Fractured State by Steven Konkoly

Published by Thomas & Mercer on May 17, 2016

Fractured State is a near future science fiction thriller. Like most modern thrillers, the plot is preposterous, but since this one is science fiction, I readily suspended my disbelief in order to enjoy the story.

Legislation designed to assure sustainability and resource protection has upset some Californians. All of their purchases are recorded so they can be issued a consumption report card. They are allotted a certain number of minutes per month for travel outside their residential district; exceeding the limit is taxed exorbitantly. Water use is regulated, solar power is mandatory, and so on. No swimming pools, no gardens, no fun.

Sustainability has become such a success that a growing number of greedy Californians want to secede, preventing other states from consuming California resources. The assassination of an influential public official might spark a civil war within the state -- or so fears Keira Fisher. She has her bug-out bag all packed. Nathan, her husband, works for San Diego County as a wastewater reclamation expert.

The assassination is soon followed by another, and by the apparent sabotage of a nuclear plant’s cooling system. The media aren’t sure whether to blame the California Liberation Movement (which favors secession) or the One Nation Coalition (which opposes secession). Neither is the reader, since it seems that certain interests are advancing their own causes and using the political movements as scapegoats.

Against that background, the novel follows Nathan, who witnessed something he wasn’t supposed to see. He needs to flee or die. With the help of a Marine, Nathan and a band of Marines take on an impressive paramilitary force that uses an improbable amount of weaponry and men in an effort to kill Nathan, his family, and the Marines who are helping him..

The set-up of Fractured State is interesting. The politics of the future schism might be improbable, but they are handled intelligently. That background develops during the first third of the novel. The rest is a fairly standard military/action novel, but the action scenes are lively and intense. Since I tend to ignore book descriptions before I start reading, I didn’t realize this was part one in a series, although it became clear as I neared the final pages that the story would not end with this book. I look forward to reading the next one.

RECOMMENDED

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

First published in 1988

Iain M. Banks began his series of novels about the Culture in Consider Phlebas. I enjoyed that novel but thought it had a number of flaws. To my mind, Banks hit his stride as a science fiction writer with his second Culture novel, A Player of Games. It is an impressive examination of how social, political, and cultural structures are used to control individuals, as seen primarily from the standpoint of a gamer.

Jernau Gurgeh is a famed game player. He has mastered pretty much every popular game, no mean trick for someone who does not specialize in any particular game. He has devoted his life to game scholarship which, in Banks’ utopian future, is as good a way of using up your life as any other.

The Contact section of Culture has been interacting with a galactic empire that acquires power over other planets by the ruthless use of force. Leadership in the empire is determined through a series of games. The ultimate winner becomes the Emperor, while a good showing assures political or military appointments. None of that would bother the Culture except for the empire’s cruelty toward pretty much everyone who isn’t in power, including residents of the planets it conquers.

The Culture manipulates Gurgeh into playing the empire’s game after manipulating the empire into inviting Gurgeh to play. Having accepted the challenge, Gurgeh experiences a series of emotional highs and lows as he confronts his feelings about the game, the empire, the Culture, and his life as a game player.

The novel has some funny moments, mostly involving Gurgeh’s interaction with the prissy machine that the Culture has assigned to assist him, but the novel isn’t humor-based, as are some of Banks’ later Culture novels. Banks includes a nice mix of action scenes, but The Player of Games isn’t really an action novel. It’s more of a psychological thriller in a science fiction setting. Playing the games takes a toll on Gurgeh, as do his discoveries about the nature of the empire and the consequences of the game he has chosen to play. His turmoil and the evolution of his character is the novel’s strongest feature.

The Player of Games has something to say about the nature of empires and of any political or social system that relies on subjugation or that denies freedom. None of its insights on those subjects are fresh or surprising but that doesn’t lessen their importance. A stronger and subtler theme, I think, is that games are not a model for governance. Banks makes the reader understand that competition, while fun in a harmless game in which honorable players do not cheat, leads to war and corruption when it becomes the basis for acquiring political power.

The Player of Games is fun, smart, exciting, and meaningful. I think it’s one of Banks’ best science fiction novels, and one of his best novels overall.

RECOMMENDED

Ice Station Nautilus by Rick Campbell

Published by St. Martin's Press on June 28, 2016

I’m a sucker for submarine novels. This one has four submarines, torpedo battles, undersea rescues, SEAL shootouts with Spetznaz, and all sorts of technical jargon that sounded convincing to me, given that I know nothing about submarines apart from what I glean by reading submarine novels.

