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All of our authors this week tackle the changing cultural landscape of turn-of-the-century America, which witnesses the emergence of a mass culture that often superseded older cultural forms. In particular, each author is concerned with whether or not these changes in the way culture was produced and consumed were democratic in nature. Larry Levine in Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America, sees a transformation from the heterogeneous audiences of American theater in the 19^th century to the tightly controlled highbrow entertainments of the elites, saying, “Art was becoming a one-way process: the artist communicating and the audience receiving” (195). No longer did audiences participate in the performances of material such as Shakespeare or operas, but instead, as dictated by elite tastes, sat in silent reverence to watch inflexible performances of these now-dubbed classics. For Levine, the elites responded to the disorder of urbanization and massive immigration by placing strict controls on cultural forms.

            But culture and art did not transform into a one-way process of creation and reception as Levine claims. It’s true that cultural categories are contingent upon their historical context, and Levine does a convincing jobs of tracing the movement of cultural forms from one category to another. But culture did not completely lose its democratic nature, and other authors trace the dialectic between cultural forms and cultural receivers by studying the new forms of mass amusement that emerged at the turn-of-the-century. Most interesting is the tension between Progressive reformers’ impulse to educate the immigrant and working classes and these same group’s wholesale embrace of new cultural forms. In his study of Coney Island, Amusing the Island: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century, John Kasson begins by examining the City Beautiful Movement and the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. Planners intended Central Park and the White City to pastoralize and instill awe in their visitors, but the Midway Plaisance, harbinger of Coney Island, overflowed with visitors.

Indeed, these new amusements, like Coney Island, brought heterogeneous groups of Americans together at the same time that Levine observes a cultural bifurcation. Mass amusements may have controlled and guided visitors through the walls of their amusement parks and the mores of social behavior, but Americans, especially the working class, voted with their pockets and their feet as to which cultural forms they enjoyed most. Further, Coney Island and other new public spaces of amusement allowed Americans to mix with each other and create new heterosocial spaces. The argument can validly be made that vendors programmed leisure time just as readily as employers programmed work time, but at least the illusion of choice existed for those seeking pleasure in Coney Island and other public amusements.

Kathy Piess captures the dichotomy between freedom of choice and oppression in her book Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn of the Century New York. As wage earners, working class (immigrant) women found themselves with the capital to participate in the new culture of mass amusements and mass production. Women used their newfound economic freedom (or semi-freedom, depending on whether or not part of their wages went to their families) to purchase fashionable clothing or take part in new social amusements, like dance halls and movies. This allowed them a new freedom in leisure time, a relative social autonomy that they had not experienced when cultural and economic norms dictated they work and socialize in the private sphere. The so-called freedom came with a price, however, as the ability to participate in these new social forms did not prove to be as affordable as at first appeared. Often women starved themselves to save enough money to enjoy leisure time and, even more predominantly, a system of treating arose where men paid women’s way in exchange for sexual favors. This system created a delicate balancing act for women, who had to reciprocate to men without tarnishing their honor.

Even as old cultural forms bifurcated into low and high, new cultural forms emerged to fill the vacuum, creating new standards of behavior, freedom of choice, and instances of oppression. Every mechanized reproduction meant that cultural forms lost their aura as cultural products moved further from the original. Like Theodor Adorno, elites tried to preserve the aura of cultural artifacts they deemed genuine and classic by isolating them from the rowdy masses and dictating to those who participated how they should imbibe things like Shakespeare, opera, and art pieces. But as observed by Benjamin, mass culture allowed a new class consciousness to arise. It may not have been revolutionary, but the working class and immigrants, especially young people like young women, emerged as demographic markets to be both catered to and taken advantage of. Culture remained a highly contested place one of newfound choice and carefully calculated limitation.

In 2002, Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt lost the Hugo award to Robert Sawyer’s Hominids, a book I won’t be reading due to its graphic and gratuitous depiction of rape. Instead, I chose to read this alternate history, which details what the world might have looked like if all the Christians/Europeans had died out in the black plague. Geographically the story focuses mostly on the Chinese and India, Muslim Arabia and the Middle East, with some focus also on Native Americans. As a narrative device, the book makes coherent its jumps across time and space by following a group of characters reincarnated through all the chapters and identifiable by the first letter of their first names. The reincarnation serves not only as a plot device but also as an example of the way alternate constructions of history itself might look like.

