Afterword

by PAUL PREUSS

O n her way to Ganymede, Sparta spends some of her time reading The Tale of Genji, “before she became mired in its famous sticking place, which was to the novice humanist as the pons asinorum was to novice ge­ometers.”

Genji Monogatari, set down about 1000 C.E., is often called the world’s first novel. Other scholars give that honor to the Odyssey, composed more than 1,700 years earlier. (I’m no scholar, but I side with them.) Genji was written by a woman known as Lady Murasaki after one of the characters in her story; her real name is unknown. It seems likely that the Odyssey too was composed by a woman, whom Robert Graves called Homer’s daughter—someone who, despite her unflinching nature, possessed an appreciation of human be­havior rather subtler than the greed, foul temper, and vio­lence that dominate the Iliad. Not to mention her intimate knowledge of palace housekeeping.

The “sticking place” in Genji occurs when the narrative, which has centered on Prince Genji’s consorts, skips eight years; Genji dies offstage, and the story resumes with a new set of main characters. The pons asinorum, the asses’ bridge, is Euclid’s proposition that the angles opposite the equal sides of an isoceles triangle are themselves equal—neither a trivial proposition nor an easy proof for beginning geometry students, but one that must be worked out, understood, and accepted before progress is possible. Those that can’t do it are left behind.

Those of you who are reading these words have suc­cessfully negotiated a less formidable sticking place and crossed a less formidable bridge. In Venus Prime 4, Sparta succumbed to drug addiction, committed murders, and attempted other murders; given all that had gone before, her actions can be forgiven—but it’s not what one expects from a jaunty heroine. And worse, she finally gave in to the un­forgiveable sin, despair.

Unforgiveable, maybe, but essential to human growth. In the many analyses of comparative mythology that read my­thology as psychology—Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces, for example—this is the night journey, the descent into the underworld, the part where the protagonist discovers that she can’t do what’s expected of her by par­ents, teachers, bosses, coaches, and friends. What she has come to expect of herself.

Most of us get stuck in that place. Most of us despair. Some of us never wade through it.

Those who do may discover that whatever it is they have to offer themselves by way of compensation—ditzy humor, hard-nosed perfectionism, artistic passion, any of the virtually infinite human strategies for self-respect and survival—can be a valuable gift to others. They have crossed the asses’ bridge, passed through at least one of life’s sticking places, and are once more free to act. (Maybe they’ve even decided to tell their parents off.)

Thus the fifth volume of Venus Prime, which I hope con­veys some of the exuberance I felt while writing it. I had fun with popular science figures—Sir Randolph Mays is, of course, a very broad rendition of David Attenborough—and literary figures/former housemates as well; I have no doubt that Frank Chin savors my portrayal of Luke Lim, nor that he has grinned his famous grin, chuckled ominously, and is scheming repayment in kind.

And I had fun with a good old-fashioned adventure story, in which cleverness and sheer drive meet intellectual puzzles, physical obstacles, and human duplicity head on. These are essential ingredients in every real-life tale of ex­ploration and discovery, of course, and Arthur’s original tale, Jupiter V, embodies them fully. It was a joy to enlarge that exemplary story in this volume of Venus Prime. Jupiter V was the forerunner of the great Rama novels, recounting as they do a mind-expanding revelation of alien visitation.

Be warned, complications lie ahead. Sparta, come into her own, is powerful—not least because, like Cleopatra, she is a woman of infinite variety. (Literally infinite, if you know what I mean—and if you’re a fan of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, I think you do.)

But in none of her incarnations does Sparta ever visit the medieval Japan of Genji Monogatari, and that’s regrettable. At an SF convention many years ago I heard Suzy McKee Charnas recommend that any aspiring writer seeking to enter an alien consciousness begin by reading The Tale of Genji. She meant, I think, that the aliens are already among us; indeed, paraphrasing Pogo, “We have met the aliens, and they are us.”

Is this the ultimate message, the “moral” of Arthur C. Clarke’s Venus Prime? If it were, I don’t think Arthur would object. . . .

But not so fast. There’s one more volume to go, and it is not without its surprises.

  —Paul Preuss
  Sausalito, California