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The Last Theorem,
Arthur C. Clarke & Frederik Pohl,
Ballantine,
$27,
299 pp.
ISBN: 9780345470218
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Like any other living thing, the science fiction field is constantly changing. Popular themes and preoccupations from one decade fall out of favor in the next, perhaps to return a generation later. Alien invasions, telepathy, and robot fiction have become novelties in recent years, but space opera and first contact stories are enjoying fresh popularity. One of the classic genre novels of the 1950s was Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, in which the human race is transformed by its encounter with a greater galactic civilization. The Last Theorem—a posthumous collaboration with Frederik Pohl, an author of equally memorable work—resurrects and reworks that theme. The passage of half a century has left its mark, however, not just on the authors but also on the field itself. During the 1950s, science fiction was primarily focused on macro issues. Humanity would be confronted by some event—a new scientific discovery, an unprecedented disaster, contact with another intelligence—and the author described its impact on our world as a whole. That focus has changed to the micro in recent years and The Last Theorem focuses primarily on the adult life of one individual who lives through a period of astonishing revelations and changes.
That man is Ranjit Subramanian, whom we first see as a Sri Lankan college student obsessed with proving Fermat’s last theorem. Dissatisfied with a complex, theoretical proof provided by a computer analysis during the 1990s, Ranjit is determined to discover Fermat’s proof, which must have been much simpler. Ranjit lives in our near future, a future in which brushfire wars have become even more prevalent than they are today despite hints of growing cooperation among the three major powers. The world has become an increasingly dangerous place filled with bellicose states squabbling over dwindling resources and old enmities. Unfortunately, the use of increasingly destructive weapons has attracted the attention of the Grand Galactics, an ethereal race that effectively rules the galaxy. Their agents are monitoring Earth closely and a preliminary order has been given for one of their subject races, the One Point Fives, to exterminate the troublesome upstarts. A massive fleet has been dispatched to accomplish that comparatively minor task during Ranjit’s lifetime. Fortunately, there are signs on Earth that a group of influential people has recognized the serious nature of conflict on Earth and is about to employ a new technology to impose some relatively benevolent control over rogue states.
One of the difficulties with classic Utopian fiction is that the reader is presented with a mature society rather than shown the intervening steps that would demonstrate how such a new civilization might evolve. The authors in this case address that problem, although in the real world the situation would certainly be far more complex and imperfect. The story is also far less melodramatic than it might have been if published during the 1950s. Included are brief discussions of mathematical and other scientific problems that evoke a kind of old-fashioned sense of wonder about the universe without disrupting the flow of the story. It is on the whole a remarkably intelligent reworking of a familiar genre theme.
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Implied Spaces,
by Walter Jon Williams,
Night Shade
$24.95,
265 pp.
ISBN 9781597801256
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The opening sequence of Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams is slightly misleading, because it takes place in a world of orcs and trolls and beleaguered caravans crossing a desert filled with bandits. Rather than fantasy, however, it is a variation of traditional space opera. In the distant future, the human race has created thirteen immense artificial intelligences which orbit the Earth and which facilitate the creation of pocket universes in each of which the laws of nature can be altered to suit the inclinations of the designers. The protagonist, who has many names but is most commonly called Aristide, was one of the original designers, now virtually immortal since personalities can be backed up and downloaded into new bodies in the event of the death of the original. Aristide is interested in the implied spaces of these artificial environments, that is, the small details that evolve as a consequence of the design rather than by the conscious choice of the designers.
His sojourn in this primitive world leads to an unexpected discovery, however. Several artificially constructed priests have been causing people to briefly disappear, and then reappear with slightly altered personalities. Aristide returns to the external universe and learns that similar disappearances have been occurring elsewhere, and that the returnees are part of a mysterious and wide-ranging conspiracy. The most troublesome aspect is that this conspiracy could only be undertaken if one of the thirteen artificial intelligences were being suborned or somehow freed itself from its programming restraints. Once the existence of the conspiracy is revealed, the secret campaign is transformed into an open battle with a mysterious individual who has learned that the “original universe” is also just a construct of some larger meta-reality and who plans to forcibly unite all of humanity in a quest to confront their creators.
Williams is perfectly at ease with either swordplay or superscience, and he has a bit of fun while describing the two sides as quite literally throwing universes at one another. The interplay between Aristide and Bitsy, an artificial cat that is actually an avatar of one of the AIs, is crisp and amusing. There is a strong cast of supporting characters, a handful of entertaining and unexpected reversals, and some rewarding surprises, particularly in the latter parts of the novel.
