Spin State by Chris Moriarty

Spin State packs a large amount of material into a large number of pages. Even with over 600 pages, it sometimes feels rushed. There's a lot of explaining, a lot of plots, and a lot of players. By the end of the story I wasn't sure exactly what had happened. On the other hand, by the last third of the novel I could barely put it down.

I've been doing some thinking lately about how genre readers suspend our disbelief, especially when it comes to "hard" sf. As far as I can tell, fantasy has it relatively easy: as long as the rules are internally consistent, very little will cause a reader to lose the suspension of disbelief (e. g. you can't establish that each mage only works with one element, then have a water mage cast a fireball). Hard science fiction faces a much bigger challenge. While the reader usually wants to give the benefit of the doubt to the author, the reader also needs help to fit the author's world-building into an understandable framework. (I'll be delving into these ideas in more depth in a review for Strange Horizons that should be published within the next month or so.) Here, Moriarty both succeeds and fails. Where she succeeds is where her world-building is most directly based on extrapolation (an uninhabitable Earth, a diaspora of humans to other worlds, FTL travelers getting out there ahead of slow-space travelers) or analogy (her FTL communication/travel system is based on a scarce resource that everyone needs, just like oil). It's a little less successful when she's giving straight-up infodumping explanations. She tries to minimize them, but ends up shorting herself and her audience a little. Her FTL communications use macroscopic quantum-entangled blocks of room-temperature Bose Einstein Condensates (BECs) for FTL communications, but I could never figure out why she felt she needed the unique properties of BECs to do it; likewise I couldn't figure out how you got to FTL transportation from there. I'm pretty sure the explanation was in there somewhere, but it wasn't clear. During the first parts of the book, I spent too much time wondering about questions like these instead of focusing on the story.

And it's the story here which needs a lot of attention, as we get deluged with as many (or more) plots as we can handle. This is not just a matter of having lots of sub-plots; here we have entirely different *kinds* of plots mixed together. We've got military sf, hard sf, romance, thriller, PI-style murder mystery, and political espionage. It's all a little overwhelming.

The experiences of Catherine Li make up the heart of the novel. In a future where your rights are determined by the naturalness of your DNA, she's hiding a dark secret. She has some protection, though. She is a publicized war hero, the go-to soldier for a powerful general, and good friends with the oldest sentient AI in existence. After a botched raid on an illegal tech station, Li is diverted to the planet of her birth. This planet is the sole source of useful BECs. There, the most famous scientist in the world, the person who made all the FTL stuff possible, has died catastrophically while experimenting on the BECs. She appeared to be on the verge of creating synthetic BECs, which would liberate the society from dependence on that one planet. Li's high-level military contact needs her to go and solve the mystery of the scientist's death, even though it's the last place in the universe that she wants to be.

Here is an abbreviated list of some of the agendas in play: Cohen, the AI, is fighting for more rights for his AI brethren; the general may or may not want Li to actually solve the mystery; the scientist may have been passing information to the "Syndicate," the bad guys of the previous war; the mining company that controls the planet wants to maximize profit and minimize scandal; the miners are trying to unionize; and Cohen may be in love with Li, who may be in love with a Syndicate agent. It's all very complicated.

This is a story that you'd have to read twice to get everything straight, and I'm afraid that's I luxury I don't have. However, from the time that Moriarty describes Li and one of her policemen helping the rescue efforts after a mine explosion, all the way to the final showdown, the story grips you and doesn't let go. It's very impressive; even the "slow" times in the final two hundred pages, where the pieces are being set up for the end game, are intense and well written, always keeping you turning pages.

I have mixed feelings about this story. It is needlessly complex, both in its hard sf aspect and in the plethora of actors and agendas scattered throughout the multiple plots. There are a couple places where the characters have to be kind of stupid for the story to continue as the author intends. On the other hand, it's good to see a future that still has significant class conflict (the miner's union vs. the corporation). Too often recent sf has been set in "post-scarcity" worlds, where everyone always has enough, eliminating socioeconomic class as a source of friction. I can understand how it makes life easier for the author, but it's never struck me as particularly realistic. Another interesting point is that all the different plots seem to constructively interfere with each other to create something really readable, if not straightforward. Is this a case where the author's craft and talent salvage a victory from what would otherwise be a confused mess, or has Moriarty discovered an alchemy of plots that really can make a PI murder mystery, a romance, and a spy novel all play nicely together? It's hard to say, but it's easy to recommend that you take a look at it and see if it (or any one of its myriad pieces) is to your taste.

