Asimov's SF, October-November 2006
Page 36
However....
However, Hamilton violates the hoary science fictional maxim that you don't have to explain the workings of the internal combustion engine and the technical details of highway construction just because your character is driving from New York to Chicago.
Hamilton does this with his interstellar trains. He does it with the rejuvenation technology. With the building of the starship. With the e-butlers. With just about every bit of imaginary technology he introduces.
Up to a point, this is a strength, because he does it very well indeed. He also does it with the geography, ecology, economic base, architecture, and city planning or lack of it of every planet depicted in the book, and he does this equally well.
But maybe halfway in it started to become overdone, wearying, slowing the story to a crawl, and all the more so, because while the main story is going on, a very long subplot is interwoven with the main story, which ends up consisting of little more than an odyssey from interesting planet to interesting planet primarily for the purpose of admittedly interesting description and exposition for its own sake.
Hamilton does this world building as well as anyone ever has or could. He's very, very good at it. Maybe too good for his own good. Maybe he knows how good he is at this all too well and has fallen a little too much in love with his own world-building talent.
One thing that Pandora's Star desperately needed and apparently didn't get was an editor sitting down with the author and line-editing the manuscript. It would have been a tedious but simple enough task to boil two hundred or even three hundred pages out of these 988 pages, to the novel's literary benefit.
And who knows—if Judas Unchained suffers from the same degree of bloat, the two volumes could have gotten rid of five hundred or even six hundred unnecessary and literarily counterproductive pages by tough line editing and have been published, and more importantly structured, as one admittedly huge twelve hundred page novel.
It has been done, you know. War and Peace. Finnegans Wake. Okay, price-wise it may not be feasible any more by conventional means. But there is a way around it that has been used and that could be adopted—what my French publisher did with the mass market edition of Russian Spring and with other long novels as well. They broke it into two volumes without hiding that this was one continuous novel and published them simultaneously. You could buy volume one and read it before you decided whether you wanted to go on, and if you did, you could buy the second volume immediately, or you could buy both at one time, or, in the case of Russian Spring, the two volumes in a fancy boxed set.
These were paperbacks, but there's no reason it couldn't be done likewise with hardcovers at great and obvious advantage to the potential readers, but at even greater but less obvious advantage to the writer.
Peter Hamilton's Pandora's Star, and Judas Unchained, demonstrate the reason why. Pandora's Star suffers from the bloat described above. I've opined that Judas Unchained might suffer from the same to the same degree, but when I finally finished reading Pandora's Star, I was very loath to try to find out, for I realized that the bloat slowing down the story in Judas Unchained might be even worse.
Because it would almost have to be worse.
The last part of Pandora's Star concerns an interstellar war between the Commonwealth and the aliens of the solar system in question, the terrorists-against-the hidden-alien-manipulator plot, and the multi-planet odyssey. But the book ends with none of these stories resolved, and with—I swear I am not making this up—a literal cliff-hanger, after 988 pages.
The reason I read Pandora's Star first before considering Judas Unchained was because I thought Judas Unchained would be unreadable to anyone who hadn't. But what if I was wrong? What if Hamilton felt compelled, and not unreasonably, to do the sort of thing that Meaney did in the third volume of the Nulapeiron cycle and bring the reader who had not read Pandora's Star up to speed on 988 pages of back story?
Literarily speaking, damned if he did, and damned if he didn't, and currently I'm most reluctant to read Judas Unchained to find out. Because if he did, Judas Unchained is likely to crawl like a snail for the reader who has read Pandora's Star, and if he didn't, the reader who hasn't will be utterly lost.
But, assuming there isn't going to be a third installment, if Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained had been conceived, and more importantly written, as one long novel, not only would that inherently paradoxical problem have vanished, but another hundred or two hundred pages of back story stuff in Judas Unchained would never even have had to be written in draft. And with the line editing mentioned above, that one big Kahuna could be brought down to a thousand pages—again to its literary benefit, not at all for the sake of commercial compromise.
