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When I worked at Half Price Books in Berkeley, Red Mars was one of those books that we sold out of regularly. Being two blocks from UC Berkeley, college students interested in buying and selling their books made up a large portion of our customers. Somewhere along the line we’d acquired the knowledge that Red Mars is required reading for students up at Cal, which always excited me: science fiction on a syllabus! So, one day, as I helped a girl find a copy of Red Mars, I asked her which class she was reading the book for. I expected her to name some upper level English course focused on science fiction, but what came out of her mouth was a long string of large scientific and technical words, astrobiology being one of them. I felt incredibly impressed by this young woman. Turns out they read Red Mars in upper level science classes (hard science classes!) at UC Berkeley to learn about what terraforming a planet might be like. That’s right, this work of fiction is used to teach actual science.

If that knowledge didn’t clue you into the fact that Red Mars is a masterpiece of hard science fiction, then I will state it outright. Robinson goes to amazing lengths to create a story that depicts what the terraformation of Mars would look like if we could ever get off our terrible, ignorant asses and actually try to do something so bold and amazing. But ignoring the hard science that makes this book required reading for actual scientists, Red Mars is truly an opus about space exploration and colonization. Kim Stanley Robinson has found a new frontier in this western in space, not only in science, but in human societal relationships. Just as the colonists must deal with the nuts and bolts of getting to Mars and building a livable human habit on a foreign planet, they must also struggle to create or recreate human society on Mars. Expanding Red Mars beyond scientific discovery to explorations of cultural, societal, and interpersonal relationships is what makes this book such an important contribution to the field: Robinson remembers the human element. Beyond the amazing science in the book, Robinson’s attention to the human species is another reason those undergraduates are required to read this book: they’re not just learning physics and biology, they’re reading about how the human dimension of space colonization might look.

Red Mars won a Nebula but it did not win a Hugo, though its two sequels, Green Mars and Blue Mars did win Hugos. It’s entirely understandable why this book is so acclaimed and is considered to be a standard text not only in science fiction, but among actual scientists. Robinson clearly did his homework, and at times this book reads like a textbook. At 572 pages, most of the book is detailed description of the scientific nuances of terraforming a planet or, less frequently but with just as much pedantry, long bits of narrative minutely detailing the political and cultural situation on the planet.

At this point I’m going to admit that I did a whole lot of skimming as I read this book. The science I found to be fascinating but as it went on and on I lost interest. That’s not fault of the author – I think someone more interested in that nuance than I am would be lost in a dream of realistic speculation. I am simply not so inclined. So, for readers like me, that made this book very slow in a lot of places. Normally this is where I’d say that Robinson needed a better editor to rein him in (I’m looking at you, George R.R. Martin), but in this case I think all of the scientific detail Robinson has included is not only necessary, it’s incredibly compelling. The book’s reception in the scientific community confirms this, but if you’re not a lover of science textbooks guised as sci-fi novels, this book might not be for you. That said, I think this is probably the best hard sci-fi book I’ve ever read. Though packed with information that can go on for pages without advancing the plot, the science stuff never seems long-winded or out of place. It is necessary for Robinson’s project. And it’s well written, so that when I felt like tuning in I found myself both interested and able to understand the scientific language.

That said, I do have real issues with Robinson’s attempt to weave politics and interpersonal relationships into the story. Yes, colonizing Mars would have a huge political dimension to it, and I think it’s a good thing that Robinson included that reality in the novel. Exploring the way Mars and Earth, as well as the colonists, would interact with each other, and further, the ways in which nations would attempt to redraw their boundaries (or not) on Mars, enriched the novel beyond the simple wonder of postulating how science might allow us to live on Mars. Robinson also goes out of his way to create a cast of characters who have differing visions as to what Mars should look like, from the extreme environmental conservasionist, Ann, to the terraformer, Sax, to the utopian revolutionary, Arkady, to the two idealistic American leaders Frank and John, who are just trying to bring everyone together, to Nadia, the engineer who doesn’t give a fuck about anything other than her machines, and so many other characters I could list. And that’s not even getting into the competing cultures that emerge as new groups of settlers arrive.

Refreshingly, Robinson’s Mars is multi-national and multi-ethnic. Everyone has their own vision for Mars and takes sides in the developing factions that arise as more Terrans emigrate from Earth and corporations try to take over operations on the planet to take advantage of natural resources. There remains a unique bond among the first 100 colonists, all scientists who share the same basic belief that Mars should be its own governing entity, free of any mercantilist system with Earth. Beyond that they do disagree on what a Martin government should look like. And so the explicit parallels are drawn between the mercantile relationship between imperial England and the American colonies and the subsequent revolutionary war, where the colonists in both American and on Mars resort to revolution to overthrow the mother country/planet in order to form a more perfect union. Red Mars shows us the colonization and revolutionary phase of this struggle, whereas I assume Green Mars and Blue Mars go a bit further into setting up the new Martin government.

The way Robinson writes about politics tends to remind me of Ayn Rand. I’m not accusing him of being an Objectivist. I don’t think he is at all. My comparison is stylistic. He tends to use the same literary devices to get his political views across: long, rambling monologues or debates between characters that are really just vehicles to get his ideology out there or explain positions or events to the reader in detail that characters in the book already know about. I’m not honestly sure what Robinson’s ideology is, which may be a point in Robinson’s favor. At the end of Red Mars , violent revolution hasn’t worked to drive out the unwanted interlopers from Earth, but the corporations and the UN are still enemies of the first 100 and Mars itself, both physically and socially (the physical and social landscape/well-being are always explicitly linked in the book). The true path to political and physical salvation may be revealed in the book’s sequels. Robinson does enough of a song and dance that the differing political views he offers seem to be a genuine exploration by the author of how competing viewpoints might come about and be expressed. But obviously he favors one, it’s just in trying to ferret out which one that is.

Then there are the interpersonal relationships among the first 100, specifically between Maya, John, and Frank, a love triangle that spans the book. I have to admit, this is my second time attempting to read Red Mars. The first time I got to the part where Maya fucks Frank then turns around and falls in love with John, the man Frank hates, and I just put the book down. I wasn’t interested in reading a 572 page book about a love triangle. The way Robinson writes about Maya is truly disappointing. Ostensibly she is the leader of the Russian delegation to Mars, but her only purpose in the novel is to serve as a sexual object for Frank and John, and for the author as well. Thankfully this book did not turn out to be a romance novel, but Maya’s only purpose whenever she was present was to have sex with one of those two men, or to make Frank resent that she wasn’t having sex with him to the point that it helped motivate him to murder John. The relationship between the three of them was really annoying, and I just couldn’t understand why Maya’s plotline had to exist when the rest of the book was so rich in characters. Another nice thread of science fiction romance for men, featuring the objectification of a sexually manipulative and therefore crazy woman, woven into to a densely factual novel.

I’m not reading into subtext here either. Robinson states more than once that Maya gained her position of power through using her sexuality to manipulate men. She is described by other characters and herself as purposefully playing Frank and John against each other. She is openly depicted as becoming crazed as a result of her mercurial feelings of “love,” which only ever manifest in sex. Her actions annoy the other characters, though only hers, never those of the male members of her trio. Taking a step backwards toward Maya’s sexual manipulation of men, this characterization actually extends to all of Russian society. Apparently, by 2026 Russian women turned the double burden on its head by making sexuality a weapon against men in order to gain positions of power. If you can’t beat the sexist system, join it? Or, there is a demographic imbalance of women vs. men in Russia so women use sex to take over the country? I don’t know. It’s a very strange reading of Russian history combined with a very sad understanding of women’s sexuality.