From the author of Red Mars, it is reasonable to expect an incredibly rich and detailed narrative that focuses both on the characters as well as the world around them. Robinson certainly delivers on this front – his book is richly populated with intriguing characters and somehow the plot device of reincarnation never comes to seem trite. But, as we’ve seen before, one of the most interesting conceits of alternative histories (and there is definitely room to debate whether these are even science fiction at all) is that the author is given carte blanche to create a new world. On this front, Robinson fails.

The Years of Rice and Salt reads as a catalog of human scientific discovery, except with the discovery being done by Muslims and the Chinese, not Europeans. These discoveries, however, often lead to exactly the same ends, such as The Long War, a 67 year war between the Muslims and the Europeans that eerily resembles WWI. Similarly, the Chinese discovery of the Americas leads to a smallpox epidemic that wipes out a large portion of the native population and invasions of South America to overthrow the Incas and take their gold. One notable difference is that somehow the Muslims and the Chinese manage to avoid dropping the atomic bomb, but China still ends up a country revolutionized by a philosophy the sounds exactly like the peasant-centric communism of Mao Zedong.

At one point, Robinson even has one of his characters argue against the kind of counterfactual history he is creating in his own book:

“It’s such a useless exercise…What if this had happened, what if that had happened…The historians who talk about employing counterfactuals to bolster their theories, they’re ridiculous. Because no one ever knows why things happen, you see? Anything could follow from anything. Even real history tells us nothing at all. Because we don’t know if history is sensitive, and for want of a nail civilization was lost, or if our mightiest acts are as petals on a flood, or something in between, or both at once. We just don’t know, and the what-if don’t help us figure it out.”

“Why do people like them so much then?”

“More stories.”

For The Years of Rice and Salt, the alternate history just serves the purpose of more stories, especially since historical events parallel the actual timeline, even with different players. The use of reincarnation as a plot device suggests that all of our lives are endless iterations of more stories, stories that advance the same inevitable history that may come in a foreign garb but when undressed is all the same. Because the alternate history of The Years of Rice and Salt is so close to our own, the book can be difficult to read through, as Robinson becomes lost in his stories and loses sight of the alternate histories he’s creating. The book moves from intriguing to dull and back again, over and over, like the reincarnations of its characters.

Published in 2002, it’s hard to ignore the timeliness of a book about a world where Muslims rule half of it. Robinson’s Muslims are artistic and interested in the hard sciences, they search for the truth about the Koran and believe in equality for women, and let Hindu and Buddhist beliefs about reincarnation color their own religious experiences. With the book’s timely proximity to the events of September 11th, it’s hard to know exactly how much that day affected Robinson’s book. It’s a thick tome, so it’s hard to believe he wasn’t working on it before 9/11. But his mission, regardless of external events in our real history, is to portray Muslims and the Chinese as vibrant, learned civilizations, not backwater barbarians as our history so often paints them. Left unchecked by religious wars and imperialism, The Years of Rice and Salt demonstrates how these societies may well have developed into imperial powers themselves, driven by science, without losing their religious identities.

The Years of Rice and Salt is an interesting read, even if Robinson doesn’t grab the reins allowed him by alternate history and run with them. That’s not his goal here. For those interested in rich character studies and imagined lands populated by familiar cultures, this is the book for you.

Buried inside this terse read of a novel are the little nuggets of grand speculation that helped Rendezvous with Rama win both the Hugo and the Nebula in its year. This novel is a first contact story without any real first contact. The ultimate question – are we alone in the universe – is answered with a decisive no when the so-named Rama probe, a huge black cylindrical ship – enters the solar system. But, devoid of any sentient life, or perhaps or any life at all, the question then becomes, what else is accompanying us in the universe?

This book was written in 1973, when the American victory in the space race increasingly paled when faced with Earth’s increasingly apparent “limitations.” Set in 2130, Rama is Clarke’s imaging of what the space race could have gotten us. A world that was forced to pull together to protect itself from attack of space-born objects discovers and explores the Rama probe when it first appears in the solar system’s orbit. People are no longer identified by their nationality, but by their planetary statuses, and Clarke makes light of the UN, poking fun that it could have over 100 members while the planetary committee can barely function with under 10. Indeed, at one point while exploring the Rama probe, one of the characters remarks that the Ramans must have morals or they would have destroyed themselves, as humans almost did during the 20th century, an obvious allusion to the Cold War detente the United States enjoyed with the Soviet Union at the time.

