Terminal World, by Alastair Reynolds

Terminal World is Alastair Reynolds' latest novel. To be frank, it's not his best novel. It doesn't matter, however: all hist books to date have been great reads. From his Revelation Space-trilogy (or quadrilogy if one includes Chasm City), to his stand-alone novels like Pushing Ice and the present installment, he always manages to convey a sense of wonder, mystery, excitement and dread, using good characters to paint his stories across canvases of space and time. It is a hard sci-fi novel, blending in elements from steampunk, Jules Verne-like fantastic travel-stories and gothic horror.

Like much hard sci-fi, his stories are usualy carried by ideas, taking scientific speculations to the extreme, inventing gadgets, creatures and vast timelines, weaving a tale that uses such as essential plot devices rather than just “cool stuff”. The basic idea for Terminal World is humanity's last city, Spearpoint, which is divided into different zones where the laws of nature are slightly different, somewhat like Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon The Deep (see another blog post): at the bottom, in Horsetown, almost nothing mechanical can be made to work, creating a wild west-like environment. Further up, we have Steamville, Neon Heights, Circuit City and finally the Celestial Levels, where posthumans, “angels”, fly around on genetically engineered wings. All around spearpoint is a wasteland, where Mad Max-esque post-apocalyptic conditions prevail. The main character, Quillon, is an angel with an amnesia, forced to leave Spearpoint and head for the wastelands when his past catches up with him.

It sounds like a silly idea, and it really is, but Reynolds spins a believable tale. At the same time – and this I was actually grateful for – the complete story of the Terminal World is never told, leaving room for interpretations and speculations on the reader's half. It's great stuff. For example, the sense of sheer wonder he manages to inflict on the reader during Swarm's travel through the Bane made me read the chapter twice: Quillon or the other characters have no way of understanding what they see, but as an experienced hard sci-fi reader living in the present the reader is allowed to draw his or hers own conclusions.

Thinking back, what still lingers in my memory from time to time, nine years after reading Chasm City, is the dread I felt when the main characters entered the “grub ship”. These aliens had no moral concepts like we know them, making it a dangerous place to be. Also, the grubs incorporated people physically in themselves, a tormenting a horrible way of “living” for the victims. I the same dread reading Terminal World, during the encounter with the vorgs. Since this is a review, I will not spoil it further – suffice it so say that it is grim, in a Frankenstein meets Mad Max-way.

Some parts of the book are a bit slow, spoiling the page-turner nature of the rest. Some of the dialogue is perhaps thin, with moral discussions stretched too long for my taste. Still, while not as good as his previous novel House of Suns, Terminal World carries Alastair Reynolds' hallmarks as one of the top five hard sci-fi writers out there.

Let's say 4 out of 5 stars.

The Wasp Factory

The last book by Iain Banks I read (and the first he got published) was "The Wasp Factory"; a novel about a slightly reality-challenged youth, Francis Couldhame, who lives alone with his father on a Schottish island. He has a very vivid imagination, and his upbringing has, obviously, had some shortcomings. Actually, it's plain crazy. His life-story is told in first person while he awaits the coming of his long-lost brother. Frank's world evolves about the island and his personal mythology, the reasons for and details of being somewhat unclear -- in the beginning. Let me stop there, or else I'll spoil the fun.

Because Iain Banks is a brilliant story teller, and this story is so full of details, symbols and revelations that one should discover it oneself. Try not to google the book, read the Wikipedia article, or anything (although chances are it is too late as you are reading this.) This novel -- Banks' first -- really proves his talent. Actually it is one of his very best. The grisly happenings put to the pen here evokes imagery akin to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, or Psycho, while at the same time telling a believable story about a humanly unhuman human, managing to evoke sympathy and afterthought in the process.

If there is a flaw here, it must be spoonfeeding the reader at the end of the book. That really wasn't necessary -- I had it figured out by myself.

There is so much more to say, but I really don't want to spoil this one for potential readers. Nine out of ten.

The Puppet Masters, by Robert Heinlein

Finally, this Christmas I sat down with Robert Heinlein's "The Puppet Masters". The book was first published in 1951, and I read the 1969 Pan edition (see cover image). In the Wikipedia article, I discovered that my edition probably is an abridged edition, leaving out some of the more controversial plot details.

