Macroscope, by Piers Anthony

Piers Anthony is nowadays best known for his Xanth series of comic fantasies, notable for the most terrible puns in the genre, but he started out writing science fiction with a very distinctive flavour. His first published novel, Chthon (1967) was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Macroscope, unusual for this author in being a stand-alone rather than part of a series, appeared in 1969 and was also nominated for a Hugo in 1970. I read it a couple of times in the 1970s but not since, so I was interested to see how it stood up to the passage of time.

This is far from a straightforward tale, with mysteries emerging on several levels. It is set in a near-future world; there are orbiting space stations but only the space around the Earth and Moon is routinely visited. Ivo Archer, an apparently ordinary young man, is given a mysterious message which prompts him to accept a ride to the Macroscope, an immensely powerful sensor orbiting a million miles away. This acts like a high-powered telescope using “macrons” rather than light waves, and can deliver clear images of life on distant planets.

Ivo has been summoned by his old friend Brad Carpenter, a genius-level scientist in charge of the Macroscope, to try to solve a major problem. The Macroscope had stumbled across an alien signal which appeared to be a teaching aid packed with advanced knowledge. The problem is that it is a lethal trap; people of sufficient intelligence to follow the programme to the end have their minds destroyed. Ivo himself is little more than averagely bright, but he somehow controls access to a super-genius known as Schön, whom Brad hopes can solve the problem.

Ivo himself gradually emerges as the major mystery in the story. He and Brad were both the result of a special project to try to use genetics and advanced educational methods to raise geniuses; Brad was the one major success, Ivo considered a failure. But why does he have childhood memories of pre-civil war America? And exactly how does he control access to Schön? The action moves to the outer reaches of the solar system and then far out into the galaxy as the story tackles some bold and ambitious SF themes before reaching an unexpected conclusion.

This is an intriguing story that takes the time to explore a range of issues on the way, with asides on topics such as space-time, the nature of intelligence, education and even astrology. It also takes the time to build the principal characters thoroughly, quirks and all. This means that the pacing is relatively slow, but it still had sufficient interest to hold my attention; I found it thought-provoking as well as entertaining. Its award nomination was well deserved and SF lost an innovative talent when the author switched to the presumably more profitable comic fantasy. This story still stands up, and I enjoyed reading it again.

The Vang: The Military Form, by Christopher Rowley

The Vang: The Military Form is the second book I have read by Rowley and I was pointed towards it after posting my review of Golden Sunlands in April 2011.  It was published in 1988, a year after Sunlands. The time is again the far future, with humanity spread over a large number of worlds, and aliens again make an unwelcome intervention. This time the tone is much darker, as indicated by the subtitle on the cover “A Close Encounter of the Fatal Kind”.

The Vang are a very alien race, not remotely like the funny-looking humanoids we have become used to from Star Trek and such. They are parasitic on advanced life forms like humanity, which they “convert” by taking over their bodies and making radical changes to their biology, turning them into ferocious, lightning-fast killers who are very hard to stop. They also have various life forms of their own, specialised for different purposes, which they create by laying eggs inside their “hosts”. Finally, they consume any spare hosts for food, preferring to consume them alive in a particularly disgusting way. The graphic descriptions of exactly what they do to their hosts make Ridley Scott’s Aliens seem relatively benign.

At the time of the story the Vang were an almost forgotten horror from the distant past, believed to have been eliminated in a war to the death with another alien race who managed to defeat them by the simple expedient of unleashing the most appalling weapons of mass destruction ever invented. So when some mineral prospectors poking around in a forbidden zone of space discover an obviously alien and very ancient ovoid drifting by itself, they think only of the vast profit to be made and have no inkling of what is to come.

The nearest human inhabited planet to the prospectors is Saskatch, a cold and rugged world with a small population, most notable for being the only source of TA45, a highly addictive and highly pleasurable drug. Its production and export are banned, which only ensures that most people in authority are complicit in its trade. This is the stage on which the drama of the human-Vang collision will be played out.

There is no one protagonist in this tale but multiple viewpoints from an ensemble cast of prospectors, drug smugglers and law officers, plus a wealthy naturalist and his team. And of course the Vang, whose viewpoint (in the shape of the Military Form) is also presented, from the first scene to the last. The story is almost relentlessly grim, with none of the quirky humour and offbeat charm of Sunlands, and might best be described as a blend of SF and horror. I mentioned Ridley Scott’s Aliens before, and the general flavour is not very different; this seems to have been Rowley’s take on the Alien series as opposed to Sunlands which read more like the author’s tribute to Niven’s Ringworld. Curiously, the one character with whom this reader began to sympathise by the end was the Military Form of the Vang, which faced all manner of problems in doing what it was supposed to, not all of them concerned with humans.