Each of the existing two separate novels are almost that long already, and yet somehow commercially viable—or so at least the publisher hopes—at that length. And even if the single thousand page version were not, the French solution not only solves the problem nicely, but ends up selling more copies overall.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Those who adapt survive.
And in the case of Hamilton's grand opus, a little evolutionary marketing thinking on the part of the publisher, probably in Britain where this work was originally published, and some tough editorial evolutionary pressure in setting a thousand page limit for the final version, would probably have turned unfortunate commercial constraint into literary virtue.
River of Gods by Ian McDonald is nowhere near as long as either of the Hamilton books, though it is a long novel by today's commercial parameters, 597 pages. But Pyr, which somehow manages to keep doing this, has kept the hardcover price down to the magic twenty-five dollars.
It, too, was first published in Britain, in 2004, where it won the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel, was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and even the Worldcon's Hugo—as well it should have been.
I don't place that much credence in such awards or nominations, but River of Gods is a masterpiece, I can't think of a better science fiction novel I've read in years. It should have won all of the above, as well as whatever other such bowling trophies were available.
Certainly it should have been eagerly and immediately gobbled up by any American publisher favored with a look at the manuscript or the British galleys. But it wasn't. The so-called major American SF lines passed, and there was no US edition at all for two years until Pyr once more rescued a worthy British novel from Yankee oblivion.
Why?
I've written and complained and even tried to explain this sort of thing before, but when it comes to River of Gods I find it totally outrageous. This novel is a masterpiece of science fiction by any meaningful standard and even some that are not. No slur on Hamilton at all, but River of Gods is superior to Pandora's Star or presumably Judas Unchained—the point being that it is therefore proven not to be commercially unviable because of length. Moreover, McDonald had already published several excellent science fiction novels in the United States, if perhaps nothing quite on this level. So commercial pricing and unit cost constraints don't seem to be the reason why this novel had trouble finding an American publisher.
Why?
Literarily it certainly makes no sense, and given the in-group award and nominations it makes no sense either in terms of hitting the so-called “fan base.” If Del Rey could bring out Judas Unchained as an American hardcover, why wouldn't a major established American publisher be eager to publish River of Gods, a literarily superior novel, a good deal shorter, a Hugo nominee off the British edition, and therefore with a potentially wider readership?
In the end, the only answer I can think of is political. British science fiction writers have been complaining of the difficulty of getting their work published in the United States for some time now, but that's not what I mean by political; it can't be, since both McDonald and Hamilton are in the same UK boat there.
But River of Gods is the great SF novel about India. It isn'
t just set in a near future India, it is about a future India; deeply, completely, and on a multiplicity of levels, from high government and scientific circles, to show biz, to religious and mystical complexities, to the lowest sleazoid levels of the Indian underworld.
Moreover, this is an extrapolated future in which what we now know as “India” has fractured into several independent states, two of which, thanks to the failure of the monsoon due to global warming, end up in a “water war."
River of Gods is also a science fiction novel that delves deeply and cogently into the question of the evolution of Artificial Intelligences, moving toward Vernor Vinge's “Singularity,” the asymptotic moment when their self-evolving advancement takes them so far beyond humanity that we can no longer even comprehend what they are and they become the gods of our puny reality and we become pets or go extinct.
McDonald not only demolishes this notion, but does so by turning it around emotionally and theologically, and does so from a Hindu perspective.
I will not attempt a plot summary of this wonderfully complex novel told from the viewpoints of several well-realized characters, except to say that all the plot threads—hard science, the Indian soap opera genre, the rise and fall and rise of two petty gangsters, the discovery of an artifact from the future at a La Grange point, Artificial Intelligence, Indian politics, Hinduism, future Indian police procedural—interweave in the manner of a Bach fugue, or indeed in the manner of the polytheistic complexities of Hinduism itself, entirely successfully in structural and thematic terms. And yes, it all does come together in a most satisfying apotheosis at the end.
When my novel Russian Spring was published in the then Soviet Union I went to Moscow for the launch, and several people there paid me the great compliment of telling me they couldn't believe it wasn't written by a Russian.
