Asimov'sSF,Dec2005

PARADOX: Book One of the Nulapeiron Sequence

Prometheus Books, a publisher best known for scientific and philosophical titles, launches its science fiction imprint by picking up a John Meaney series first published in England in 2000. Given the parent company's emphasis on free inquiry and critical thinking, it's not surprising that Pyr's initial offering treats the theme of rebellion against unjust authority.

We meet Tom Corcorigan as a young boy living in a tightly regulated society in which his family inhabits one of the lower rungs. The world they inhabit apparently consists of multiple underground shells, with the lower classes literally toward the bottom of the stack. Of course, from Tom's point of view, much of this is simply the way things are—at first.

But his world changes when he meets a strange woman, who gives him a curious data-crystal. Young as he is, Tom knows already that he cannot let anyone else learn about her; almost immediately after meeting her, he is questioned by the militia, but allowed to go home when they decide he knows nothing.

Then, helping his father set up shop in the open market at the center of their level, Tom sees the woman again, this time the prisoner of a squad of militia. When she breaks her manacles—apparently almost by magic—and flees, Tom's father identifies her as a pilot. Just as it appears that she'll escape to safety, the guards shoot her down.

After this mysterious opening, we slowly learn more about Tom's world, Nulapeiron. An Oracle—clearly an all-powerful being whose whim is law—takes Tom's mother away. Shortly thereafter, Tom's father falls ill and wastes away. Tom makes a few friends who recognize that he has something beyond the ordinary about him, but with no parents and no way to make a living, the only thing to be done with him is to send him to school. There, Tom begins to learn that the crystal he was given by the Pilot contains a course of education—and the story of a girl who became one of the first pilots. Hooked, he begins to solve the puzzles in order to follow the story.

And then his life changes again. On an expedition away from school, one of the boys steals a garment, then hands it off to Tom as pursuit arrives. Caught red-handed, Tom is tried in the presence of a noble lady. The usual sentence for his crime is execution; Tom concocts an argument that impresses the lady and her beautiful daughter, Sylvana, whom Tom had seen earlier. The two ladies are in need of a spare servant, so they ask that Tom be spared and given to them. His punishment is reduced to the loss of an arm.

Now Tom must learn the ways of the aristocracy as one of their servants. Again, his quick mind gives him an advantage, and he soon becomes a trusted servant ... but there's way too much plot to summarize here. Suffice it to say that Meaney takes his protagonist through the entire fabric of the elaborate society he has built, and in the end Tom has shaken Nulapeiron to its foundations.

Summarized flatly, this sounds like a more or less standard plot of growing up in a strange futuristic world; anyone from Fred Pohl to Anne McCaffrey could have written something from the same outline. But of course Meaney has his own twists to bring to the story, beginning with a stronger than usual ability to convey what class differences mean to a boy growing up in a rigid society. He is particularly good at showing the visual elements of Tom's surroundings, as well, from the open marketplace on his home level to the squalid school to the brilliant homes of the aristocracy. And he has a rare ability to convey a sense of strangeness, the most essential quality for someone creating new worlds.

Two more volumes of the Nulapeiron sequence have been published in England, and Paradox was shortlisted for the BSFA Award. Prome-theus Books have scored a coup in obtaining the series to open their new SF imprint; let's hope they bring the rest of the sequence to us without delay.

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Stross continues the story begun in The Family Trade, reviewed in this column a few months ago.

Miriam Beckstein, a tech-oriented journalist in our world, has discovered that she is a member of the ruling class of a parallel world, in which a feudal society inhabits North America. The clan of which she is a member has the power of movement between worlds, and has exploited it to make vast sums by smuggling illegal commodities—gold, drugs, etc.—between worlds.

As this second part begins, Miriam has returned to our world after escaping two assassination attempts. In the process, she has learned that another parallel world exists, from which at least one group of assassins came. She has brought with her Brilliana D'Ost, a young woman from the medieval society whose life is also in danger, and who has absolutely no experience in the modern world. Miriam's main allies are her secretary Paulette, now using her paralegal training, and her mother Iris, who acquired several useful skills as a counterculture fugitive during the seventies. But Miriam needs to learn quickly who's trying to kill her—and why—if she's going to survive much longer.

The most obvious source of that information is the third parallel world, which Miriam believes she can enter with the help of an elaborate design etched on a locket one of the assassins was carrying—the design differing subtly from the one that lets her navigate between her own world and medieval America. She makes preparations, then makes the attempt—and sure enough, finds herself in a new world, this one equivalent in technology to the late Victorian era, but with different political and social background.

In particular, the third world is rigidly hierarchical, with an English king in America, and most of Europe under the control of the French. The police are vigilant in their search for enemies of the crown, especially anyone promoting the radical notion of democratic rule. And while women are not powerless, their rights are tightly restricted. Here Miriam begins to lay her plans for an alternative to the clan's way of accumulating wealth: introducing advanced technology and acquiring the patents for its manufacture. But of course, the police are wary of her, and she must keep in mind that someone in this world sent the assassins that she barely escaped in the medieval world....