Lookit me now!

I've been blurbed!

Over at SFSignal I wrote a review for Zoran Živković's last book from PS Publishing, The Last Book. I really loved it (as I have so far loved all the Živković I've read), so I'm happy to be used in the promotional material.

However, it does tickle me that though the magic of the ellipsis [...] they have joined a sentence from my intro paragraph to a sentence from the second paragraph to pretty much my entire closing paragraph. Talk about cherry picking!

No matter; it's a lovely book and you should all run out and buy a copy right now.

Satisfying Short SF

I think I'll propose that one of the key differences between "mainstream" and "genre" fiction is that in genre fiction, when people go searching for answers, they find them. Why are the crops blighted? See Evil Wizard in Yonder Tower. Whodunit? The Butler. What is the common thread linking 12 exceptional graduates (the members of which include senators, celebrities, pro-athletes and Nobel prize winners) of a small mid-western high school? That's the question in "Reunion." A woman comes to town before their thirtieth high school reunion, looking for answers as to what happened to make this small group so exceptional. The early death of one of their classmates may hold some clues (and a fairly cynical moral for the story, if you want to read that into it). It's lighter than some stories that Robert Reed has already produced this year (see "Five Thrillers" in April's F&SF among others.) I think Reed is one of my favorite short story authors simply because he provides satisfying explanations for his puzzles pretty much every time. It may not be avant-garde, but it's good sf.


"Rebecca's Locket" is a very brief piece of amusing "what if?" by S. L. Gilbow. What if you could download someone's personality, before they died, into a small piece of jewelry? Perhaps just big enough for a small camera, microphone and speakers? You could be comforted by the personality of your loved one speaking to you in your time of grief... or not. The final fate of Jerry, the gentleman in the locket, will come as no surprise to the attentive reader. It's a funny reminder that sometimes, functional immortality is NOT a boon to those "left behind" (see "Helen's Last Will" in March's Analog for the more romanticized version of cyber-life after death).

To Whit: Baen's Vol 2, No. 6

"Manumission" by Tobias S. Buckell (good)
"Virtually, A Cat" by Jody Lyn Nye (good)
"Indomitable" by Jack McDevitt (excellent, ss)
"Honorable Enemies" by Mike Resnick (good)
"Scraps of Fog" by Sarah A. Hoyt (OK)
"The Witch of Waxahachie" by Lou Antonelli (good)
"The Knight of Coins" by Margaret Ronald (OK)
"Red Tape and Cold Iron" by Lucy Bond (good)
"Extreme Reservations" by R. J. Ortega (good)

The editors of Baen's appear to know exactly what they want: good, enjoyable sf and fantasy. That's what you get here. It's all good and readable, if rarely ground-breaking.

Next up: F&SF for May. And it's still May!

Finishing Baen's with Fantasy

"Knight of Coins" by Margaret Ronald is a tarot-card based fantasy, which I usually enjoy. (Although not, I hasten to add, Piers Anthony's Tarot books. Those are just whacked.) In Ronald's story a man hires a private investigator (the second one in this issue) to track down three tarot cards that have been enchanted to curse his family. The PI has some magical talent, but hates magic and magical cases (of course). Luckily, "paying the rent" is always enough to motivate these hard-boiled protagonists, so the plot proceeds. Her dislike of magic is soon justified and things get complicated. It's another enjoyable story, nothing special.