The Times of India is quoted on the cover of the Pyr hardcover of River of Gods saying “Not bad for a Firang (non-Indian) who has oodles of imagination and chutzpah."
Not bad? When an Indian writer produces a novel with such a level of immersion in the extrapolated complexities of the future of his own culture, I will eat lamb shaag topped with chocolate ice cream.
McDonald takes the reader to a level of immersion in the fine detail, texture, consciousness, pop culture, very being, of an extrapolated non-western culture that is utterly awesome—and, for a novelist occasionally attempting to do something like the same sort of thing, daunting. The novel reads as if Ian McDonald spent a year or more wandering around India ripped on ganja and LSD with an American Express card and a mobile high speed internet connection.
It's difficult to avoid believing that this very literary and cultural virtue is the source of the political reason that the major American SF lines let a novel of this caliber go unpublished in the United States for two years until Pyr rescued it. I have the awful feeling that the nationality of the writer had nothing to do with it, but rather it was the collective editorial judgment of the corporate publishing powers that be in the United States that an American readership would not be interested in such total immersion—not only in the reality of the future of a Third World entity like India, but in a future Indian culture no less advanced and complex than any near future imagined for their own.
If I am right about this, and they were right about the degree of pa-rochialism of the American readership, of the supposedly visionary science fiction reader at that, then it's a lot more than the literary culture of the United States that's now in deep dark doody.
The usual fulsome praise of one novelist to another in such circumstances is “I wish I had written that.” No way. Speaking as a novelist who has set fiction in an extrapolated Soviet Union, Gaul at war with Rome and Julius Caesar, Mexico at the time of Cortes’ conquest, presently the Hadj and a civil war in Nigeria, it's not just “I wish I had written that,” but “how in hell did McDonald do it?"
But one thing I can say with confidence is that a work of fiction like River of Gods, even if it were twice as long—and as I approached the end of it I found myself sorry that it wasn't—could never ever have been written as a trilogy or a duology or anything but a single novel, and for two reasons in a feedback relationship with each other.
It is the novelistic structure that not only holds such a long and even somewhat discursive novel like River of Gods together and allows it all to be brought together in a final epiphany—a structure that simply cannot be applied to a novel “cycle” or “sequence,” but allows such a literary work to read “faster” or “shorter” than the middle or concluding novel of even the best trilogy because there is no clogging of the flow by the introduction of necessary back story.
A trilogy or novel sequence simply cannot be structured like one big free-standing novel. By its very nature, such a novel sequence can only be a compromise between practical commercial and informative necessity and novelistic literary structure. Sometimes it can work rather well on its own terms, as with Meaney's Nulapeiron Sequence, but compromise it must be or fail even on those terms.
And what a long well-structured novel like River of Gods, free-standing unto itself and literarily uncompromised by current market restraints on length can be, is what will be lost if works of such magnitude should become commercially unpublishable.
Copyright © 2006 Norman Spinrad
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SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR
With WorldCon over things quiet down. Here's a look ahead to next year's cons. Plan now for social weekends with your favorite SF authors, editors, artists, and fellow fans. For an explanation of con(vention)s, a sample of SF folksongs, info on fanzines and clubs, and how to get a later, longer list of cons, send me an SASE (self-addressed, stamped #10 [business] envelope) at 10 Hill #22-L, Newark NJ 07102. The hot line is (973) 242-5999. If a machine answers (with a list of the week's cons), leave a message and I'll call back on my nickel. When writing cons, send an SASE. For free listings, tell me of your con 6 months out. Look for me at cons behind the Filthy Pierre badge, playing a musical keyboard.—Erwin
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SEPTEMBER 2006
22—24—Foolscap. For info, write: c/o Box 2461, Seattle WA 98111. Or phone: (973) 242-5999 (10 AM to 10 PM, not collect). (Web) foolscapcon.org. (E-mail) chair@foolscapcon.org. Con will be held in: Bellevue WA (if city omitted, same as in address) at the Sheraton. Guests will include: none announced. For SF and fantasy on paper: writing and art.