TV series: Continuum

I have watched the first few episodes of Continuum, a new Canadian TV series. This features Rachel Nicholas as Keira Cameron, a “protector” (police officer) living with her husband and child in Vancouver in 2077. She is on duty at the planned execution of the leaders of Liber8, a terrorist group responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, when a strange force is released which sends them – and her – back in time to 2012.

The world of 2077 is a very different place, one in which huge international corporations have taken over the duties of governments and run police states which tolerate no dissent. Liber8, led by Edouard Kagame (Tony Amendola), is dedicated to breaking their hold on power and restoring democracy, and see their group’s displacement into the past as a golden opportunity to stop the corporations before they can gain power. Keira Cameron is equally determined to stop them and, after they begin a violent crime spree to obtain weapons and money, works with the Vancouver police to track them down. She is aided by Alec Sadler (Erik Knudsen), a geeky young computer genius who has devised a communications technology able to link up with her advanced systems.

This series is proving to have a nicely-judged blend of elements with several inbuilt tensions: between Cameron and the terrorists, whom she despises but also needs as they hold the key to her return to her family in 2077; between Cameron and the present-day police - particularly Detective Carlos Fonnegra (Victor Webster) - who are unaware of her background and are curious to find out as much about her as possible; within the terrorists, between the dedicated fanatics and those who welcome the opportunity to start afresh and use their knowledge to become very rich; and indeed in the conflict between Liber8 and the world of 2077. Who would not support the idea of a democracy battling against a police state? Yet it is the democrats who are the ruthless terrorists and the representative of the police state who is the heroine. There is also a developing mystery about the role of Alec Sadler, who we also see in 2077 (played by William B Davis) as the elderly head of a powerful corporation who has become acquainted with Cameron and is present when she is thrown back into the past.

As an occasional break from the 2012 action we see the protagonists in the years leading up to 2077, revealing their past histories. There are some nice SF touches particularly concerned with Cameron’s bulletproof protector suit, which is packed with advanced technology and can also make her invisible, and with the systems built into her body. There are some impressive scenes when she looks at views of Vancouver in 2012 and then superimposes her knowledge of the same view in 2077. There is even some humour, as Cameron comes to grips with the limitations of 2012 technology, and a touch of incipient romance in the growing attraction Detective Fonnegra feels for her. Rachel Nicholas (an actress I haven’t seen before) is very good as Keira Cameron, revealing an appealing blend of tough competence and vulnerability as she struggles to cope with the loss of her family.

All in all this is shaping up to be one of the best TV series I’ve seen in a long time. The plot is complex and intriguing, the story lines adult and convincing, and I enjoy the effective blend of SF and detective elements, my two favourite genres. Highly recommended.

Interzone 245

The interview in this issue of the magazine is with Paul Cornell, previously noted for writing Doctor Who novels. This is accompanied by a review of his new novel, London Falling, concerning detectives operating in an alternative London in which the supernatural exists. I love alternative London stories and have a range of them already: Christopher Fowler's Roofworld, Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, China Miéville's Un Lun Dun, and also Miéville's Kraken which is on my reading pile. So I have ordered Cornell's book and also Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, which was mentioned in the review. Lots to look forward to.

The film and DVD reviews feature Cloud Atlas which I am still in two minds about adding to my rental list (general conclusion: strange and difficult, but worth it), and also include generally favourable reviews of Skyfall, Neverland and Looper among others.

Five stories this time, but no fewer than three of them are novelettes:

The Animator by Chris Butler, novelette illustrated by Ben Baldwin. This is the second story set in his strange alternative Earth to be published in Interzone (the first being in issue 233). It is a world in which everyone constantly emits clouds of spores which can be detected by other people nearby and allows them to assess each other's status and mood; effectively not unlike telepathy.  In this story, a young man is trying to make his fortune by developing a light projector for entertainment - but there are risks in introducing a new technology in a restrictive society with a vaguely steampunk feel.

Hypermnemonic by Melanie Tem, illustrated by David Gentry. A strange tale about a woman whose brain has been modified to give her an intense recall of events, sent to confront a man she once had an affair with. Atmospheric, but confusing and with a rather gothic conclusion.

The International Studbook of the Giant Panda by Carlos Hernandez, novelette illustrated by Richard Wagner. We all know that giant pandas have problems with mating, so in this story there's a hi-tech but controversial solution; remotely-controlled animatronic pandas to help things along. Put like that it sounds bizarre, but I found it intriguing and entertaining.