This book was published in 1993, right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, so that may have something to do with the strange femme fatale imagery. Hiroko, an Asian woman, is also highly sexualized and eroticized. Her only real role in the book is to have orgies and pop out babies. That’s her contribution to the revolution. Apparently that in and of itself is a revolution. Procreation is not #1 on any of the first 100’s lists except for Hiroko and her followers. In fact, population problems plaguing Earth are one of the key threats to stability on Mars. Despite the sexualization of Maya and Hiroko, two other female characters, Ann and Nadia are scientists and engineers before they are lovers and women. It is a very strange balance, but in Nadia Robinson crafts a character who is both a competent and brave worker as well as loving and sexual. Ann herself is tough as nail, a brilliant scientist, and also capable of emotion. Neither of these female characters is punished for being smart and capable – in fact, they are, in Robinson’s world, to be admired for who they are as individuals. Robinson’s creation of these strong, human female characters just makes Maya’s character seem even further strange,  unnecessary, and a little insulting.

What’s really at issue here is Robinson’s social and political critique of the Blue planet, Earth, as it stood in the early 1990s. The Soviet Union had just fallen, but as reflected in Red Mars, the ability of the UN to keep any sort of peace was a joke. Robinson explores the dangers of outsourcing government scientific projects to multi-national corporations but then asks, who else will provide funding? The importance of Arab settlers on Mars seems to bizarrely presage the post 9-11 world, down to an open debate about Women’s rights and Islam between the American Frank Chalmers, and the Arabic caravan that is hosting him as they wander the Martin desert. Perhaps most pressingly, beyond the blatant colonial metaphors, Robinson is concerned that the nation-states of Earth do not have the proper apparatuses in place to face the rising threats of overpopulation, depleted resources, and global warming. For Robinson, on Earth and on Mars, nation-states and nationalism are no longer the answer. Earth is lost, but Mars is the alien terrain that provides the setting for a rebirth of human civilization, and a dawning of a new system of governance not corrupted by nationalistic politicians and their corporate backers. Watching these dynamics play out through the spectacle of the colonization of Mars is what makes this book required reading not only for those looking to the stars, but back to Earth. Unlike the few lucky thousands who make it to the red planet in Red Mars, we’re still stuck her on our own on this dusty rock, but we’re facing all the same problems with even fewer answers.

Because there are two sequels to this book that, as I mentioned, both won Hugos, I’m going to reserve some judgment here. Storylines are clearly unfinished, and sometimes in sequential books the weaknesses those loose ends leave are tied up quite satisfyingly in subsequent volumes. That said, I still think the portrayal of Maya was ridiculous and her storyline distracting and unnecessary. Otherwise this book is a great addition to the genre. There’s a lot to be digested in this book from all fields of study, and there’s some amazing prose to go along with that great scientific research. I’m going to take a break before I read the next two because the level of detail is just so intense and the plot is plodding as a result that I need a break from the kind of reading Red Mars demands – it’s almost like reading a dense, dusty historical monograph. That said, I do look forward to seeing what happens after the revolution.

The idea that the disappearance or removal of all technology and nuclear weapons might be the only way to save the human race is not new to science fiction. Clifford D. Simak made exploring the pros and cons of this scenario the center of many of his works, including the great City. Vernor Vinge, another decorated author, is more known for his far future Hugo winning space operas than post-Cold War dystopias. In The Peace War, however, written in 1984, a time when President Regan built up the US army as the USSR began to collapse under the strain of rot from within, Vinge’s near-future exploration of technology, morals, and war proved compelling enough to garner him a Hugo nomination.

The Peace War is the first in a string of nominees that I will be reading in place of the actual Hugo winners from their year. Why I’m skipping certain books varies on a case by case basis, and that doesn’t mean they won’t pop up later in the project. In this case I’m choosing to ignore William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Skip down to the end of the review for my explanation of why.

I’ll be forthright when I say that I love Vinge’s Hugo winners, A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, and I look forward to reading Vinge’s other near-future winner, Rainbows End. At his best, Vinge is a modern master, blending hard sci-fi and far future plots to create incredible universes that leave the reader both convinced and in awe. His books are also quite riveting page turners, and I generally tend to dislike books overly driven by plot. But no, in Vinge’s universes the reader is treated to vivid and surprising characters that are just as alive and captivating as his harrowing plots.

The Peace War is interesting, but it is certainly not Vinge at his best. It is mired in Cold War not-so-sub-text, set in a world in which the Peacers have disabled every nuclear and military complex and weapon on earth, bringing “peace” to a world teetering on the brink of catastrophic, violent collapse. The Peacers, are not a governmental body but a private corporation who created a technique called bobbling. Using this technique the Peacers surrounded all military weapons and installations in impenetrable silver spheres – referred to as bobbles – therefore incapacitating all world governments by rendering their armies useless.

But in this new, demilitarized world, the Peacers are the enemies. Disallowing not only military but other forms of advanced technology that might lead to military development, the Peacers have plunged the world back into what Vinge repeatedly refers to as a feudal society, though Vinge only gives us glimpses of a ravaged Southern California ruled by what might be some sort of feudal government. Mostly the world seems to be populated with gangs, tribes, traders, and our heroes, the Tinkers: men and women who continue to develop advanced technology. Hiding from the Peacers, they hope to one day overthrow the authoritarian entity and let the United States flourish again.

There are a lot of things going on in The Peace War, most of them very thinly fleshed out in favor of advancing action, a weakness that Vinge put aside in later works. One reason dystopias are so captivating is because of the world building that occurs in such familiar places. The disaster has already happened – what does like look like for the surivors? Literally, what does it looks like? These questions, and Vinge’s world invites many of them, go largely unanswered.

On the micro level, Vinge is obviously trying to explore the way race and social status would be constructed following such a catastrophe. The main character, Wili, is black, something that Vinge reminds us of over and over again, especially every time he is introduced to new characters. But the meaning of this blackness is unclear; several times Vinge alludes or states that other characters might be surprised to take orders from Wili or to learn that he is a genius, but why this characterization in relation to Wili’s blackness is so important is made unclear. No racial tension is ever actively demonstrated. Interestingly, Vinge again alludes that Southern California is no longer angelo, but boosts a majority Spanish population, though in the caste system is still seems English speakers are on top. Confusion abounds. Does this mean whites are still in control here? Is there a difference between language and race? Wili grew up in Southern California but is fluidly bilingual, further compounding this problem. Then there are groups of people that are only referred to by made-up tribal names. Wili is always black in relation to them while their own racial identities remain unclear.

This issue of Wili’s blackness is worth bringing up because Vinge makes it such a glaring point of description but refuses or overlooks explaining to the reader how race works in this dystopic society. His oversight is really a shame, as dystopias provide an interesting setting to explore social constructs like race. Though Vinge seemed to sense these possibilities, his novel is much more interested in exploring the technological marvels he creates in the form of the bobbles and cerebrally interactive computer networks than how humans might interact following a devastating event.

His strange half-exploration of post-apocalyptic social constructs extends to women as well. The antagonist of the novel, Della Lu, is an Asian woman. Her race is mentioned as constantly as Wili’s, with just as little exploration of what that racial identity means to Lu, and to the other characters she reacts with. A bit more fleshed out is her characterization as a woman. Like with Wili, Lu is constantly aware that all the men around her are surprised and resentful that they must take orders for a woman, even though she is more competent than they are. Unlike Wili, Lu at times even has to listen to men denigrate her femaleness, whereas Wili’s blackness if never openly addressed.

