Looking at Michael Swanwick’s oeuvre, one sees an
interesting arc. Opening in territory of
a relatively realist nature (In the Drift),
wandering for a time through science fantasy (almost magic realist) land (Stations of the Tide, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, and The Dragons of Babel), before arriving in decidedly, fantastically non-realist
territory (anything related to Darger and Surplus), the rocket of Swanwick’s
imagination counting down, taking off and exploding is visible. Vacuum
Flowers, Swanwick’s second novel published in 1987, should be considered
ignition.
Vacuum Flowers
opens on a tense chapter drawn straight from Cyberpunk 101. Rebel Mercedes Mudlark (yes, her real name)
awakens in an unfamiliar body, tied down in a hospital bed. Escaping with some neural-transmitter slight
of hand, she meets a mysterious man disguised in wetware, who takes her to the
home of a mysterious woman who informs Rebel she is sharing the strange body
with its original owner, Eucrasia Walsh, and that the corporation funding the
hospital Deutsche Nakasone wants both of them back, and badly. Rebel going on the run, she tries to sort out
her and Eucrasia’s situation while evading capture. Is there anywhere in the solar system she can
get help, however?
While there appears a driving force behind the plot in that
summary, it is perfunctory between the covers.
Vacuum Flowers is more a tour
of our futuristic, inhabited solar system (aka tour of Michael Swanwick’s
imagination) than it is a gripping hunt and chase narrative. The coproation’s efforts to recapture Rebel
propelling her to constantly find new sanctuary, the majority of time spent in
the novel is exploring said sanctuaries.
From the gravity-free asteroid modules to the surface of Mars, Dyson
spheres in the Oort to beyond, the environments, polities, and lifestyles she
encounters are anything but vanilla Earth.
And this is where the novel really shines; Swanwick
accomplishes the unreal feeling of space without resorting to the dry
exposition of hard sf. Elastic,
colorful, variegated—these are the words I would use to describe the settings,
cultures, and technologies Rebel encounters on her interstellar tour. You want post-human
sensawunda, Swanwick delivers a rolling rollercoaster of imagination.
In the end, Vaccum
Flowers is a sophomore novel reminiscent of another, perhaps overly
ambitious, second novel: Ian McDonald’s Out on Blue Six. (Pot-smoking raccoons, I mean...) An explosion of
partially grounded imagination, the lack of balance between plot and settings
skews the novel toward worldbuilding, which detracts, to some degree, from its
underlying import to examine the meaning of sentience and autonomy in a solar
system whose technology has granulated the classic understanding of
individuality (i.e. classic cyberpunk). Fun
reading more than purposeful reading, the novel does climax in personal
fashion, but could have had more impact were the details of setting planed
tighter to the main character and her plight.
Another way of putting this is, the book feels more like a tour of
Swanwick’s rich-rich imagination than rounded, focused story. 3… 2…
1…
Yeah, good novel. I first read it serialized in the Dozois-edited ASIMOVS of the mid-1980s and decided then that Swanwick was a happening author. And the Comprise/Earth in VACUUM FLOWERS is essentially the same Earth as in STATIONS OF THE TIDE, a book I like even more.
ReplyDelete