Blind Lake

My reviews are piling up - I'm not sure why. But I should write something before I forge ahead with my reading... This year is different, no?

I'll come right out with it. I loved Blind Lake. I'll admit, I would have been surprised if I didn't at least like it. The author of Darwinia and Bios (not to mention the much lauded Spin, awaiting the attention of my generator...) has yet to provide much cause for disappointment. So, because of my admitted bias, I'll tell you why I liked it so much - I even made notes for this one!

I often proclaim that I'm not much of a "hard" science fiction fan: the "what if" is more important to me, always, than the "how." Wilson's novel deftly navigates both, and cleverly, yet effectively sidesteps some of the conflict. Blind Lake tells the story of a lockdown, in the dead of winter, at an experimental government astronomical station. The "Blind Lake" observatory utilizes "quantum organic computers" to visualize distant planets - that's right. I don't want to spoil too much, but the premise is too good not to explicate. In the near future, mankind has devoted immense resources to massive space telescope arrays: near-Earth planetary systems have been identified which seem capable of supporting life. But the arrays begin to fail, at once leaving important questions about the planets unanswered, and becoming the most costly pieces of space junk in history. To prop up the failing project, "quantum" evolving neuro-networks are applied to the job of sifting distortion from the signals being received from the arrays. The way that the self-evolving futuristic computers are able to do this is poorly understood. But when the telescopes themselves fail, but the pictures keep coming, only now "zoomed in" on the planet's surfaces: the process takes on a ghostly life of its own - no eyes, but the "machines" see. The Ghost in the Shell premise leads to a mysterious absolute quarantine that traps a group of journalists at the observatory. The ensuing tale is both a study of the humans marooned at Blind Lake, and the tale of what the inexplicable eyes begin to see...

This is a gorgeous novel with just enough technical information to be fascinating and mysterious at once, but in Wilson's developing style, never pretentious. A sense of wonder infuses the mystery of technology which man has created but cannot understand. Wilson's characterizations are engaging: I often think that a measure of a novel can be taken by how kindly its "villains" are treated. In Wilson's work, easy answers are hard to come by; characters ring true because we aren't asked to suspend disbelief in order to service paper-doll heroes and devils. None of the characters experience epiphany, none magically transform, but they act within the tale, and if they learn something along the way, maybe we do to.

Maybe the biggest reason that I like Wilson is his vision of the cosmos... In the works I've mentioned above, we are often left with the sense of a creation teeming with life: consciousness and "humanity" spread across the universe. I put "humanity" in quotation marks, because other life, obviously not human, is just a flawed, just as redeemable, just as miraculous. Wilson builds on the sort of Science Fiction written by one of my favorites, one of the "greats": Arthur C. Clarke, and his ideas about childhood's end... Wilson's visions are humble, compassionate, hopeful... The cosmology suggested by his works intersects with my own in a lot of ways: we both believe in worlds without end, lives without number, and mankind's destiny to grow into something else, something vast, and ultimately wiser than we are. Keep your post-apocalyptic wastelands - I live for this stuff! Wilson's future earth here is darker (the glimpses we are given of it) than some of his other novels have foreseen, but the contrast rings truer: the emphasis on individual choice seems braver, and the ambiguity of his characters' decisions feels familiar.

No, in my opinion it's no wonder this novel was nominated - I keep meaning to look back and see which novel actually won it in 2004. This is a novel that re-affirms what science fiction can be - not reliant on gimmicks, gizmos, the needlessly surreal; not cynical, but not naive. Wilson's writing gathers force with each passing novel - I think we are reading the works of a new "great" as they are being writ, and I certainly don't think that even that is high enough praise for this lovely, engrossing vision of ourselves, in the future.

Final Grade: A/A+

Re-read? You bet!