Lu isn’t very sympathetic, she’s through and through a killer, bent on destroying the Tinkers because, well, who knows why, really. It seems every story needs and enemy. At one point she has sex with Mike Rosas, a Tinker turned turncoat turned Tinker again, only for the reason that she is trying to shut him up. The sexual encounter sticks out like a sore thumb in the context of the novel, as if Vinge threw it in there simply to spice up the narrative. Women in this book are always sexual objects, including Jill, a computer program created to resemble lead Tinker Paul Hohler’s lost love. Vinge also assumes that a return to the “feudal” structure (a word I’m not sure he even understands) automatically means a return to extremely restricted gender roles – all the peripheral female characters are expected to be domestic and silent. This is a post-feminist novel written during the rise of the New Right, perhaps grasping at the disintegrated domestic ideal. Women can have agency, but in the case of Lu, if they step outside the domestic norm they are heartless bitches who use their bodies to manipulate men and are punished for their sins by death. A familiar trope. Vinge does allow one female character, Allison, to have agency, even though she takes on a non-masculine role in the storyline. Allison, however, has literally been objectified by Paul Hohler, who created the computer program Jill in her image.

Overall The Peace War’s most interesting contribution to the field is its examination of Cold War tensions through a dystopic lens. On a geopolitical level, the three remaining powers in the novel are France, China, and America (all under control of the Peacers), with nary a mention of the USSR. This trio of powers is a wonderful imagining of what might have grown from the alliance made between the French and the Chinese. In 1984 the Soviet Union was collapsing, and in The Peace War there’s nothing left of it. Instead, the unstoppable behemoth, China; France, the rebel of Europe; and the USA have taken over control of most of the world. Interestingly, Africa, always a problem for the first world, remains largely uncontrolled, though it lacks the technological resources of Tinkers elsewhere in the world and is therefore not as much of a threat of Peacer technology. Vinge created a fascinating reading of contemporary geopolitical structures in his dystopic future, and this is yet another point of interest that it would have enriched the novel if only it had been fleshed out.

A product of the 1980s, in The Peace War, Vinge explores a lot of familiar technology, like sophisticated spy satellites and computer networks that looks suspiciously like the internet. The book also reveals that fears of nuclear war and the escalating development of technology didn’t die with détente – they continued to suffuse people’s lives and minds, driving their actions and influencing their fears. The Peace War doesn’t find peace in removing technology. As the title of the novel suggests, the attempt to remove technology simply led to a war to bring it back, almost leading us again to the conclusion that violence is inherent to Man. Vinge’s characters believe that peace is possible, but only if technology is used correctly, and is put in the right hands. What “correct” use is and whose hands should be in control remains unexplained, along with most of the dystopic world Vinge created.

 * * *

During the course of this project I will skipping at least a few of the actual award winners, each for varying reasons. In the interests of fair play, I’ll try to explain why I’m skipping each one. This year’s winner that I’ve chosen to exclude was Neuromancer, by William Gibson. I know that Neuromancer is considered one of the game changers of modern science fiction, that it is much, if not obsessively beloved. The thing is I don’t like it. I’ve tried to get through it many times and never once have I been able to finish it. I find it to be dense, boring, and unreadable. To be fair, I am not a fan of cyberpunk in general. Also, I have actually read quite a lot of William Gibson’s work. I didn’t like any of those books either. While less dense than Neuromancer, I found his plots to be repetitive and all of his endings to be terribly anti-climactic, so much so that they ruined the premise of each book that I read – and some of them had really good premises! Those disappointments combined with my inability to make it through Neuromancer even once left me feeling rather disinclined to try reading it again, especially since I’m doing this project for fun. I’m sure there are many really wonderful places both online and in print that you can go to read about how great or shitty Neuromancer is. For now this won’t be one of them.

When I ran the sci-fi section at HPB in Berkeley, my consumption of science fiction accelerated at an exponential rate. Berkeley and Oakland are sci-fi towns, and have produced many famous authors, including Philip K. Dick (who worked right down the street from me on Shattuck during his own retail days) and Ursula K. Le Guin, among other. It is a veritable mecca for sci-fi fans of all stripes, and being in charge of the sci-fi section in a heavily trafficked used bookstore in a sci-fi town meant I had to know my fucking stuff. Running that section is actually where my quest to work my way through all the Hugo winners began, and it only deepened my love and knowledge of a genre I was raised to adore.

HPB is also where I began to refer to science fiction books as romance novels for men. No matter how awe inspiring the plot of many of the books might otherwise be, they almost always involved some wild romantic or sexual fantasy, usually about women. Sometimes even the science fiction premise wasn’t enough to detract from what was really a veiled romance novel. Just like romance novels use conventions of their genre to explore the limits of gender norms and fantasies about the way couples should behave and act, male and female authors alike graft romantic and sexual tropes onto science fiction ones, consciously or unconsciously hoping to hide their fantasies about love and sex amidst fantasies about other, more fantastical worlds. I’ve already had a look at historical fiction disguised as sci-fi, and in Vonda N. McIntyre’s Nebula winning The Moon and the Sun I’ve managed find to a romance novel couched as alternate history, science fiction style.

Alternate history is always a tricky way to approach science fiction. I think it is extremely hard to do well, as most often it falls into the fan boy category, where the author is enamored of the time period they picked and gets lost in the fantasy of creating alternate storylines without offering anything really interesting to say in terms of historical commentary, if there’s any commentary at all. That being said, alternate histories, when written well, can be simply stunning. Philip K. Dick’s own Hugo winner, The Man in the High Castle, immediately leaps to mind, and fellow winner Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee has its moments. But both these novels explore alternate histories in order to say something remarkable, if not extraordinary, about history that already was. Further, they demonstrate just how tenuous the hands of fate or chance can be, in each case boldly displaying what disaster we may have averted or invited. Like all good science fiction, these authors use the convention of alternative history to teach us about ourselves.

The Moon and the Sun makes no such contribution to our understanding of our own history, past or present. In the interest of full disclosure, the last time I had a thorough history Louis XIV, at whose Versailles court this book takes place, I was a freshman in high school, and that was in 1999. When interacting with works of historical fiction I tend to think that ignorance is bliss – if I know little to nothing about the time period in question I don’t spend the whole time enraged by mistakes and inaccuracies (unless I’m watching Mad Men, which tends to hit every note pitch perfect, which sends me into a spiral of ecstasy). McIntyre supposedly painfully researched this book to recreate the court accurately, and I have no doubt that she tried her best, however, I think her focus on the details of chivalry and fashion are a great detriment to the book. The endless litany of minor noble characters is both confusing and distracting, and the amount of time McIntyre spends describing her protagonist, Marie-Josephe’s, outfits and other accoutrements, to say nothing of the rest of the court, is a ridiculous waste of time. The setting is sumptuous and rich and serves absolutely no purpose. In a way, McIntyre has written a love story about the unimaginable opulence of Versailles.

The twist in McIntyre’s presentation of the past is that sea monsters, creatures that resemble grotesque mermaids, actually exist in this timeline. Humans have been hunting and killing them for centuries, almost to extinction, believing them to be beasts and demons when really they are only peace loving, sentient beings. The crux of the novel hinges on the relationship that develops being Marie-Josephe and the female sea monster, Sherzad, that Louis captures and brings to Versailles, believing that if he eats the creature he will win immortal life. It’s up to Marie-Josephe to convince the god-like sovereign that to do so would be murder.

I don’t usually read reviews of books before I write my own because I like to let my own brain juices flow without plundering other people’s thoughts. This time I found myself seeking out reviews before I’d even finished reading the book, so fed up with descriptions of ball gowns and period wigs that I needed to know what, exactly, Nebula voters found so compelling about this book. Where was the science fiction? The fantasy? One review interestingly described this book as a first contact story between humans and an “alien” species, only set in the past. I really love that assessment, but I’m not sure McIntyre lives up to the wonderful determination the reviewer bestowed upon the book.