"Red Tape and Cold Iron, or A Proposal for the Reintroduction of the Faery Folk To The United Kingdom" by Lucy Bond is a satirical story. A gullible politician agrees to let an activist government Folklorist gather up the denizens of Faery and get them back onto the British scene. The descriptions of the Folklorist are both funny and slightly sinister. It starts off by simply making government eco-do-gooders look ridiculous, which is not hard, but one gains some respect for the Folklorist by the end, with her cucumber sandwiches and her very practical brown boots. The moral of the story is to be on the lookout for all the agendas when one is dealing with government proposals. However, the ending is pretty abrupt. I would've liked some more detail about what happens when the Faery-folk finally cross over. Still, it's better to leave the reader wanting more, I suppose, compared to the alternative.

Finally, we close with a flat-out hilarious romp. "Extreme Reservations" by R. J. Ortega describes a man trying to continue the family business: running an inn and saloon out of an old paddle wheel river boat permanently moored in the Sacramento river delta in California. Just as he is coming to the conclusion that this business his uncle left him is simply not profitable, he finds out about a very unique annual engagement that his inn hosts. It's a gathering of immortals, both from legend (The Flying Dutchman) and story (John Carter, Ayesha, etc.). This is a classic homage-packed tale with a little bit of adventure and at least one truly awful, groan-out-loud pun. I have to admit, I love stories like this. It shamelessly appeals to the fan-girl in me, and this one is well done.

Science, Fantasy, or Science Fantasy?

Baen's has an unusual practice of explicitly segregating their science fiction stories from their fantasy stories. This can provide fodder for the ever-popular "Guess the Genre Label!" game. For Mike Resnick's story in this issue, it's an easy call. It's set on another planet, it's got aliens—no problem, it's sf. Things get a little trickier with Sarah Hoyt's story. It features the possible reappearance of a figure from the past to help a woman deal with her issues. At the end the figure disappears. The choice here is between reading it as mainstream (everything is rational and she's slightly delusional) or fantasy (an ancient king reincarnated for a day just to help her with her relationship issues—totally!), not between fantasy and sf. This is clearly a genre magazine, so clearly the story must be generic—fantasy it is!.

It may have been a bit harder to categorize Lou Antonelli's story. It's got a multiple-worlds thing going, where one world is science-based (Superconducting Super Collider) and one is magic-based (animal telepathy). His world-building indicates that the basis for this split lies not in differing physical laws but differing research grant allocations. This is really a science fantasy, the sort of thing that John W. Campbell banished to the pages of Unknown back in olden times. Unknown was a place where Analog (Astounding back then) authors could go to "let their hair down," i.e. not be "scientifically rigorous." (Stop laughing.) It spawned such tales as The Compleat Enchanter series by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt. Here Eric Flint seems to have applied the same general philosophy that Campbell did. Let's call it the one drop rule: one drop of fantasy makes it a fantasy. It's probably the only realistic way to draw the line if you're going to be throwing labels around, but thinking about it made me giggle a bit. On to the stories themselves!

"Honorable Enemies" is Mike Resnick's new mystery novella. It continues the adventures of Jake Masters, previously seen in Resnick's contributions to the SFBC anthologies Down These Dark Spaceways and Alien Crimes. In this story his alien partner has been murdered (a darn shame, I really liked the little guy), and Masters has to cozy up to some mighty shady customers to find out who did him in. He also has to decide what retribution is appropriate when he finally gets his answers. It's a fun read, with some good mystery twists, but nothing exceptional.

"Scraps of Fog" by Sarah A. Hoyt is unusual in its use of Portugal and Portuguese history for its setting. The protagonist is a female cop. She is losing her faith in her ability to do anything useful, given the macho culture of Portuguese police. She's contemplating marriage to an old friend. They're not particularly in love, but he needs a wife to host dinners and go to society functions, and she's talking herself into it. Her grandmother, her last link to her family's past, has recently passed away and she is settling the estate. Then, she gets a call about a young man who has turned up claiming to be the reappearance of King Sebastian, an almost mythical figure from Portugal's past. In dealing with the young man, the cop gets a reminder in the importance of being grounded. Once she regains her sense of history and place, she can move forward with her life. It's a good character story, if perhaps not the most useful self-help message. I always feel a bit sorry for the mythical or otherwise super-powered beings who have to show up and help people sort out their relationship problems. Who knew that having the brain the size of a galaxy (see my review of Elom in SFSignal) or that having helped the poor and the sick, engaged in productive diplomacy, ruled well, and waged war in Morocco would also require you to show up later as a therapist for well-off people with issues? I'm not sure I'd take fame and immortality on those terms.

