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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.

The first book I ever attempted to read by Arthur C. Clarke was 2001, a novelization based on a film based on a short story. I’ve never seen the movie, but I found the book to be boring, put it down, and never finished it. This was all at least five or six years ago. Fast forward to 2012 and I picked up Fountains of Paradise anticipating some of the hard science fiction coupled with existential crises that I anticipated from Clarke’s work. This book was written a bit after the Golden Age, when Arthur C. Clarke cut his teeth, and at the tail end of the wild and fancy speculation of New Wave authors. As a result, The Fountains of Paradise is a strange blend of hard science fiction and far eastern folklore, drawing lines from a fictionalized classic Sri Lankin setting to twenty-second century Earth and the aspirations of one man to physically link the earth to the heavens.

The Fountains of Paradise won both the Hugo and the Nebula for its year, and as I plodded through the book I found myself at a loss to identify anything that might make it deserving of such accolades. Over time it’s certainly paled in comparison to his other winner, Rendezvous with Rama, as well as beloved nominee Childhood’s End. I’m not sure how the larger sci-fi community at large rates this book retrospectively, but from where I stand there’s nothing groundbreaking of interest here.

The fixed center of Clarke’s novel is the space elevator that engineer Vannevar Morgan is bent on building in order to reduce the complication of rocket travel so that humans can colonize and explore space and the solar system with a greatly increased ease. Unfortunately for Morgan, the best place on earth to anchor such an elevator is on the top of the fictional mountain Taprobane, which for centuries has been home to an order of seemingly immovable Buddhist monks. These monks and their order have survived the onslaught of disasters and the ambitions of violent kings, and at first it appears they may be the only thing standing in the way of Morgan’s giant leap for mankind.

In a way, one of Clark’s goals in The Fountains of Paradise is to make an explicit connection between Earth’s history and the science fiction future that he creates. Morgan sees the space elevator as a necessary step forward in man’s need to invent, grow, and explore. The monks, conversely, represent a stagnant past, even though in the text they are venerated, in a way, for their willingness to uphold tradition. In a strange twist, it is a series of superstitious omens that causes the monks to abandon the temple, allowing Morgan to build his elevator.

This interaction reveals the subtle tension between the mystical and the scientific that underlies the entire books. The nature of god and fate form the quiet core of mankind’s search for life and truth among the heavens. While the temple on top of Taprobane stands for mankind’s spiritual link to the skies, it retreats in the face of man’s actual physical invasion of the heavens through the use of science. An interesting, almost throwaway plot, complicates the dialectic between religion and science, as an alien space probe has just happened to drift through our solar system around the time Morgan is planning and building his elevator. Viewed as a fount of knowledge, particularly because it represents a supposedly advanced culture, the probe is assaulted with questions, the most important of which turns out to be whether or not there is, in fact, a god. Frustratingly for Clarke’s humans, the probe’s answer is evasive enough to be both tantalizing and unsatisfying.

Fate plays a crucial role in the building of the space elevator as well, beyond facilitating its ultimate construction. Much of the action of the latter half of the book focuses in agonizing detail on the plight of a group of scientists who get trapped on the elevator following a near-catastrophic accident. For some reason Morgan is the only one who can save them, and while their fate in lays in the balance, his ultimately does as well. In a cruel twist, Morgan dies saving them before his space elevator is completed.

The present, the past, and the future, the scared and the profane, spirituality and science, tradition and exploration – all these dueling themes weave their way through Clarke’s novel. None of these are unfamiliar territory for readers and writers of science fiction, but as presented here they’re not necessarily more or less thought-provoking than in any other average novel. A random cast of seemingly superfluous characters makes finding the novel’s center difficult, as do random jumps in time and shifts from folkloric writing to hard science fiction. All these elements can be combined in success, but The Fountains of Paradise reads a bit like a half-formed draft with some lovely bit and many others that need re-evaluation. As I’ve said before, my own reaction may be in part because many works I’ve read are derivative of this book, which sometimes can have the unfortunate effect of devaluing the source material. Either way, this book is an unchallenging read that could have been much better. The terse style of the Golden Age seems to fall flat here when met with a more folkloric and spiritual attempt at writing and thinking about science fiction with the many intricate threads Clarke attempts to weave into his story of one man’s attempt to reach the stars.

