Going to Extremes
Dec. 3rd, 2005 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvessel31 Aug 2005
Alternate Realities - C.J. Cherryh - Tor, 2000
* * * / * * * * * / * * * *
My final US import, this book is a compendium of three early short novels (Port Eternity, Voyager in Night and Wave without a Shore). I've always liked C.J. Cherryh for her plausible and intense depictions of what life on board a spaceship might actually be like and her subtle subversions of standard golden-age science fiction tropes (the women are almost invariably strong and the men are gentle, sensitive and damaged and must be looked after), whilst finding some of her stories and obsessions somewhat repetitive. These strengths and weaknesses are both in evidence here, but there is an additional streak of philosophical speculation in two of the three stories which lifts them above the normal run of her novels, and indeed of SF generally.
To deal with the (relative) dud first - Port Eternity is clearly a fore-runner of Cyteen and deals with the same concept of azis, artificial humans grown in vats to have certain personality types (or psych-sets). I have always had a problem with azis - in my view anyone who looks like a human being, acts like a human being and feels like a human being should be treated as one regardless of their origin, and so for me the citizens of Union with their azi slaves are science-fictional nazis with whom I cannot under any circumstances sympathise, despite Cherryh's best efforts to make me do so. That applies to the rich aristocrat Dela Kirn, on whose spaceship the story is set. The ship's crew is made up of azis whom Dela has had made with psych-sets corresponding to the major characters in the Arthurian legends. Whilst Dela is on a cruise with her latest lover, the ship is hit by a space-time anomaly and ends up trapped in a pocket universe containing a bizarre station-cum-junk heap. Then something starts banging on the hull... The story is essentially about how the azis deal with this situation given the archetypal impositions of their psych-sets, a situation that is complicated when they gain access to the original legends on which their personalities were based. The set-up is intriguing and doesn't go in exactly the directions you expect, but there is too much repetitive emphasis on the fear that they feel and the nurturing that they give to one another and their human masters. There is also a distinct sense of punch-pulling, which is a fault that I have noticed in other Cherryh novels. Although she is not afraid to put her characters under emotional strees, I think that sometimes she gets so involved in them that she cannot bring herself to do anything truly nasty to them, and this is particularly obvious in the climactic action sequences of this novel.
No such problems with Voyager in Night, where the things she does to her three main characters are quite horrible. For a start two of them are dead by chapter three. Rafe Murray, his sister Jillan and Jillan's husband Paul are the only crew on a small asteroid mining ship which gets captured by an alien vessel. In the process Jillan and Paul die, but their bodies and brains are scanned by <>, the disembodied intelligence that runs the ship, and recreated as constructs of light and computer code with all the thought-processes of the originals. Rafe, the sole survivor, also gets scanned (an extremely painful process) and encounters his own construct as well as those of Jillan and Paul. Which leads, as one might expect, to a certain amount of tension. Things are complicated still further by the fact that the mental stress that the constructs undergo sometimes causes their programming to malfunction, creating deranged and dangerous personae whose madness can infect and damage other constructs. In addition, <> can create new constructs from backup whenever it wishes, as well as creating additional backups of both the constructs and the original Rafe. And there are other entities on the ship wishing to wrest control from <>, and they get hold of a damaged version of Paul and start to use it (him?) for their own ends...
This enjoyably head-spinning scenario is well plotted (though you need your wits about you to keep track of the various versions of the constructs). I particularly liked the way in which Rafe's, Jillan's and Paul's cosy relationships are ruthlessly deconstructed in an attempt to fortify them against the psychological attacks of the rogue Paul. All in all, a very clever story which plausibly investigates the psychological consequences if we ever do manage to be able to transfer human personalities into computers. It has a nice twist in the tale, too.
Wave without a Shore isn't quite as successful but starts from an equally intriguing premise, similar to the one explored in Ursula Le Guin's interesting recent novelette, Solitude. The people of the planet of Freedom have taken the power of positive thinking to its logical extreme. They have developed a philosophy in which the important thing is to have one's own reality - elements of other people's realities can be accepted into one's own, but to lose your reality completely is to become invisible, to cease to exist. One way in which this can happen is to acknowledge the existence of the blue-robed aliens that throng Kierkegaard, the capital city. Herrin Law, an arrogant but talented sculptor, is employed by his university friend Waden Jenks, the son of the planetary governor, to create a statue in the central square of Kierkegaard. Relishing the opportunity to impose his reality on both Jenks and the citizens, Herrin sets about his task. Jenks, however, has his own reality to impose and in the ensuing clash Herrin comes to realise that perhaps his reality is not as wonderful as he had thought...
Although Cherryh makes a good fist of constructing a society based on solipsism, one can't help feeling that the crisis that eventually occurs should have happened long ago - simply ignoring things that one doesn't want to be real is such a blatantly stupid approach to life that a society based on it would surely not be stable. One obvious weakness in the story is that the society of the human invisibles isn't adequately explored - why haven't they banded together, perhaps allied with the aliens, and taken over? Also, if everybody has their own realities, how did the consensus that the aliens don't exist come about in the first place - surely this would have involved someone imposing their reality on everyone else, in which case how come she or he is never mentioned? Nonetheless, the question of how far we should open ourselves up to external reality is an interesting one - as the metaphor of the novel's title makes clear, if we accept too much, the wave of our personality may spread so much on the infinite deeps of external reality that it eventually disappears altogether. The fact is that we all have our limits, our own constructions of reality which give our own selves meaning, and this novel nicely points up the dangers if our constructions get too elaborate. Purveyors of religions, pseudo-sciences, philosophies of life and other uncheckable truths, take note.
