The Generator Speaks

Next Train:

The Sandman: The Dream Hunters - Neil Gaiman

(From the author of Neverwhere, and American Gods...)

The Queen of Air and Darkness and Other Stories

There was a time when we looked at the stars and we imagined worlds like ours - ready and waiting for us to walk out of the rocket doors. We imagined a cosmos full of pristine worlds, much like our lost Eden left-behind: new continents, new planets, a new frontier. We also imagined space filled with races that looked like us, or were enough like us, that all it would take for everyone to get along would be some time in mutual translation sessions.

Those days seem to have passed. Our imagined alien worlds have become more ... alien. We lean towards the likelihood that our delicate cradle, the Earth, is the only spot capable of fostering our kind of life. Even if free water, nitrogen-oxygen atmospheres, and carbon-based biology are out there, we can't deny that our organism would likely be poorly equipped to handle the biota, microscopic or otherwise, of an alien ecology.

Still, maybe we haven't forgotten the old dreams. They just seem much, much less likely. If, in the first place, we can even believe that we aren't alone. In an infinite universe, though, infinite possibility would seem to suggest that other life is "out there" even if you don't happen to believe in an infinite creation: we cannot reject the null hypothesis. And in all of that possibility, maybe there is a world out there, verdant under strange moons, where quiet oceans ebb and flow, and dewy grass-stuff awaits the first footfalls of a new Adam and a new Eve... Try and deny that it doesn't set your heart racing.

I had Anderson's The Queen of Air and Darkness on my shelf because it won the Hugo and Nebula for best Novella/Novelette. Anderson, better known for his works of Fantasy (The Broken Sword and A Midsummer Tempest), taps into a rich SF tradition in Queen's tales. These are stories of colonization, of pioneering, of pushing outwards away from the maddening crowd. Each story approaches the enterprise from a different angle. In most of the tales, humans find someone already there and then make difficult decisions - decisions that should make us feel uneasy, while in other tales things seem to work out as harmoniously as we could imagine. Anderson describes a galaxy in which mankind has left a crowded, wasted Earth on bootstrapped machines that take decades to reach even nearer stars. A minimum of equipment is carried along with the colonists, who are expected to establish basic industry from blueprints brought from their homeworld, and then redevelop - or not develop - their civilization as they see fit. Contact between worlds is tenuous, and visiting out of the question: cost and distance make interstellar travel a last resort. This is not a universe of recent Sci-Fi's FTL deus ex machine: taken into account, Anderson's galaxy may well be more realistic than first blush would suggest. FTL refers to vessels capable of traveling "faster-than-light" - a necessity in order to span the distances between stars that would otherwise take improbable amounts of time. FTL is variously explained in much contemporary Science Fiction by the use of fantastic devices and "drives."

After their long voyages in cryo-sleep, Anderson's colonists step off their rockets, more often than not into fresh, green grass. But then what? Should they stay? Is it right to start the whole thing over again? Are the old ways necessarily the good ways? What do the locals think of the newcomers? Can we live in peace? These are wide-eyed questions, pondered during a wide-eyed era. This is heady pre-New Wave stuff! If we don't believe in the simplicity of the questions anymore, at least the nostalgia for those days warms the blood: I think that on some level, we still want to believe... I'll admit that these stories, in some camps, might be called dated - while reading them Bradbury and Blish, and even a little Burroughs come to mind. But silver hair or no, that seems to me good company to keep. Are the scenarios likely? Yes and no, no different than their iconoclastic children's. Do they make for a worthwhile and enjoyable Science Fiction read? Absolutely! The title tale, the one that I've actually made little reference to, nearly overwhelms the reader with richness of description and imagination within the first two pages. Should it shock us that our dreams, our hopes of new worlds might reflect some of the things we dreamed of in the past - Thomas the Rhymer's traverse, for instance? The first story asks one clever question further: and what if this were manipulated...?

A disjointed review for a collection of tales that might be regarded themselves as variations on a theme. The theme is familiar I'll grant, but it's not one likely to be abandoned by the human imagination any time soon, and it's this familiarity that makes them read, for me at least, like SF comfort food. Bon apetit!

Final Grade: B+/A-
Re-read: Humid jungle night in Mexico? I'm there!

The Generator Speaks

Next train:

The Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson

(disclosure: again, I haven't read a novel by Robinson that I didn't liked. Seriously, the Mars trilogy sprang from this man's pen! And now an alternate history of the world supposing that the Plague wiped out European civilization? Ambitious, yes. Credentials to pull it off? Also, yes.)