And while all this is going on, the leaders of the clan are playing their own political games, which (for the moment) involve letting Miriam have plenty of rope. But their enemies are also at work, anxious to discredit their claim that Miriam is the lost heiress. And unknown to both factions is the existence of the third reality—although Miriam has begun to suspect just who the power is that has been sending the assassins.

Underlying all the plot complexities is Miriam's recognition that only an economically sound strategy can let her break through the rigid social structures in the two alternate worlds. Here is where Stross brings a new dimension of realism to the (by now) well-worn trope of alternate Americas with differing social systems. Miriam's success depends not on better weapons or clever tricks, but on a clear analysis and careful manipulation of the economic engines of the two societies she wishes to change. That is a rare commodity in fantasy, and it's good to see it being put to use here.

A second way in which Stross steps outside the conventions of the genre is that he has constructed an action plot in which all the central characters are women. The men aren't without power, nor are they passive; but practically all the significant positive actions in the story are made by the women: Miriam, Paulette, Brill, and Iris all have important contributions to make. And while the men are by no means uninteresting or stereotypical, they are all basically supporting characters. Even Roland, Miriam's ally and lover from the medieval world, is essentially an ornamental character, once he has taught Miriam what she needs to survive in the alternate world. And this feminization of the cast is done subtly enough that I didn't notice it until my wife drew my attention to it after she devoured both volumes in a couple of days while recovering from the flu.

A roaring good read, and a thinking person's fantasy both in one—Stross just keeps getting better.

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NEBULA AWARDS SHOWCASE 2005

Edited by Jack Dann

Roc, $14.95 (tp)

ISBN: 0-451-46015-4

Jack Dann edits the latest installment of SFWA's annual collection built around the Nebula awards; this volume celebrates the awards given in 2004. Chosen by the writing members of the organization, the Nebulas are the only peer awards in the SF/fantasy field.

As usual, the contents center on the Nebulas, with complete texts of two of the winners (Karen Joy Fowler's “What I Didn't See,” and Jeffrey Ford's “The Empire of Ice Cream"—short story and novelette, respectively). The winning novel, Elizabeth Moon's The Speed of Dark, and novella, Neil Gaiman's “Coraline,” both published in book form, are represented by excerpts; in addition, Moon contributes a brief but powerful memoir on her novel's growing out of the author's experience as the mother of an autistic child.

There's a healthy selection from the other finalists, with stories by Richard Bowes, James Van Pelt, Carol Emshwiller, Molly Gloss, Cory Doctorow, Eleanor Arnason, Adam-Troy Castro, and Harlan Ellison. (As usual, several of the stories originally appeared in the pages of this magazine.) There are also appreciations of, and stories by, Author Emeritus Charles Harness and SFWA's 2005 Grand Master, Robert Silverberg. Readers who get a kick out of short fiction will get their money's worth just from the stories. And fans of SF poetry will enjoy the winners of the Rhysling Awards.

But that's far from all—the Nebula v olumes have always offered added value over and above a collection of good fiction. Dann has gotten several influential writers to comment on current “movements” in the field. Bruce Sterling offers an overview, then China Mieville, Paul McAuley, Ellen Kushner, and Jeff VanderMeer delineate their particular takes on the current state of things: “New Weird,” “New Space Opera,” “Interstitial,” and “Romantic Underground.” Like all attempts to pigeonhole writing (e.g., “New Wave” or “Cyberpunk"), these labels serve best as shorthand ways of suggesting that X, Y, and Z all seem to be doing something similar, and if you like the way one of them writes, you might like some of the others, too.

The most unusual piece here is a memoir by Barry Malzberg concerning his years with the legendary Scott Meredith Literary Agency. The Meredith Agency, as Malzberg explains, consisted of two operations: a “normal” literary agency that made its money by selling its clients’ work to publishers and taking a commission; and the “fee agency,” which provided canned manuscript critiques for a price. Malzberg was just one of several SF writers who worked for the agency—Norman Spinrad, Damon Knight, and James Blish all took home its paychecks, as did Donald Westlake, Evan Hunter, Lawrence Block, and several other successful writers in a variety of genres. And while many seasoned writers will already have arrived at the pessimistic conclusions Malzberg derives from his time at the agency, his account of that unmatchably sordid experience should be required reading for prospective writers, editors, and agents. Priceless.

Finally, the book includes a brief history of the Nebulas, a list of previous winners, and a short piece on SFWA aimed at prospective members. All good stuff—but if you have even the foggiest notion of “becoming a writer,” the Malzberg is worth the price all by itself.

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ODYSSEUS ON THE RHINE

by Edward S. Louis

Five Star, $25.95 (hc)

ISBN: 0-59414-281-5

Here's a sequel to the Odyssey, sending the wiliest of the Greek heroes on a quest into the northern reaches of the (then) known world.