Next we get the science fantasy by Lou Antonelli, titled "The Witch of Waxahachie." The hero is a newspaper editor who tags along as a scientist tries to run one last experiment on the incomplete ruins of the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas. (They claim this is being done secretly. You really can't power up something like the SSC quietly, but it's easy to give the author that bit of hand-waving.) After the inevitable catastrophe, they find they're in the same place, but the SSC is gone, the road is dirt, there's no cars... They hitch a ride into town, and luckily get to an encyclopedia set before being picked up by the authorities. (A trick also used by Robert Heinlein's world-hoppers in Job and The Number of the Beast. An excellent argument for never going completely digital—how else will dimension-hopping protagonists gather the vital information they need?) In this new world, the advances of the Enlightenment focused on magic instead of science. It turns out that each person exists in both universes, and their different fates are sobering. They get back home relatively easily after comparing notes with the folks they know on the other side. It looks like Antonelli is setting up a story cycle here, since at the end the narrator reminisces about other adventures they've had with their other-world counterparts. This is a fun story with a lot of potential in the world-building, so I'll look forward to other stories in this setting.

Baen's Universe does fun, poignant

Baen's Universe (Vol. 2, No. 6) starts off with a strong action story by Tobias S. Buckell, "Manumission." The protagonist is a man without a past, enslaved to a shadowy intelligence agency he doesn't necessarily understand. He's assigned to track a woman, and she turns the tables on him. She makes him an offer he can't refuse and can't accept. It closely follows the conventions of action/thriller movies such as the "Jason Bourne" movies, where the hero goes rogue against a no-name agency implied to be evil. It's well written and engaging. Does it answer any fundamental questions of existence? No, but that's not its purpose.

Next up is a fun story, "Virtually, A Cat" by Jody Lynn Nye. A computer programming genius has been assigned to the first interstellar flight, just in case anything goes wrong with the software. He is shattered when he learns this will mean leaving his beloved cats, Parky and Blivit, behind. He goes, but torments all his crew mates with incessant stories of his cats and their doings. When every single person on board finally tells him to shut up about the damn cats, he falls into a depression. Fortunately, the crew figures out a solution. They put him in a full-body tactile suit (used for maneuvering robots outside the ship) and program the suit to act as if there's a cat there. The geek is overjoyed, and goes back to being a useful (and less annoying) crew member. The crisis comes when they get to the new star system. They record so much information that they start deleting anything non-essential from memory to carry more data home. Obviously, the cat program has got to go. The geek's reaction to this is refreshingly not what you'd expect from the geeky stereotype personality. It's both refreshing and satisfying. My only fault in this story is that it ends rather abruptly. I'd have liked to see him return home to his real cats, but the story ends with him still in space. It's a minor quibble, and as a rule it's better to leave readers wanting more. Although I'm significantly more of a dog person than a cat person (see below), this was a really fun story.

"Indomitable" by Jack McDevitt is a very short story that almost perfectly distills an important aspect of the psyche. A young boy is touring a museum with his father. He knows, with the obsession of youth, the names of all the spaceships and all their crews - all their flights and their fates. He particularly wants to see the Indomitable, one of the last of the interstellar explorers. It's in pieces now - a historical preservation group is trying to raise funds to restore her. Ships like that aren't needed now. We've gone about a thousand light years all around our solar system and found tons of planets that can support life. Enough to support human expansion for the foreseeable future. No aliens, though. So why do any more exploring? Why waste the money? The little boy knows why. This story reminds us all of the belief that exploring is intrinsically worthwhile, even if there's no immediate profit to it. It may be the faith of a child, but it's one I hope we never lose.