So - two classic SF tales and one okay one. Strongly recommended.
Alternate Realities - C.J. Cherryh - Tor, 2000
* * * / * * * * * / * * * *
My final US import, this book is a compendium of three early short novels (Port Eternity, Voyager in Night and Wave without a Shore). I've always liked C.J. Cherryh for her plausible and intense depictions of what life on board a spaceship might actually be like and her subtle subversions of standard golden-age science fiction tropes (the women are almost invariably strong and the men are gentle, sensitive and damaged and must be looked after), whilst finding some of her stories and obsessions somewhat repetitive. These strengths and weaknesses are both in evidence here, but there is an additional streak of philosophical speculation in two of the three stories which lifts them above the normal run of her novels, and indeed of SF generally.
To deal with the (relative) dud first - Port Eternity is clearly a fore-runner of Cyteen and deals with the same concept of azis, artificial humans grown in vats to have certain personality types (or psych-sets). I have always had a problem with azis - in my view anyone who looks like a human being, acts like a human being and feels like a human being should be treated as one regardless of their origin, and so for me the citizens of Union with their azi slaves are science-fictional nazis with whom I cannot under any circumstances sympathise, despite Cherryh's best efforts to make me do so. That applies to the rich aristocrat Dela Kirn, on whose spaceship the story is set. The ship's crew is made up of azis whom Dela has had made with psych-sets corresponding to the major characters in the Arthurian legends. Whilst Dela is on a cruise with her latest lover, the ship is hit by a space-time anomaly and ends up trapped in a pocket universe containing a bizarre station-cum-junk heap. Then something starts banging on the hull... The story is essentially about how the azis deal with this situation given the archetypal impositions of their psych-sets, a situation that is complicated when they gain access to the original legends on which their personalities were based. The set-up is intriguing and doesn't go in exactly the directions you expect, but there is too much repetitive emphasis on the fear that they feel and the nurturing that they give to one another and their human masters. There is also a distinct sense of punch-pulling, which is a fault that I have noticed in other Cherryh novels. Although she is not afraid to put her characters under emotional strees, I think that sometimes she gets so involved in them that she cannot bring herself to do anything truly nasty to them, and this is particularly obvious in the climactic action sequences of this novel.
No such problems with Voyager in Night, where the things she does to her three main characters are quite horrible. For a start two of them are dead by chapter three. Rafe Murray, his sister Jillan and Jillan's husband Paul are the only crew on a small asteroid mining ship which gets captured by an alien vessel. In the process Jillan and Paul die, but their bodies and brains are scanned by <>, the disembodied intelligence that runs the ship, and recreated as constructs of light and computer code with all the thought-processes of the originals. Rafe, the sole survivor, also gets scanned (an extremely painful process) and encounters his own construct as well as those of Jillan and Paul. Which leads, as one might expect, to a certain amount of tension. Things are complicated still further by the fact that the mental stress that the constructs undergo sometimes causes their programming to malfunction, creating deranged and dangerous personae whose madness can infect and damage other constructs. In addition, <> can create new constructs from backup whenever it wishes, as well as creating additional backups of both the constructs and the original Rafe. And there are other entities on the ship wishing to wrest control from <>, and they get hold of a damaged version of Paul and start to use it (him?) for their own ends...
This enjoyably head-spinning scenario is well plotted (though you need your wits about you to keep track of the various versions of the constructs). I particularly liked the way in which Rafe's, Jillan's and Paul's cosy relationships are ruthlessly deconstructed in an attempt to fortify them against the psychological attacks of the rogue Paul. All in all, a very clever story which plausibly investigates the psychological consequences if we ever do manage to be able to transfer human personalities into computers. It has a nice twist in the tale, too.
Wave without a Shore isn't quite as successful but starts from an equally intriguing premise, similar to the one explored in Ursula Le Guin's interesting recent novelette, Solitude. The people of the planet of Freedom have taken the power of positive thinking to its logical extreme. They have developed a philosophy in which the important thing is to have one's own reality - elements of other people's realities can be accepted into one's own, but to lose your reality completely is to become invisible, to cease to exist. One way in which this can happen is to acknowledge the existence of the blue-robed aliens that throng Kierkegaard, the capital city. Herrin Law, an arrogant but talented sculptor, is employed by his university friend Waden Jenks, the son of the planetary governor, to create a statue in the central square of Kierkegaard. Relishing the opportunity to impose his reality on both Jenks and the citizens, Herrin sets about his task. Jenks, however, has his own reality to impose and in the ensuing clash Herrin comes to realise that perhaps his reality is not as wonderful as he had thought...
Although Cherryh makes a good fist of constructing a society based on solipsism, one can't help feeling that the crisis that eventually occurs should have happened long ago - simply ignoring things that one doesn't want to be real is such a blatantly stupid approach to life that a society based on it would surely not be stable. One obvious weakness in the story is that the society of the human invisibles isn't adequately explored - why haven't they banded together, perhaps allied with the aliens, and taken over? Also, if everybody has their own realities, how did the consensus that the aliens don't exist come about in the first place - surely this would have involved someone imposing their reality on everyone else, in which case how come she or he is never mentioned? Nonetheless, the question of how far we should open ourselves up to external reality is an interesting one - as the metaphor of the novel's title makes clear, if we accept too much, the wave of our personality may spread so much on the infinite deeps of external reality that it eventually disappears altogether. The fact is that we all have our limits, our own constructions of reality which give our own selves meaning, and this novel nicely points up the dangers if our constructions get too elaborate. Purveyors of religions, pseudo-sciences, philosophies of life and other uncheckable truths, take note.
So - two classic SF tales and one okay one. Strongly recommended.