Louis picks up the story almost immediately after Odysseus has won his battle against Penelope's suitors, and taken charge of his kingdom again. But the hero's happiness is short-lived, as his faithful wife sickens, then dies. And his dutiful son Telemachos seems quite capable of running Ithaka by himself. There's no need for the old hero any more, and Odysseus begins to think about sailing off once more in search of some new adventure.

Luckily, at just this point, a ship appears off shore, carrying an old comrade-in-arms: Diomedes, bearing rumors from afar. After the fall of Troy, say the rumors, some of the Trojan allies escaped to the far north, where they now rule new kingdoms in a land of golden-haired maidens. They brought with them enough wealth to set themselves up as near-gods. The local barbarians call them the Aesir.

This is all the incentive Odysseus needs to wind up his affairs and take to the seas again. Gathering a small company of old companions from the Trojan war and young would-be heroes (the grandson of Achilles among them), Odysseus and Dimoedes set off.

The ship first stops in Sicily, where Odysseus settles his long-standing quarrel with Poseidon, not without paying a price. Then they head up the west coast of Italy, passing the sirens once again, and resisting the equally strong temptation to raid Aeneas's new Trojan colony in Rome. After a final stop in Corsica, where they leave behind several wounded companions, they set out for the mouth of the Rhone, the easiest corridor into the heart of Europe.

Here the story, so far a relatively convincing recreation of the Homeric era, begins to take on new color. As the heroes move north and east, they begin to encounter new and exotic breeds of barbarians—people most readers will recognize as the ancestors of the Celts and Germans. Although the lure of revenge and loot is strong, Odysseus makes his companions take their journey by stages, gathering intelligence as they go. This gives the reader a guided tour of Bronze Age Europe, as well as giving the heroes a chance to adapt to local conditions and make allies along the way.

Louis eventually gets Odysseus and his crew to the land of the Aesir, after adventures including an encounter with the Lorelei. At the same time, he drops hints of the outcome—Odysseus's wound at the hands of Poseideon is one of them—and plays entertaining games as he works to blend Homeric and Norse mythology. An amusing wild card is Orestes, driven mad by the gods, who sings bits of nonsense—at least to the Greeks—that readers will recognize as coming from the far future of the world the characters inhabit.

Off-beat fantasy that combines mythology, anthropology, and a healthy sense of humor; worth looking up.

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BIG BANG:

The Origin of the Universe

by Simon Singh

4th (Harper/Collins), $26.95 (hc)

ISBN: 0-00-716220-0

Singh, one of the liveliest current science writers, takes on the biggest of subjects—the origin of everything—with an eye to both the science and the history behind the theory most scientists now accept as the likeliest explanation of how the universe began.

Singh starts with origin myths from all over the world, then turns (as scientific histories inevitably must) to the Greeks. A bias against experiment meant that their philosophies too often neglected actual data. But even the oft-maligned Ptolemy (ca. 200 ce) managed to produce a description of the solar system that prevailed until the mid-1500s, when Copernicus's system, eventually backed by Tycho Brahe's mountains of data and Galileo's telescopic observations, knocked it off the hill. Eventually Newton's gravitational theory gave the Copernican universe a sound mathematical foundation, and astronomy could at last call itself a science.

But as astronomy opened the doors to the universe, scientists inevitably found themselves more and more puzzles to explain. A key point came in the early 1920s when the Russian mathematician Alexander Friedman demonstrated that Einstein's General Relativity (a correction and expansion of Newtonian gravity) was consistent with an expanding universe. Einstein at first contested this, but within a few years, Edwin Hubble's observations that the light of distant galaxies showed a red shift effectively settled the question. Soon thereafter, the Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaitre offered the obvious suggestion: that the universe had originated in a single point at some time in the distant past.

The job of refining Lemaitre's suggestion into a coherent theory was largely carried out in the 1940s by George Gamow and his student Ralph Alpher. Meanwhile, Fred Hoyle and Thomas Gold were developing a rival “Steady State” theory, arguing that the universe's expansion was the result of new matter being created from the vacuum, with no single point of origin in either space or time. This elegant theory began to collapse when, in the early 1960s, radio telescopes detected residual radiation from the Big Bang, winning Nobel prizes for the scientists responsible for the Big Bang theory.

Singh does a fine job of summarizing the scientific debates, giving credit to several figures who have been short-changed by scientific history. (Alpher and Hoyle are two who probably deserved Nobels—and yes, this is the same Fred Hoyle whose SF novels many of you undoubtedly remember.) The scientists were often colorful and controversial characters in their own right—Gamow in particular was a born showman—and Singh brings them alive, warts and all.

At this point, the Big Bang is establishment science, and the frontiers have moved on again—inflation, string theory, branes, and other refinements now hold center stage and generate most of the heat in scientific debate. But Singh has also provided a good foundation for readers who want to explore physics beyond the Big Bang—as well as a fascinating portrait of world-class scientists at work. Recommended.