Interzone #215 Wrap Up

"The Endling" by Jamie Barras; (skipped)
"Dragonfly Summer" by Patrick Samphire; (meh)
"Crystal Nights" by Greg Egan; (excellent)
"Holding Pattern" by Joy Marchand; (OK)
"Street Hero" by Will McIntosh; (good)
"The Imitation Game" by Rudy Rucker; (meh)

Well, I'm very surprised. In the previous two issues of Interzone that I had read, the quality was head-and-shoulders above what I'd come to expect from my sf short-fiction magazines. While not every story was my all-time favorite, they were mostly above average and several of them were even better than that. This issue, with only two good stories (even if one of them is amazing), is disappointing.

Here's hoping for better with Interzone #216. That's the Mundane SF issue edited by Geoff Ryman. It's already generated a bit of discussion, and I'm looking forward to reading it (as soon as it shows up on Ficitionwise).

Next up, Baen's Universe for April & May. W00t! I'm getting this one reviewed while it's still the latest issue available! Real-time reviewing is coming ever closer.

Last bits for Interzone #215

Three more stories finish off this issue of Interzone. "Holding Pattern" by Joy Marchand is a claustrophobic tale that takes place on an airplane. The stewardess is convinced that one of the passengers is an alien. As the tale progresses we get vignettes about the lives of the other passengers, and we find out why this flight is special. It's an OK idea, but the story never sold it to me. I could never really suspend my disbelief — it was all too convenient and arbitrary. I suppose it's gauche to complain about a story set in the air not being grounded enough, but there you go.

"Street Hero" by Will McIntosh is more interesting. Kilo Orange is the hero of his own running internal monologue. He's got friends and mad martial arts skillz, which he needs in the plague-ridden eco-dystopia in which he lives. Through the story he makes various attempts to fit into the world: gang-banger, superhero, hippie drop-out, until he finally finds the right place for himself. Sometimes the transitions can be a little awkward and a little rushed. That makes sense; the author is writing a fairly complex bildungsroman into a short novella (or long novelette, Interzone doesn't label their stories by length, which makes things difficult come awards time). It's a satisfying piece that avoids the easy answers of some coming-of-age stories.

The last story, "The Imitation Game" by Rudy Rucker, is a short secret history providing an alternate explanation of Alan Turing's death. I'm always leery of stories that mess with real historical figures, and this one is no exception. Throw in a piece of bio-technology that Turing not only couldn't have access to in the 50's, it'd be impossible even today, and this story really didn't work for me. Basically, I wasn't sure if I should read this as secret history, sf, or science fantasy of some nature. If it's secret history, the tech should be plausible for the era. If it's science fiction, the tech should be plausible for any era (and I don't buy it at all), and if it's science fantasy then what's the point? I was probably also peeved that I read the entire story with only minute amounts of comprehension. Then I went to Wikipedia, looked up the circumstances of Turing's death, and realized what Rucker was actually doing. Any historical work, especially alternate or secret history, depends largely on the reader's appreciation of what the author is doing. This time, I didn't have the knowledge I needed to appreciate Rucker's approach, and that also soured me on the story. It may be much more attractive to Turing devotees.

"Looking Backward: 2000 to 1887" by Edward Bellamy

Looking Backward: From 2000 to 1887 is a classic of the utopian form of genre fiction. In this case, a rich young idler falls into a deep trance in 1887. He is discovered and revived in the year 2000. The world of the future is darn-near perfect, and his hosts tell him, at great length, why their world is perfect and his sucked eggs. This goes on for a very long time, and the only semblance of a plot is the young man's inevitable romance with the daughter of his hosts.

90% of this book is dedicated to explaining the social system of the year 2000. Despite repeated protests that no system could ever be simpler, it takes roughly 200 pages to get through it all. The core idea is universal employment and freedom from want for everyone. Given this goal, the author tries to back out a system that would supply this. Instead of going the way of socialism or Marxism, as one would expect from a 20th century author, Bellamy looks to the armed forces for inspiration. He envisions an industrial army, where all of industry is controlled by the state. Basically, let the monopolistic trend that was so prevalent at the end of the 19th century continue to its logical extreme, then have the government take over the resulting corporate monolith.

