Directive 51 by John Barnes

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Let’s start with the title. This is a real-world directive to decide what is to happen to the government of the US should there be a “decapitation” of leaders. Under normal circumstances, the President would be succeeded by the Vice President. But if this succession proves impossible, there has to be a mechanism to decide who shall become the next President.

Part of the problem with this book is that it can’t seem to decide exactly what it’s about. It could be a political thriller in which we watch the various factions jockeying for positions to assume power. Except, although considerable wordage is devoted to discussing the options as the scenario develops, it’s all rather swamped by the devastation taking the world back into a new Dark Age where most modern technology will not work.

So what’s the primary narrative theme? Well, this being John Barnes, we are back in meme territory again. Those of you who know his work will remember Kaleidosope Century, Candle and The Sky So Big and Black in which AI entities invade human minds through the power of ideas. Well, Directive 51 is playing in the same kind of semiotics sandpit with a loose alliance of human malcontents infiltrated and subverted by idea pumpers. These vulnerable innocents are inducted into a kind of underground movement to wipe out technology and restore the simple life before the “big machine” took over. It’s a form of brainwashing that produces conformity of thought through a repetition and reinforcement of key ideas.

The book therefore starts with two different sets of personal stories. One set covers the “terrorists” as they seed the US with nano and biotechnology swarms designed to “eat” the plastics and chemicals essential to our modern lifestyles. The other set introduces those in Government who will be pivotal in trying to keep the US from falling too far into the abyss. Bridging between the two is the story of the Vice President who is kidnapped by a third group who are playing both sides. This being the first book in a planned trilogy, we do not yet know who this third group is, but they are obviously powerful and ruthless. Quite what motivates them is as yet unclear.

This third strand involving the VP is the best element in the first third of the book. It’s got good pace and tension, building to the eventual shooting down of the plane. The multiple POV elements showing the different methods of seeding and introducing the various “terrorists” is somewhat strange. It should be quite interesting to see into the minds of those bent on causing such massive destruction, but it’s actually self-defeating. All you see is what they do. There’s no sense of awareness that this is dangerous and could bring an end to civilisation as we know it. Put it down to their programming by the idea pumpers. They seem mildly amused, perhaps even a little aroused by their daring and the cleverness of what they are doing. This is not traditional local terrorist fodder where we observe the mindset of an ideologically driven group, intent on the destruction of their enemies. These people are remarkably passive in psychological terms for all their physical commitment to activity inevitably designed to kill millions. Equally, the Government characters are all a bit cardboardy. We have the usual suspects of dodgy politicians, high-minded civil servants and intelligent operatives. Frankly, it all moves slowly forward as the co-ordination of effort from the different terrorist elements produces the first step towards the end of things as we know them.

All of which brings me to a major problem. I was brought up on a diet of books describing worldwide catastrophe. It could be rising seas or disease. But once started, the end of the world meant just that. Given this is not simply an attack on the US (albeit we have the cod triumphalism at the end of this book when brave Americans face the future with confidence because America is great), dismissing the unfolding catastrophe in the rest of the world with a few well placed bomb blasts, seems unreasonably USA-centric. I can understand the US feels a bit victimised after terrorists crashed planes into buildings, but only seeing a world-ending disaster from the US perspective is carrying cultural imperialism a little too far. Worse, it’s a sanitised disaster. Billions die through starvation, in fires and during rioting, but none of this is shown. It’s all left unspoken, unacknowledged. As if Barnes can’t quite bring himself to describe so many Americans (and some foreigners) having to die.

And then we are all perky and getting ready for the renaissance. Except those pesky people start arguing about who should be the President and locking each other up, and then threatening a new Civil War. In all this, there’s no real sense of hardship. Even our terrorists settle into comfortable lifestyles. When did we get around to burying all the dead? Why were there no epidemics of cholera or any of the other diseases that inevitably follow a systemic breakdown in civilisation? Were there really enough tins of food around to keep everyone so well fed? I could go on posing questions, but all this would show is loss of life without a darker side. What we seem to have here is an author caught up in the desire to cull vast numbers of humans but, in the best traditions of a neutron bomb, leave the remainder a good place to live. A place in which they can look forward with hope.

I suppose this is what the blurb writers call a techno-thriller. Set a few years into the future with new technology for those who want some sfnal ideas. Bits of this book are excellent, but the overall feeling is one of great disappointment. Barnes is usually better than this rather turgid, catastrophe-by-the-numbers effort. I suppose I will have a look at the second instalment, apparently called Daybreak Zero, but it will be more out of a sense of duty than anticipation.

