Summer 2007 (35 page)

I must give kudos to David G. Hartwell for producing the
best edited book among the nominees.
Eifelheim
is the epitome of fine
science fiction, based on exquisitely tantalizing physics, a fascinating alien
physiognomy and associated culture, an insightful and well-researched grounding
in history, a masterful use of language, and equally satisfying suppositions as
to the possibilities inherent in man’s reaction to the unknown.

I cannot say such laudatory things about
Blindsight
,
though it obviously has its fans. Watts’ conceit is that a small
pseudoscientific, semi-militant expedition to make contact with an unknown
artifact in deep space suspected to be the source of the first alien mission to
blitz Earth with (unmanned drone) scouts of its own will be lead by a
vampire–a member of a reincarnated race that is as predatory as legend
would have it. Jukka Sarasti suffers from the Crucifix Glitch–a weakness
to right angles common to all vampires– that is kept in check with
regular drug doses but isn’t removed completely because it relates to one of
the vampire’s main strengths–an ability to see and think differently from
humans. Not that the humans that round out his tiny crew think particularly
normally.

Susan James, the linguistics expert, houses four personalities
(“the Gang of Four”) in her partitioned brain. Isaac Szpindel is a biologist,
wired into his scientific apparati so deeply his nervous system twitches and
his awareness is sometimes not focused in his body at all. Major Amanda Bates
and whatever army of drones and other weapons she cares to generate onsite
comprises their military arm. And the narrator of it all, Siri Keaton, is a
Synthesist, an autistic savant who had half his brain removed and replaced with
electronic prosthetics when he was a child. Supposedly he is there to observe
and report, which he does with more melodrama than you would ever expect to
hear coming out of a lobotomized person whose humanity is questioned by the
people around him because of his aberrant lack of emotions and the way he
maintains social function through conscious analysis of informational topology
instead of instinct or empathy.

What most irritated me about this book, besides the
unrelenting re-emphasis of the
drama
and
fearfulness
of both the
alien constructs they encounter and the vampire they brought with them, was the
fact that the technology they use is awkwardly yet continuously described. They
are on a spaceship with its own artificial intelligence. They drink out of
squeeze bulbs and walk around the hull or drift and catch themselves, or
whatever. They don’t just move and do their work, they interact with artifacts
the reader is not allowed to absorb and assume. They use an online
collaborative tool called ConSensus that is named nearly every time it is
invoked. And they seem to have no idea what they’re doing most of the time,
even when they aren’t experiencing electromagnetically-induced hallucinations.

I couldn’t wait to finish
this book and be done with it. It explores interesting questions about perception,
consciousness, and sentience but its base assumptions on why life forms must
inherently be in conflict and how they might (violently) investigate
differences between them were as irritating as the social tensions of the crew
and their ineffectiveness as a team. The ending was mainly satisfying in that
it was over, though the final sentence was a nice summation of where the author
was aiming; your mileage may vary, but
Blindsight
was not for me.

Reviews:
THE SPACE OPERA RENAISSANCE and THE NEW SPACE OPERA: ALL NEW
STORIES OF SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURE

THE SPACE OPERA RENAISSANCE

Edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (Tor/944
pages/$39.95)

THE NEW SPACE OPERA: ALL NEW STORIES OF SCIENCE FICTION
ADVENTURE

Edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan (Eos/528
pages/$15.95, trade paper)

Reviewed by Dorman T. Shindler

After the “Star Wars” movies hit neighborhood screens in
the late 1970s and early 1980s, the subgenre of Space Opera—once
considered all but dead—has flourished. Though practiced by
well-respected writers within the genre, Space Opera never seemed to get as
much respect as “hard” SF. Two recent anthologies not only celebrate Space
Opera, they acknowledge its importance to the field of SF and fantasy and its
reemergence as vital part of the new renaissance for the genre in literature (not
to mention film and television)

