This is the first bit for what could be a regular feature -- the Saturday Evening Geek Out, where a revolving list of Your Contributing Editors takes a look at books, games, films, and gadgets. Chip in your affirmatives or your vote of antiestablishmentarianism about this new feature. And no, you can't have an antidisestablishmentarian position because first something has to be established before it can be dis'd, so save it for next week, if we get that far.
There's an old saying about the golden age of science fiction -- it's twelve. That is, twelve is the age where readers seem most willing to take the Door into Summer, to try and visualize a tesseract, to boldly split infinitives like no one has split them before. Not too long after that, even those who continue to read fiction not handed to them by a teacher find that they're no longer able or willing to follow along on a trip at a galactic scale.
There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that some readers find it hard to stretch their thoughts around a situation that's so different from their own. Bookstores are rife with books designed to give you heroes not too far removed from your own background (thirty-something Asian-American woman who's nagged by her parents and worried that she may be waiting too late to have children? Aisle six.) so why try to move your perspective to a head that's located a million light years away, or one that's green, or carrying antennae? The other reason is simpler: a lot of science fiction, even "classic" science fiction, sucks.
That shouldn’t be surprising. It’s mostly just Sturgeon's Law in action, but there an additional factor on the sci fi front – a bad image. For a long time, the availability of sci fi in films and television was highly limited. This is especially true for those of us who grew up in the days of network television before the invention of the VCR (you can ask your grandmother what those where). Because there was so little science fiction to be had on the tube, extraordinary affection was given to those few scraps that did appear. So yes, a good series or movie got its fans, but so did the most miserable pap. Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century? Galactica 1980? Godzilla vs. the rubber suit of the month? Really, if those were your ambassadors to the world of science fiction, would you feel like investing the time it takes to tackle a hefty novel?
Even on the bookshelves some of the works regarded as science fiction’s best had a hard time finding a general audience, not only because of a bad media image, but because they seemed to be written to an audience more interested in the nuts and bolts than the people on the other end of the wrench. I suspect that many of the people who were hard SF fans in the 1970s turned to Clancyesque military fare in the 1980s, a place where they could satisfy their thirst to know the serial number on the bottom of the gadgets that were at the center of the plots.
But even if, as Mr. Sturgeon so neatly pointed out, "ninety percent of everything is crud" there's still ten percent that isn't. And in science fiction that ten percent can be something very special. Science fiction can, and the most popular works frequently do, act as a mirror to the struggles of our time. It provides a place to wrestle with racism, sexism, religious prejudice, war, capitalism, socialism, morality – and to do so in a setting not so weighed down by our own built-in expectations. Many readers of science fiction have had that experience of finding themselves sympathizing with a character who – were all aspects of the story mapped to real world equivalents – they might have found profoundly unsympathetic. And not a few readers have closed the last page of such novels to find their own attitudes altered, their assumptions about life challenged.
Other works of science fiction are still focused on the "hardware," on the tricks implicit in a bit of physics, or a situation made possibly by just the right coincidence of technology and conditions (Hal Clement used to be the master of such works, and some of his books are well worth the read just for the sake of seeing how far he could stretch the weirdness). Done well, reading such a book can be a mental workout that’s hard to match.
Okay, enough prologue. Here are a few titles that you might enjoy sliding onto your own shelf. And naturally, when it comes to the comments, feel free to add your own titles to the list.
A Fire Upon the Deep by Venor Vinge.
In the universe created by Vinge, mass = slow. It's not just travel that slows down around matter, it's equipment, it's electronics, it's thought. The further you move away from the center of the galaxy, the faster you can travel, the more effective your equipment can be, the more powerful the computers at your command, the closer you are to godlike cognition. Travel far enough away, and whole races can vanish into the whatever-it-is-that-happens-out-there.
Right on the border between the worlds of normal matter-based beings and the unthinkable beyond, a little race called humans has found the wreck of a mammoth computer. With a little work, they might be able to get it going. It could be the greatest thing ever discovered by man. Or the very worst.
