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The Reference Library

Don Sakers

Science fiction has often been called a literature of ideas. That’s not to say that ideas are all that make a good sf story. The perfect sf tale (which is about as rare as the perfect gas) would combine great ideas, outstanding characters, intricate plotting, superbly drawn backgrounds, transcendent themes, and sublime writing.

Obviously, certain stories do a better job on some of these elements than on others. In the sf world, there’s a tendency to look kindly on stories in which stunning ideas or magnificent backgrounds predominate, and to have less patience with tales where a mediocre idea takes back seat to compelling characters or lyrical prose.

This month we start with two books that are very definitely idea-dominated stories.

Hylozoic,
by Rudy Rucker,

Tor
$25.95 (Hardcover),
336 pp.
ISBN:
9780765320742
Genre:
Singularity/Transhuman
Series: Postsingular 2

Reading a Rudy Rucker novel is like entering the dreams of a more-than-slightly mad genius, or going on the Alice in Wonderland ride in a theme park designed by the likes of Stephen Hawking. There’s no fighting it or making sense of it; just relax and enjoy the ride. You’re in the hands of a master. By the end of Postsingular, the physical world was infected by nano . . . constructs (one can’t really call them machines) called silps, which imbue every object with consciousness, personality, and a form of telepathy. At the same time, human beings gained a number of abilities, including telepathy, teleportation, and integration with the worldwide emergent intelligence Gaia, affectionately known as the “Big Pig.”
And that was all in the prequel.Hylozoic picks up shortly thereafter, in this newly awakened world. “Hylozoism,” according to a helpful epigraph, is a doctrine that “every object is claimed to have some degree or sense of life.” None of this, by the way, is magic: it’s all nanotechnology, quantum entanglement, and the emergent properties of molecular computers.

The cast of Postsingular returns in Hylozoic. Newlyweds Jayjay and Thuy, along with their friends, have turned their lives into a hit 24/7 telepathic reality show called Founders. As the book opens, Jayjay and Thuy are putting up a cabin in the woods—a process that involves gaining the sympathy and co-operation of the silps that control rocks, trees, the ground, and a petulant local stream. When all is right, the couple (with a little help from their friends) teleport their already constructed cabin from San Francisco to the prepared spot in the woods. Then everyone parties late into the night. Except, of course, Jayjay, who follows a sentient pitchfork down a surreal beanstalk ten tridecillion levels into subdimensions, where he discovers an alien entity that promptly takes control of his mind.

It seems that Earth, in becoming a postsingularity world, has attracted the attention of all kinds of alien beings from various planets, dimensions, and other-universe branes. Some aliens are helpful, some are amused, some want to make what profit they can off of Earth, and others are really malevolent. It’s not at all easy to tell which is which, but Jayjay and Thuy are going to have to if Earth has any chance of controlling its own destiny. Along the way there’s the painter Hieronymous Bosch (who just might be an avatar of yet another godlike alien), an enchanted harp, runes of power engraved on individual silicon atoms, and adventures on a parallel Earth called the Hibrane . . . and then it starts to get truly weird.

If you’ve never read Rudy Rucker before, by now you’re probably shaking your head and furtively looking around for the egress. So, undoubtedly, were the hapless Victorians who first followed Alice down that rabbit hole. And you know how much fun that journey turned out to be. Rudy Rucker is this generation’s Lewis Carroll, and if you can have enormous fun if you relax and put yourself in his more-than-capable hands. Rucker plays with the frontiers of quantum physics and cosmology with his tongue firmly in his cheek and a manic grin on his lips. Don’t think about it too hard; like any good dream, the whole thing falls apart once you try to makes sense of it. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. And above all, keep your hands inside the car at all times.

Buyout,
by Alexander C. Irvine,

Del Rey,
$14.00 (Paperback),
319 pp.
ISBN: 9780345494337
Genre:
Psychological/Sociological SF

Buyout is a different kind of idea-dominated story. In Hylozoic, the ideas fly fast and furious, breeding and mutating before your eyes like so many unruly microorganisms. Buyout is a more classic, more familiar form in which the author brings one big idea onto the stage, then builds a whole show around it. In this case, the idea is social rather than scientific, and probably even more plausible today than when the author started work on the book.

In the all-too-familiar California of 2039, the prison system is overloaded and taxpayers are going broke paying to house and feed the hordes of life inmates. So here’s the idea presented by Scott and Jocelyn Krakauer, an entrepreneurial couple who have made their way up through the world of finance to the highest levels of the insurance business: the life-term buyout. Prisoners serving life without parole are given the choice to be executed, in return for a payment of several million dollars to family, friends, victims, or charities. The deal winds up being cheaper for taxpayers, and allows a murderer to take care of his family, ease the suffering of victims’ survivors, and do some good for society. As Scott and Jocelyn present the notion, it’s a win-win situation.

Enter Martin Kindred, middle-aged insurance salesman for a failing company, in a deteriorating marriage. Scott and Jocelyn choose Martin as their point man, the one who will sell eligible prisoners on buyouts. If he takes the job, Martin will become the public face of the life-term buyout. In return, Martin will receive substantial bonuses for each buyout deal he closes. If Martin declines the job offer, he’ll be unemployed.

Opinions in Martin’s family vary. His wife is against the idea. His father and brother, former and current cops respectively, are in favor of buyouts and support Martin’s choice to take the job. His best friend Charlie, a private eye, is doubtful about buyouts . . . and also concerned that Martin won’t be able to handle the pressure. In fact, Charlie takes on a job with Martin’s company so that he can help his friend.