The action of the book centers not around the sea creature, though she is a crucial part of the plot, but around Marie-Josephe and her struggle to find her place in Louis XIV’s court while maintaining her personality as a curious, intelligent, talented, virtuous, and obnoxiously perfect woman. Just as Sherzad is trapped by the King’s desire for immortality, Marie-Josephe is trapped by the cultural norms of 17^th century France which demand a woman be silent and demure instead of outspoken, inquisitive, and demonstrative. Marie-Josephe wants nothing more than to study mathematics, aid her Jesuit brother in his pursuit of natural sciences, compose extraordinary music on her harpsicorde, create beautiful artistic and scientific drawings to be presented to the king, and ride perfectly to the hunt on a spirited Arabian lent to her by a friend and protector at court, Lucien. When Marie-Josephe went from riding astride to side saddle without a second thought I lost all interest in the character – for me this small detail pushed my willingness to suspend disbelief too far. It may seem a little thing, but on the very balance of it was just how perfect a character McIntyre created – a perfect feminist construct trapped in the past who must prove the sea monster’s personhood to prove her own personhood as a human woman, and therefore free them both from the tyrannical men around them who would consume and abuse them and treat them as beasts.

The thing about alternate histories is that, again, the author is given carte blanche to create any scenario they wish because this is not actual history. If this book had appeared in the age of fan fiction, I think we would deem Marie-Josephe a Mary Sue. Ignoring the fact that the king doesn’t lop off her head or send her to a nunnery, she is a virtuoso at absolutely everything she does. But, conversely, she is also devoutly Catholic and incredibly virginal to the point of being prude. She knows absolutely nothing about sex and believes that it is an act god created to punish women for original sin. Then, she just happens to fall in love with a dwarf (Lucien) who only finds respite from the pain in his back caused by his skeletal structure when he’s having sex with women. You read that right. Fucking is the only thing that makes his back feel better.

McIntyre spends a great deal of time meditating on Marie-Josephe’s innocence, upholding it as desirable and incorruptible even though the book seems to also tell the tale of Marie-Josephe’s sexual liberation. The sea monster, an openly sexual being who sends Marie-Josephe a musical orgasm to get her attention, also represents the key to Marie-Josephe’s freedom from fear of sexual pleasure. But, in another strange twist, this only comes after she marries Lucien, who will hopefully forever find a cure for his back pain while he sleeps with his wife. The formerly notorious philanderer is tamed in marriage, just as Marie-Josephe is allowed to find sexual liberation behind its safe bonds. Here we see the norm of sex being contained within the family, a distinctly 1950s ideal recreated in this novel from the 1990s that tells the tale of a woman’s sexual liberation. It’s all very confusing, at least to me.

This love story, not the discovery and investigation of the sea monsters and their culture, is the true heart of The Moon and the Sun, and it’s why I would call this book a romance novel guised as sci-fi or, perhaps even more appropriately, fantasy. In the end traditional marriage safely contains sexual passion. Our princess finds her prince.

I find it difficult to see past the romantic conventions of this book. As I’ve said before, it seems to me Sherzad only exists as a conduit to Marie-Josephe’s own freedom. The history of sea monster and human interaction if laced with religious overtones – religion is the antagonist here, threatening Sherzad’s life and aiming to silence and control Marie-Josephe’s body and spirit. While I found the idea that humans would simply slaughter the sea monsters, intelligent or not, to be incredibly plausible (we have a poor track record with murdering each other, after all; we could see the sea monsters standing in as indigenous races wiped out during colonialism, a d-plot in this novel), the book simply felt too thin on exploring the fantastical situation McIntyre created, and too thick on making sure Marie-Josephe and Lucien fell in love and properly ended up naked together at the end of the novel.

There is no doubt at all that McIntyre has a talent for description, and as I said, I believe that she must have spent a considerable amount of time researching Louis XIV’s court. But it seems to me at times she became too enamored of recreating the actual historical trappings of Versailles and neglected to fully investigate the intriguing 17^th century first contact scenario she created. Making Marie-Josephe defiant and forward thinking in every way except for her desire to adhere strictly to the tenants of the religion that so damaged and betrayed her (a betrayal she was conscious of), and her absolute need to fall in love and marry sends very mixed messages. I suppose one can be a powerful woman and have all of those things, though the belief in a church that demands women be both silent and dumb seems to be the most discordant of her traits. Whatever the mixed and tangled messages about the meaning of being a woman – which McIntyre does firmly demonstrate is NOT something to be ashamed of – the fault at the heart of this novel is it’s too perfect heroine and it’s too predictable love story that unfortunately distracts from the true marvel of alien cousins waiting to meet us in the depths of our own oceans. Plunked down in the setting when modern science was just awakening, this book had a chance to explore the crossroads in reasoning using a fantastic cast of characters, but instead of it chose to focus on making sure the heroine and her hero ended up rich and happily married. In the end, The Sun and the Moon is a run of the mill exploration of the past with some alien spice thrown in.

There are many different kinds of science fiction stories, so many that scholars seem to have reached a consensus that the genre’s boundaries are impossible to define. One woman’s work of science fiction is another’s work of historical fiction, for example. Frustrating as this fact may be for a bunch of academics trying to pin down defining features or for bookstore clerks trying to figure out just where exactly to shelve a book, the boundless conventions of science fiction allow authors incredible freedom to create whatever kind of world that they want and to run with it, wildly if need be.

Larry Niven’s classic, Ringworld, is a rich mix of hard science, deep space, and far future science fiction that would border on outright space opera if its plot weren’t so plodding and dull. I realize that some of you consider me to be some sort of heretic for applying those to adjectives to this revered and award-winning novel, but for me it simply failed to impress. In this sort of deep space exploration tale that travels to a landscape both utterly alien and impossibly plausible, the appeal of the novel rests on two key factors: the deftness of the world building and the appeal of the author’s characters. This can be a tricky balance, as a technological marvel like the eponymous Ringworld often becomes a character in and of itself in novels like these. Likewise, the reader vicariously encounters this inanimate character through the eyes of whatever intrepid (band of) explorer(s) the author has assembled for the voyage, and so our reactions to whatever marvelous thing there is to be encountered is closely linked to theirs. Further, in the best works of science fiction, inter-group dynamics run parallel to story of discovering and exploring a new world, and in the most masterful of works these dual stories intersect to form one work of truly breathtaking art. Ringworld tries and fails to do any of these things. Instead it reads as a deep space Edgar Rice Burroughs novel that switches hard science for wonder and monotony for adventure, keeping intact only the blatant chauvinism with little sign of the intrigue, wonder, and heroism that makes you want to look the other way when faced with the denigration of woman (and did I mention all the aliens are white, too?).

The premise is interesting enough: an advanced race of aliens called the puppeteers has discovered the Ringworld, a modified form of a Dyson Sphere in the shape of a ring, and have dispatched a motley crew of unclearly qualified adventurers to explore it. There are a lot of complicated politics going into why this mission is being started in the first place, almost all of which are more interesting that what happens when the crew actually gets to Ringworld and starts poking around. Of course, these tidbits, such as the fact that the galaxy is slowly but inevitably exploding, are merely a very intricate string of (perhaps unnecessary) devices Niven invents to get his protagonists to Ringworld itself. Inexplicably to a curious reader, they’re not even planning on landing on the surface until they crash land, which forces them to explore the giant surface area in hopes of discoveing a means to re-launch their ship into space. Even then they spend most of their time flying above the landscape and arguing with each other about honor or something equally petty.

