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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.

2005 isn’t history, yet, or so chant all the erstwhile history professors in my brain that I’ve encountered over the years. Where to draw the line between history and current events remains hazy. From one professor I heard 20 years was the absolute minimum distance from event zero. Another professor said that if it happened in your lifetime, it isn’t history. I’m not so sure I buy these theories, particularly the last one (humans have a tendency to live through a lot of big events). But Seeker is only 8 years old and so does probably fall under the purview of the ambiguously dubbed category of “current events.” But that doesn’t mean we can’t attempt to understand Seeker within its own particular pocket of time.

Seeker is an incredibly fast-paced and enjoyable read. It’s not just science fiction but a murder mystery within an archaeological mystery about the discovery of a long lost, Atlantis-like space civilization. The world building, set thousands of years in Earth’s future, is exquisite, and the long pages of expository dialogue and description are intriguing and rarely off-putting. You get the sense right away that this is not a story where any of the main characters will meet an untimely end, even if death stares them in the face, but the tone of the novel is too cheerfully appealing and all the hints of unbelievable perfection that surround our main characters is mostly forgiven. The murder mystery sub-plot seems a bit of an unnecessary drag, as the main plot is enough to propel the novel forward to a satisfying conclusion, but it’s quite obvious that McDevitt loves mysteries jut as much as he loves hard sci-fi.

The central mystery of Seeker revolves around the eponymous ship, an interstellar Earth vessel that went out into the stars 9000 years ago to found a utopia and promptly disappeared. It, and the so-named settlers, the Margolians, have become a myth, but when evidence of the Seeker turns up at the door of Alex Benedict, independent archaeologist extraordinaire, the find sparks the imagination of him and Chase Kolpath, Bendict’s assistant and the narrator of the the novel. They are hellbent on finding the Seeker and the Margolians who crewed her, whether they are dead or alive. Margolia and her occupants represent a coup d’etat for Benedict if he can find them.

I don’t want to give away too much about what happens because a lot of the fun of this book is watching the story unfold. I will say that it’s pretty obvious how things are going to end up, but taking each step toward the ending in turn is highly satisfying. I don’t like mysteries, but McDevitt’s deft inclusion of science fiction elements, including the search for a lost world and interactions with an alien race, kept me rapt almost till the end. Usually I do a lot of skimming in these books, but here I didn’t want to miss a detail. The only plot that seemed laborious to me was, as I mentioned the murder plot. There I admit letting my attention wander.

To attempt putting this book in its historical place, we must examine the Margolians themselves. They are a bunch of intellects who leave Earth to start a society based on freedom of thought. My only point of comparison is the anti-intellectualism that emerged under the Bush years, which could make the Margolians and their dream an inspiration for the material, be it conscious or not. The world Chase and Alex live in is devoid of war at a time when the United States was involved in two highly contested wars abroad. In Seeker, every society, be they alien or human, has gone through periods of intraspecies war and then found peace again, which is perhaps McDevitt’s hope for present day mankind.

Whatever the comparison, Seeker is a great read. Historians especially should enjoy this quest for a long lost civilization. McDevitt even manages to write an incredibly smart female protagonist without objectifying her too much. He gets extra points for that as well.

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.

I’ve only gotten a few comments on this blog, and most of them were from readers very unhappy with my reviews of their beloved books or TV shows. To them all I can say is I’m sorry. My policy on screening comments is that if you spew obscenities and insults at me, you’re not making a valuable contribution to the discussion. That said, I have my own perhaps not valuable addition to the discussion to make. That is to say, I very much dislike The Uplift War.  In fact, I couldn’t finish it. Don’t get me wrong – Brin’s premise (that sentient races were all brought into being by the process of uplift, a gift bestowed upon them by other sentient races) is unique and compelling. I read Startide Rising and liked it. But I find that The Uplift War suffers the pitfalls of much contemporary fiction – an acute focus on action with very little interest in exploring the philosophical underpinning of the world the author has created. Further, there is a fixation on character development that, curiously, still leaves the characters undeveloped. Few writers, like Vernor Vinger and Dan Simmons, have managed to do this kind of novel successfully. Here, David Brin fails.

The Uplift War shifts perspectives between multiple different narrators, two of which are alien species and one of which is chimpanzees, the first species which human beings uplifted. Of course, we cannot introduce an exotic female into the narrative, the Tymbrimi Athaclena, without immediately eroticizing her and setting her up as a love match for the human Robert Oneagle. Similarly we are treated to erotic scenes of chimpanzees in a strip club. I’m not surprised by Brin’s penchant toward bestiality – in Startide Rising one of the dolphins entertains sexual feelings for one of his human crewmates. I’ve gotten used to the objectification of women in science fiction – it’s inevitable, and tracing the phenomenon over time proves that we have a long way to go toward cultural equality if this kind of thing is still present in what is supposed to be our most forward thinking genres of fiction. But when animals are eroticized I become disturbed for the reader and the author. I’m plain not interested in that subject matter. This, of course, is a personal preference, but it’s appearance in The Uplift War made me far less likely to finish the novel.

Besides its sexism, what the novel really suffers from is a minute focus on action that barely moves the plot forward at all and does not explore the philosophical underpinnings of the novel’s premise that most appeal to a certain type of reader. For those of you that love action for the sake of action in your science fiction novels, this one is for you. For those of you interested in learning about uplift or what the humans discovered in deep space that triggered this war, you’ll find nothing of interest here. Yes, the uplifted species the chimpanzees are featured prominently, and yes, the uplifted nemesis Gubru also play an important role, but the mystery of the Streaker’s discovery is left, perhaps, for other books.

Anyone who wants to chime in and voice their opinion on the book is welcome too, as long as they’re constructive. I simply found it, above all, to be insufferably boring and painfully disappointing.

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.

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.

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.

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.