At first, things are fine. Half a dozen buyouts go well, and Martin makes a good deal of money. There is some resistance in society, most notably a fringe group called Priceless Life. Yet all is not well; Martin’s marriage slides toward divorce, his school-age daughters show signs of stress, and Charlie gets more worried.

Then a famous film producer is sentenced to life in prison for killing his girlfriend, and he agrees to a life-term buyout. Suddenly, Martin is in the bull’s eye of publicity.

In the wake of this case, Martin finds himself of the trail of a mystery. For buyouts are not as simple as they seem . . . and Martin and Charlie soon uncover a conspiracy leading to personal danger and the requisite surprising revelations.

The suspense/conspiracy story gives the book a workable plot. Martin, Charlie, and the others are credible characters. But the real test of an idea-based novel is how well it does at exploring the main idea.

All in all, Buyout does a fairly good job of investigating the ramifications of it main idea. Life-term buyouts raise a number of moral, philosophical, and legal questions, and Irvine examines many of them. How to go about establishing life-term buyouts, the best candidates for the first buyouts, handling negative publicity—Irvine rings the changes on the idea in a satisfactory way. And at the end of the book, the reader is left with plenty to ponder.

One test for an idea-based novel is whether a reader is still thinking about the idea a week or two later. Buyout passes that test.

Flinx Transcendent,
by Alan Dean Foster,

Del Rey,
$26.00,
398 pp.(Hardcover)
ISBN 9780345496072
Genres:
Genres: Animal Companions,
Galactic Empires
Series: Humanx Commonwealth,
Pip & Flinx 15

Alan Dean Foster made his name by writing movie novelizations. There was a time when just about every sf or fantasy movie that hit the big screen was accompanied by an Alan Dean Foster novelization. (One of my all-time favorite cartoons appeared in 1984, when the unlamented DeLaurentiis version of Dune was released and Frank Herbert was still very much alive. The cartoon shows a Hollywood producer on the phone, Dune posters on the wall behind him, and he’s saying, “But Frank, baby, Alan Dean Foster writes all our novelizations.” But I digress.) Anyone who uses those novelizations to dismiss Foster is making a big mistake. There’s a reason he was the go-to guy for novelizations: he’s a great storyteller. And nowhere is his storytelling ability better demonstrated than in his decades-long saga of Pip and Flinx.

Flinx (Philip Lynx) is a redheaded, green-eyed human with psi abilities; his companion Pip is a miniature telepathic flying dragon. Across fourteen previous books Pip and Flinx have had various adventures throughout Foster’s larger universe, a multi-species hegemony known as the Humanx Commonwealth. This time around, Flinx is on his biggest mission, working to prevent a threat called the Great Evil from destroying . . . well, everything. To foil the Great Evil, Flinx and Pip will have to travel across the Commonwealth and even beyond the universe, revisit elements from their past, and convince disparate and hostile species to work together. Along the way there are plenty of wonderful sights to see and action enough for any summer movie blockbuster.

In a well-constructed series, any particular book can be read out of sequence. That’s certainly true of the Pip and Flinx books. If you’ve never had the pleasure, or if you’ve missed some volumes along the way, don’t be afraid to dive into Flinx Transcendent. Foster gives you everything you need to follow the story.

For the reader who’s followed Pip and Flinx all along the way, this book is even more of a delight. All the strands of Flinx’s life come together (he even revisits the Tar-Aiym Krang from the very first book) delightfully.

The Humanx Commonwealth, and the Flinx series in particular, is a great example of the multi-culture, multi-species galactic society that Star Trek thought it was portraying. Fascinating aliens, diverse planets, exotic cultures—they’re all here. In fact, in this book Flinx himself states what could very well be the overarching theme of the whole Humanx Commonwealth universe. Another character speaks wistfully of a time “when people were confined to one world and believed it constituted the whole universe . . . [t]hey never had to worry about the survival of a civilization composed of dozens of star systems and species.” Flinx disagrees: “. . . they also worried that shape, or smell, or language differences or belief systems were important. They didn’t know that all that matters is sentience and sensibility.”

Flinx Transcendent is billed as Flinx’s last adventure, and it does wrap up things in a satisfactory package. If it truly is the last Flinx book, readers who have come to know and love the duo will be disappointed. But I wouldn’t worry: if there are two things you can count on in science fiction, they are the fact that no one ever really dies, and no popular series ever really ends while its author is alive. And sometimes, not even then.

The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction,
Volume Three,
Edited by George Mann,

Solaris,
$7.99,
406 pp. (mass market paperback)
ISBN 9781844165995
Genres:
Original Anthology

Solaris and George Mann continue to provide a venue for some very good science fiction. Volume Three contains fifteen stories ranging from steampunk to love stories to alternate history to good old dystopian futures. The contents page is heavy on Brits, which may say something about the state of American sf (or maybe about the ease of transatlantic communication). Among the Big Names are Alastair Reynolds, Stephen Baxter, Paul Di Filippo, Ian Watson, and Ken MacLeod.

Among the standout stories are Alastair Reynolds’ “The Fixation,” which is a fascinating take on alternate universes, and John Meaney’s “Necroflux Day,” which shows us a fully realized society that’s neither past nor future but just different. (The nearest comparison I can come up with is to Cordwainer Smith, not on the basis of style or substance but mainly for pure uniqueness.)

Reviewing this anthology for Analog readers is a snap. I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this column, you like Analog. If you like Analog, you’ll like The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Three. It’s as simple as that. We can all hope that Mann is hard at work on Volume Four.

Don Sakers is the author of A Rose From Old Terra and Dance for the Ivory Madonna. For more information, visit www.scatteredworlds.com.

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