But what is Rama, besides a curious allegory for Cold War relations? Rama is a massive, hallow space probe outfitted with many strange but seemingly useless features on its inside that begin to reveal their purpose as the probe awakens to life. Clarke was a  golden age hard science fiction author, and calling him a stickler for details is an understatement. Rama is nothing but a cold, scientific adventure story – even his human characters are never more than mere conduits to the futuristic dream ship that Clarke creates for them to explore. This can make for some dry or even frustrating reading, as Rama’s interior is described with intricate detail but all the greatest mysteries about her – i.e. who are her creators – are left unanswered.

And that is the way Rama must be left – as an exploration novel emblematic of a time when Americans looked to the stars with not just hope but also cold realism in their eyes. In Clarke’s future space pulled humanity together and allowed us to colonize the stars, just as in real life it drove two nations toward the pinnacle of scientific greatness. There is the requisite sexism,  but women also serve on Commander Norton’s exploratory crew, and are allowed to hold important roles on the ship. It’s also a book for fanboys and space geeks and anyone else who wonders whether or not we’re alone in the universe, and if not, what our companions are like. In Rama answers are only found in the things that the Ramans invented, but as there are many sequels, I can assume more is revealed about their nature in later books. Perhaps Clarke’s terse prose opens up a bit as well.

The preface to my 2009 edition of this Nebula winning classic does my work for me in historicizing this novel. Silverberg writes that A Time of Changes came about as a response to America’s transition from the straight-laced conformity of the 1950s to the counterculture and free love of the 1960s and 1970s. A Time of Changes stands as an allegory for that transition set on a far distant world in a distant future, where men have depleted the resources of Earth and colonized the stars.

Settled by a taciturn, religious (almost puritanical) people, on Borthan it is illegal to break the scared Covenant, a religious doctrine that prohibits the use of the pronouns “I” or “me” and isolates people emotionally from themselves and others. Kinnall, our protagonist and a prince of Sulla, one of the provinces on Northern continent where most people reside, narrates the reader through his own journey of self-discovery, guided by an Earthman and realized with the help of a hallucinogenic drug that lays bare the souls of those who take it in a basic orgy of emotional sharing. Emerging from this stupor, the first impulse is to say, “I love you,” which is also the ultimate crime on Borthan, as it breaks down barriers between the self and others.

A Time of Changes presents astute world-building, and remains dedicated to the strict social rules set for its characters, but doubting these rules is an integral part of the journey for the characters and the reader. Just as the reader is questioning why Borthan’s residents remain so strongly dedicated to the Covenant, Kinnall is wondering it himself, writing a desperate manifesto meant to convince Borthanians that the way of rightful existing is through self love and love of others, the two most taboo indulgences on Borthan. In this way A Time of Changes is not just a stand in for the counterculture or the drug culture that grew out of the 1960s, but is an exploration of religion itself. The Earthman, Schweiz, takes the drug because he is trying to experience God. He envies the Borthanian’s easy dedication to religion, and nothing in his wandering of the stars has convinced him God exists. Scheiwz thinks he might find God through complete and unfettered connection with others. For Kinnall, the drug brings him closer to God by tearing apart his own religious beliefs. God is self love and the love of others, he finds.

A Time of Changes doesn’t have much to hide in its allegorical story of one man’s transformation from conformity to a belief in free love. It’s easy to read this book onto the historical narrative of the counterculture and the 1960s and 70s. The treatment of women in this novel also dates it – all women are sex objects, pure and simple, even Kinnall’s bondsister, who he is supposed to feel only platonic feelings for. It is their only function. During the free love period in the 1960s, women found that free love often meant their objectification, as they were merely sex objects for the men practicing open sexual mores upon their bodies. This objectification is one of the experiences that drove feminism and women’s quest for sexual equality. Silverberg is unable to grant any of the women in his novel agency – their bodies exist purely for the pleasure of his protagonist. Sadly, as some of the more recent science fiction novels I have reviewed demonstrate, this is still the case in many texts.