The Space Opera Renaissance
edited
by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (who brought us
The Hard SF
Renaissance
as well as
The Ascent of Wonder
) is a huge, doorstop of
a book that does a good job of tracking the development of the subgenre from
the days E.E. “Doc” Smith (who wrote
The Skylark of Space
, but isn’t
included in this tome, darn it) to the more recent writings of Allen Steele,
Catherine Asaro and Stephen Baxter. Another Space Opera pioneer—Jack
Vance—also misses the role call in this roomy anthology. Although Smith
and Vance are no-shows, the inclusion of Jack Williamson’s “The Prince of
Space” is a welcome sight. It’s a story that virtually invented the idea of
“space habitats” that rotate in order to simulate gravity. Knaves. thieves and
pirates play a part in 1949’s “The Enchantress of Venus” by Leigh Brackett
(surely one of the most versatile writers to grace the field) as well as 2002’s
“Ring of Rats by R. Grarcia y Robertson—and both make for wild, adventurous
reads. Although the early stories of Space Opera seem to have been given a bit
of short shrift (“The Game of Rat and Dragon” by Cordwainer Smith, and a Robert
Sheckley gem are included), the latter days of Space Opera’s renaissance, from
the late 1970s and on, are well-covered.

Stories by David Brin, Lois McMaster Bujold, Charles
Stross and Robert Reed are among the rich, well-written pickings. “The Shobies’
Story” by Ursula K. LeGuin, which deals with a reality shift caused by a faster
than light drive, works very well as a representative of the sort of thoughtful
but well-paced fiction LeGuin (in novels like The Left hand of Darkness) was
writing early on in her long career. A newer, and particular favorite of mine,
is “Orphans of the Helix,” a Locus Award-winning novella tied to the classic
“Hyperion/Endymion” Space Opera quaternion by Dan Simmons. Set over 400 years
after the events in the last of those four books, the story finds the crew of
the starship Helix being awakened to investigate a distress signal. The ensuing
adventure pits the characters (named after Japanese authors like Saigyo,
Murasaki, etc.) against and out-of-control “harvester” ship running on auto
pilot and threatening an entire civilization near a double star. Like the best
of Simmons’ space operas, this story uses just about everything but the kitchen
sink to tell an entertaining and adventurous story. (With over 30 stories
offered up,
The Space Opera Renaissance
is a great buy—a paperback
will be published in July).

Oddly, “Muse of Fire,” the contribution by Simmons in
The
New Space Opera
—a collection of brand new, original works—which
once again makes use of classic literature (in this case, Shakespeare) and
starships, doesn’t quite fire on all thrusters the way “Orphans” did. But as
editor Dozois points out, Space Opera is many things to many readers and
writers, so while Simmons’ story isn’t quite up to snuff, a good deal of the
many other variations on the subgenre in this collection are. “Who’s Afraid of
Wolf 359” by Ken Macleod successfully fuses humor and cynicism into the mix.
The story begins with the protagonist dumping his “smart clothes” in an effort
to throw off pursuers—the garments dance about like something from a Tex
Avery cartoon. Robert Silverberg mixes familiar tropes with new ideas and new
twists in “The Emperor and the Maula,” in which a woman from Earth finds
herself at the center of a galaxy-spanning empire, pleading for her race’s
freedom. She’s imprisoned, of course—and sentenced to death! But like
Scheherazade, heroine Laylah Wallis proves resourceful, and while she spins her
hypnotizing tale, author Silverberg slyly muses on the art of narrative
structure, etc.

In “Dividing the Sustain,” James Patrick Kelly
postulates a future—and a race of people—who are happy to have rid
themselves of emotion. But a smuggler aboard a starship enroute to one of their
settlements truly shakes things up. And in “Maelstrom,” Kage Baker makes good,
humorous use of the same trope Simmons started from—a troupe of
space-traveling actors—when thespians have to act out an Edgar Allen Poe
story for some miners on Mars. Other highlights include pieces by Tony Daniel,
Mary Rosenblum and, especially, Greg Egan.

Sure the Hartwell/Kramer
anthology could’ve used more early Space Opera work (something by Alfred
Bester, for example) and both anthologies could’ve used a piece by Elizabeth
Bear (one of the fasted rising, new SF writers), but it’s hard to complain
about two anthologies that offer up such terrific stories by many of the finest
writers in the field.