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The Reference Library

Don Sakers

Other Earths,
Edited by
Nick Gevers & Jay Lake

DAW
$7.99 (Mass Market PB),
320 pp.
ISBN:
9780756405465
Genre:
Alternate History,
Original Anthology

In science fiction, the alternate history story has a long and venerable . . . er . . . history. The first alternate histories developed in the 1800s from the fields of nonfiction and historical fiction. Some were downright essays, others were essays wrapped in just enough plot to disguise them as fiction. As with much else, H.G. Wells dabbled—his Men Like Gods tells the story of some Englishmen transported into a utopian alternate world. It’s a gripping read, but ultimately more philosophical treatise than novel.

It took the Campbell revolution, in Astounding and its sister magazine, Unknown, to bring about the birth of the alternate history as we know it: actual stories with genuine characters, set against the background of a world with a different history. Murray Leinster’s “Sideways in Time” and L. Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall introduced the notion of coexisting divergent timelines, a concept that today we call the multiverse. Other writers, most notably Poul Anderson in his Time Patrol stories, explored the deliberate manipulation of alternate histories by time travelers. Currently, alternate history is more popular than ever; the steampunk craze shows how far the genre has penetrated into popular culture.

Today it is possible to distinguish between two types of alternate history stories. There’s the basic alternate history tale, which is set entirely in a different timeline; and then there’s the multiverse story, involving multiple timelines and travel between them (often including time travel as well). The king of the first type is Harry Turtledove, with Eric Flint as archduke of his own territory. Most of the royalty of the multiverse story, unfortunately, have passed on to the great typewriter in the sky: Poul Anderson, Fritz Leiber, L. Sprague de Camp, André Norton, and Robert A. Heinlein were among them. But there are plenty of up-and-comers out there.

Generally, those who are passionate and knowledgeable about history are more fond of the first type; those who are looking for the adventure of science fiction are more likely to prefer the multiverse story.

Other Earths is a fine collection of original stories of the first type. The editors present 11 stories by a host of big names: Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds, Lucius Shepard, Jeff Vandermeer, Robert Charles Wilson, and Gene Wolfe, among others. With a lineup like that, you wouldn’t expect too much in the way of hard science, and you would be right. These are definitely stories from the humanities, not the sciences. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t some excellent tales.

Wilson’s “This Peaceable Land, or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe” is set in the late 1800s in a United States that developed without a Civil War. Slavery still exists, but economic forces have made it a rarity. In Wilson’s well-developed world, the costs of avoiding the war are heavy upon the society, and the reader is left wondering which universe is really better.

Shepard’s exceptional novella “Dog-Eared Paperback of My Life” begins with a writer of bestsellers who comes across an obscure cult novel written by another writer of the same name. From there it goes off into trackless and disturbing jungles of the mind. But Shepard is a reliable guide; follow him to the end, and you’ll emerge in one piece.

Fair warning: most of these stories aren’t exactly the kind that would appear in Analog. Some of them involve such fantasy elements as magic and elves. Yet in a universe next-door to ours, a universe in which Unknown continued publishing to this day, you might easily find these stories in the pages of that magazine. If you’re an alternate history buff, you’ll definitely like this anthology.

Warrior Wisewoman 2,
Edited by
Roby James

Norilana,
$11.95 (Paperback),
272 pp.
ISBN: 9781607620280
Genre:
Original Anthology

Despite the old saw, all too often you can tell a book by its cover. Publishers spend great amounts of time and money to make it so. Stroll through the science fiction section of your local bookstore, and you can instantly tell fantasy from science fiction; further, it’s easy to distinguish military SF from space opera, alternate history from alien culture, biological SF from cyber-whatever. Cover art, title, typeface, even the authors chosen for quotes: all combine to help the browsing reader find exactly the type of book he or she wants.

At least, that’s true of the big publishers. Among the small presses, things are different. A small press has no in-house design shop, very little money for cover art, and not enough staff to spend the effort on covers that the big boys do. With small press books, you truly can’t tell the book by its cover. And that’s a good thing.