A Time of Changes is an interesting read. It forces us to ask ourselves how much our own culture mirrors the Borthanian culture of isolation and mistrust. It also asks us to examine the value of sharing love and emotional experience with those around us. I oftentimes felt that Silverberg spent more time telling the reader about Borthanian mores than he did demonstrating them, so that the impact of Kinnall’s ultimate martyrdom felt less destructive than it should have. But the settings in the book were lovely and the allegory intriguing. Even after 30 some odd years, this book provides valuable insight into the way we view ourselves and each other.

It’s hard to know where to begin in dissecting this out-of-print Nebula winner. It’s another time travel story, and as we’ve already established with historical fiction and alternate histories, using such a device allows the author carte blanche when constructing a plot around their unique timeline. No Enemy but Time uses this latitude to create a novel that rewrites our understanding of our distant past. Whether this journey 2,000,000 years into Earth’s past is successful enough for the reader is up for debate.

No Enemy but Time is really two stories about one character told in a twined narrative as the author moves forward through Joshua Kampa’s past being raised by his foster parents, and his future, where he travels backwards in time to Plieistocene Africa in the the fictional country of Zarakal. He goes because he has been dreaming of living there, in this same far-distant time period, his whole life, and somehow the time travel technology in this novel revolves around the vivid dreams Kampa has had since he was a small child. Only one who has “spirit traveled” can actually go back in time using the time travel device, White Sphinx. Kampa qualifies, and so he is sent back in time to observe the fictionalized proto-humans, Homo zarakalenis (referred to as Minids). The rest of this time travel part of the story focuses on Kampa’s adventures with the tribe of proto-humans he eventually becomes a part of. An intriguing premise, No Enemy but Time fails to reach the heights worthy of a Nebula.

The plot of No Enemy but Time is hard to summarize intelligently, as may be apparent from the first two paragraphs of this review. The book is long and winding, and while its two stories are connected through the shared character of Joshua Kampa, it’s hard to pin down why the story of his childhood and maturation is necessary, even if these chapters are the best written of the book. But what is most frustrating and banal is the way Bishop treats Kampa’s time in the past. The book reads like an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel without the excitement, and with a black protagonist. As Kampa successfully joins the Minids band, he becomes the all-powerful outsider, just as good, if not better, at practicing the tasks of hunting and gathering that his Minid companions are both evolutionarily and experientially more suitable for.

Even more problematic is the nature of gender and sexuality in this book. The Minid society is divided along gender lines, with the men doing the hunting and protecting and the females doing the gathering and the nurturing. They also pair bond monogamously along gender lines, implying that heteronormative standards reigned supreme in humans’ distant ancestors. That is, of course, until Kampa falls in love with one of the female Minids that he names Helen, a loner, physically larger than the other woman, who most often acts like a male of the tribe. But this is an uneasy role – Helen is shunned by the females and often takes to stealing other animals’ children in an attempt to play mother. In Bishop’s Pleistocene era, the key to true acceptance in society for a woman is still tied closely to her reproductive capabilities and her role in a heteronormative couple.

That’s right. If you haven’t guessed it by now, Kampa and Helen pair bond, have sex, and produce a child. Putting aside the possible scientific impossibility of this procreation (it is a novel about time travel based on dreaming, after all), I was quite put off by the sexualization of Helen, who I read to be basically an animal in comparison to Kampa. Their love scene read like lurid bestiality, and though I could see the relationship coming from miles away, that didn’t lead me to be any more disappointed in the author. The love scene and sexual bond between Kampa and Helen served no purpose in the plot other than to situate both Kampa and Helen in a monogamous, heteronormative relationship.

This book was published in 1982, during the rise of the New Right with a backlash against the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 70s. It’s hard to know if Bishop’s interest in pair bonding Kampa and Helen related to this backlash, but one of the most striking features of this novel is that Joshua Kampa is black. Further, he encounters prejudice and discrimination based on his skin color in scenes that are convincing enough such that they are uncomfortable to read. If Bishop was unwilling to relinquish heternormative relationships, he did explore the color barrier.