A new Russian ballistic missile submarine is carrying a secret. The USS North Dakota is assigned to monitor its maiden voyage. As might be expected when submarines play tag under the polar ice cap, things go wrong pretty quickly, and the story turns into one of survival and rescue. But while the American Navy goes about its rescue mission, the wily Russians hatch a more nefarious plot. That leads to the aforementioned torpedo battles and polar shootouts.

National Security Advisor Christine O’Connor and presidential military aide Steve Brackman are the main characters, although a full cast of military and political characters round out the story. This is the third novel in a series and, while I didn’t read the first two, it works well as a stand-alone. Relationships between the central characters, however, are probably more meaningful to readers who followed the series.

While much of the story is predictable, it is predictably exciting, and occasional surprising moments are rewarding. The story moves at flank speed. Characters have enough characterization to carry a thriller and the plot is no more far-fetched than is typical in a modern action novel. Credible excitement is about all I ask from a submarine novel, and Ice Station Nautilus delivers.

RECOMMENDED

Just Over the Horizon by Greg Bear

Published by Open Road Media on April 26, 2016

Just Over the Horizon collects a number of stories (and a teleplay) written by Greg Bear. The volume showcases Bear’s versatility, mixing science fiction, fantasy, horror, and (in one instance) mainstream fiction. The science fiction is more to my taste than the other stuff, but fantasy fans might enjoy the stories that didn’t appeal to me.

My favorite in the collection is “Just Over the Horizon,” a first contact story that takes place on Mars. Its strength is its recognition that alien life is likely to be completely beyond human understanding, at least at first glimpse. Another entry I enjoyed is “Genius,” an unproduced script written for the 2000 version of The Outer Limits. The teleplay involves scientists/mathematicians who are lured into opening a portal to another dimension where shadow creatures dwell. That’s a standard television plot but I liked the autistic child Bear imagined as a main character, as well as the scientific detail that supports the story.

“Blood Music” is well-known for being the first (or at least the first widely read) story to imagine a version of nanotechnology (biology-based rather than machine-based) that changes the body and redefines what it means to be human. It won a Hugo and a Nebula and Bear later turned it into a novel. “Blood Music” is a good story but I don’t think it has the impact now that it must have had to readers who read it more than 30 years ago.

“Tangents,” another Hugo and Nebula winner, is about a boy who has a talent for visualizing things/places/beings in the fourth dimension. I like the setting and characters more than the story. It probably deserved the attention it got for featuring an Alan Turing stand-in who was persecuted because of his sexual identity. The theme was less common in 1986, when the story was published, than it is today.

“Sisters” is too syrupy for my taste. A girl with unaltered genomes is unhappy that she doesn’t fit in with her pretty high school classmates, despite her computerized therapist’s assurance that she is not a freak. The theme of society’s obsession with the superficial is heavy-handed, and the story relies on an obvious contrivance to make obvious points: “we are all the same underneath” and “everyone is important.” Still, the “I’m special even though the cool kids don’t like me” lesson is one that always plays well with the younger sf fans who are the story’s natural audience.

“Schrodinger’s Plague” turns the “Schrodinger’s Cat” thought experiment into a real experiment, but not one that involves cats. The story is a little to abstract for me to appreciate, but I’ve never been a fan of thought experiments. “Silicon Times E-Book Review” purports to be a robot’s review of a novel written by another robot. It’s an amusing diversion.

“Through Road No Wither” is a quasi-religious, quasi-supernatural “revenge against the Nazis” story. There isn’t much to it. “Dead Run,” about a hitchhiker to Hell who is looking for his dead girlfriend, is a better story with a religious theme, although it didn’t do much for me. The ending takes a twist that explains why the story was filmed as an episode of the revived Twilight Zone series.

Science fiction stories about religion tend to extoll the superiority of scientists as compared to everyone else. “The Visitation” is one of those. I’m not religious but I’m also not a fan of hubris.

“The White Horse Child” is a story about a child who learns to be a storyteller. It has a whiff of the supernatural. Bear says it is one of his most popular stories, but it did nothing for me. I’m also not a fan of urban fantasy, which describes “Sleepside Story,” a “photographic negative” of Beauty and the Beast.