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Space opera has enjoyed a particularly fruitful resurgence in popularity during the past few years, with major works in that form from Alastair Reynolds, Iain Banks, and Peter Hamilton, among others. Michael Flynn helps prove that this isn’t just a British phenomenon with his newest, The January Dancer, a complex, panoramic story that incorporates a wide variety of traditional and more contemporary plot devices. Captain January and his crew are performing routine repairs on their ship on an uncharted world when they uncover the Dancer, a mysterious alien artifact whose function is unclear. He promptly cedes possession to a local commercial official, but only after his crew has proven to be remarkably obedient, a quality they had not previously demonstrated. Eventually the artifact’s potential attracts the attention of a variety of searchers, some of whom wish to claim it for themselves, others hoping simply to deny it to those who might take unfair advantage of its powers of persuasion. From these disparate threads, Flynn weaves an interesting tapestry in a civilization that uses technology that verges on the magic but which no longer pursues science at all. There have been no new discoveries or inventions in countless ages. The backdrop is a richly implied civilization that features an uncomfortable truce among the two main powers and ongoing efforts by dislocated Terrans to secure the liberation of a now occupied Earth.
The cast of characters who are caught up in the chase is rich and colorful enough to populate a shelf of books. Many of them manage to be larger than life without losing their humanity. In fact, there are so many plots and counterplots, betrayals and secret alliances, that readers are cautioned not to let their attention stray or they’ll find themselves paging back to discover the roots of an entirely new subplot. Some of the characters are working for government agencies, some for themselves, and others serve causes that transcend the individual. Included are politicians, heroes, investigators, interplanetary agents, criminals, spaceship captains, conspirators, and bards, some of them admirable, others less so.
The novel is crammed full of plot twists and embellishments. There are space pirates and missing starships, assassinations and seductions, wormholes providing secret routes through space, concealed identities and surprise revelations, enigmatic alien artifacts, an extinct intelligent race, a mutiny, and a planetary civil war, to name a few. There are in fact so many elements in the story that they might have added up to incomprehensible confusion in the hands of a less able writer. Flynn, however, not only manages to hold them all in check but also employs each for a specific function in the story. The diverse strands are all drawn together in the closing chapters. This is the author’s most complex and rewarding novel to date.
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Military science fiction tends to fall into two major categories: space-based, which is generally more about strategy; and planetary combat, which usually involves tactical and political problems. The latest from William C. Dietz, eighth in the Legion of the Damned series ( When Duty Calls), falls into the latter category. The legion in question consists of cyborg soldiers, oversized humanoid war machines directed by human brains, commanded by Captain Antonio Santana, who is acutely aware that those under his command are not just expendable assets. His efforts are hampered to a degree by his new commanding officer, Liam Quinlan, who is more interested in his own career than in the welfare of his troops. A minor plot complication is the existence of the Clone Hegemony, an offshoot human civilization that doesn’t believe in using natural reproduction, preferring a more rigid caste system.
The human-dominated Confederacy is locked in a battle with the insect-like Ramanthians, and portions of the novel read like a cross between Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and accounts of the Japanese army’s resistance during World War II. These are useful shortcuts because military SF almost always places the emphasis on the military side of things, and its readers are less interested in lengthy descriptions of an alien culture or other peripheral matters. Several of the standard elements emerge—the small band of defiant guerilla fighters on one of the occupied Clone worlds, the contingent of troops cut off from support on a largely hostile planet, the conflict between a savvy front-line soldier and his inexperienced and thoughtless superior, and difficulties with supply protocol that deny the front line troops the readily available equipment they require. Dietz selects his puzzle pieces so that they complement each other and fits them together to emphasize action and excitement.
One of the puzzle pieces is the political component. A delegation from the human worlds hopes to take advantage of the Ramanthian attack on the Clone Hegemony to forge a permanent alliance. Unfortunately, this means making major political concessions that don’t sit well with their own senior military officers. This is particularly problematic because there are signs that internal dissensions among the clones may be almost as serious as the invasion itself. Those dissensions, and the essential differences in culture between the two strains of humanity, will prove to be major factors as the battle unfolds.
