Landing Veekle and the godlike figure of Angela or Mother Gela.

The second of Chris Beckett's trilogy of novels set on Eden focusses on Starlight Brooking, a woman of a smaller tribe descended from John Redlantern's clawfoot ally Jeff. Like Jeff, Starlight and her tribe are pacifists with a tradition of mindful meditation, living on a small island to avoid the skirmishes between Johnfolk and Davidfolk and building boats to trade with the mainland. However on one visit Starlight encounters Greenstone, the son of the leader of the Johnfolk, and travels back with him to become his bride.

The society of Eden has changed in ways foreshadowed by the events of the first novel. Forms of money are appearing. The Johnfolk have discovered metal and moved forward into a bronze age with better weapons and armour, along with other discoveries such as doors and houses, servants and slaves and the division into "big" and "little" people. As the handed-down stories of Earth become cloudier the religion that has formed around Angela has become stronger, and the societies of both Johnfolk and Davidfolk have shifted towards male domination and rule of the strongest. Starlight's new family are powerful but must constantly scheme to remain in control, knowing that they will be killed by their rivals if they fail. Meanwhile women are persecuted for spreading the Secret Story, advice supposedly passed down by Mother Gela to her female children teaching them about equality and the dangers of men who "believe the story is all about them." Eden is darker than ever and this novel introduces themes of power and sexual politics on a personal and societal level, while continuing to dissect the darker side of religion.

I found both Dark Eden and Mother of Eden to be compelling and addictive reads. The writing is very high quality and is capable of shocking the reader at times - punches are not pulled. Starlight's experiences with the Johnfolk are reminiscent of A Song Of Ice And Fire, and the writing style is similar in some ways, particularly the chapters narrated by different characters. while the setting of Eden reminded me of the Human Beings of Stephen Baxter's Flux, another tribe clinging on to their sense of humanity in an environment utterly different from Earth.

Stepping Out [Review: The Long Earth]

Step Day: the day a blueprint for a potato-powered circuit is released onto the Internet and everything changes. Thousands of people construct their own device and instantly vanish, travelling “east” or “west” along a chain of Earths in parallel universes. The chain may be endless, and although it’s full of life there are no signs of humanity anywhere. The ease of stepping, at least for most people, creates a land rush and a lawless frontier society as humanity expands into the Long Earth.

Two travellers – Joshua Valiente, a human with a natural ability to step, and Lobsang, a computer who claims to be a reincarnated Tibetan, set out on a journey that will take them over a million Steps to the west. Along the way they meet other Steppers, explorers and colonists, and discover more of the secrets of the Long Earth multiverse. Joshua is ambivalent about humanity, drawn to silence, needing human contact but shy and awkward up close. Lobsang is another HAL 9000 or GERTY, human-ish and apparently caring but alien and difficult to trust.

The Long Earth is the first, much anticipated collaboration between two of science fiction’s greatest living authors, Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett. This would be exciting enough, but this is no licensed novel in a franchised series – both writers have put their heads together to create something newer. Of course the idea of parallel universes itself is not new, science fiction writers have been exploring it for a long time. I've already reviewed Iain M. Banks’ recent novel Transition; also Pratchett and Baxter have both been there before. It’s fair to say that The Long Earth shares themes with Baxter’s Manifold novel Origin. However I don’t recall reading a novel that deals with colonization of parallel universes in this way.

The novel occasionally feels like the result of a brainstorming session, and indeed the authors did hold such a session at a sci-fi convention along the way. Some interesting limits are placed on Stepping – the device will only work for the human who completed its construction, suggesting that it may have a psychological or metaphysical mode of action. The chain itself, with only two directions of travel, instantly makes the whole concept easy to grasp. Iron cannot be Stepped although iron compounds such as haemoglobin seem to be OK – so every new colony has to set up its own foundry, and guns cannot be transported, at least for about ten minutes until humanity solves that particular issue. This seems to serve as a way of slowing the rate of colonization on each new world, and creating a more interesting narrative.

The Pratchett influence is more subtle, although the characters are very much in his style. I didn’t pick up on any obvious references to Discworld. However, while most parallel Earths are only slightly different from the last, each Step bringing gradual changes in the geography, evolutionary outcome or climate, there are occasional outliers where anything goes – a world dominated by tall forests, a crocodile-infested waterworld, etc. These acquire the name Joker Worlds - as a fan of Pratchett’s early sci-fi novel The Dark Side Of The Sun, this makes me happy.

