But it wouldn't be a Schroeder novel without a stunning setting, and Spyre is just that—an intricate and fully realised steampunk world-within-a-world. And it's not just worldbuilding for worldbuilding's sake, not the fruitless march of Harrison's clomping foot; the structure of Spyre informs its politics, and the politics drive the plot while the structure throws obstacles in the paths of the characters. Spyre also allows Schroeder to slip in some subtle allegorical comments on the insular narrow-mindedness of another more familiar world that is threatening to fall apart beneath the neglect and blinkered greed of its inhabitants.
Most of all, it's fun. Schroeder balances the ‘hard’ gosh-wow setting with a human plot that keeps moving the pages, and while he may not be one of sf's great prose stylists, he writes more than well enough to capture the imagination of any but the most jaded reader. Queen of Candesce is a fine second instalment to what promises to be a memorable series.
Copyright © 2007 Paul Raven
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A MULTITUDE OF IMAGINABLE FUTURES—Andy Hedgecock talks to Gary Gibson about faith, power, transformation and Co-codamol
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After a desultory rummage through several bookshelves, a recent visitor to our home asked whether the books on secularism and rationality belonged to me. When I told her they were indeed mine, she jumped to the conclusion the titles concerning religion and mythology must belong to my partner. When I told her, no, these too were mine, her comment was “Talk about hedging your bets."
It was a salutary reminder of the common and enduring idea that a commitment to rationality precludes openness to mythic modes of understanding the human experience, and disallows recognition of the human desire for transcendence.
The Glasgow-based writer Gary Gibson refuses to be cowed by preconceived notions about the compatibility of concerns, ideas and themes. He has produced three novels to date: Angel Stations (2004), Against Gravity (2005) and, just published at the time of writing, Stealing Light. His slickly paced and gritty space opera plots are crammed with technological invention—nanotech based on the interface of organic brain and machine, faster-than-light travel, interstellar trade, rogue AIs and the impact of advanced alien intelligence on human development.
The graphic, cinematic sweep of Gibson's books has, inevitably, led to comparisons with the works of Richard Morgan, Peter Hamilton and Neal Asher. Reliable points of reference, but beneath Gibson's obvious relish for scientific speculation is a strand of writing concerned with the continuities in the human condition; a strand that explores the nature of humanity and highlights our attempts to understand the world through myth and storytelling.
"What's interesting to me is that human nature is the one great constant in life, regardless of unceasing technological and cultural change. We're still driven by the same desires and emotions that we have been for many millennia. Part of that nature seems to be a deep need for transcendence: the desire to believe there's some grand plan of existence, some hidden purpose to creation."
All the books acknowledge this deep need, but Angel Stations and Stealing Light also deal with the enduring and pernicious power of organised religion and its ability to compete for influence, even against the most voracious corporate interests and even in the most advanced technological societies. I ask Gibson what draws him to this theme.
"Appealing to spirits and gods gives those who believe in them a sense of control over their lives, and that's where organised religion comes in—they represent the people who claim to have the answers. It's that need for answers that pretty much guarantees that if our descendants are anything like us, our history will continue to be a war between rationalism and superstition.
"What's surprising is how often sf has been seen as a predictor of a kind of super-rationalist utopia where everyone abandons religion and superstition in favour of some vaguely imagined society free of the pettier human drives. Yet some of the best sf around has used the same transformative appeal found in religion. I'd cite Dune, Greg Bear's Blood Music, 2001, Childhood's End and the whole Vingean Singularity idea to this end—and all of these influence the stuff I write. That's not by any means to suggest these approaches are religious, but it's fair to say they all involve asking roughly similar questions about the universe and our place in it, but provide wildly divergent answers and approaches to those questions.
"I say all this despite being a very atheistic person who has a lot of trouble accepting why anyone would be religious in the modern world. I agree with the thesis that it's often really more a way of identifying yourself as a member of a particular community or group: a way, perhaps, for the disaffected and disenfranchised to gain a sense of kinship and belonging, the same need for a sense of purpose that drives some to send money to evangelists or worship statues."
Sudden transformative change
Having identified seemingly contradictory impulses underpinning much of the best sf, Gibson goes on to point out that a worldview grounded simultaneously in religious faith and scientific optimism may be less paradoxical than is at first apparent.