Also, the novel is set in Africa, an Africa that Bishop envisions as forward thinking scientifically, and that in the end gets its own space program. It is not a simple backdrop for a story about time travel, but instead is a character in its own right, as are the African politicians who play and support Kampa along the way.

As I said at the beginning of the review, this novel has an extremely interesting premise, I just wish it had been executed better. Kampa’s sexual relationship with Helen was a disturbing plot point that I couldn’t move beyond, and it was hard to feel immersed in the minutiae of the Minids society when most of their time was spent looking for food – realistic perhaps, but it didn’t make for riveting reading. Then Bishop glossed over one of the most interesting parts of the story – his return to the present with his hybrid daughter. Perhaps unwilling to imagine the prejudice she might face, or the mental handicaps she might have to overcome, she appears as perfectly normal in the final chapter, absconding to chase her own dreams of the future.

No Enemy but Time is lean on material where it should be thick, and dwells too much on seemingly mundane episodes. Further, it is hard not to feel disturbed by the eroticization of an animal. Poor females are always sex objects, even if they’re almost of a different species. This book is a romance novel for men disguised as a technical manual for wilderness survival disguised as a coming of age story. Follow your dreams, Bishop extorts his reader, they will lead your on wilder and more inappropriate adventures than you ever imagined.

So I have a habit of watching bad movies and live tweeting as I go along. Usually my commentary ends there, but I think I have more to say about my most recent subject, Showgirls.

A round table article found in Film Quarterly on JSTOR presents many different takes on the film. The authors try to unpack Showgirls through the lens of trash or cult cinema, attempting to analyze the film as a serious text, even though most admit the film is terrible. Sometimes, though, we can learn the most about ourselves through the products of our culture that we deem to be the worst. As this film came out in 1995, I’m not going to try to historicize it in my analysis. I was only 10 years old, and all I remember about the movie’s debut was trying to reconcile the Saved by the Bell reruns I watched with this snark that was circulating about poor Jessie Spano.

What I do want to do, however, is share briefly my thoughts on women and power in this movie. It’s no secret that this movie was a deliberate exploration of the sexual power of women. Nomi, he main character, is presented as a bad ass chick who no one should fuck with, but all of the power she has in the film is physical, be it sexual power (which is most of the time) or when she’s quite literally kicking ass. There’s no in-between for Nomi – it’s either fight or fuck.

All the power women have in this film comes from their overt sexuality. Nomi’s sometimes rival, Crystal, loses her power when her body is physically damaged, which also renders her sexual power inert. On the flip side, Nomi not only dances her way to the top, she fucks her way to the top, and orchestrates Crystal’s downfall by pushing her down the stairs. She is the agent who damages Crystal’s sexual power in order to bolster her own.

So what does this sexual power tell us? Should we celebrate this film as a triumphant unleashing of women’s sexuality, or is it simply softcore porn working to stroke the patriarchal male ego? All the positions of power are, after all, fulfilled and guarded by men in this film, and the way Nomi gains her power is partially through fulfilling the sexual fantasies of the men around her through lap dances or actual sex.

There’s also the troubling subject of rape in this film. One character who has no control in the film at all is Nomi’s African American roommate portrayed throughout the film as asexual and, as noted in the round table discussion, fulfilling a service role. When her character attempts to become sexualized, she is punished by being gang raped. Like in real life, no one calls the police on her attackers, in large part due to the fact that one of them is a famous pop star. Even though the film presents the act as wrong, it doesn’t right the wrong by seeing legal recourse.

The narrative is further problematized when Nomi enacts a rape revenge fantasy, literally kicking the shit out of Nomi’s most famous attacker. Here again we see female power being demonstrated through physical prowess, but the troubling nature of the rape itself, which could play like a fantasy in its own right, overshadows Nomi’s actions, leaving them as more problematic than cathartic.

At the end of the day it’s hard to read this film as any sort of liberation for women in general or for the women in it. Some of the authors in the round table discussion argue that Showgirls is purposeful camp, that Jessie Spano’s overacting is mean to embody Nomi’s over the top character. It’s hard to find agency for Nomi outside her sexuality, which leaves her to be rather one dimensional, and the patriarchy reins supreme as men take up positions of power and dictate things like whether or not someone can report a brutal rape to the police. Nomi and the women around her are more trapped in the system by their sexuality than liberated.