Dietz doesn’t break any new ground, but that’s not his intention. Military SF is intended to be predictable in form if not in detail and Dietz is one of its most reliable practitioners. There is no single central focus to the story, which employs several viewpoint characters so that the reader can observe events from various levels within the military and civilian authority, and even from among the alien Ramanthians. Although this necessarily means that the characterization is relatively sketchy, Dietz skillfully differentiates his characters with brief but incisive scenes that establish them as individuals. One small caveat, however: The specific campaign central to this story is more or less brought to a conclusion, but the saga of the Legion does not end. The war with the Ramanthians and other issues remain unresolved.
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Quofum,
by Alan Dean Foster,
Del Rey,
$25.00,
286 pp.
ISBN 9780345496065
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Alan Dean Foster’s novels are frequently set in the context of the Commonwealth, a future interstellar civilization created jointly by humans and the Thranx, a race resembling oversized beetles. His latest, Quofum, involves a joint expedition by five humans and one Thranx to a mysterious planet first reported by a robot probe which observed that the planet seemed to blink in and out of existence from time to time. Although the odd data is dismissed by the expedition as erroneous, the reader is obviously aware that there is some mysterious quality to the planet because if there wasn’t, there wouldn’t be much of a story.
Their arrival is uneventful and they discover an astonishingly fecund world filled with disparate forms of plant and animal life. Although they are initially caught up in the wonders surrounding them, they begin to suspect that something is wrong. In fact, they take a surprisingly long time to conclude that the ecology is not natural, something which the reader will have realized almost from the outset. They encounter five separate intelligent species within a few days of landing, each of which appears to have followed a separate evolutionary path, and not all of the indigenous creatures are even carbon-based. Their reaction to this strange environment is not always entirely plausible, but the story is not about the people in it as much as it is about the world itself. Their adventures are almost an afterthought in what is essentially a catalogue of bizarre forms of life.
The situation changes when the ship’s technician identifies himself as a professional criminal and hijacks the ship, marooning two surviving humans and one Thranx. His escape is foiled by the peculiarities of Quofum’s existence, but that doesn’t help the three stranded scientists, who struggle to remain motivated even after realizing that their situation is hopeless. It is only then that they begin to discover the true nature of the planet, and the purpose underlying its peculiar nature. Although Foster explains the major mystery, the future of the three surviving scientists, and possibly that of the entire human race, will remain unresolved until the next book in the series.
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The Quiet War,
by Paul J. McAuley,
Gollancz,
£18.99,
462 pp.
ISBN 9780575079335
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The human race has yet to reach the stars in Paul J. McAuley’s The Quiet War, but the solar system is littered with human settlements, although the definition of human has changed somewhat. Using genetic engineering and mechanical enhancements, humans colonizing the remote parts of the solar system—known as the Outers—have adapted themselves to that environment. This disparity has added to the political and economic tensions separating them from an Earth where a collapse of the present civilization has made Brazil and a Pacific coalition the major powers on the home planet. Although those commanding the power structure consider the physical variations among the Outers as virtual heresy, they’re not above creating genetically designed, cloned soldiers or turning others of their citizens into cyborgs when they feel it is to their advantage.
Although there is an uneasy peace between the two, there are powerful pressures building in both societies. The Outers are concentrated in a few locations and have limited numbers, but there are many among them who want to spread throughout the rest of the solar system, diversifying the human form in order to realize its potential in a variety of ways. The repressive forces on Earth express their disapproval of tampering with God’s work with increasing stridence, but in fact the most powerful objections come from those who realize that an evolving and expanding Outer society will marginalize their power. The battle then is not only about what it is to be a human being but also the question of who determines the shape of our collective future.
It would be impossible to tell a story of such great breadth from a single viewpoint, so McAuley shows us the developing situation by means of several protagonists, representing both sides of the issue, although it is obvious where the author’s sympathies lie. The specific plot involves a number of separate but divergent elements including an accidental death that might be murder, the passing of a prominent politician, espionage, and other intrigues. The conflict of societies is reflected in the struggle between individuals and vice versa. The author mixes a great variety of ingredients in his pot, stirs well, and provides his readers with a masterful story of a future that is very much unlike the present in many ways, but which still manages to be convincing and gripping and somehow familiar. As the crisis approaches—which will be dealt with more fully in a sequel—the line of battle is clearly drawn and those who hoped to negotiate a peaceful settlement are forced to choose sides for the final confrontation. McAuley successfully blends serious issues with high adventure.
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