"The ideas in these books are, perhaps, not entirely unlike certain aspects of religious belief that focus on some imagined future time when the just will be rewarded and the world made new. Sf has often been about embracing radically transformative events, where mainstream writing has often focused on preventing such implied threats to the existing status quo. I'm not the first to point this out, and I won't be the last. So to focus on religion, and its inevitable influence on the future worlds I think up, isn't really so surprising since I think it's an inevitable part of any imaginable future social environment."
Gibson's take on the philosophical conservatism of traditional literary is similar to that of the cultural commentator Tzvetan Todorov, who feels a key function of fantasy is the expression of cultural desire and disenchantment. It's possible, of course, to think of mainstream literary fiction that tackles themes of social, political, psychological and spiritual transformation—John Cowper Powys’ Weymouth Sands and Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities spring to mind—but there are few writers who address these issues head-on and with the wit and intensity of the best sf.
Not that Gibson sees sf readers and writers as having a privileged insight into the balance of rationality and transcendence, nor does he feel they are immune from the odd bout of irrationality, but he does feel the genre opens up the possibility of an essentially optimistic and progressive world view.
"With our desire for fiction that often features sudden transformative change, whether through the Singularity, or contact with aliens, or the desire to vicariously reinvent ourselves through post apocalyptic scenarios, readers of sf are by no means invulnerable to the same desires that drive the rest of humanity. Obviously we tend to express them in quite different ways. And, as much as I believe in the absolute necessity for scientific rationalism, I can't help remembering some of the most brilliant people can sometimes also be the most irrational—witness Newton and his alchemy. However, it must be said that rather than having an interest in the transformative power of gods and spirits, I like to think the majority of people who read my stuff are more focused on the rather more authentically transformative power of technology, both now and in the future. It's where our destiny lies, but it won't be without a fight, and that's a good source of conflict for story ideas."
Like many sf writers of his generation—and several earlier generations, come to that—Gary Gibson was drawn to fantastic fiction by a Robert Heinlein story.
"There was a library with a copy of Have Spacesuit Will Travel waiting for me on a bookshelf. I can't remember how old I was, but I was pretty young. I read it and I was a goner from that moment."
Having already acknowledged an enthusiasm for work by Frank Herbert, Greg Bear, Arthur C. Clarke and Vernor Vinge, I ask Gibson which writers from outside the sf genre have i
nfluenced or excited him.
"I think a lot of sf and genre writers are fans of Hunter S. Thompson, because of the insane energy in his writing. It's a real shame he's gone. The world needs Hunter in Baghdad, in the Green Zone. He certainly excited me, but I don't know if he influenced me, except in the sense I wished I could write more like him, with that manic energy. Beyond that, I don't know if I can really cite ‘influences'; it's more like a weird osmotic absorption of ideas and concepts floating around in my head I've filched from everything from the last book I read, to New Scientist or Fortean Times, or wherever."
Explore and populate the unknown
Gibson's latest novel Stealing Light has a multilayered plot and pace to burn. Set in the 25th Century, it concerns the colliding stories of former military pilot Dakota Merrick and a secretive alien race, the Shoal. Dakota is a ‘machine head’ with a brain rewired to allow access to a sprawling neural network encompassing intelligences artificial and organic; and the Shoal have a monopoly on faster-than-light travel and, therefore, a virtual stranglehold on intergalactic commerce. Rich in compelling and idiosyncratic characters, complex plotting and an infectious delight in baroque and dizzying technologies, it's a classic slice of Space Opera.
"Space Operas appeal primarily because they provide the widest possible canvas for storytelling and the means to create the same sense of widescreen spectacle that first made the form popular several decades ago. They're a future mythology and embody the very human desire to explore and populate the unknown with our imagination. Once you take humanity off this one tiny ball of rock and mud, the possibilities are enormous. You can do that in a very plot-driven way—should you choose—without compromising the themes of your story. That can make it very, very satisfying to write. Besides, it appears stunningly obvious to me that humanity has some kind of long-term future in space in the coming centuries, and the fundamental appeal of stories of ‘What Might Be Out There’ will continue to find an audience for a very, very long time."
If the writer and scholar Karen Armstrong is correct in her assertion that myths are all about “making a painful rite of passage from ... one state of mind to another ... [bringing] fresh insight to our lost and damaged world” then what are the fundamental uncertainties driving Gary Gibson's future mythology?