In writing Ringworld, it’s very clear that Niven attempted to weave a tale that was not only fantastic but believable, which almost falls into a subgenere called hard science fiction, where all technology is supposed to be believable and based upon known science. Ringworld exists in a nebulous gray area in this regard, as Niven spends a great deal of time throughout the novel creating fantastic “technological” marvels such as floating cities, and then coming up with equally lengthy and nonsensical explanations for how any of his miraculous inventions operate. If you create something amazing enough in science fiction, readers are predisposed to suspend disbelief to a certain degree, but Niven writes himself in circles that not only nearly destroy the believability of his far future, high tech society, but serve to bore the reader out of their mind. The explanations aren’t informative and they don’t make sense, and there’s still a lot of that wonderful “Of course!” device being used, where characters over and over have “A ha!” epiphanies that instantly solve problems based upon some sort of assumed future science that the reader must accept is true because look at all these other circles the other jumped through when explaining flying bicycles!

Once our characters crash land on Ringworld essentially nothing happens. They all bicker a lot and spend a great deal of time flying over Ringworld’s surface, not really interested in exploring anything at all beyond things that might get them back into space. In fact, the plot is increasingly focused on the interaction between main character Louis Wu and his female companion, Teela, who was chosen to join the mission for her literally inbred luck (the puppeteers playing genetic gods with alien species is a plot that comes almost out of nowhere and fades almost as quickly). Wu is 200 years old and very confident with the idea that he knows everything. Conversely, Teela is 20 and has never known pain, something Wu finds to be high contemptible. Despite her naiveté and the 180 year age difference, Wu has no problem fucking her silly, and in fact, the only reason he “allowed” her to attend the mission at all is because he wanted someone to have sex with. Which she baited him with. So we have now established that she is officially a sex object.

Perhaps I should state right here that if there’s any reason I find Ringworld interesting it’s as an example of the blatant chauvinism, if not outright misogyny, that often suffuses science fiction works, even to this day. I think as a piece of science fiction in terms of exploring strange new universes and using aliens as stand ins to explore intra-human dynamics Ringwold  fails because it is boring and repetitive in both regards. Ringworld’s premise is so compelling that a synopsis is thrilling, but it completely fails to live up to its premise once you actually open the book. There is no wonder here. We as readers only fly over the scenery along with our explorers, praying for a crash landing so that we can maybe look around a little. Just as in a Burroughs novel, the only natives around are savages, but we don’t even get a true chance to explore the remnants of a failed society that our protagonists compare to gods.

No, what this novel is actually about is Wu’s hatred of Teela’s perpetual happiness and luck. She resembles and is distantly related to a woman who broke his heart, and in the end Teela breaks his heart too. Wu thought he was using her sexually, but it turns out she was using him (albeit completely unknowingly) to get to the Ringworld so she could go native and fall in love with one of the men there. Even more exciting for those of us reading down the misogyny checklist, due to native custom Wu must sell Teela to her new lover as a slave, and because sex is predicated on ownership, he is basically selling her as a sex slave. And Teela is completely okay with this exchange. She has literally been objectified by these men. The only female character in almost the entire novel and her only purpose has been to have sex with one man until he sold her away to have sex with another. In fact, Wu has always described Teela as alien, and eventually, when she goes off with the alien to be his sex slave, she actually does become an alien. As Wu states, she is more alien to him than the actual aliens in their traveling party. All because she preferred to have sex with someone else. A literal dehumanization.

Having lost one whore, Niven simply introduces another, a native woman of Ringworld who is a professional prostitute, as in she was trained in sexual arts to pleasure 33 men over long space voyages. Just as in a Burrough’s tale, Wu has now gone completely native, but the power dynamic between himself and Prill must be carefully maintained. Prill is a superior sexual lover to Wu, which is unacceptable in this narrative. Women exist to be protected and fucked, and when they diverge from this narrative they are either obstructionists, insane, or dead. Prill’s superiority is quickly neutralized, and she becomes his willing “partner.”

It is very difficult for me to read a book that so openly sexualizes and objectifies women. It’s not that these trends are new – they run rife in all forms of media and culture. 1970 is getting a bit out of my own temporal realm of study, so contextualizing the misogyny beyond generalizations is a stretch for me. I think it is fair to say, however, that the treatment of women in this novel is an outgrowth of the sexual revolution. The sexual revolution did bring greater sexual freedom, but it was not some happy free for all, and it was not egalitarian. More often than not it meant that women were supposed to be completely sexual available to men; the sexual revolution, in other words, helped lead to a new, mass objectification of women. Feminists at the time included sexual rights, equality, and respect for sexually liberated women in their own manifestos, as they do today, but here we can see the stud/slut dichotomy at work. Throughout Ringworld, Wu’s sexual prowess if not only boldly on display, but is wantonly described, but it’s simply assumed that he will be this way. That he should be this way. It makes him a human male. The two female characters also have their sexuality boldly on display, but they are literally whores. They are also aliens or, their sexuality dehumanizes them. Stud/slut.

This kind of thought process isn’t really excusable, but we can put it in its time, though unfortunately its time is still with us. The thing about Ringworld is that there is no other reward here. Perhaps in 1970s, when this book was released, this kind of far space exploration of a technological marvel was new, or mind-blowing, but the fact that we barely get to see any of Ringworld in action and the descriptions we do get are dry, boring, or incomprehensible leaves me feeling unconvinced. In 1977 a far better work called Gateway, by Frederik Pohl, would come along and, in my opinion, punch Ringworld right off the map. That book mingles an exploration of complicated inter-gender relationships with explorations of unknown alien technology in a way that is both deep and riveting. Ringworld blunders through space and spends most of its time dwelling on how women are the bane of one man’s personal universe when instead it should be exploring the new, endless possibilities its unfulfilled scenario creates.

This cover is notoriously bad.

Let me preface this review by stating that I am a historian. I’ve always loved storytelling and being transported to faraway worlds, which is why I love science fiction. By the time I’d reached college I knew I loved history as well, passionately, both because it is a mirror of time that reflects back on ourselves, and because it transports us to faraway places both familiar and fantastical, all of which have the benefit of being real. I think many science fiction authors are lovers of history, if not consciously then latently – how can you write about the future without at least being enamored of the past? It makes perfect sense to me that an author might therefore combine a love of science fiction with a love for history in order to use the conventions of one genre to explore the meaning of the human past. That being said, I have no idea why Doomsday Book won a Hugo.

Doomsday Book actually received the Hugo as a co-winner, along with Vernor Vinge’s masterful far future, deep space adventure, A Fire Upon the Deep. Co-nominated with such a transcendent competitor, Doomsday Books’ win seems even more of a mystery. Clocking in at 578 pages long (Bantam revised edition, 1994), the novel, set in the near future, is a tedious, drawn out tale of historical fiction with the convention of time travel thrown in to predicate the action on a sci-fi premise.

Kivrin, a Medieval history student studying at Oxford, has the privilege (or luck) of being a historian after time travel has been discovered. This allows historians to travel back in time to observe events as they unfolded and, more importantly, to see how people truly lived. Obviously, Connie Willis is a fan of social history. It may not be the dream of every historian to time travel back to our chosen time periods, but I’d be lying if I said that thought hadn’t crossed my mind more than once. Not that this doesn’t raise a myriad of questions about methodology and subjectivity, but the nature of the historical profession is not being examined in this novel, nor shall it be in this review. Here, going back in time is the authoritative way to find out about history and Kivrin is going to do it. The only problem is that her chosen time period, 14^th century Europe, is rated a “ten,” or one of the most dangerous centuries, and is therefore off limits to time travel.