See here for a review of Daybreak Zero.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or Män som hatar kvinnor (2009)

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Neutrality is a most curious convention in International Law. When all about you are fighting, one country stands aloof and refuses to support any of the “sides”. The curiousness lies not so much in the wish to avoid fighting — the risk of casualties both in the armed forces and the civilian population would deter all rational governments from involvement — but in the willingness of the actual combatants to respect the assertion of neutrality and not allow the theatre of war to stray over the relevant borders. So Sweden managed to remain relatively uninvolved in WWII. There was significant trade, significant volumes of money moved through the banking system, some Swedes fought in the German army. Some even worked as guards in Treblinka. The degree of collaboration is one of those unexplored pieces of history. More modern Swedish governments prefer to remember heroes like Raoul Wallenberg who saved thousands of Hungarian jews by issuing them with Swedish passports, carefully reconstructing history in the schools and media generally to divert attention from the inconvenient truth.

One of the more illuminating lines in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or Män som hatar kvinnor is that everyone has secrets, even countries. Given that the plot surrounds a family whose wealth was undoubtedly enhanced through collaboration with the Nazis, we are immediately pitched into a classic murder mystery from the Golden Age with the political ideology of Aryanism to the fore. Only a limited number of people could have “done it” because, at the relevant time, all the key players were trapped on an island by a serious traffic accident. But there are two elements that lift this from a mundane Agatha Christie plot into a work for modern sensibilities. The first is that it plays with the nature of history and the power of the modern eye to interpret and reinterpret the signs from the past. In this, it’s clearly following in the tradition of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose with its deconstructionist and semiotic undertones. The ability to manipulate images and to excavate the past for even the most trivial of pieces of paper are the keys to all understanding. The second decision of note is to take an unflinching look at misogyny. I cannot remember a film in recent years that exposes all the prejudices and abuses that lie mostly hidden under the surface of most modern societies. Perhaps from a poor understanding of Scandinavia, I had always thought Sweden was a relatively civilised country. Sadly, if this film is in any way representative of reality, it seems just as venal and corrupt as the rest of the world when it comes to the treatment of women.

In this, the pivotal character is the eponymous girl, played with outstanding suppressed violence, by Noomi Rapace. It’s an intensely demanding role and, in the wrong hands, it would have completely changed the character of the film, probably condemning it to the direct-to-video route to oblivion. As it is, her performance is one of the most memorable I can recall in the last decade. She has been abused at every point during her life, yet she manages to retain integrity and a brutal kind of honesty. In the end, she gives as good as she gets. Playing her foil is Michael Nyqvist as a journalist paid to investigate the disappearance and presumed murder of a girl some forty years ago. Nyqvist is passive and understated but, because of his honesty and empathy, he is able to bridge the gap with Rapace’s character. Apart they are interesting. Together they become an unstoppable force for truth. Unlike Sweden itself which played a game of neutrality during WWI, this film takes no prisoners when it comes to confronting the abuse of women in Swedish society.

Almost without exception, every character is beautifully played from the obsessed industrialist who pays the journalist to find the murderer, to Peter Andersson’s extraordinarily corrupt Guardian responsible managing the dragon girl’s money while she is out of mental hospital on licence, to Björn Granath as the determined local police officer. Perhaps it’s because I’m not familiar with the current stars of Swedish film and television, but the entire cast of “unknowns” emerge as fresh and talented. One further cast member must be mentioned. The scenery of the island and key locations are stunningly beautiful, if somewhat bleak, a factor that plays against the emerging horror of the investigation and surrounding events.

I am disturbed by stories that the film is to be reshot for American audiences. Apparently, Daniel Craig is lined up to play the journalist. Frankly, I think this is a supreme insult to the director and cast of the Swedish original produced by Yellow Bird. I cannot conceive of any sanitised script with a cast of stars coming remotely close to being as good. Having James Bond in the remake is ludicrous casting against type and can only be explained by Hollywood’s lack of faith in the quality of the story. You can just imagine the producers in a smoke-filled room, “We need a star to carry this movie — unknowns would condemn our remake to the arthouse circuit.” In truth, the only reasons for this offensive decision are the extreme parochialism of America that, for the most part, is hostile to any culture other than what it claims as its own. And the inability of the audience to read the subtitles. Let’s face it, the desperation of US distributors cannot be better illustrated than by the rerecording of the voice tracks for Hayao Miyazaki’s wonderful animations. There has been no worse butchery in recent years than cutting out the sensitive vocal performances of the Japanese casts in favour of Hollywood stars. I shall be watching the other two Swedish films in this Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson. I will not be queuing to watch the Hollywood remakes.

