Review of Steel Beach by John Varley

There are several significant features which identify the stereotypical cyberpunk story.  Most readers would agree that one is setting.  Near future almost necessary to bear the sub-genre’s label, Gibson, Sterling, Shiner, Rucker, and other writers known for the form did their share to propagate visions of technology burgeoning in our lives just a few years in the future.  The stereotypical cyberpunk view rarely one that looked long term; a life replete with technology to the point of utopia was not on the agenda.  Such perspective appeared in the wave of science fiction that came next: the Singularity, the Accelerated Age, whatever you want to call it.  Segueing the two nicely is John Varley’s Steel Beach (1992), which examines the personal effect of having an existence where technology is expanded to the point it can provide every dream.  What will humanity want next?  Varley’s answer is disturbing.

Steel Beach is the story of Hildy Johnson.  A magazine journalist living on Luna, he works for the Nipple, covering whatever entertaining material he can get his hands on.  Society lacking for nothing, his reports typically feature the latest in sex change technology, what actor A is doing with diva B, and the latest in body modifications.  The two-hundredth anniversary of the Invaders’ takeover of Earth upcoming, Johnson’s editor assigns him the task of producing an article a day comparing life when the aliens came to Earth to life on Luna now.  But before the reader can groan “Oh no, here comes a lengthy, episodic, self-indulgent examination of how the future is different from Earth today”, Johnson’s life takes a twist.  Living in an underground Texas cabin, complete with slivers, horse shit, and a doctor whose medicine bag contains more whiskey than medicine, Johnson’s ennui begins to dig its thorns deeper and deeper into his mind, and he takes to reckless behavior.  A slash-boxing competition injuring him severely one day, in rehab a virtual dream changes his life.  Meeting Luna’s Central Computer while under, he emerges with a new perspective pushing him to seeking meaning like he never had before.  Trouble is, which is it, real or virtual?

Review of The Sky Road by Ken Macleod

For those who have read the first three books in Ken Macleod’s Fall Revolution series, The Sky Road will be a sublimely satisfying last bow.  None of the books connected linearly in a strong sense of the expression (in other words, it’s not necessary to read them in order but it goes a long way toward manifesting the overall vision), The Sky Road offers yet another perspective on the future of humanity through the splintered lens of politics and technology.  The novel is a delicately pointed end to the series, and while certainly the most subdued, may be the best of the four.

Like The Stone Canal, The Sky Road is divided into two stories told in alternating chapters.  The first focuses on a young man named Colvis colha Gree and is set at a time centuries in the future when the world has re-built itself to a pleasantly bucolic/industrial state many years after a major civilization-destroying apocalypse.  Though a history major at the local university, Colvis is working his summer vacation as a welder on a crew building the first rocket the world has seen in ages. Technology beyond mechanical considered “black knowledge”, the rocket represents mankind’s first excursion back into space since the Deliverer saved humanity.  Meeting a young woman while drinking at the town market one day, Colvis suddenly finds his studies and work have a connection. 

Review of The Cassini Division by Ken Macleod

The Stone Canal, predecessor to The Cassini Division, saw a flurry of technical, and as a result, social developments, move one part of humanity to post-human status.  And so while Wilde and Reid’s personal matters were resolved, larger matters, that is, an agreement between standard and post-humans was left hanging, a peaceful resolution far from certain.  Focusing precisely on this schism, The Cassini Division, Ken Macleod’s third novel in the Fall Revolution sequence, brings the implications of Singularity to full head.

Set 350 years after the events of The Star Fraction, The Cassini Division is told through the eyes of Ellen May Ngwethu, captain of the spaceship Terrible Beauty and one of Cassini Division’s most prominent officers.  Assigned the protection of humanity, she and her comrades occupy the moon Callisto, dutifully guarding the wormhole and the hive-like construction on Jupiter from any post-human incursion.  At the outset of the novel, Ellen is sent to Earth to bring back Sam Malley.  A brilliant physicit responsible for the mathematics supporting the engineering of the wormhole, Cassini Division has a mind to enlist his help for a sortie through the ‘hole to meet with New Mars.  A non-cooperator—capitalist, that is, finding Malley amongst the dirty underbelly of London’s non-Socialists on Earth proves tricky, while convincing him to join their team proves moreso.  Ellen fully believing the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, she pursues her mission with confidence and stubbornness, and ultimately takes her fight to other star systems.  Whether the post-humans have good intentions, well, that the reader will have to discover alongside Ellen.

Review of The Star Fraction by Ken Macleod

Back cover copy claims Ken Macleod’s debut The Star Fraction (1995) is like “modern-day George Orwell”, and there is some truth in it.  Not an examination of totalitarianism, the novel is rather a thought experiment on technology in an environment as rife with subtly variegated politics as the scene Orwell covered in WWII Spain in Homage to Catalonia.  Given the dry wit and experimentatal mode, however, I would say that Macleod is more Heinleinian.  Regardless of classic parallels, however, the first of the four books which comprises the Fall Revolution sequence, The Star Fraction, is an astonishingly confident debut which examines poly-sci in a way neither author did: the Singularity.

Before jumping to the review, I think it is necessary to position the The Star Fraction within the context of the series given it is certainly not an A-B-C-D affair.  When I picture the Fall Revolution sequence in my mind’s eye, a lobster claw appears.  The Star Fraction being the wrist from which two stories branch, The Stone Canal forms the claw and The Cassini Division its pointed end, while The Sky Road forms the second storyline, the pincer.  Setting the tone (style, pace, mode of presentation, etc.), The Star Fraction introduces readers to Macleod’s brand of sci-fi and presents the major themes at work in the three books which follow.  Thus, if you are thinking of reading Macleod, it is strongly encouraged to begin with this novel.