Full of huge concepts and sweeping ideas, Vinge's book is grounded by likable characters and tensions that are both personal and philosophical. How do you put out a fire that threatens to burn through the galaxy when that fire is driven by a mind beyond your comprehension? Not without a lot of effort – and a really good read. The companion volume in the "Zones of Thought" series, A Deepness in the Sky is a terrific follow-up that revisits the same universe (and some of the same characters) for an adventure that's merely world-shaking in scale, but equally compelling.
Startide Rising by David Brin
Really, that should be by kossack, David Brin, as he's nice enough to occasionally grace us with a diary (they could be more frequent, David, we'd not complain).
This is the second volume of Brin's "Uplift" series, but don't let that stop you from dipping into the story at this point. You need not have read other books in the series before you jump on board the starship Streaker and splash into an alien ocean. Crewed by a mixture of humans, chimpanzees and dolphins, the ship has located something very valuable in space – something that many more ancient races than man are willing to go to war over – but Streaker hasn't shared the location of its find, and as the ship hunkers down to hide beneath the waves, vast forces prepare to battle.
If that sounds like the start up for a grand bit of space opera... well, it is. But that's only part of the story. Most of the focus of the book stays with the crew of Streaker and particularly on her modified neo-dolphins, as they vacillate between the desire to sink into the endless "whale dream" of their ancestors and the need to deal with the technical challenges that have been forced on them by humans who have tinkered with their genetics. Back in the days of Astounding Science Fiction, John Campbell used to challenge his writers to deliver a creature that thought as well as a man, but not like a man. Brin achieves this goal – actually he manages it several times in the same book – most notably when he deals with the thoughts and feelings of the dolphins.
The events of Startide Rising start a cascade that ripples across at least four more novels to follow, and they're all worth reading, but Startide is the perfect place to plunge in (sorry about that).
Emprise by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell
In a not too distant future, for reasons that seem all too possible, the world has collapsed. Not as a result of any huge war or calamity, just because of a kind of general economic and resource meltdown. Following this tumble a hatred of science and technology has grown up as many people blame the scientists for failing to prevent the disaster. It's against this background that an amateur radio astronomer detects a signal coming from a nearby star – a signal that indicates not only are their other intelligences among the stars, but they're on their way to Earth.
This discovery triggers a great globe-hopping adventure as mankind begins to reassemble civilization around one central idea: it's never good to have your first encounter with a superior society on your home turf.
What Kube-Mcdowell manages in this book is notable both as a stand alone novel and as book one of a sharply-crafted trilogy (if you only read this book, the explanation of what we encounter once the world gets on its feet and sends a ship into space may be less than satisfying). Across the three books there are different approaches to point of view, to tone, and to structure that make them as interesting for the writing as for the ideas. This first book can actually be seen as a set of connected short works. The second book is intensely focused on a single pivotal character. The third a bit looser multi-viewpoint piece.
These are books I've always thought deserved more attention than they received.
Declare by Tim Powers
Even some who have read it will be surprised to see this book here, not because it's not a worthy tome, but because – with djinn, ghosts, and demons onboard, it's hard to call this book science fiction. But then, Powers' work defies categories.
This book is part Indy Jones, part George Smiley, part insanity as we follow the career of a British spy from World War II through the Cold War in a struggle to recover... something that's resting on Mount Ararat in Turkey, something that almost certainly is not Noah's Ark, but which is part of a tale just as dark and ancient.
There are the rooftops of Nazi-occupied Paris where spies listen into a signal that twists reality, there are desert caves where demons seek the unwary, there are the hallways of secret agencies where intrigue is as deadly and almost as strange. If you're read Powers before you'll have some idea of just how dense with ideas – and how sparse with explanations – his work can be. If you haven't read Powers before, pick a comfortable chair and prepare to settle in. This is not a book that can be subjected to a quick browse or one that will surrender its secrets easily. This book is, for want of a better term, hard. But so very satisfying.
Just another of the volumes that makes me quite comfortable in saying that Tim Powers is my favorite living author. So don't be surprised if when we play this game again I find a way to slide in another Powers novel. Maybe Last Call, or The Stress of Her Regard... now making that decision really is hard.