The setup is as follows: "Sam" is a secret agent in a top secret organization in the USA in the early 21. century. Flying saucers land, carrying parasitic "slugs" that attach to their hosts, making them zombie slaves. Time is running up as Sam and his organization tries to stop the aliens from taking over the world. Now a classic plot, copied many times over in books and movies; most notably perhaps "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" which have been adapted for the screen at least twice. Obviously, there are clear cold war and The Red Scare references in the plot, also made explicit.

Today, the plot might seem somewhat clichéd: secrent agents versus alien parasite slugs that take over the world. However, Heinlein's book is witty, exciting and fast-paced. On the other hand, like much Old School science fiction, the prose is a little cheesy: cold, deadly action is relieved by very dated view of women and relationships, complete with annoying love scenes. (Actually, I think the unabridged edition is much better balanced in this respect, as my edition is frankly a censored version, leaving out some "saucy" details; pun intended.)

Much of the cheesyness can be traced to the fact that The Puppet Masters was originally serialized in the magazine Galaxy Science Fiction. It was then hard to edit the story properly, leading to situations where the plot is a little weak: although one may argue that while some points are not logically impossible they are certainly implausible.

All in all, The Puppet Masters is a great read, but it does not quite reach the top of the list.

Samnorsk

I just finished Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon The Deep from 1992, an excellent hard sci-fi novel. It actually won the Hugo award in 1993.

It's a great read, with some very original ideas. Among them are the "zones of thought." The known universe, i.e., the galaxy, is divided into four zones, with different space-time properties. For example, in The Beyond, faster-than-light travel is possible, while at the galactic core, The Unthinking Depths, not even normal intelligence is possible. I think Vinge is trying to explain very alien ways of thinking. The beings in the Transcend, called Powers, are almost gods. Indeed, there a humorous references to Applied Theology -- the dealings with the Powers.

As a Norwegian, I got my share of laughs, and I feel privileged: The book is full of half-Norwegian (scandinavian?) names, places ... Like Nyjora ("New Earth"), the surnames Olsndot, and similar (a mix of "Olsen", "Olesdatter", or perhaps "Olsen dot ..."?) The majority of the human race is actually descended from Norwegians! The main worlds are Straumli and Sjandra Kei (that one is cryptical...) Except the people have purple eyes and dark brown skin. No kidding! Some norwegian words are also interspersed: "Hei!" ("Hey!") and "Nei!" ("No!"). Their language is called Samnorsk, which really must be a joke! It's not even a real language today, but a strange construct that was made sometime a 50-100 years ago, trying to unite the two official written languages in Norway; Nynorsk and Bokmål. (That's right -- two different written languages for the same spoken language. I think Vernor Vinge had a good laugh, discussing this with his Norwegian friends.) The chance for it to be the official language of the human race in the future -- well, that must be Vinge's comment on cultural imperialism today.

By the way -- the other very common language is called Triskweline. I thought I had heard that name or word before, but couldn't quite remember. Google solved it -- it's the programming font I use! I cannot find any other reference to that word, and the font is the newest of the two. Funny!

The Tines race is a race of distributed minds. That i haven't read about before, although Peter F. Hamilton's "Prime" race from the Commonwealth Saga is quite similar, but more extreme and alien. They are the inhabitants of a medieval world -- in desription very similar to the wild nature of northern and western Norway! Indeed, Vinge says in the preface that he really enjoyed his stay in Norway in 1998, when he among other things attended a seminar on distributed networks. So that's where the ideas came from!

This somewhat whimsical drawing of a universe (actually consistent with what we observe today) comes complete with a galactic internet. Remember this was written in 1993, and the galactic net is like a steampunk internet: The net we have now is much more advanced (except for superluminal transmission lines) than in The Beyond. You can feel the book was written 15 years ago! The net is mostly newsgroups like we knew them before they succumbed to discussion forums, wikipedia and BitTorrent downloads., only some of the participants are very alien.

Vinge also is quite satirical in the way he uses "net of a million lies", but I am not sure he could imagine the internet as it is today. Nevertheless, he captured the problems and benefits of freedom of speech perfectly.

The scale of the story is just huge. I am not going to spoil the book any more than I already have, but get prepared to think. It has really awesome moments, and the plot is well-written and full of charm, humor, suspense and intelligence.

A great read!

There is a great review out there, able to put words to these things better than I am. Beware of spoilers, though.