Doomsday Book is not 578 pages of Kivrin trying to get to the Middle Ages. In fact, she transports away rather quickly, too quickly, in fact, for her mentor, Mr. Dunworthy, a historian of the 20^th century who inexplicably knows more about the Middle Ages than any of the actual Medieval historians. In fact, thanks to the almost sinister bumbling of Mr. Gilchrist, Dunworthy’s rival, Kivrin is sent to the 1348 instead of 1320, right in the middle of the Black Plague. Oops. Luckily for our heroine, she has been inoculated against the disease in preparation for such a mishap, but she finds herself stuck in the past for a variety of reasons, one being that she has no idea how to find her way back to the rendezvous point (or “drop”) meant to teleport her back to her time, and the other being that as soon as she leaves, present-day Oxford begins to experience a deadly epidemic of the influenza virus that leaves everyone capable of bringing her back from the past incapacitated or dead.

What follows is a duel narrative tracing Dunworthy’s struggle to reach Kivrin admist the epidemic and Kivrin’s frantic attempts to find the drop point, unaware both of the crisis going on in her own century and of the oncoming bubonic plague. Having insinuated herself in the household of a minor noble family, she is forced to watch with horror as the grotesque disease rips through the population of the house and village adjoining it. Meanwhile, Dunworthy runs endlessly between his office and the hospital, spending most of his time making phone calls that don’t get through and trying to pry information out of the deathly ill technician who may be the only one that can save Kivrin from being trapped in the past.

To my eyes, this book reads more like a work of historical fiction than a work of science fiction worth holding a candle to A Fire Upon the Deep. As I said, most of the plot is extremely detailed historical fiction, though Willis’s description of 14^th century England is very conveniently predicated upon the fact that she can change things at will. Remember, Kivrin is experiencing history as it “really” was, not as it was written about. This gives the author carte blanche to fill in gaps or alter details however she desires. Unfortunately, Willis does not use this self-made latitude to create any multidimensional or human characters. Instead of exploring gender roles, for example, Willis creates stock female characters capable of one emotion that limply advance the plot and little else (shrewish mother-in-laws, petulant brides-to-be, etc.), and men cut to fit the mold of disgusting, elder suitor and longing white knight. All the characters seem to have rather modern attitudes about very ancient things. A true historian explores the subjectivity of the lived experience of the historical agent, but in Willis’s past what we expect to find is exactly what we get. What’s the point of time travel, then? It’s easy to be trapped by Willis’s unimaginative tropes because they are familiar to us – so familiar that they’re as worn out as they are enticing in their familiarity. Continuing to harp on well-worn themes, Willis spends an inordinate amount of time making sure to describe the appearance and effects of the black plague in gruesome detail. If this book has a point, more than anything else it seems to be that the black death was really gross and really DID suck for all those involved, though again, I’m not sure we needed time travel and 578 pages to prove that to us. Luckily, the influenza virus in present times is nowhere near as graphic in its manifestations.

Other flaws abound. The characters in this novel are, for the most part, poorly drawn and two dimensional. The villains are so cookie-cutter evil that it is almost insulting to the reader, Dunworthy has no characteristics other than constant anxiety over Kivrin’s whereabouts, and even the unhappy betrothal between a too-young bride and her fat suitor comes right out of the most cliché of storybooks, though how she is saved from an unhappy marriage presents a bit of a twist.

Better, I guess.

If Willis does move toward anything like interesting commentary beyond gore and the pain of losing a loved one, it is in her brief exploration at the end of the novel as to how people find meaning in the midst of a crisis such as a plague. For Willis this manifests in the character of Father Roche, the village priest who believes Kivrin is an angel sent to save them, and Lady Imeyne, the unbearable mother-in-law who rules over the house Kivrin stays in, who is obsessed with status and religion, and believes Kivrin is a sinful witch (because she is a single lady) who has brought the plague upon them. Kivrin, educated in science, knows that the plague is caused by an infectious disease, not a curse sent from God, nor can it be cured by prayer. But, as she struggles to save those she loves from a truly gruesome death, she finds herself confronting the God she so strongly believes, has to believe, isn’t punishing the wicked. Is this kind of death senseless, or does it serve a purpose? Where are those who promised to protect us from such things? In a way, the entire novel takes on our fear of being lost and alone, facing impossible odds. Facing our dooms.

This kind of nuanced questioning brings a level of meaning to Doomsday Book, but it takes 578 pages to get there and is overwhelmed by all the other truly petty concerns that Willis dwells on for most of the book. The interlacing story arcs are so repetitive that surely some of the running back and forth waiting for the phone to ring could have been cut out, as could Kivrin’s waiting by the window for a guide to the drop and her “journal entries,” which in many cases merely summarize events that have already occurred. Doomsday Book is a story with a lot of content with little substance. Unveiling the ending to the mystery Willis builds may have its riveting qualities, but there’s not much else here that bears any remarking upon.

Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man became the first Hugo winner in 1953. Originally serialized in 1951, the novel appeared during the golden 1950s, in the midst of the baby boom, and at the dawning of the age of the expert. In the introduction to the 1996 Vintage edition (which I read), fellow sci-fi author Harry Harrison quickly synopsizes the book with a heavy focus on the capitalist structure of Bester’s future. But it’s not the economics that drive this novel. Instead it is a deepening nervousness about the power of the emerging field of personal psychoanalysis that is represented by the Espers, a large group of human beings who have evolved the power of ESP or mind-reading. In The Demolished Man, the Espers, and by extension pyschoanalists and psychoanalysis, are the most fearful characters, for it is these entities that are able to look within us and show us our true selves, and it is our true selves that we fear the most. For Bester, our true selves are what destroy us.

Skimming over a summary of The Demolished Man, one can’t help but notice similarities to Philip K. Dick’s posthumously famous short story, “The Minority Report.” Both stories feature a society in which murder has been rendered impossible thanks to the emergence of psychics capable of reading minds and predicting murders before they happen. In Dick’s world, his “precogs” have been co-opted by the government and are systemically used by the police department to stop murder through preemptive arrests. In The Demolished Man, Espers make up the population at all levels and work in concert to prevent murder through dissuasion – there’s no point in committing because the psychic population will detect your guilt. Interestingly, even when Espers detect guilt through ESP, they are still obliged to provide non-psychic evidence to an objective computer that determines guilt. The burden of proof still depends on factors outside of the psychic mind, demonstrating Bester’s unwillingness to side with the Espers in the dual society of normal and psychic humans that he’s created.

There are other, major differences between Dick’s story and Bester’s book, the most important one possibly being that The Demolished Man is actually good. “The Minority Report” is a meditation on the ethics of finding a man guilt of a crime he hasn’t yet committed based on non-existent evidence, an interesting premise that is actually better executed in Steven Spielberg’s film adaption than it is in Dick’s noirish source material (Dick wrote a LOT of short stories and books; they couldn’t all be winners). Conversely, Bester’s novel is not a meditation on the ethics of utilizing a pre-emptive criminal system – Bester’s system is not simply preemptive. Instead, Bester uses the scenario of a murder successfully committed and the subsequent race to prove the guilt of the killer to explore not only how a society built out of psychics might function, but the ways in which we hide from ourselves, the lengths we will go to do it, and what it takes to make us confront who we truly are.

Ben Reich, one of Bester’s dueling protagonists, is a non-psychic CEO at the head of a solar-system spanning megacorporation. Plagued by nightmares of The Man with No Face. Reich is falling apart at the seams because his company is about to be absorbed by a corporation owned by his rival, D’Courtney. As a last act of desperation, Reich suggests a merger to D’Courtney, but when he thinks the offer has been refused he comes to the conclusion that the only way for him and his corporation to survive is to kill his rival in cold blood.