Obviously this is my capitalist bourgeois-ness speaking, but the result is the worst kludge of an economic system I could ever imagine. All the efficiency of government bureaucracy with all the potential abuses of the corporate system, combined with the abuse potential of the armed forces. Bellamy suggests that instead of wages tied to performance, everyone would receive an allowance of credit that they could spend on whatever goods and services they desire, and that these would be plentiful. What would induce people to work hard then? The desire to move up the ranks in their industry, gaining more honor as they go. Wouldn't they then be envious of those above them? No, because without one's material needs hinging on promotion, there would be no envy or jealousy at all. Crime, fraud and corruption would be essentially unheard of.

This has all the naivety that has given utopias a bad name for the last century or so. It assumes that human nature will become perfect if we can only find the right political/economic/ethical system. Also, it treats workers as essentially interchangeable units, something that has never worked out well in history. Plus, while it presents all workers as being free to choose whatever employment they want, it also mentions that the government can offer inducements to get workers into less desirable positions. Sure, that would never be abused.

There are some points here I could agree with: with such a strong social safety net, property-driven crime (robbery and mugging) would likely decline. If all children were fed properly and given equally excellent education, we would likely get a healthier and even more productive and innovative labor force. However, it seems like the goal of universal employment would tend to stifle innovation. I'm reminded of an anecdote about FDR and Stalin during WWII. FDR was meeting Stalin in Russia in the winter. He looked out the window and saw women sweeping snow off the walkways. He asked Stalin why he didn't have machines clear the walkways; it'd be faster and the women wouldn't have to be out in the cold. Stalin said that machinery would put the women out of work, and he could never do that to loyal citizens. FDR contemplated the scene for a moment then asked: "Why not give them teaspoons?"

Is our capitalistic system perfect? Hell no. I'm certainly liberal enough to see that. However, the capitalist system we have today is very different from what they had in the 1880s. Back then they were suffering from the worst excesses of laissez faire capitalism. You had trusts running up prices, robber barons, corruption at every level and branch of government, no labor protection, violent labor strikes put down even more violently, and shocking poverty. Completely unfettered capitalism quickly turns into a nightmare. However, our answer, instead of transforming into utopia overnight, was to strengthen government regulation of business. Gradually since the early 1900s, and especially in the wake of the Great Depression, our capitalism is now pretty tightly regulated. We've still got lots of problems, particularly with health care and the environment, but we've come a helluva long way from the squalor of the 1880s.

So given that this book never became an economics handbook for a new movement, what value in reading it now? It is very interesting from a historical point of view, especially in reminding us how different things were then. For instance, identity politics don't appear in this story: towards the end he does mention that women participate in a parallel labor pool and aren't dependent on their husbands for support. They leave the workforce to have children but can return to it any time. That's nice. Plus, they're saved much time by only having one place to shop and communal dining rooms. However, race is never mentioned in the future milieu. To me it implied that there is no more racism and that all races participate equally in the industrial army and that miscegenation would be acceptable. I wonder if the readers of the time would read it the same way, or if the author was writing it that way?

Bellamy did at least presage the basic concept of radio entertainment, although he had to use telephone wires to do it. And in extolling the virtues of central distribution, he predicted the rise of WalMarts, in an off-kilter sort of way. Probably not quite what he had in mind. Other than that, he predicts almost no advances in technology or even fashion, which reinforced my feeling that this utopia was a static culture. It was amusing when he tried to describe great literature in the absence of conflict of any sort, though!

Overall, this is less a story and more a polemic. The author's primary focus is outlining his political beliefs. This makes it a little easier to see the origins of Olaf Stapledon's style thirty years later. He too wrote books with an exposition-to-plot ration of 1:0. He was one of the last writers to do so explicitly (or maybe Heinlein, depending on your readings of Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land). I for one am quite glad that the genre moved away from this part of its origins. We may still have a significant amount of overtly political sf (see Brian Aldiss' HARM and Ken MacLeod's Execution Channel), but now they have to at least pretend to have a plot at the center of the book. Amen.