“Webster” is about a middle-aged virgin who conjures a man from the words in a dictionary. “Richie by the Sea” is a horror story about a child with a connection to the water who isn’t what he appears to be. Both stories are well-written but again, not the sort of thing I go out of my way to read.

“Warm Sea” could be subtitled “The Old Man and the Squid.” It isn’t science fiction but it is the most literary effort in the collection. The story proves that Bear can unleash some fine prose when he is of a mind to do so.

On the whole, I liked some of the stories in this collection but was indifferent to the majority of them. Again, fantasy fans might view this more favorably. A good story is a good story in any genre but Bear's brand of fantasy didn't work for me.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer

Published by Tor Books on May 10, 2016

Only at the end of this relatively long book did I discover that the story extends to a second book. I suspect that after reading the second one, I will conclude that the entire story could have been told in a much tightened single volume. But I will read the next one because there is so much in this one to admire, despite the novel’s meandering nature.

Set a few hundred years in the future, the story in Too Like the Lightning is narrated by Mycroft Canner, a man who is notorious for reasons that are not made clear until after the novel’s midway point. The book is presented as a work of history. The history that Canner explains is strikingly imaginative. In a genre that is too often filled with derivative works that don’t even try to place a fresh spin on old themes, Too Like the Lightning stands out.

Following a catastrophe that had something to do with religious conflict, the Earth’s people have chosen to organize themselves by shared philosophies rather than national boundaries. Individuals belong to one of seven hives (Humanists, Utopians, Masons, etc.) or they are Hiveless. For the most part, hives determine their own laws. Only a few basic laws apply to the Hiveless. Within a hive, people are grouped by membership in a chosen family known as a bash’; bash’mates may or may not be related by blood.

In this politically correct future, people use gender-neutral pronouns and the practice of proselytizing religion has been banned. To preclude the development of cults, the law forbids groups of more than two from having an unchaperoned theological discussion. The chaperone is a Sensayer who, without proselytizing, helps people find their own answers.

Carlyle Foster is a Sensayer who has been assigned to the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’. One bash’ member, a kid named Bridger, apparently works miracles. Carlyle isn’t permitted to express personal opinions about miracles, but he privately regards Bridger’s power as both revealing and disturbing. Bridger is an innocent kid with a sweet nature, but he’s in danger for surprising reasons that Mycroft Canner reveals quite slowly as he narrates the story.

When it isn’t following Bridger, the plot focuses on the theft of a seven-ten list, an annual ranking of the world’s most powerful or influential people. This sounds like something that should be in People magazine but the lists are taken quite seriously.

A subplot (not fully developed here but perhaps that will come later) involves the status of set-sets. A set-set grows up wired to a computer, swimming in raw data, optimized and trained for a particular purpose, like keeping automated cars from crashing.

Another plot thread reveals a key theme -- whether people can change. Mycroft Canner, once the embodiment of evil, claims to have changed. Bridger believes him, but Bridger has good reason to believe in miracles. Carlyle doesn’t believe in the miracle of change, at least as applied to Mycroft Canner. Again, the reader must suspend judgment as the story twists its way to an answer that, unfortunately, this volume does not fully reveal.

A second key theme -- although it does not develop until late in the novel -- is an old philosophical question concerning the utility of murder. Is it acceptable to kill one person to save ten? And if so, who should be entitled to make that judgment?

Keeping track of all the characters and the complexities of the world that Ada Palmer built is challenging. I attribute my struggle to concentration lapses rather than any fault of the writing, which is consistently strong. Some of it is quite amusing, including a reimagining of Marquis de Sade’s pornographic blend of religion and sex.

The complex plot of Too Like the Lightning is less compelling than the novel’s intricate background. The plot too often seems directionless, or maybe the entire novel is just too ambitious. There’s so much going on that the plot does not come into focus until near the novel’s end. That’s a fault that I suspect could have been cured by writing a tighter single novel rather than an extended story spread over two volumes, although the political and cultural detail that animates this inventive future certainly justifies a long book.

The ending, like the story’s background, is intriguing. One of the novel’s key revelations comes right at the end -- not exactly a cliffhanger, but something to ponder as a key to unlocking the conspiratorial plot. Combined with high quality prose, those features of this sometimes bewildering novel whetted my interest in reading the next one.

RECOMMENDED