Blackout.
Connie Willis
Ballantine, 491 pages, $26.00 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-0-553-80319-8
Series: Oxford Historians 3
Genre: Trips in Time
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When you look at it, there is considerable overlap between science fiction and, of all things, historical fiction. That shouldn’t really come as a surprise; in many important ways, readers come to both fields looking for the same sorts of elements.
Both sf and historical fiction take the reader to places fundamentally different from the present-day world. In sf it’s either the altered world of the future, or literally another world (or universe) altogether; in historical fiction, the different landscapes of the past. Both fields delight in presenting other cultures and unfamiliar societies. Both are often concerned with people involved in far-reaching societal changes. And in both fields, readers respect authors who do their research and provide accuracy.
Is it any wonder, then, that many readers like both sf and historical fiction? And what could make those readers happier than when the two come together in the same book?
In general, there are three basic ways that sf and historical fiction fuse. First there’s the so-called “future historical,” a book that reads like a historical novel even though it’s set firmly in the future. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation stories were consciously written as future historicals, and when Frank Herbert’s Dune was first published, it was often compared to a historical novel.
A second fusion of sf and historical is the alternate history story, and if you haven’t noticed, alternate histories are all the rage nowadays. Harry Turtledove alone keeps the genre in business, and there are many other fine practitioners.
That leaves a third way for sf and historical fiction to come together, and that’s the venerable time-travel novel. Just about any time-travel story worth its salt has some kind of historical element, unless it’s strictly about travel into the future. But some authors have raised the time-travel/historical blend to the level of fine art. Which brings us, happily, to Connie Willis.
According to her publisher, it’s been eight years since Connie Willis last gave us a novel. While that’s something like 95 months too long, the wait proves to have been well worth it.
For those who are not familiar with Willis’s Oxford Historians tales, a few words of explanation are in order. In the mid-twenty-first century, Oxford University is the base of a large group of time-traveling historians who spend their time visiting other eras to learn the kind of things historians love to learn; how people lived, what they ate and how they spent their time, how they felt and what they thought. In this, the historians are very like readers of historical fiction.
To say that the Oxford Historians series has been well received is like saying that the Pacific Ocean is a little damp. Not to put too fine a point on it, but these stories have achieved the status of science fiction classics. The novella that started it all, “Fire Watch” (1982), won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, as did the novel Doomsday Book (1992). To Say Nothing of the Dog (1997) was a Hugo and Locus Award winner, and a Nebula nominee. All three frequently appear on “best science fiction” lists, and in many school districts one or another is on high school recommended reading lists.
Can Blackout, the newest book in the series, possibly live up to all this?
Does Saturn have rings?
Veracity
Laura Bynum
Pocket, 376 pages, $25.00 (hardcover)
ISBN: 0-978-1-4391-2334-8
Genre: Dystopian Futures
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Here’s the setup. The story primarily focuses on three Oxford historians on missions to three different periods of the World War II era. Polly is playing the part of a shopgirl while observing the behavior of ordinary Londoners during the Blitz. Mike is headed to witness the evacuation of Dunkirk, in which thousands of private boats rescued stranded soldiers across the British Channel. And Eileen is off in the British countryside studying the world of children temporarily evacuated from London.
Even before they leave Oxford in 2060, there are ominous signs that something’s up with time-travel. Schedules are being rearranged, missions postponed or moved forward, and administrators (including Mr. Dunworthy, the all-powerful head honcho) off on emergency conferences to discuss different theories of time-travel.
Polly, Mike, and Eileen each have their difficulties, and when they arrive in their past eras, things are still going wrong. Each suffers an inconvenient amount of “slippage,” arriving well past their assigned target dates. Then, each one must deal with the challenges of working in the field, finding out that assignments that seemed simple are anything but. Polly has to find a place to live, get a job, and somehow get more appropriate clothes while spending most of her time huddling in bomb shelters. Mike is stranded in a sleepy seaside village thirty miles from where he’s supposed to be, with no way to get there. And Eileen, who has her hands full with two of the most obnoxious children in history, is looking forward to the end of her assignment when an outbreak of measles traps her in a quarantined house.