In any case, Showgirls is an interesting, if sometimes baffling watch. It’s a difficult film to unpack, and I don’t know if I agree that it was purposefully campy. But then again, it’s hard to discount the theory that the director didn’t know he was making a film so over the top.

On the cover of my edition of this 1991 Nebula winner, the blurb from the New York Times Book Review reads, “Engrossing…enigmatic…playful, erotic, and disturbing.” I heartily agree with most of these adjectives. The one word missing, at least for me, is impenetrable.  Like C. J. Cherryh, Swanwick throws the reader into his world assuming that they already know the way it’s structured and all its rules, and expects the reader to figure out any details he provides on their own. There’s no generous exposition here for most of the book, only a plot that skips along at a breakneck pace, keeping up with the protagonist the bureaucrat in his fevered search for the outlawed Gregorian, an apparent wizard of some sort.

On the planet Miranda a phenomenon known as the jubilee tides drowns the continents every so many years, sending her inhabitants fleeing. But this time Gregorian is promising that he can change human being so that they can live in the newly risen oceans. Whether this is magic or technology is never revealed, but it is unacceptable to the extraterrestrial ruling body the governs Miranda from afar, denying advanced technology to the Mirandan civilization. Hence why the bureaucrat, working for that government, is dispatched to find the wizard and hunt him down.

I’m not sure I have much to say about this book because it was so dense and experience for me. I feel neutral about it in terms of whether or not I liked it; someone to discuss the book with would have made it a richer experience. The book is, in a way, a meditation on the matter of the self, what’s real in the world around us and what is illusion. The bureaucrat is constantly attempting to undercover whether or not the native Mirandan phenomenon he encounters are real or simply hallucinations.

The one commentary I can offer on this book is the use of tantric sex, or sex magic. Having read another of Swanwick’s books I can tell that he is into writing about sex as a form of power, especially when it comes to women. In Stations of the Tide, Undine controls the bureaucrat through sex magic, opening his mind to the possibilities of magic on Miranda by manipulating his body. But this seems to be the only power that Swanwick offers to women, which in my opinion made the sex scenes seem a bit gratuitous and in a way, a let down. Sexual power for women is all well and good, but when that’s their only trait it leaves the characters extremely one dimensional. But then again, what do I know. Books of science fiction are, in many cases, romance novels for men, and the audience of this book felt distinctly masculine in the way the novel read.

As to how to historicize this book, again I am unsure. Previous civilizations on Miranda had enjoyed advanced technology, and this and their battle with the extraterrestrial government over advanced technology hints at Swanwick’s own ambivalence about the place of technology in human society. It gets away from us, he says, but it can also save us. This could be read as an allegory for the massive technological changes happening at the beginning of the 90s, especially the coming revolutions in personal electronics.

There’s also the issue of the haunts, a native Mirandan species wiped out by human presence. There are hints of environmentalism in the government’s obsession with finding the haunts, through there’s also a hint of the sinister in the air, as it’s never stated why people are so bent on finding out if the haunts are truly extinct.

As my read was mostly unpleasurable, I don’t feel I can recommend this book. At the same time, I do want to recommend this book. I do think there’s a lot here to unpack, especially when it comes to the world building Swanwick does. There is a lot of beautiful imagery in this book, and the glimpses of Mirandan history we do get are fascinating. I would love to hear about someone else’s reading of this book. Perhaps it wasn’t as troubled as mine.

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.

I am a sucker for Falling Skies, the post-alien-invasion-show currently in its second season on TNT. I don’t know why I feel so compelled to watch this show, because it is full of problems. Butt loads. I guess it’s because I always feel compelled to investigate media and entertainment centering on dystopia, be it print, film, or, most rarely, television. And Falling Skies is certainly dystopic.

But it’s also incredibly problematic, beyond commonplace technical problems such as good writing. Too often dystopias look all too familiar to the world we’re already living in, just maybe throw in some alien overlords and nuclear waste. And when I say they “look” familiar, I’m not talking about physical landscapes, I’m talking about social constructs, or, the way the surviving society looks. Sometimes that means physically how society looks, not just the way it is constructed.