Paskutinis Iliuzija (The Last Illusion) by Damien Walters Grintalis, illustrated by Dave Senecal. The last magician in Lithuania is under constant threat after the invasion by the Soviet Union, but needs to help his sick daughter. A sad, bittersweet tale.

The Face Tree by Anthony Mann, novelette illustrated by Martin Hanford. What appear to be carved wooden faces are found protruding from tree-trunks around present day Oxford. A man who lives a pointless, drifting existence meets a mysterious woman who seems to have some connection with them.

A good selection this time, all of them worth reading. My favourite is Hernandez' story about the giant pandas.

Finally, I was sad to read in the R.I.P. section that Charles Chilton has died. I wrote about him in my review of Interzone 235 in July 2011, as follows:

"A blast from the past in David Langford's Ansible Link column in the July/August issue of this magazine: at the British Library's Out of This World SF exhibition he met 93-year-old Charles Chilton. I well remember listening to his exciting Journey into Space radio drama series in the 1950s - probably my first introduction to SF - and I still have an ancient copy of his novel The World in Peril on my shelf. I see from Wiki (which has a very informative entry) that Journey into Space was the last radio programme in the UK to attract a bigger audience than television and was translated into seventeen languages. It is apparently available on CD and internet download. It will have very little merit by modern SF standards but the sheer nostalgia value is huge!"

Hull Zero Three, by Greg Bear

I read several books by Bear in the 1980s and 90s, but the only ones I kept on my shelf were the Songs of Earth and Power duology:  The Infinity Concerto and The Serpent Mage. This is rather curious as these are fantasies, rather than the SF which I normally read and which Bear normally writes, but I do have a soft spot for original contemporary fantasies like these and really must read them again before long.

Hull Zero Three, an SF book published in 2010, was chosen as a read of the month by the Classic Science Fiction discussion group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ClassicScienceFiction/ ), so I decided to give it a try. The time is the distant future, the setting a huge sub-light speed colony ship on its way to find a new home for humanity; a journey of many centuries. This is not a conventional story, however.

The protagonist, simply known as Teacher, wakes from a pleasant dream of colonising a new planet into a nightmare. He is in an almost empty, freezing cold ship, populated mainly by strange and often deadly creatures, with his only ally a young girl who constantly urges him on to some unknown destination. This is a dark, downbeat and gloomy start, the bewildered and helpless Teacher having lost much of his memory and only recalling snatches of information from time to time. The air of confusion was exacerbated in my mind by the fact that Bear's descriptions of the places his characters pass through are frequently too unclear to form a mental picture of them.  Teacher meets up with other companions of the girl, strange humanoids with whom it is difficult to communicate, but they are all constantly trying to keep warm, to find food and drink, and to avoid danger. I found this a tough part of the story to get through and it goes on for almost half the book. I can't say any more about the plot without posting spoilers, so if you don't want to know what happens next, read no further - but I can reassure you that in the second half of the book both the pace and the interest pick up, and there is an intriguing conclusion.

WARNING - some spoilers follow

The first glimmers of optimism come just before the half-way point of the story, when Teacher meets up with an even more disparate group of beings who are in a more secure position and who between them (and with the aid of Teacher's returning memories) manage to piece together a picture of their circumstances. The vessel actually consists of three separate, kilometres-long ships linked to a vast central snowball which provides their reaction mass; Teacher's group are in Hull Zero One. It is clear that something has gone badly wrong with the journey and that the ship is seriously damaged.

They realise that the colonists and other creatures are not carried in corporeal form but as genetic potential, able to be artificially conceived and grown in various different physical forms to suit whatever environment is provided by the planet they arrive at, and given artificial memories. For some reason, the ship has started producing a wide range of different humans and animals even though they have not arrived at a planet. Teacher's group realise that there has been a major and still on-going conflict between Ship Control and the mysterious Destination Guidance which is based on the snowball. They travel to Hull Zero Three, the only one still in good condition, to try to discover more about what is happening and why. What they find there divides loyalties and leads to a final showdown between Ship Control and Destination Guidance, with all being revealed and resolved only at the very end of the story.

The key question: was it worth reading? That's a tough one to answer; it certainly isn't an easy read and I nearly gave up at one point, but I was just sufficiently intrigued to keep going and enjoyed the final part of the story which I read in one sitting. This is not a novel which will have universal appeal, but if you don't mind being kept in the dark for much of the story and have the patience to stick with it, you may find it worthwhile.