Then things get really bad. Because it soon becomes obvious that their temporal gateways are not opening on schedule—in fact, they aren’t opening at all. Apparently, something has gone terribly wrong in the future, and the three are stranded. Their only chance is to find one another . . . if they can make their way through falling bombs, V1 rockets, and the nightmare of World War II London.
This isn’t a book to race though. You’ll want time to savor the experience, and at nearly 500 pages there’s a lot to savor. Don’t worry—with Connie Willis you’re in the hands of a master, and she’s not going to lead you astray or waste your time.
Blackout—like much of Connie Willis’s other work—tells the story of rather ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times and events, and somehow rising heroically to the challenge. For in the end, the historians from the future are in the same boat as the people of the past they’ve come to study: they don’t know what’s going on or what’s going to happen next, and all they can do is live through it as best they can.
Fair warning: Blackout is only the first half of the story. The whole tale is too big to be published in one volume, and I dare anyone to find a single sentence that could be cut. The conclusion, All Clear, will be published later this year. But don’t wait for it: read Blackout now.
Pennterra
Judith Moffett
Fantastic Books, 288 pages, $14.99
(trade paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-60459-729-5
Genres: Alien Beings, Ecological/Environmental SF, Psychological/Sociological SF, Religious/Philosophical SF
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Veracity is one of those books that’s just as at home in literary circles as among science fiction readers. It’s a novel of a dystopian future, and before you start groaning that you’ve seen this before, take a moment to look. There’s a lot here that’s fresh.
In 2012, terrorists unleashed a virus that killed half the world’s population. The result was a new oppressive government called The Confederation of the Willing, which exists to maintain security and order at all costs. The main instrument of the Confederation is the “slate,” a device implanted in the neck of every citizen. Using slates, the Confederation controls behavior by controlling speech itself. Certain words are forbidden: to utter them results in immediate physical pain—and to continue uttering them quickly brings a visit from the brutal police force known as the Blue Coats.
Most people live with the restrictions of the Confederation, grateful for the security it gives. Harper Adams is one of those people; a child during the terrorist attacks, Harper is now a grown woman with a daughter of her own, and she’s as law-abiding as they come.
Until her daughter is taken from her. Until her daughter’s very name, Veracity, becomes a forbidden word.
Then Harper runs, goes off the grid, destroys her own slate, and starts a search for the fabled resistance. But unlike the other rebels, Harper isn’t just fighting for freedom, for liberty, or for the defeat of tyranny. No, Harper is fighting for Veracity . . . and for truth itself.
Not just another Brave New World or Handmaid’s Tale wannabe, Veracity is a unique book with powerful characters and a fully realized future society. It reminds one of some of the best work of Frederik Pohl, with perhaps healthy quantities of Edgar Pangborn and Suzy McKee Charnas thrown in. This is Laura Bynum’s first book; if the literary establishment doesn’t seduce her away from us, she’s definitely a name to watch in the future.
Judith Moffett is a voice we haven’t heard from enough. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1988, has been a Hugo and Nebula finalist on several occasions, and has been shortlisted for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores gender issues. Her most recent work, the Holy Ground Trilogy (The Ragged World, Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream, and The Bird Shaman), tells of the invasion and occupation of Earth by the Hefn, a benevolent and highly advanced alien race.
Moffett’s first novel, Pennterra, has been out of print for far too long—but Fantastic Books has brought it back in an attractive trade paperback, and this time around you don’t want to miss it.
The lush, beautiful planet Pennterra is home to the hrossa, a peaceful race of amphibian aliens. When a colonizing ship of Quakers from Earth lands, the hrossa allow them to stay but quarantine them in one specific valley. At first the colonists—including their leader, George Quinlan—chafe at the restrictions of the natives. But soon enough, they grow accustomed to their valley and they come to know the hrossa as talented ecologists willing to share their knowledge and wisdom. The Quakers broadcast a warning, prohibiting other colony ships from coming to Pennterra, and settle down to a happy and peaceful existence.