Light Of Other Days

Reflections in a Slow Glass (TM) window:

In 2008 I remarked here that there was no prospect of a new film version of Karel Capek's famous play R.U.R. Now it's in development, with director James Kerwin on board (reported on io9 last year, also official website here.)

In 2009 I commented on Stephen Baxter's Titan, which continues to be that rarest of things - a science fiction novel that does actually predict the future, describing clearly and accurately the first steps of the Chinese manned space programme, and sadly anticipating the break-up of Space Shuttle Columbia during re-entry. As described in the book, atmospheric data from the Cassini mission is now being analysed carefully as it may indicate there is life on Titan.
Also in 2009 I reviewed my three favourite Terry Pratchett novels here, commenting that I preferred his science fiction writing to much of the Discworld series. Mr. Pratchett has just announced to my joy that he will be returning to science fiction in a future novel - which he will co-write with Stephen Baxter (news via Grasping For The Wind.)

Multi-dimensional book series

The novels making up a trilogy or series don't have to follow each other serially. Steven Baxter's trilogy Time, Space, Origin and the short story collection Phase Space are connected unusually - each tells a stand-alone story, but the characters and plot elements recur. Baxter uses parallel universes, and sends each story literally in a different direction, following a different space-time axis. Time follows the protagonist into the distant future, in Space he undertakes a very different voyage to the limits of space, while in Origin he finds himself cast from parallel universe to universe. The Origin here is also a reference to Darwin's Origin of the Species, and this novel explores alternative evolutionary possibilities.

As in many of Baxter's novels, the author shows off his knowledge of the world's space programmes (each novel features a different, though equally plausible "Big Dumb" launch system) and of astronomy, physics and evolutionary biology. The science is so clearly described that these could easily replace secondary school textbooks. Space also features a good, if scary, answer to the Fermi Paradox.

The Machine

While time travel appeared in stories before H.G. Wells, it is Wells who introduced the idea of the Time Machine. By making time travel a mechanical process relying on the ideas of a scientist he brought the idea into the sci-fi genre he was busily making his own. Wells' story uses the time travel plot device in order to explore evolutionary theory - the upper and lower class trends of the day are extrapolated into the distant future in which humanity has diverged into two distinct species, the childlike Eloi and the more animal, although possibly more intelligent Morlocks. Wells didn't introduce any ideas about changing the future or time travel paradoxes - change was of course offered to Scrooge by Dickens while the paradoxes are a more recent time travel theme.

The classic 1960 film starred Rod Taylor and was directed by George Pal. More recently, Simon Wells, great grandson of H.G., directed a re-make with Guy Pearce and Samantha Mumba. This was disappointing in some ways but introduced a version of the time travel paradox - the traveller is only driven to complete his invention following the death of his girlfriend, and tries repeatedly to save her life - each time, she is killed in some other, quite different but equally unexpected way. Eventually he stops trying and instead sets off for the future, where he is finally given a sad explanation for the paradox.

There's also an official, Wells-estate-sanctioned sequel written by Stephen Baxter, The Time Ships. In this book time travel has consequences: the traveller has returned from the future and shared his experiences and this has changed the future. Baxter's story uses the time travel device to explore a range of imaginative scenarios including a First World War that has persisted for decades, and a future where the Morlocks developed very differently from Wells' description - all the while developing Wells' ideas about class and evolution.

Review: Coalescent

Good science-fiction is mind-blowing. This book has had a huge effect on my thinking and how I see the world.

In the book there are two interwoven narratives, one concerning a Roman family struggling to survive, the other concerning a modern day hero trying to solve the mystery of his family. Unsurprisingly they are connected, and initially this feels like a Dan Brown historical mystery thriller (or thrilling mysterious history?). However the mystery Baxter is building towards has nothing to do with the origins of Christianity, even though his mysterious organization passes itself off as a Roman Catholic - this is a more sinister, more biological and more sci-fi concept.

What is it that's so good about this book? The mystery is revealed gradually, this is handled well without seeming to hold back facts unfairly (I am often irritated when I read that the protagonist of a story has just learned a key fact but I am not informed until two chapters later); The case for plausibility - basically that similar phenomena do exist in several places in the animal kingdom - is worked in neatly; the complex concept at the heart of the novel is described clearly; and the ending turns the story on it's head - instead of describing a freak occurrence as I thought, are the principles of this book central to understanding all human activity?

It hardly seems fair to identify any faults at all with such a powerful book but it's difficult to imagine all the evolutionary changes described in humans occurring over "just" two thousand years. The quality of the writing helps to minimise this; also some suggestions (that the process could actually have evolved earlier in human history, and remained within the human genome as a vestigial capacity or a dormant process re-activated by stress) are hinted at later in the series.