As in Clifford D. Simak’s Way Station, Bester’s novel spends a lot of time meditating on what it means to be a Man. Both Simak and Bester conclude that, on some level, violence is inherently part of Man’s nature. Writing in the early 1950s, Bester had just survived WWII and was now living under the long nuclear shadow of the Cold War, which most likely colored his meditation on the intrinsic nature of violence in man’s psyche. Ben Reich is living in a society where violence has been eradicated thanks to the Espers, but he is still driven to kill. Further, his inherent instinct and drive for murder helps him to successfully circumvent detection and later capture. He is aided by a high-level Esper, who risks being cast out of Esper society if he is caught. This Esper acts in the name of greed, another trait that makes up Man, be he normal or psychic.

It seems impossible to describe in one review the nuance that colors Bester’s work. I haven’t even mentioned Lincoln Powell, Bester’s second protagonist and Reich’s nemesis. The police Lieutenant assigned to bringing Bester to justice, Powell is a high level Esper bent on catching his perpetrator. Though one of the most powerful Esper’s on Earth, Powell is repeatedly unable to find enough physical evidence to convince an objective computer that Reich is guilty of murdering D’Courtney.

What he does have is D’Courtney’s daughter, the only witness to the murder who has been thrown into psychosis through witnessing the violent act. Powell initiates a mental process that basically reboots Barbara, causing her to rapidly evolve from infant to grown woman in order to erase the trauma of watching her father be murdered without removing the memory. In the process he falls in love with her, which creates a very strange pedophiliac situation that definitely reminded me of many of the women in Philip K. Dick’s stories. Men’s need to infantilize their lovers and spurn more mature, capable woman is not uncommon for cultural works of these times. The insistence on infantalization and sexual dependency is surely linked to worries about what is means to be a Man during a time when gender roles within the family and society at large were very strictly defined.

At the end of the day, every character is forced to face their true self in order to find the peace or resolution they are searching for. Normally I’m all for revealing the twist in order to deconstruct it, but this time I think I’ll leave the identity of The Man with No Face a secret. The answer Reich finds does tie-in closely with that cult of experts rising to power in the 1950s. It also speaks to America’s increasing obsession with constructing the ideal family, and the way experts often blamed neurosis or abnormal behavior on defective family life. But, in this society, through psychoanalysis (all of which is done by Espers, by the way, because who better to psychoanalyze than a mind reader), every single person can be saved and reintroduced into society with all their good parts still intact, even if it means demolishing them first.

I’m not usually the biggest fan of police-type books, but The Demolished Man supersedes that literary convention, excellently combining the search for self with the search for a way to convict the killer. Even having finished the book, I’m still unsure if I’m supposed to be rooting for Powell or Reich, and Reich was a psychotic killer. Bester does a very good job of forcing his reader to empathize with both perspectives, speaking to the frightened, self-preserving, and violent aspects of ourselves, as well as the peaceful part of us that abhors violence and injustice at our very core. The reader is forced to reflect on their own reaction to Bester’s dueling protagonists, and, as in the best science fiction, we are left with no easy answers, only new questions we must ask about ourselves as we move throughout our present day world.

Gotta love a plug from the Las Vegas Review Journal.

When I first wrote a review of Clifford D. Simak’s A Choice of Gods back in May 2011, I found myself quite captivated by Simak’s deft exploration of the nature of man’s technological and spiritual development in a far future dystopia. My interest in dystopia is what made me pick up the book in the first place, and many of Simak’s novels reach into the future, sometimes near, sometimes far, sometimes both, in order to explore man’s relation to technology and a search for a higher self, usually through some sort of spiritual and/or intellectual transcendence. Science is not necessarily the enemy, but man’s relentless drive for technological innovation is often the reason for the downfall or ruin of humankind.

Way Station is the story of Enoch Wallace, a Civil War veteran born in 1840 who is still alive in roughly 1964, when the novel is set. Enoch is still living in his boyhood home in rural Wisconsin, the pastoral setting being a constant motif in Simak’s work. While neighbors know there is something strange about Enoch, Simak explains that their backwater sense of community leads them all to leave the nature of his existence unexplored. Unfortunately for Enoch, the US government, tangled in the treacherous throws of the Cold War, has caught wind of Enoch’s agelessness, and their investigation into the true nature of Enoch’s being and home leads to major revelations about humankind’s place in the universe.

For Enoch is not an ordinary Rip van Winkle, but is actually the keeper of an intergalactic way station placed on Earth by a consortium of far-advanced alien species called the galactic federation. These aliens have discovered a means of faster-than-light transport that operates something like a transporter does on Star Trek (though, in a more gruesome manifestation of the technology, each traveler’s material body is left dead at its original location, while a new one is materialized for the traveler’s consciousness upon arrival; in Simak’s world, bodies are simply material things, containers). The patterns associated with traveler’s bodies tend to break up when they encounter certain kinds of space junk, so stations like the one on Earth are established to ensure safe passage. Most of Enoch’s visitors are vacationers, as the galactic federation’s mission is again, Star Trek-like in its intent to explore space for a higher purpose rather than simple economic gain, at least originally.

Enoch’s position as the station keeper creates a great deal of cognitive dissonance for our protagonist that leads to lots of contemplating what make a “Man” a “Man.” Enoch lives a double life, both of Earth and of the stars, and, in a way, of the aliens. This split manifests physically in his immortality – as long as he stays in his boyhood home, which has been transformed by alien technology into the impenetrable way station, he doesn’t age. When he leaves the house, as he does daily to walk through his rural property and retrieve the mail, his ability to age is restored to him for that brief time.

Simak has been called a pastoral author, and his descriptions of the Wisconsin countryside are vivid and beautiful. Enoch’s daily walks through nature are one of the strongest ties to the part of “Man” that is Earth Man – a direct link to Earth’s own physical body. Conversely, the station links him to the transcendent nature of the aliens he safeguards, and represents the possibility that “Man” might also severe the link with the other defining factor of our “race,” violence.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Way Station lies in the way Simak investigates what it means to be “Man,” or in a less-limiting, gender and species neutral term, sentient. First there is the aspect of violence, which Simak explores on multiple levels. Enoch is a Civil War veteran and has witnessed firsthand the futility of war, which makes him (uniquely) placed to see the similar futility of impending nuclear war. For Simak, this tendency toward group violence, driven by fear, is an intrinsic part of “Man’s” nature that will drive the species to utter destruction if left unchecked. Integrally linked to apocalyptic future is man’s drive to develop technology, which in this case means more destructive ways of obliterating ourselves. When the aliens offer a solution to MAD, it comes in the form of removing all knowledge of how to operate technological devices of any kind from all humans, driving us back into a dark age and essentially rebooting our intelligence in hopes that the next time it won’t work against us.

There is also the role of personal violence. Enoch’s rifle is always close at hand – he takes all his daily walks with it cradled in his arm and leaves it within careful reach every time he is in the house. The one thing he asked the aliens to install for him to keep him entertained for all eternity is a firing range. Despite having witnessed the insanity of violence firsthand as a solider, and now as a terrified onlooker during the Cold War (and all those intervening wars as well), the rifle is still an integral part of Enoch’s life, representing the violence that still drives him as a “Man.” Even though he never fires it in direct confrontation, he can’t separate himself from it.

Initially the aliens of the galactic federation are posited as the opposite of “Man,” because they have put all petty squabbles and futile violence behind them in the name of peacefully exploring the galaxy. Enoch’s ability to see this peace creates his cognitive dissonance, however, as the novel progresses Simak reveals that the aliens themselves have not transcended their own desire for violence and greed, but have found an intermediary force that allows their benevolent and peaceful sides to win out. And that force is God.