Until six years later, when the Earth colony ship Down Plus Six arrives, packed with refugees from the economic and ecological collapse of the home world. The Quakers can’t turn away the newly arrived “Sixers” (and more to the point, have no way to prevent them from landing and settling). The Sixers are ready to set down and conquer their new world . . . but that isn’t the Quaker way. Nor is it the way of the hrossa. . . .
Pennterra packs a thousand pages of first-rate science fiction into its scant 288. The hrossa are finely drawn aliens with their own language, culture, philosophy, and even sexuality (all of which figure into the story). The clash between the Sixers and the Quakers, with the still-largely-unknown hrossa taking their own side, is compelling. If you think you hear distant echoes of LeGuin, you’re right: Moffett is a stylist as well as a good storyteller.
Cyril (C. M.) Kornbluth was one of the pivotal figures of American science fiction. He was there at the beginning, those late-1930s days that marked the launch of Amazing Stories, the foundation of the Futurians, and the start of so many careers: Isaac Asimov, David A. Kyle, Sam Moskowitz, Frederik Pohl, Richard Wilson, Donald A. Wollheim. Kornbluth would easily take his place among those hallowed names. Two of his solo stories, “The Little Black Bag” (Astounding, 1950) and “The Marching Morons” (1951), are classics and as popular today as when they were written. His collaborations with Frederik Pohl, most notably The Space Merchants (1952) and Gladiator-At-Law (1954), are equally well regarded, as is his solo novel The Syndic (1953).
When Kornbluth died in March 1958, at the age of 35, his loss was felt throughout the science fiction community. If he had lived, he would undoubtedly have been hailed as one of the superstars of the field.
Mark Rich has written a very detailed yet highly readable biography of this exceptional writer, which is itself a mini-history of the early decades of science fiction. Along the way, he includes commentary on just about every short story, novelette, and novel that Kornbluth produced, alone or in collaboration, under a variety of pseudonyms. A scholarly text (with the requisite 40 pages of notes) that reads like a novel, Rich’s book is nothing short of a delight.
If you remember anything of that time, this will be a nostalgic journey for you; those of us who had the misfortune to be born after Kornbluth died can only marvel at this now-gone world and the geniuses who inhabited it. The book is a bit pricey, but no fan of the history of science fiction (you know who you are) can afford to be without it.
It’s hard to glance at a newsfeed nowadays without seeing something about biotechnology. Even for Analog readers—who’ve been thinking about genetic engineering and advances in biology almost as long as we’ve been contemplating nuclear power and environmental disasters—the field of biotech is moving so quickly and in so many directions that it’s hard to keep up. If only someone would wade through all the research and tell us what’s important right now. And while they’re at it, it would be great if they could manage to make it all funny.
Our prayers have been answered.
Kyle Kurpinski has a Ph.D. in Bioengineering and works on technologies for tissue regeneration; Terry D. Johnson lectures in the bioengineering department at the University of California, Berkeley. It’s safe to say that these guys know their subject.
They start off with a timeline of biotechnology advances, beginning with 15,000 B.C.E. when humans domesticate dogs. “Having acquired a best friend, the human race decides to see if there’s anything else in nature that could use a bit of tweaking.” Then they move on to present two conflicting scenarios for the future. In the dystopian one, a proliferation of Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee clones leads to “the most incredible yearlong kung fu battle ever.” In the utopian future, “Every child rides to school on a genetically engineered unicorn (trademarked ‘My Little Rhino-pony’).”
The remaining chapters take a lighthearted look at the basics of genetics and biology, and then deal with such matters as cloning, bio-enhancements, engineering other lifeforms, and finally the all-important tips for defeating your own clone (“The best you can hope for is to persuade your friends and family to enter into a temporary truce while you and your duplicate sort this out for yourselves.”)
If you’re looking for a book that will bring you (or a friend) up to speed on current trends in biotech, while at the same time giving you plenty of laughs, this is the book for you.
Don Sakers is the author of A Rose From Old Terra and Dance for the Ivory Madonna. For more information, visit www.scatteredworlds.com.