So this is it, my last sci-fi review for a while. The school year starts up again on Monday, which means I’ll only have time for grading papers and reading big, fat monographs on important historical events. If I can swing using sci-fi as a primary source then maybe more reviews will pop up, but that possibility remains to be seen. Feel free to keep tuned into the blog, though, as I hope to continue posting here about my various academic exploits. Topics this semester include African-American women in the antebellum period, war and remembrance, and the history of mass/popular culture. Lots of fun stuff.

For my last book review of the summer season I chose to read Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. Apparently when this book won the Hugo there was a bit of a kerfuffle, as some consider this novel to be more a work of fantasy than one of science fiction. It’s easy to see why that argument can be made. Written in an extremely lyrical style, Lord of Light reads very much like the Hindu mythology that inspired it. That this the novel is more than a creative retelling of this mythology is only hinted at, the most direct discussions coming at the very end of the book. Many of the major events in the book are outright fantastical, seeming to break the laws of the physical universe with no scientific explanation behind them, a faux pas that is considered one of the biggest lines between sci-fi and fantasy.

Kerfuffle aside, Zelazny doesn’t really have much to actively say. It took me a while to slog through this thin book, and every time I picked it up I mentally referred to it as The Most Boring Book in the World. Zelazny is thick on descriptive prose that belabors his narrative, and while he creates an intriguing premise that explores the nature of religion and technology, he gets bogged down in unenlightening character studies of his unique version of the Hindu pantheon.

By the mid-1960s, American culture blossomed along all fronts. The Summer of Love loomed near, civil rights, feminist, and gay rights movements all demanded reform and equality, and counterculture eschewed the domestic and consumerist obsessions of postwar America. Exploring Eastern religion fit very neatly into this dynamic of change and exploration, as was most memorably dramatized in a recent episode of Mad Men, when the Hare Krishna made a noteworthy and startling appearance. So it makes perfect sense that Zelazny would write a novel steeped in Hinduism in the 1960s. Science fiction has long led the way in exploring foreign cultures in the present on Earth, and is also a genre ever ready to tackle Big Questions like the nature of technology and religion. In Lord of Light Zelazny combines all of these elements in his sleepy search for enlightenment through science fiction.

Despite its rambling chapters, there’s not really much of a plot to Lord of Light. Ostensibly the book is a story about a war between the Hindu pantheon and a former god who comes to be known as Buddha in one of his incarnations. But slowly the real motivation for the war is drawn out of Zelazny’s mythological trappings: years ago those who became known as gods (men?) came to this planet and used their incredible technological powers to take over and turn themselves into gods, styled after the Hindu pantheon. Their technology not only gave them incredible power, but it also allowed them to reincarnate themselves endlessly by transplanting their personal energy patterns into new bodies. Whether the people that populate the planet are colonists unlucky enough to have missed out on gaining god-like powers or are remnants of the native population isn’t clear. They do, however, live enthralled by their overseers, seeking their own right to incarnation.

The plot centers around a war between Sam, also known as the Buddha among his many incarnations, his followers, and the other gods of the Hindu pantheon. Sam is what is known as an Accelerationist – he believes that all the non-gods on their planet should be given technology so that they can advance society. His enemies believe that the people on the planet should be denied technology so that the gods can maintain their control over them. This disagreement is enough to cause huge and widespread warfare, which also involves legions of zombies, for those of you who are into that sort of thing. The gods prance around and pontificate while a lot of mortals are mowed down with nary a blink.

Lord of Light prompts a lot of important and fascinating questions about the nature of God and religion. For example: what happens when a God doesn’t believe in himself anymore? Where do we draw the line between humanity and God? Can godhood be created with incredibly powerful technology? If there is a God for mankind, is he/she/it just another being hoarding all the good gadgets for themselves? Do scientific advances bring us closer to god? Do we create our own gods? IS immortality possible and if so what does it look like? Is there life after death?

This aspect of the novel really tickled me, and it’s why I kept reading. One review I read online said the “science fiction” aspect would become more apparent toward the end of the novel, and while this plot device did become more prominent, I still put the book down thinking it was The Most Boring Book in the World. There’s absolutely nothing offensive about it, it simply read like an overlong folktale with some veiled technobabble thrown in for good measure. Though it has some timeless ideas, I do think it is also quite a book of its time. I’ll also add that I wish I’d been reading this book with someone, so we could have discussed it together. I feel that Lord of Light is meant to be provocative, but subtly so. Without anyone to bounce my ideas off of, it felt like something was lost on me. The book definitely has a communal, almost oral aspect to is, just the like myths and folktales its style apes. Maybe, like enlightenment, it takes more than one try to thoroughly understand exactly what it is that Lord of Light has to offer.

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.

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.

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.

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!