Falling Skies obviously has problems with race and gender. It’s a male-centric show focused on reinforcing current day definitions of masculinity. It appeals to a boarder audiences by focusing on plots that are family-oriented, or center around attempts to maintain and/or rebuild “normal” human families in the face of a catastrophic event. Come hell or high water, the American family will persevere, it will serve as something to protect and fight for, is the comforting message Falling Skies sends to its viewers. Even in the middle of the apocalypse, this will not change. Through the institution of the family, order lives on, as do the rest of us, even if we actually die.

It’s nationalism garbed in the robes of science fiction, but the producers make no secret of linking American exceptionalism and the myths of the American revolutionary spirit to the survivors’ attempts to outlive and destroy the superior firepower of the aliens. Survivors have organized themselves into militias and named themselves after the militias that fought in the revolutionary war. They are lead by real military commanders, bringing one of the most patriotic symbols, the army, to the forefront of the show. Though Tom is not military, he is a professor of  military history, a specialty that, when combined with his masculine bearing (stoicism, the ability to be an efficient killer, and a firm position as the physical protector of his family) automatically makes him the second ranking officer, according to the show’s logic. He is the civilian conscience of a militarized revolution, but his academic past works for him instead of against him because he studied a masculine, violent subject that echoes the gendered values Falling Skies upholds. The values the characters fight for are not only domestic values, they are American values, with the two being so inextricably intertwined that the link isn’t remarked upon often in the show, which is stunning considering how corny and awkward some of the dialog can be.

Noah Wyle’s character, Tom, is, as described, a military professor turned resistance leader. He’s wracked with guilt over the death of his wife, which he feels he could have prevented. Failure as a man number one. Now he’s left to be a father to his three sons, and really, to the hundreds of survivors he’s supposed to protect, help lead, and watch over. The show revolves around his relationships with his sons, who he must also raise to be proper men through modelling appropriate masculine behavior. In this show men are stoic, they are (very competently) violent (when necessary – because they are real, honorable men, they don’t act wantonly unless that trait are specifically written into their character bio), they are honorable, and they are also paternal, but mostly when it comes to instilling values of manhood. Their job is as protectors.

Interestingly, the role of the doctor is played by one of the show’s few female leads. You could say her occupation is a victory for feminism, but actually casting her as the doctor places her in a nurturing position. Constructed gender roles often dictate that women are inherently nurturers. The doctor here is not even a prestigious surgeon, but a pediatrician turned field medic. Her pre-attack job was to take care of children. Again, sexist logic: women are biologically childbarers and caregivers. And guess what, her son died in the invasion. Failure as a woman/mother number one. She is punished by her unending grief and this fact being her the only bit of backstory given to her character. She is defined by her motherhood, by her failure as a mother, and by her current job: to play mother to all the survivors, especially Tom (Noah Wyle) and the Second Mass’s leader, Weaver by mending their bodies and providing and emotional shoulder for them to lean on. She also becomes Tom’s sexual partner and emotional outlet. Tom can be soft around a woman. So she nurtures and has sex. That’s it.

The other female lead, Maggie, is a bad ass militia scout. Again, points for placing a woman in an aggressive role, right? Whoa there buddy. This position, by default, makes her a failure as a woman. She is given a complicated back story of sickness, rape, and crime, all punishments for her attempt to break out of the show – and society’s – dictated domesticated role. This form of punishment for bold, masculinized women is an old, old story in all kinds of media. And, another old story, Maggie is trying to find redemption through the love of Tom’s oldest son, Hal, who can validate her as a woman and therefore as moral by forgiving her for her past sins. Hal also acts as her protector, and when she tries to protect him, at least in one instance, she get’s beaten half to death. Oh, and did I mention it was during a catfight with Hal’s old girlfriend, another (blond) masculinized female who is also punished for stepping outside a domestic role by being abducted then physically and mentally altered by the aliens? Poor Maggie (and Karen). She deserves better.

And then there’s race. It seems that the white people on Earth did an exponentially better job of surviving the alien invasion than any of the other minority races. This racial superiority is doubtless an outgrowth of the discriminatory casting of current day Hollywood and the inherent white superiority complex in our dominant cultural narrative. Our society is not post-racial, and though Falling Skies makes tries to take a stab at it, it does not depict a post-racial dystopia. African, Asian American, and Latino characters play supporting roles and tend to end up dead. Another familiar trope. Oops.