Yes, in Simak’s worlds, nothing is every completely black and white. Out there somewhere an alien invented a machine that allowed sentient beings to communicate with God, proving its existence and, as Simak eventually reveals, creating peace for all who have experienced the presence of the Talisman and its keeper. For you see, the machine works kind of like the Oracle at Delphi, it needs a special operator or “sensitive” (Simak’s terms for psychic) to channel the device and communicate with God. An intermediary. These oracles are rare birds, too, and the only creatures that can make this device work.

It turns out this Talisman has gone missing, which is causing violence and greed to stir in the whole galaxy, not just on Earth. The inevitable conflict in the stars appears to be the force that will finally lead Enoch to choose between his identity as a violent Earth man, and that of the more far seeing alien liaison. But, thank god for deus ex machina (in this case quite literally), Enoch has to choose neither and both. The Talisman shows up on Earth, and Enoch uses his skill with the rifle, the integral violent part of his being, to kill the alien who’s stolen it. Then the Talisman brings peace to both Earth and the galaxy and we end not just with the peaceful resolution of the Cold War, but with Earth being prepared for induction into the galactic federation.

The most interesting part of this solution is the role of Lucy Fisher, Enoch’s deaf-mute neighbor who’s played the role of fey fairy savior throughout the novel, a woman literally struck dumb who can commune with nature but not really people except for Enoch, our divided hero. She stands in as a symbol for mother earth and as the psychic needed to communicate with and activate the Talisman. She is more in touch with the purity of her emotions than any other character in the book, but this also makes her more intellectually simple and simultaneously, more pure. Being a symbol of nature is not an unusual one for a woman, but her literal deafness and dumbness is quire representative of Simak’s inability or unwillingness to create actual, human women. Women aren’t “Man” in this novel, and therefore they’re not human. Lucy is fey and the only other female, Mary, is a ghost that Enoch created using some alien equation. She doesn’t even have physical substance, and her only reason for existence is to be trapped in her unrealized prison of love for him. Women are otherworldly, mysteries, they cannot be controlled, they are part of another universe and foreign others. And here they lack the integral dual nature, specifically the violence, that makes man “Man.” Simak’s women are often props – witches outright, if not oddities, and Lucy Fisher is no exception. She is an asexual Earth angel, a woman who can transcend “Man’s” violence to communicate with God and save the universe.

Also of note is that there simply are no minorities in this book. In A Choice of Gods, Native Americans had largely re-taken the depopulated Earth, an interesting plot twist that hinges on the assumption that Native Americans are more in touch with nature but are not part of the rest of the human race because they’re not down with technology or psychicness. Though included, they are still the Other. In this novel, “Man” is white. The other, when not female, is so outrageous that He is literally Alien. And He is a deliberate choice – we meet no female aliens, nor do we even hear about them.

Finding the historical context for Simak’s novel is fairly simple in many cases. Published in 1963, this novel came right on the heels of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the world ever came to plunging into nuclear war. In Way Station, that sense of crisis and impending doom is ever present, and this time it takes the help of God to stop the escalation, not sheer luck and sensibility.

This was also the age of the space race, and technology is not always the demon in this scenario. Instead, for Simak it is the type of technology that man is developing which is the problem. It may be God and a psychic angel-woman who save the day, but they do it with the help of the Talisman, a machine which has proved the existence of a higher power through the “correct” use of technology. Simak’s suggestion here seems to be that warring over religion may be a root cause of man’s violent tendencies, or that only finding something as transcendent as a God machine can save us, though he doesn’t necessarily state this idea outright.

Also, Enoch knows that the answer is in the stars, as Simak’s novels often look to expansion of the human race into space as the solution to our earthly woes. Interestingly, this exploration of space is most often achieved through psychic and not technological means. Whatever the alternate scenario, Simak seemed to think that in the actual one we were going about it all wrong.

As for his treatment of gender and race, I don’t think there’s anything extraordinary to say other than this book is exemplary of many of the racist and sexist assumptions of the times. We’re still a bit early in the 1960s here, and science fiction at this point was a white boy’s club. The deconstruction of his identity creation that I’m presenting is largely a reading of well-trodden subtext. Tracing Simak’s use of women and minorities in his novels over time might prove interesting, as his work spans several decades, but that is a project for another time.

Simak as an author of science fiction is an enjoyable read, and I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of his catalog. I would recommend him to fans of Philip K. Dick, as both authors share similar concerns. Dick’s futures are much more bleak and thoughtful, and much more inventive. But Simak is a good writer in the sense that he is writerly – his prose is beautiful. He is constantly asking questions about technology. Approaching technology as a problem is not necessarily unique, but the solutions Simak offers to that problem often are. Finally, Simak is actually quite deft at using science fiction to explore what it is that makes us human. His definition of human may be limited, but noticing and exploring the reasons for those limitations is another exercise in enjoyable reading.

Sadly, most of his books are out of print, but you can find copies very cheaply on amazon.com, or at your local used bookstore (trust me, you will find tons). I encourage you to try Simak out!

As an avid lover of both science fiction and the history of popular culture in the 20th century, I’ve found that my time spent as a graduate student at GMU has only deepened my excitement for reading and interacting with science fiction, no matter the medium. A really wonderful professor of mine, Dr. Brian Platt, once said “nostalgia is a criticism of the present made from the past.” We were in a Post-War Japan class discussing Japanese memories of WWII and the atomic bomb, but I think this statement applies to all memory studies, and should be kept in mind when we are evaluating our own nostalgia for the past and how that nostalgia manifests through popular culture, among other things. We can see this statement in operation through cultural phenomenon like Mad Men, a television program set in the 1960s that comments on our own feelings about the American Dream while hiding behind the screen of its historical setting. It’s easier to view ourselves through the lens of the past because temporal distance takes the sting out of the criticism.

This statement also works the other way around. It’s just as easy to criticize or examine the present from the future, or alternate universes, or parallel universes, or alternate pasts, or whatever other foreign iteration of existence science fiction takes us too. Coming of age under the long nuclear shadow of the Cold War, science fiction as a genre creates worlds both distant and familiar that provide us with an escape from our own world while simultaneously shining a mirror on us to show us what we might be fleeing from.

In this blog I have made it my goal to read and blog about science fiction novels from the perspective of both a fan of the genre and a historian who specializes in the study of culture, memory, and the the time period in which many of these great works were created. I am also a gender scholar, with a broader interest in identity construction, which includes social constructs like race and class. All of these areas of inquiry will play a role in how I approach reading and writing abut these works.

As a jumping-off point, I’ll be reading all the Hugo and Nebula award winning novels to date, with some deviations that I’ll explain later. Eventually I hope to expand this project to include other media as well, like television (a personal favorite) and film. Also, expect to see reviews of books not on my award winning reading list. I also reserve the right to venture into the realm of fantasy if I should find a book compelling enough. Finally, I may also include reviews of works written about the genre itself.

I’ll note now that this is also my “professional” blog, a place to establish my presence in the digital history community, as well as the historical community at large. As such, the blog itself will not be entirely dedicated to the science fiction project, but will also include posts more exclusively related to other historical projects. I do, however, feel this blog is an appropriate place to carry out the science fiction project, as it is relevant to my own field of study, and can hopefully provide enjoyment to fans of science fiction as well as academics. If a post doesn’t speak to your particular interests, please feel free to skip!

Okay, introduction’s over. The first book I’ll be reviewing is Clifford D. Simak’s Hugo winning Way Station, so look for that post soon!