Anyone who judges Warrior Wisewoman 2 by its cover (and even its title) is in danger of making a big mistake. “Another touchy-feely anthology with lots of noble Amazons and high priestesses, yawn.” Please don’t let this happen to you.

Warrior Wisewoman 2 (it’s the second of an annual series) is a collection of fifteen science fiction stories with nary a witch, dragon, or unicorn in sight. Instead, there are spaceships, artificial intelligences, social speculation, High Frontier construction jobs, and enough technology to make anyone happy. Some stories are by women, some by men, a couple by collaborative pairs, and a couple more by writers who use genderless initials.

The one thing these stories all have in common is that they feature women as main characters. While I wouldn’t call any of the stories “feminist,” some of them do play with the reader’s preconceptions and expectations regarding gender roles. Others are a bit more concerned with emotion than adventure.

Take, for example, Lee Martindale’s “Lady Blaze.” The title character, who shares her name with her luxury spaceship, is both a tough-as-nails space captain and the madam in charge of a crew of high-class courtesans. When she decides to take on a young woman who needs help, Lady Blaze finds herself in the middle of a mission of vengeance against a ruthless female pirate captain. The whole situation may be more than this talented businesswoman had bargained for.

At a completely different emotional pole, Jennifer Brissett’s “The Executioner” shows us an ordinary woman serving an extraordinary duty and pulls at the heartstrings in a way reminiscent of Judith Merril’s classic tale “That Only a Mother.” Kate MacLeod’s “Gardens of Wind” is a clever story of life aboard village-sized airships. And perhaps the cleverest story in the book, “Shop Talk” by Ian Whates, is clearly akin to van Vogt’s “The Weapon Shops of Isher” for the sensibilities of the modern day.

There are eleven other stories, all of similar quality. Editor Roby James has done readers a service in bringing together this anthology; let’s hope she’ll continue for many years to come.

WWW: Wake,
by
Robert J. Sawyer,

Ace,
$24.95,
356 pp.(Hardcover)
ISBN 9780441016792
Genres:
Man & Machine, Psychological/ Sociological SF, Religious/Philosophical SF
Series: WWW Trilogy 1

Wake was serialized in Analog recently; those who read it in these pages don’t need me to tell them what a good book it is. So I’ll just go ahead and assume that you didn’t read it, haven’t gotten around to reading it, and/or don’t remember reading it.

For many years now, Robert J. Sawyer has been turning out imaginative, thought-provoking science fiction novels set in the present day and dealing with the impact of science and technology upon relatively ordinary people. A typical Sawyer tale brings together multiple diverse elements from popular culture, psychology, physics, and philosophy; stirs together plausible advances in science with appealing characters; adds some realistic depictions of actual scientists at work and a generous helping of old-fashioned sense-of-wonder; and filters the whole mix through a distinctly Canadian filter. Wake is no exception.

Here’s the basic setup. Caitlin Decter is a teenage math genius who was born blind. While dealing with the challenges of trying to adjust to a new school and relating to a father who doesn’t talk to her, Caitlin receives an email from a Japanese scientist with an experimental treatment that he thinks might allow Caitlin to see.

So it’s off to Japan, where the scientist fits Caitlin with an implant that processes input from a camera and links it directly to her optic nerve. At first the experiment seems a failure; Caitlin returns home to Toronto in hopes that a few weeks will allow the implant to start working. Meanwhile, the scientist continues to work on the device’s software, arranging a way for Caitlin to download updates directly to the implant.

Comes the time of the first software update, and suddenly Caitlin can see . . . after a fashion. There are two problems: first, the patterns of lines and blobs that she sees seem to bear no resemblance to the world around her, and second, her new sight goes away as soon as the new software is downloaded.

A little experimentation reveals the truth: Caitlin’s sight is only active when the implant is actively connected to the Internet. As for what she’s seeing . . . it turns out that she is somehow able to perceive the structure of the Net itself.