22—24—FenCon, Box 560576, The Colony TX 75056. fencon.org. Dallas TX area. A.D. Foster, Butcher, L. Watt-Evans.
22—24—RimCon Victoria, Box 32108, Victoria BC V8P 4H0. Michael Sheard (Admiral Ozzle, Robin of Sherwood).
28—Oct. 1—BoucherCon, c/o Box 55023, Madison WI 53705. bouchercon.com. Robt. B. Parker. World mystery con.
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OCTOBER 2006
5—8—Archon, Box 8387, St. Louis MO 63132. archonstl.org. Collinsville IL (near St. Louis MO). E. Moon, Vic Milán.
6—8—AlbaCon, Box 2085, Albany NY 12220. albacon.org. Crowne Plaza. Peter David, Omar Rayyan.
6—8—ConClave, Box 2915, Ann Arbor MI 48106. conclavesf.org. Crowne Plaza Detroit Airport, Romulus MI. C. Asaro.
6—8—Another Anime Con, Box 692, Nashua NH 03064. anotheranimecon.com. Radisson, Manchester NH. Howard Taylor.
13—15—AngliCon, Box 75536, Seattle WA 98175. (206) 789-2748. Greater Seattle area. British media.
20—22—CapClave, 7113 Waybe Dr., Annandale VA 22003. capclave.org. Hilton, Silver Spring MD (near DC).
27—29—NecronomiCon, Box 2213, Plant City FL 33564. stonehill.org/necro.html. Tampa FL. Lots of hall costumes.
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NOVEMBER 2006
3—5—World Fantasy Con, Box 27277, Austin TX 78755. worldfantasy.org. Renaissance. Cook, Duncan, Denton, Lord.
10—12—WindyCon, Box 184, Palatine IL 60078. windycon.org. Wyndham, Rosemont (Chicago) IL. McDevitt, T. Smith.
10—12—AstronomiCon, Bo
x 31701, Rochester NY 14603. (585) 342-4697. astronomicon.info. Clarion. Guests TBA.
10—12—United Fan Con, 26 Darrell Dr., Randolph MA 02368. (781) 986-8736. Marriott, Springfield MA. Media SF.
10—12—EclectiCon, Box 3165, Bayonne NJ 07002. eclecticon@rcn.com. Ramada, Newark NJ. Media fanzines. 18+ only.
17—19—PhilCon, Box 8303, Philadelphia PA 19101. philcon.org. Wyndham Franklin Plaza. 70th anniversary PhilCon.
24—26—Darkover, Box 7203, Silver Spring MD 20907. darkovercon.com. Holiday Inn Timonium, Baltimore MD. Kurtz.
24—26—BeNeLuxCon, Steenstraat 16, Puth 6155 KH, Netherlands. ncsf.nl. Grand Hotel de L'Empereur, Maastricht.
24—26—COsine, Box 50618, Colorado Springs CO 80949. firstfridayfandom.org. Colorado Springs CO.
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JANUARY 2007
19—21—Arisia, Bldg. 600, #322, 1 Kendall Sq., Cambridge MA 02139. arisia.org. Park Plaza, Boston MA. SF/fantasy.
19—21—ConFusion, Box 8284, Ann Arbor MI 48107. stilyagi.org. Marriott, Troy MI.
26—28—VeriCon, H-R SF Assn., 4 University Hall, Cambridge MA 02138. vericon.org. Harvard University.
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FEBRUARY 2007
16—18—Boskone, Box 807, Framingham MA 01701. boskone.org. Westin Copley Plaza, Boston MA. Hub's oldest con.
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AUGUST 2007
2—5—Archon, Box 8387, St. Louis MO 63132. archonstl.org. Collinsville IL. 2007 No. American SF Convention. $60+.
30—Sep. 3—Nippon 2007, Box 314, Annapolis Jct. MD 20701. nippon2007.org. Yokohama Japan. WorldCon. $180+.
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SCIENCE FICTION SUDOKU SOLUTION
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