Books: MacLeod, Banks, and the Tempus Fugitive

[woodwardiocom]

Learning the World by Ken MacLeod

This science fiction novel follows two parallel stories. The first is about the events on a barely-slower-than-light colonization ship as it enters a new star system. It hails from an interstellar transhuman civilization thousands of years in our future, and (since this civilization requires a lot of explaining) the story is presented in the form of a blog by a teenager named Atomic Discourse Gale. The second story is about the birdlike aliens living on a planet in this new star system, who are at about a Victorian level of technology, and are just figuring out that that comet they've been looking at isn't a comet. The humans observe the aliens, and begin having some serious breakdowns in their society, just as the aliens discover the humans and, well . . .

There was one bit which made me wonder what exactly the author intended. "Race", among humans, is a long-dead issue, since everyone's been interbreeding for 14,000 years. Instead, skin color is an indicator of how long someone has been traveling among the stars, since the radiation eventually tans you black. The Oldest Man on the ship is thus also the darkest . . . and he's also the one who objects most strenuously to how the local aliens treat their domesticated labor animals. (The book strongly implies, but does not make it 100% certain, that the "trudges" were nonsapient when the humans arrived.) So, he decides to interfere with their civilization, by spontaneously making the trudges intelligent, and thus capable of rebelling against their "enslavement". Rather like if some Martians made human horses and dogs intelligent. An argument ensues as to whether they had been enslaved before they became smart, or whether the Oldest Man is the one who enslaved them. And, of course, from the perspective of a 21st century American reader, there's the question of why this role was given to the blackest man onboard a ship where ostensibly there's no such thing as race. Food for thought.

Anyway, recommended. Oh, and, the economics of the ship are quite interesting, and are presumably why it won a Prometheus Award.

Matter by Iain M. Banks

This is the seventh novel or so in Banks' Culture series, set against the background of an interstellar transhumanist utopia, and against the foreground of a mostly human society with a roughly Victorian level of technology, living on one level of a "Shellworld", a massive planetlike artifact with an alien god in its center. The Hamlet-like politics and tragedies of this society are very small potatoes indeed to the Galaxy at large, until it becomes clear that there is actually a far greater game being played here . . . This one takes a little while to get moving, and I find the quirks of Culture society much more interesting that those of the "backward" civilizations he creates, but it was still worth it for the bang-up ending. Highly recommended, though if you're new to Banks and the Culutre, I might start with The Player of Games first.

(The above are the two novels I shouldn't have been reading at the same time, since they have just enough similarities to cause confusion.)

Tempus Fugitive by Ken Steacy

This is a fully-airbrushed graphic novel from 1990. The title is multple puns, as the hero is a time-traveling pilot in addition to being on the run from a future facist state. He spends his time bopping from one 20th century war to the next, and one lovingly-detailed military airplane to the next, as he attempts to complete his mission. The book is indulgent of the creator's hobbies, and a bit trite, but it's very pretty, and I can't imagine how much work went into it, particularly since I didn't notice any reuse of airbrush masks above the most trivial. Mildy recommended, if you're into military aircraft, or airbrushing.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Actually, it wasn't just the economics that mattered for the Prometheus Award. It was the whole concept of the Law of Association, which is political as well as economic, and the celebration of the Whig view of history, as well—and the antislavery theme, with its interesting ambiguities. Not to mention the resolution of the political conflict by separation.