Caitlin is an appealing enough character, and the premise is fascinating: a girl, blind from birth, gains the ability to see the structure of the Internet from within. A lesser writer would go with this story, following Caitlin as she learns to deal with this new, expanded world. But this is Sawyer, and there’s much, much more going on.

Here are some of the threads that Sawyer weaves together.

A potential plague in China, to which the government responds by sealing off and destroying a rural village. To conceal the act from the rest of the world, China temporarily cuts itself off from the rest of the Internet.
The offbeat psychological theory of Julian Jaynes, author of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Jaynes claims that human consciousness only emerged about 3,000 years ago, when the human brain evolved sufficiently complex connections between its two hemispheres. Prior to this, Jaynes says, humans had only the dimmest form of self-awareness; people reacted to their own thoughts as to the voices of unknown gods.

Simian behaviorists studying a few hybrid ape specimens who seem able to carry out genuine conversations with one another via teleconference.

The life story of Caitlin’s hero, the late Helen Keller, and Helen’s relationship with her beloved teacher, Anne Sullivan.

And here is how Sawyer brings these diverse elements together. In her explorations of the Net, Caitlin discovers a presence: a newly-evolved consciousness, an entity born in the increasing complexity of the Net and given self-awareness by the Jaynes-like reintegration of China’s national Net with the worldwide Internet.

This new entity is effectively as deaf and blind as Helen Keller herself. And it falls to the blind girl, Caitlin, to be this new mind’s teacher in the same way that Sullivan taught Keller, to bring language and awareness of the outside world to this new mind.

Along the way, Sawyer raises fascinating, complex questions about the nature of consciousness and self-awareness, of communication between disparate intelligences, and compassion across huge gulfs. This is a book that you’ll still be thinking about for weeks after you finish reading it.

Wake is the first of a planned trilogy, so not every plot thread is completely tied up at the end. Indeed, Sawyer follows the old show business dictum “leave ’em wanting more.” Fortunately, more is on the way.

Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters,
by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa

Penguin,
$23.95,
252 pp. (mass market paperback)
ISBN 9780399533655
Genres:
Popular nonfiction

Psychology and sociology, the sciences of human behavior, are in the midst of a revolution. The relatively new field of evolutionary psychology does just what its name says: seeks to explain human nature through the principles of evolution. Miller and Kanazawa present a tour of evolutionary psychology for the intelligent layman, coming up with some unexpected conclusions.

First, the authors talk about a few principles necessary for understanding evolutionary psychology. First, there’s the eternal question of nature vs. nurture, and the fact that neither provides a complete explanation of human behavior. Next, they caution against two fallacies: the naturalistic fallacy and the moralistic fallacy. The naturalistic fallacy equates “natural” with “good” and says that just because a behavior exists, it is to be preferred; the moralistic fallacy equates what is “moral” with what exists and claims that because a behavior is desired, then it actually exists. Finally, they deal with the question of stereotypes: while useful, they are not to be confused with accurate descriptions of the world.

The rest of the book is filled with provocative questions and the answers provided by evolutionary psychology. For example: Why are most human societies polygynous (one man with many wives) and so few polyandrous (one woman with many husbands)? The answer: Due to their different reproductive methods, it makes genetic sense for a man to have as many children as they can, by as many women as possible—while it makes more genetic sense for women to have children only with men who will provide protection and sustenance for her kids.

Or there’s the title question: Why do beautiful people have more daughters? Well, physically attractive women are more desired as both short-term and long-term mates, while physically attractive men are more desired as short-term mates but not as long-term mates. So beauty contributes more to female reproductive success than to male success, so the genes of beautiful people are more successfully passed on through daughters than through sons. And in fact, the authors say, being rated “very attractive” increases the odds of having a daughter by 36 percent.

Some of the other questions answered in this volume are “Why are almost all violent criminals male?” and “Where does religion come from?” There are even speculations on the roots of such behaviors as soldiers dying for their country or people committing suicide.

For any science fiction reader interested in the behavior of sapient creatures and the evolutionary origins of that behavior, this is an entertaining and educational read.

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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