Review of Cyberabad Days by Ian McDonald

Ian McDonald’s 2004 River of Gods was a return to writing after a three year break.  Batteries obviously recharged, the novel won the British Science Fiction Award and was nominated for others.  The premise of the book so fertile in fact, 2009 saw the publishing of Cyberabad Days, a collection of short stories and one novella—a spillover of creative effort from the novel.  While a couple of the stories have the feel of a writer in the drawing room, trying out characters and angles for a larger work, most have been polished into more-than-presentable form.  The quality of the collection building to a crescendo, the three final stories are glittering examples of the power of sci-fi in short form.  Each set in the same India of 2047 as River of Gods, the following are my notes: 

A rather standard sci-fi foot on which to start the collection, “Sanjeev and Robotwallah” tells of a poor boy and the stars in his eyes for the war mechs that battle outside his village.  Possessing little of the flare that makes McDonald such a great prose stylist, the narrative is written in straight-forward fashion compared to Riverof Gods, but has a nice ending.

Review of "Necroville (UK)/Terminal Cafe (US)" by Ian McDonald

“’Am I a ghost in a meat machine, am I God’s little seed stored in heaven for all eternity and glued one day on to a blastocyst in Mama Columbar’s womb; has this me been recycled through countless previous bodies, previous worlds, universes?’ He pressed his finger between Trinidad’s eyes… ‘This is the final frontier.  Here.  This curve of bone is the edge of the universe.’”

Existentialism is a main theme of Ian Mcdonald’s brilliant 1994 Necroville (published in the US as Terminal Café).  Pyrotechnic poetry blasting from the pages, the possibilities of nanotechnology have never been related in such vivid profundity.  The scene lower California of 2063, the dead live again in this flames-and-leather cyberpunk exploration of the meaning of life and death in a world gone mad with possibility.

In line with McDonald’s penchant for multiple viewpoints, Necroville’s story is told through the eyes of five friends who meet every year at Terminal Café on the Mexican Day of Dead.  Santiago (the man quoted above), a drug artist, has experienced life in every way possible and seeks something more, possibly death.  Camaguey is terminally ill and must decide what to do with the hours remaining.  Touissant is an aguilar, an eagle-man, trying to fly away from his family’s legacy.  Trinidad is a dinosaur hunter who hammers bodies “to the crucifix of fear she drags across her life”.  And Yoyo, an independent lawyer, must solve the mystery of why the massive nanotech corporation TeeTee wants her dead.  But it’s the place they meet that comes most alive.  The streets and alleyways of the barrios—the necrovilles—they wander to meet at the café are much more than the neon, whores, and black leather that glitter on the surface.

Competing with theme for strongest point of the novel, readers who enjoy vibrant, dense prose are in for a treat; McDonald’s visuals are strong yet abstract.  The characters’ stories are unraveled in a fashion that keeps Necroville’s pedal to the metal the length of the novel.  Rather than buoyed gently along by breathless treacle, McDonald’s prose burns like an ethanol engine, each sentence firing off a chain of pyrotechnic visuals.  Motorcycle gangs, smog swallowed enclaves, drug trips, death hunts, and every other aspect of the characters’ futuristic lives is described in vivid, poetic detail that flies in the face of the paint-by-the-numbers sci-fi available today.  (Like River of Gods, McDonald includes a fair number of words from the setting’s native tongue: Spanish.  The book easily read without any knowledge of the language, there remain some who might be bothered by it, so be warned.)

Space opera, big dumb object, and first contact maintaining their limits of sub-genre, nanotech novels have proven more variegated.  Stephenson’s Diamond Age, Stross’s Glasshouse, and Ian Mcdonald’s Necroville present three very different views on the possibilities for the concept.  The prologue short, McDonald’s take is obvious from the beginning: “Tesler’s Corollary: The first thing we get with nanotechnology is the resurrection of the dead.”  So while theme parks have gone bankrupt trying to contain the dinosaurs they accidentally unleashed and designer drugs are available on the market with narcotic qualities like never before, the main focus of nanotech in Necroville is the superhuman status humans achieve after death, mortality no longer a limitation.  Skeletal alteration, skin changes, even life in space are choices for the dead.  (They are a more realist take on Mieville’s “remade”).   The possibilities so appealing, in fact, numerous intentionally die to have the doors of opportunity open.  Like people today, McDonald posits those of the future will likewise yearn for more from life, want to push the limits, and in his context, envy the dead.

Potential problems with the novel are more a matter of taste than technical.  Some reviewers have complained that McDonald does not thoroughly explain the technical background of his nanotech, which is true.  However, worldbuilding was never the aim.  McDonald focuses instead on the personal and ethical aspects of technical achievement, the book needing to be approached as such.  Some readers have also complained about the “confusing style” and “lack of cohesion amongst the character viewpoints”.  Suffice to say, McDonald’s narrative is indeed allusive, most often describing matters indirectly.  Attentive readers who enjoy stories to cogitate upon as they read will love the book (e.g. William Gibson, Gene Wolfe, Thomas Pynchon, etc.), while those who prefer linear narratives with overt info dumps and plot hand-holding will balk (e.g. Alastair Reynolds, Peter Hamilton, Arthur C. Clarke, etc.).  This is mature sci-fi (yes, even with dinosaurs), thus readers expecting an easily digested story will be disappointed.  