The ending, together with extracts from the sequel printed at the end of the book, give the impression that this theme will be developed further in the sequels - particularly Baxter's future history of child warfare seems initially to be built on the same principles; sadly, while the Coalescence does rear it's head again this concept is underdeveloped.

Prescience

Thinking of Stephen Baxter, while many people were touched by the real-life Columbia tragedy, I had a shiver thinking of the chapter in Titan where Columbia is described breaking up on re-entry, not least as in the novel this is just the first in a series of tragedies and disasters. Titan was not of course literally prescient but Baxter had an enthusiast's extensive knowledge of the space programmes (he also described, very accurately, the first few steps of the Chinese manned space programme long before they took place) and his description sadly turned out to be a completely plausible scenario.

The Martian Romance

I wangled a brief but highly enjoyable attachment to a department at Kennedy Space Centre into my professional training. I learned a lot there, not least the delightful discovery that a lot of NASA employees really are Trekkies and that science fiction really does seem to inspire people to go into this sort of work. This was pre-Constellation but there was a lot of coridoor speculation at the time about the design of a Mars mission; the general consensus was to wait and see how this was handled in the upcoming film Mission to Mars, and then to plan the actual mission proposal around it.

Mission to Mars was released in the US while I was there. The journey to Mars is one of the highlights of the film - beautifully and credibly filmed, with a very believable spaceship design including zero-G and centrifugal gravity sections. Zero-G simulation seems about right and lack of gravity is key to some of the action scenes. I am sure that, if Constellation does eventually get a Mars shot we will see a spaceship something like this one. M2M doesn't continue in the same vein but skips from genre to genre as the film develops - from arrival in Mars orbit there's a switch to action/survival thriller (the process of entering the atmosphere and landing is completely bypassed, no doubt lying on a cutting-room floor somewhere); later there's an alien mystery to uncover. As in many films, books and games, it seems aliens love to test our intelligence by setting logic puzzles and killing us if we fail to solve them. See Rama, Diamond Dogs, etc. for other examples of this. I have another theory: these are actually not intentional puzzles at all but abandoned baby toys from the Early Alien Learning Centre, no doubt sold in a box marked "suitable for advanced children only - designed to improve your child's hand eye coordination logical reasoning and telekinetic skills."

Films often arrive in pairs - a parallel film Red Planet was also released that season. While much is incredible (I mean rather than credible) there's one brilliant sequence inspired by the Pathfinder / Sojourner landing, where a human crew is landed on Mars using bouncing airbags.

Finally while on the subject of Mars I can't avoid mentioning Voyage by Stephen Baxter. Starting from a Jonbar point - Kennedy is incapacitated but survives the assassination attempt, presumably the bullet is a few millimetres further to the left or something; this is the alternate history in which NASA pursues the original Mars plan (an extension of Apollo) instead of building the Space Shuttle. This is a painfully believable vision of what might have been, and also includes very sensitive treatment of topics such as the involvement of Nazi scientists in NASA's history. As well as the book there is a radio play available on BBC CD which really captures the drama - one episode, the orbital test-flight of a nuclear rocket, is delivered in near real-time, with almost no voice-over, just with sound-effects and comm chatter dialogue.

Hothouse and Evolution

As Hothouse continues, Gren and his companions encounter more carnivorous plants but also some parasitic and symbiotic human -plant interactions. This book is bursting with original ideas and different ways of thinking about change or about the nature of humanity, consciousness, intelligence. At the same time it's a great action/survival/horror tale.

The symbiotic scenarios also reminded me of Stephen Baxter's novel Evolution. This follows the story of mankind and our biological ancestors from the eras of the dinosaurs onwards, each chapter telling the story of animals at a different evolutionary stage. This is extremely informative about evolutionary biology but is no dry textbook - in early chapters, gaps
in the fossil record allow Baxter to playfully include kilometer-wide pterodactyl "air whales" and some other surprises. Baxter follows the development of hominids and humans and is interested in the origins of human emotion, thought, behaviour and society rather than, say, the discovery of fire or the wheel. However the origins of painting, religion and sailing become part of the plot. Baxter also pulls no punches in documenting the destruction of the environment and the extinctions that have characterized all of human history, not just the modern era. The story extends through a near-future calamity into an eerie Hothouse-like scenario as the human era wanes.

I was struck by Baxter's description of the wide variety of human-like primates that lived side by side (although not necessarily in peace) until the emergence of humanity as the dominant species.