For reviews of other films and television programs by Yellow Bird:
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest or Luftslottet som sprängdes (2009)
The Girl Who Played With Fire or Flickan som lekte med elden (2009)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Headhunters or Hodejegerne (2011)
Wallander: Before the Frost (2012)
Wallander: The Dogs of Riga (2012)
Wallander: An Event in Autumn (2012)
Wallander: Faceless Killers (2010)
Wallander: The Fifth Woman (2010)
Wallander: Firewall (2009)
Wallander: The Man Who Smiled (2010)
Wallander: One Step Behind (2008)
Wallander: Sidetracked (2009)

The City & the City by China Mieville

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The world is an endlessly fascinating place and we depend on our abilities to understand all the signs and signals that surround us to navigate safely from innocent childhood to mature adulthood. The study of this interaction between the individual and his or her environment is most commonly called semiotics. So, when we pass each other in the streets, we make a mass of instant judgements based on the hairstyle, facial expression, posture, clothing and shoes, each factor being shaded depending on the time of day, the geographical location and any other socially relevant information. So we could conclude that, in one context, we see a police officer while, in a different context, we see a stripper about to remove his or her clothes. In some urban areas, there are signs identifying the local gang whose turf you are walking through. In other areas, we might choose not to see some people because their presence is somehow embarrassing or offensive. All of us go through a process of socialisation to learn the local culture and its nuances. Our willingness to conform ensures each culture and its niches survive and, where appropriate, evolve to different but nevertheless mutually compatible forms. This adaptability can make cultures act as if independent creatures. For those of you interested in the theory, you can google autopoiesis and take it from there.

The idea of interstitial areas has been briefly explored in two recent novels: Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams and The Shadow Pavilion by Liz Williams. Both assume that there will be one or more “spaces” or “lands” between more structured spaces. It is also interesting to compare Thunderer by Felix Gilman who is interested in the essential mutability of a city’s geography in time and space. Returning to gang culture for a moment, there may be areas of overlap or separation between two gang territories where members from different gangs may meet in safety, or where a “no man’s lands” exists as a buffer zone, i.e. no gang members may enter, but other citizens may pass through.

In The City & the City, Mieville engages in a clever exploration of two overlapping cities, each one socially invisible to the other. As children growing up in one city, you learn not to “see” the other city or its inhabitants. This is a sophisticated mental trick because, of necessity, you see your surroundings to avoid walking into people and not crash when driving. But other than this basic behaviour to ensure mutual survival, neither side acknowledges the existence of the other. Indeed, the cities are considered located in different countries, with a formal border control between them. Policing this bilocation is the mysterious Breach — a term which expresses both the physical transgression of failing to relate to the city environment in which you are currently resident, and the agency (assumed not to be supernatural) responsible for punishing all transgressions. As you will gather, there is a very detailed system of metarules in place, maintaining the separation.

Into this existential anomaly comes a murder which seems to have been committed in one city with the body dumped in the other without this crime involving a Breach. Thus, at a metalevel, we are immediately pitched into a game of establishing the rules of Breach and then understanding why no Breach has occurred in the movement of the body between the cities. It soon becomes apparent to the investigating officer that another element to be considered is whether there is balance at all levels, i.e. just as there are two cities occupying the same space, are there also two metalevel agencies: Breach and Orciny?

At this point, I want to refer to one of my favourite authors, Anthony Price. He began with a series of outstanding titles and, although he tailed off as he grew older, even at his least inspiring, he was still better than most. To avoid spoilers, all I will say about the quality of the murder and its investigation in The City & the City is that it’s one of the most elegant puzzles of the last few years and worthy of Price at his best. Even though Price is now mostly out-of-print, you should seek him out.

In writing this review, I note I’m coming to this book late (courtesy of the US postal system which lost a complete batch of 2009 titles on its way to me for several months). In the intervening time, The City & the City has been picking up prizes, the most recent being the Arthur C. Clark Award which Mieville is winning for a third time. In every respect, I agree with the assessment of the world. This is a remarkable piece of fiction that seamlessly blends fantasy with detective fiction to produce a mesmerising novel. If you have not already read it, do so immediately.

P.S. For those interested in trying Anthony Price, you have a choice. The first published novel was The Labyrinth Makers (1970). The novel that starts the internal timeline is The Hour of the Donkey. The series is unbeatable as well-developed characters struggle to solve some wonderfully complex problems.

