Nice Setting, Shame About The Characters
May. 8th, 2011 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselSep 2010
Iron Sunrise - Charles Stross - Orbit, 2005
* * *
In my previous review of The Family Trade, I expressed the hope that Stross' science fiction books would be better than his rather middle-of-the-road fantasy. Well, this is one such, and yes, his SF ideas are certainly more original and entertaining than his fantasy ones. However the unsophisticated characterisation is still a problem.
The setting (shared with the predecessor novel Singularity Sky) is unique and clever. Some time in the not too distant future, a technological singularity has led to the formation of a super-AI called the Eschaton with god-like powers. For reasons known only to itself, it has dumped groups of humans on habitable planets with just enough technology to enable them to survive if they work together. This includes plans for faster-than-light space-ships. In effect, it is an insta-galactic federation, neatly bypassing the centuries of societal and technological evolution that would otherwise need to be explained and enabling space opera stories to be told with recognisably twenty-first century human beings.
And a space opera it certainly is. The story opens with the destruction of an entire planet - New Moscow - when its star explodes. This is beautifully written, the scientifically literate description of the explosion and its aftermath only underlining the utter horror of the loss of millions of human lives. It soon becomes apparent that this was no natural event but a deliberate act of mass genocide. And one that is about to be compounded - an old self-defence system has triggered, setting off an automated sub-light attack on New Moscow's nearby trade rival New Dresden. The missiles can be halted by the concerted action of members of New Moscow's government in exile. But someone is killing them off.
Unfortunately this superb set-up is explored with less than stellar characters. There is Rachel, a competent government agent who personality-wise is an almost exact clone of Miriam Beckwith from The Family Trade (it seems that Stross is a bit of a one-trick pony when it comes to female leads); her loving, supportive, and deeply dull husband Martin; a goth teenager with attitude problems called Wednesday; and Frank, a washed-up reporter (also like Miriam). Of these, Wednesday is by far the most interesting, but her agency in the story is undermined by her invisible friend and instructor Herman. The baddies, whom Stross introduces in cut-scenes which dispel any mystery as to who they might be, are suitably nasty but are based on an all-too-familiar stereotype. Though I rather liked their motive which arises naturally from the story background.
The problem is that the characters are rather ordinary but the universe in which he has located them is not. There are serious problems with a book which starts with an exploding star but where a good proportion of the text in the run-up to the finale is devoted to the problems of living on board a luxury class spaceship. This creates a sense of bathos which extends into the rather pedestrian ending.
The shallow characterisation is a shame and seems to be a flaw of which Stross is himself aware. This is the second book of his with an elaborate background of clever ideas that justify the use of off-the-peg protagonists. It would have been more challenging to try to imagine what human beings might be like after several centuries of development, but Stross' imagination seems largely limited to the physical rather than the mental realm. This is not, of course, a problem that is exactly unknown in SF - most golden-age writers were better at the ideas than the characters used to explore them - but it is a pity.
Iron Sunrise - Charles Stross - Orbit, 2005
* * *
In my previous review of The Family Trade, I expressed the hope that Stross' science fiction books would be better than his rather middle-of-the-road fantasy. Well, this is one such, and yes, his SF ideas are certainly more original and entertaining than his fantasy ones. However the unsophisticated characterisation is still a problem.
The setting (shared with the predecessor novel Singularity Sky) is unique and clever. Some time in the not too distant future, a technological singularity has led to the formation of a super-AI called the Eschaton with god-like powers. For reasons known only to itself, it has dumped groups of humans on habitable planets with just enough technology to enable them to survive if they work together. This includes plans for faster-than-light space-ships. In effect, it is an insta-galactic federation, neatly bypassing the centuries of societal and technological evolution that would otherwise need to be explained and enabling space opera stories to be told with recognisably twenty-first century human beings.
And a space opera it certainly is. The story opens with the destruction of an entire planet - New Moscow - when its star explodes. This is beautifully written, the scientifically literate description of the explosion and its aftermath only underlining the utter horror of the loss of millions of human lives. It soon becomes apparent that this was no natural event but a deliberate act of mass genocide. And one that is about to be compounded - an old self-defence system has triggered, setting off an automated sub-light attack on New Moscow's nearby trade rival New Dresden. The missiles can be halted by the concerted action of members of New Moscow's government in exile. But someone is killing them off.
Unfortunately this superb set-up is explored with less than stellar characters. There is Rachel, a competent government agent who personality-wise is an almost exact clone of Miriam Beckwith from The Family Trade (it seems that Stross is a bit of a one-trick pony when it comes to female leads); her loving, supportive, and deeply dull husband Martin; a goth teenager with attitude problems called Wednesday; and Frank, a washed-up reporter (also like Miriam). Of these, Wednesday is by far the most interesting, but her agency in the story is undermined by her invisible friend and instructor Herman. The baddies, whom Stross introduces in cut-scenes which dispel any mystery as to who they might be, are suitably nasty but are based on an all-too-familiar stereotype. Though I rather liked their motive which arises naturally from the story background.
The problem is that the characters are rather ordinary but the universe in which he has located them is not. There are serious problems with a book which starts with an exploding star but where a good proportion of the text in the run-up to the finale is devoted to the problems of living on board a luxury class spaceship. This creates a sense of bathos which extends into the rather pedestrian ending.
The shallow characterisation is a shame and seems to be a flaw of which Stross is himself aware. This is the second book of his with an elaborate background of clever ideas that justify the use of off-the-peg protagonists. It would have been more challenging to try to imagine what human beings might be like after several centuries of development, but Stross' imagination seems largely limited to the physical rather than the mental realm. This is not, of course, a problem that is exactly unknown in SF - most golden-age writers were better at the ideas than the characters used to explore them - but it is a pity.