Combining original genre ideas with moral exploration, Necroville is a sci-fi tour de force.  From the visceral beauty of the prose to the variety of ways in which life and death are examined over the backdrop of the resurrection of humanity, McDonald has staked a claim for himself in the existential examination of nanotech.   Cyberpunk through and through, fans of Gibson, Brunner, Stephenson, and Sterling will want to check out this offering.  Having much, much in common with the style and presentation of his award-winning River of Gods, Brasyl and The Dervish House, Necroville proves McDonald’s earlier publishings highly underrated and worthy of attention. 

Review of "River of Gods" by Ian McDonald

Roger Zelazny wrote his masterful Lord of Light in 1967, a time when the West was gaining and consolidating greater and greater knowledge of the East.   The insights of Mircea Eliada and Joseph Campbell were used to full effect.  In 2004, nearly 40 years later, Ian McDonald has introduced River of Gods, another sci-fi novel with India as its fundamental element.  McDonald, however, increases the complexity, Hindu mythology just one of the ingredients.  From the pantheon, he piles on sociology, cultural anthropology, political science, and technology to postulate a near-future for India.  And so while both novels crackle with energy and storytelling power, River of Gods has more facets with which to view life-altering technology in the human context.

The novel set in India of 2047, much of the country and its culture will be familiar to readers.  McDonald does not envision significant changes in religion, food, clothing, etc.  What will not, however, are the forms to which technology has advanced and taken hold in society, particularly artificial intelligence.  The US having established the Hamilton Acts, laws which limit the usage of AI above a certain level, some places on the globe remain impossible to regulate and thus have become havens for tech that’s not strictly legal.  (One of the entities in the novel, for example, resides in India and utilizes its smarts to profit significantly from stock market using enhanced intelligence.)  History repeating itself, another familiar/unfamiliar motif of the novel is that India is no longer united.  Multiple nation states have split off along various lines, including cultural, religious, commercial, etc.  These differences, along with political issues, are what steer the overriding plot.

There are, however, numerous individual storylines (interwoven) that give the novel its color, roughly ten in all.  While some people have complained this number is too high, McDonald’s choice to include so many viewpoints suits his objective.  To show the effects of technology in the social context, it seems only natural to have more than a handful of characters to spotlight the variety of sectors societies are composed of.  And to his credit, at no time is the reader confused switching between viewpoints.  The clues are always there, chapter titles bear the viewpoint’s name, not to mention that within the overall group, many of the characters form pairs or teams, which ultimately aid the reader in tracking the storylines.  At no time did I feel lost reading this novel, and more importantly, neither did I feel that the individuals overshadowed the main storyline.  To his credit, McDonald remained focused throughout, never losing touch with the book’s message, which is perhaps the reason the book won the awards it did (the BSFA the best in my opinion).

The individual storylines too varied to go into detail, suffice to say there is enough happening at all times to keep the reader, reading.  McDonald’s writing style having brisk but dense sentences, fans of Gibson–and more than just Neuromancer - will undoubtedly appreciate McDonald’s non-utopian view of the future and the role technology may play in our lives; the style with which each scribe - suitably descriptive yet efficient – is similar.  And while Dan Simmon’s sci-fi focuses on the mythic parallels of AI, fans of the Hyperion Cantos will also enjoy McDonald’s more down to earth portrayal of the subject.  Both authors, along with Iain Banks, brilliantly imagine the “mind” of AI.  And lastly, readers of Greg Egan will particularly like the gritty edge that McDonald brings to the technology in his books, the asexuals in particular reminiscent of Distress.

If you do not like works such as Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun series or Neal Stephenson’s Anathem because you thought they contained too many words you didn’t know or it took too much effort to look in the glossary, then you should be warned that River of Gods contains many Indian words, as well as neologisms McDonald invents to contextualize his near-future India.  There is a glossary, but some readers may tire of looking or be unable to sit back and just flow with the novel.  Like Wolfe’s series, however, it’s not necessary to know every single word; context is more than enough to understand the message.  And the second warning is, if you prefer linear narratives, be careful; some of the individual storylines are not always told in a-b-c fashion.  Only momentarily disorienting, McDonald quickly clues you in, and most readers will not have a problem.

In the end, River of Gods is a book that, while not for everyone’s tastes, presents well thought out ideas on technology and society in an exciting and complex fashion.  The Indian setting and characters, while perhaps not always culturally accurate, nonetheless becomes an entity of their own under McDonald’s pen.  For its insight, its imagination, and its obvious concern for the health of society today, this book comes highly recommended.