As an added note, The City & The City won both the World Fantasy Award 2010 for the Best Novel and shared the Best Novel Award for the Hugo Award 2010. It was shortlisted for the Nebula Award 2010 for Best Novel. It also placed third in the John W. Campbell Memorial Award 2010. It was Le lauréat du Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire 2012 for Roman étranger.

For reviews of other free-standing novels, see
Embassytown, Kraken and Railsea.

Muse of Fire by Dan Simmons

Semiotics considers the process whereby one person communicates meaning to another. Put simply, A formulates a message in which he or she encodes meaning. In some suitable way, this message is transmitted to B who decodes the message and extracts meaning. The problem for A in this system is to ensure that the meaning he or she actually wishes to transmit is the one that B understands when the message is decoded. So, as a no-doubt-apocryphal example from the days when battlefield messaging relied on human messengers, a General receives the message, “Send three-and-four pence, we’re going to a dance.” For the young lovers of decimal currency, the old pound sterling used to be divided into shillings and pence. The phrase, “three-and-four pence” was an abbreviated reference to three shillings and four pence: just the right amount to pay for tickets to the ball. But what the battlefield commander actually said was, “Send reinforcements. I’m going to advance.” This phenomenon is called Chinese whispers and has been captured in a party game where semi-inebriated people sit in a circle and whisper a message to each other in turn and are then amused by how mangled the words get as they pass through many different ears and mouths. So authors must take care to ensure that they say what they mean, and to say it in a way that can be understood by their audience (or something).

By cultural convention, some authors achieve universality. No matter when they created their works, they can still be read and enjoyed centuries later. As plays or adaptations into visual storytelling, the audience can still find enjoyment and appreciate how little people have changed. Whether this is the original story of how Leonidas held off Xerxes at Thermopylae as retold by Frank Miller or the film, 300, or Beowulf as endlessly recycled in television or cinematic adaptations, people still respond to heroism in the face of overwhelming odds. Perhaps the writer most accepted as transcending time is Shakespeare. His poetry and plays seem to have captured the widest range of human strengths and weaknesses, and resonate through the ages.

Muse of Fire, a novella by Dan Simmons, takes as its conceit, the notion that there would be a market for a troupe performing Shakespeare in the far distant future. I am using “conceit” ambiguously as being both an artistic device for the story itself and pride in an author like Shakespeare whose work has the ability to survive technological and cultural transformation. Like Jack Vance who has a troupe of singers traipsing from planet to planet in the appropriately titled Space Opera, Simmons has a group of travelling players endlessly touring planets where there are human remnants, and performing the Bard. Things like this happen in science fiction. What then follows is an exercise in what those of a technical bent call intertextuality, where selected works from one author are woven into and interpreted to advance the telling of the new story. On a smaller scale, Muse of Fire pursues the same methodology as underpinned the Ilium/Olympos duology.

Handled well, the mediation of one text through another can produce interesting synergy. But the danger is that the modern author inflicts his or her own research fascinations on the unsuspecting reader. Striking the right balance in fiction is always a challenge. In this instance, even though I used to be a regular ticket holder at Stratford-upon-Avon, I found the Shakespearean quotes and analysis slightly overdone. While there is no disputing the ingenuity of the plot to take such a cliché and convert it into something more interesting, the end product is only partially successful. Bolting on some super-science, if not fantastic, elements as the environments in which the plays are performed and contextualising these elements in a Gnostic framework does not rescue the whole. Indeed, if anything, this story as a spiritual allegory is somewhat heavy-handed.

So I am back to yet another moment of self-reflection to justify why I buy these expensive books from Subterranean Press. I suppose the answer is that some of them do prove their value in literary terms. Perhaps, if I was a bigger fan of intertextualism, I would have enjoyed Muse of Fire more. As it is, I am unlikely ever to pick this up again. The jacket artwork is quite pretty, but this is another white elephant of a book for me.

For other reviews of novels by Simmons, see:
The Abominable
Drood
Flashback
The Guiding Nose of Ulfant Banderoz.

The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

For this review, I’m travelling back in time a little. I’ve been putting off reading this second in a trilogy by Brandon Sanderson until I had the time to read the last two books together. It avoids the cliffhanging ending being too much to bear for a year and more until the last episode comes along. So, off we go with another strength-enhancing dumbbell of a book. Weighing in at almost 600 pages, The Well of Ascension continues the fantasy saga of the Mistborn. But rather than a “conventional” text, it’s written with very clear postmodernist sensibilities. It would be easy to see this story as only about a small group, mainly magicians of varying degrees of power, trying to cobble a government together using democratic means while being threatened by invading armies. But there’s a lot more going on in the text.