"The idea of monopoly, basically; which is another word for power. Power is about controlling resources, whether informational or physical, and the current Middle-East situation is clearly about controlling resources. The natural response to monopoly—whether over oil or an imagined FTL drive—is to break it if there's an advantage to be had in doing so.
"We've got private individuals and companies launching people into low-orbit and planning moon missions. At the same time, devices like Hubble are constantly expanding our knowledge of nearby stars, and now there's a search for extrasolar planets capable of supporting life. It's simply impossible for a species like ours—with its inherent obsession with mythologising its own history—not to tell stories that give us a grasp on the inherent possibilities of such developments.
"The space race isn't over. In fact, it's barely even begun, apart from a very brief, politically-forced glitch from the late Fifties to early Seventies. I don't want to sound too flag-waving about it all, but the fact is there are people out there crazy and willing enough to build their own ships to get into near-orbit, then further, and they're almost certainly driven by a sense of their own potential mythology. In other words, we're in a present with a multitude of imaginable futures, and it's in our nature to tell stories about them. The more we know about extrasolar planets, the more we'll be able to imagine what might or might not be there. That means enormous mythopoeic potential for writers."
I was flying
Stealing Light represents a shift of gear for Gibson. It's both more polished and more intense than his earlier work, a fact that seems to have as much to do with the context in which it was written as Gibson's growing confidence and skill as a writer. Gibson injured his back last year and had to give up his day-job, in which he works as a graphic designer, for several months. Housebound, and suffering from considerable lumbar pain, he immersed himself in his third book to an extent that hadn't been possible with its predecessors.
"I wrote Stealing Light under a certain degree of duress but, if anything, it's proved to me how important it is to be able to concentrate on a book without having to deal with a day job—if at all possible. Having all that time to write helped me when it came to putting the book together and to get deep into its guts. I started thinking of how many artists prepare for a painting with preliminary sketches, alternative version of a work, and realised it was okay to draft, redraft and re-imagine.
"I read M. Simpson's biography of Douglas Adams a while back, where the author describes how Adams began his writing career sleeping on borrowed couches. He was effectively homeless despite early sporadic sales prior to the runaway success of Hitchhikers, while friends who were initially as ambitious to be successful writers did the ‘sensible thing’ and got decent day jobs in order to support themselves: they were never heard of again. This came very much to the fore of my thoughts when I was housebound, and unable to distract myself from the writing process: I realised just how much of a difference it makes to be focused solely on that process via my very direct experience.
"At the beginning of this period, I stopped Stealing Light for about a month, in order to radically redraft and lengthen the synopsis to three or four times its original size. I thought 25,000 words was a lot, but I've been told there are many writers out there with longer synopses to work from. It was at this point I understood why some writers lock themselves into isolated cabins for weeks or months at a time to finish a book; it's almost like entering an altered state of mind when you're that focused. “It has to be said I was pretty much out of my head on very strong painkillers and various other prescription drugs during the writing process and I sometimes wonder if they had an influence, enough so I briefly considered putting together an acknowledgements page thanking the makers of Co-codamol, Ibuprofen and others for their influence on the story. I was flying."
Since we've entered the murky waters of the writing process, I ask Gibson if his future mythologies are shaped by research, or whether his stories emerge from thought experiments, with the detailed research filling out the narrative framework.
"An article about how the dinosaurs might have been wiped out by gamma ray bursters was the seed, certainly, for Angel Stations. Although there's a certain degree of imagined science, I do at least try and develop a real-world rationale for some things. I think it's more that there's a couple of hundred vague ideas floating in my head for years, then I read an article or see some piece of information on the net or in the papers, and suddenly something clicks: an idea and a piece of data come together in an ‘aha’ moment. I read part of Frank Tipler's Physics of Immortality for Against Gravity, and Guantanamo Bay was very much in the news at the time, and both had an influence on that.
"I think it depends on the kind of story you're telling: Stealing Light, on the other hand, didn't involve a huge amount of research—outside of fact-checking on the Magellanic Clouds, and some interesting articles I dug up on certain stellar phenomena I can't talk about without giving too much of the story away."
Copyright © 2007 Andy Hedgecock
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