I have spent a lot of time studying the history of civil defense engineering in our country. For those not familiar with the term, civil defense most often refers to things like bomb and fallout shelters or protection systems set up during the Cold War meant to help American citizens survive catastrophic nuclear attacks. Officials also developed plans to rebuild society afterward. Historian David Monteyne recently published Fallout Shelter, an excellent book that explores the racial dimension of civil defense planning (many other works explore the thoroughly gendered dimension of civil defense, as does Monteyne).

After studying an amazing array of primary sources detailing how civil defense was planned and imagined by civilian and government experts, he found that these officials created plans that turned out to be inherently racist and sexist. In the future envisioned by these white men, those who survived nuclear attacks would be suburban, middle-class whites, and these men and women of the domestic ideal would work to recreate the domestic ideal of the 1950s and 60s in order to rebuild society following nuclear catastrophe. Sitting through just a few of the civil defense PSAs the government in the 1950s and 60s is enough to convince you of Monteyne’s point. This projecting of a present ideal onto the future is exactly what the survivors in Falling Skies are doing – upholding families as the key to human survival and attempting to recreate traditional looking families by reforming old ones or creating new ones in the ideal’s image. To make matters more complicated, the aliens are stealing human children, therefore undermining family structure even more. This is supposed to be the most horrifying aspect of the invasion, and drives the desire to reconstruct and rebuild families. The show is obsessed with this idea, from the macro level of the Second Mass (an army) being a family, down to Tom and his sons (one of whom was taken by the aliens).

But back to Fallout Shelter and race. Most interestingly, Montenye points out that civil defense officials assumed Americans living in the suburbs would survive any attacks, because they assumed city centers would no doubt be targets of any nuclear attacks, such as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This assumption made civil defense plans inherently racist – most suburban populations are white, and the targeted inner cities are defined by the large population of poor minorities forced by discriminatory policies to live where there was/is affordable housing. Russian bombs would do the job of whitewashing America.

So maybe something similar is happening in Falling Skies, this assumption that those who die will be those in the cities, and that the (often invisible) residents of these cities will be minorities. The survivors in the Second Mass are all suburbanites, after all. Maybe this subconscious but easy assumption explains the lack of minorities among the survivors. If you asked the show’s creators they would most likely say that is absolutely not the case. They would defend casting choices. The would point to the doctor, Moon Bloodgold’s, half-Korean ethnicity, which creates a interracial romance worth Tom that is worth remarking upon; I’m sure the producers would cite her as one example to counter my argument. Still, the future remains predominantly white. And that’s the thing about cultural norms and subtext – we are raised by society to think and act in a certain way, conditioned to receive certain messages, whether outright or subconsciously, that tell us how we should act based on how we look, what set of genitalia we have, etc. These ideas and beliefs are encoded within us, so often without our knowledge, and we embed them in all the things we create, that we do, say, and think, intentionally or not, because they are a part of us. And it takes work to break them down and strip them away. If the producers of this show are imaging the future as white, it is most likely because 1) the system of casting in Hollywood is racist and 2) we have all been fed images like this for so long that it takes conscious effort to realize the blinders we are wearing, and then we must make the effort to correct our mistakes.

Because these culture values are so firmly and often subconsciously embedded, we must ask, especially of those who are envisioning the future: why are our cultural creators still assuming that it’s only whites who will survive catastrophic events? Why do we believe these “visionaries” when they depict minorities as returning to savagery or gang rule, or don’t even give them a place in the future at all? Why don’t we question these current day racialized and sexualized images of ourselves  that are constantly projected into the future?

Perhaps that’s what is so compelling about dystopia, at least for some: the reassurance that even after annihilation, gender and racial norms will survive, institutions like the idealized traditional family, which has never actually existed, will survive, will be renewed, and so will one unfortunate definition of society and stability.

But that’s not for me, and that’s why I’m so disappointed with Falling Skies. I prefer my dystopia much more foreign and challenging.

 

Edit to Add: I just realized that I forgot to do any analysis of sexuality on the show. As far as I can tell, everyone is thoroughly straight, further supporting that the show’s narrative attempts to depict and uphold the heterosexual component of the 1950s/60s domestic ideal.

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.