Michel Foucault proposed in a series of articles and books that the best way to understand the present is to interrogate the past. He described this process as a type of intellectual archaeology. Researchers dig down into the early layers of documentation. Every new piece of evidence being important not only for what it says, but also for what it does not say. The lacunae are just as important as the finds. This process is central to this book as the Terris Keepers are walking archaeologists, each carrying a datastore of the accumulating knowledge about the past and present. As new facts are uncovered, the researchers cross-reference and annotate, creating an ever more comprehensive view of past events. All this scholarship does, however, rest upon a simple assumption. That no-one else can change the records they find or keep. Just imagine how distorted the research would become if someone was able to manipulate the records.

This theme directly links into the second proposition that access to control over people depends on a linkage between pouvoir and savoir — power and knowledge. Societies are built on and driven by a continuing stream of discourse. In their most refined form, the discourses of constitutional law and political influence dictate the shape and operation of the state. At the lowest levels, the discourses of class and culture determine how people present themselves to the others with whom they interact. Everything is essential from the clothes they wear, their body language, the accents with which they speak and so on. Leaders dress in particular ways to communicate their right to lead. There are deliberate borrowings from semiotics in this fantasy as Tindwyl, one of the Terris Keepers, tries to instruct Elend, the potential leader, in the theories of communication and the manipulation of signs and symbols.

In this story, there is access to all parts of the discourse at a metalevel with only the records engraved on metal outside direct control. Lower down in the layering of discourse, access follows the real-world structures of political power brokers and increasingly less influential classes. But, interestingly, two of the magical skills are soothing and rioting which allow those with the power to directly interact with the emotions of those close to them. Thus, the combination of words, body language and magical ability (substitute “charisma” in the real world) endows speakers with the maximum ability to influence their audience.

Then there are matter of the heart. Hardly the concern of a postmodernist but Sanderson rises to the occasion with an extended parable about choice. In one set of relationships based on romantic, courtly love (albeit not quite in the real-world mediaeval European style), the Mistborn finds herself between two brothers who could not be more different. She is young and inexperienced in love, but the need to make a choice between the two brothers becomes increasingly real as the book continues. In the second relationship between a mature couple, we are presented with two Terris Keepers. Male Keepers like Sazed are eunuchs. Tindwyl has her own reasons for preferring to remain platonic. In this trilogy, Sanderson’s central preoccupation is on the relationship between love and trust. He muses on how people might transcend their differences and find comfort in each other. It could be an entirely rational and somewhat dispassionate process. Or it could be intuitive as the couple try to see beyond surface impressions. It might be driven by the genetically-programmed desire to continue the race by producing children, or the couple might be intellectually compatible while incapable of producing children. As a separate but allied thread in the plot, we also have the developing relationship between the Mistborn and her kandra who, by reason of his ability to take on the shape of humans and animals, is not who he seems to be. With the kandra, we have a person who feels bound by the strict letter of his race’s agreement with humanity, yet is tempted by the freedom to choose.

The danger with books of this kind is that they become too preoccupied with the discussion of ideas. Every author walks a fine line. One of the best examples of the problem is The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. As an academic specialising in semiotics and literary theory, Eco could have sidelined the mystery to identify the murderer in a mediaeval abbey, but the primary narrative of how William of Baskerville “solves” the case manages to rise above its context. Although not quite on the same level as Eco, Sanderson also drives the plot along as the imperial capital of Luthadel finds itself surrounded by two armies. The threatened arrival of the third non-human koloss army keeps everyone on their toes. The merits of a democratic as against various kinds of more direct power structures are pivotal to the unfolding of events, but they remain sufficiently a subtext to let the narrative to drive forward. The emerging interest in religion also hints at future developments.

On balance, I found this an intelligent and pleasing book. I hesitate to limit it by genre. Yes, it’s ostensibly the second in a fantasy trilogy, but Sanderson’s willingness to explore the ideas and relationships gives an added depth and resonance to the otherwise simple story of daring-do. For once, I swept through a long book and immediately picked up the concluding volume, The Hero of Ages, to see how it all turned out. Five hundred and seventy two pages later, I had the answer.

For a review of the sequel, The Hero of Ages, and two YA novels set in different universes, see Alcatraz Versus The Scrivener’s Bones and The Rithmatist. There’s also a stand-alone novel called Warbreaker and a novella The Emperor’s Soul.
You also have the first two novels in The Stormlight Archive:
The Way of Kings
The Words of Radiance.