Agatha Christie in Space
Jul. 29th, 2013 12:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselFeb 2013
Jack Glass - Adam Roberts - Gollancz, 2012
* * *
SF novels that are police procedurals are two-a-penny, but how many can you name that are classic locked-room or Agatha Christie-style murder mysteries? For me, the list is embarrassingly short - Isaac Asimov's Robot trilogy (The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn) are the only ones that come immediately to mind. I don't think this is just my ignorance. SF whodunnits are relatively rare, which is a shame and a little puzzling because structurally these genres are well suited to each other. As with police procedurals, the investigatory aspect of a murder mystery allows the author to dump the background for their constructed world in a relatively non-painful way for the reader, particularly if the detective is an outsider themselves. And SF tropes, if properly introduced, will surely permit some interesting new variations on the mechanics of the murder and the motivations of the suspects. Even the readership is ready-made - anyone up for some science fictional mind expansion will surely also enjoy the lateral thinking required to solve a good puzzle (although not necessarily vice versa).
Adam Roberts has clearly noticed this, because he has come up with SF takes on no less than three different styles of mystery - a prison story, a stately home murder and a locked room puzzle - all with a common planet-spanning background. They are not whodunnits, however. We are told in the first couple of pages that the murderer in each case is the notorious criminal, Jack Glass. The challenge to the reader is to work out how. Which is Roberts' first mistake.
For most readers of whodunnits are, I suggest, not primarily interested in the logistical mechanics of the murder, but the people. They want to know about the motivations of the suspects - their back-stories and relationships. Agatha Christie's murder mysteries are satisfying not just because of their clever mechanics, but also because they feel emotionally right. When you learn who the murderer is, you realise that it couldn't have been anyone else - they are the only one for whom the psychological and physical clues work together. Depriving the readership of the psychological guessing game - who is lying and why? - is not a smart move.
The second problem is the writing tone, which has an irritatingly smug self-awareness that I generally associate with post-modernist metafictional novels. I don't want the writer to be constantly reminding the reader how clever he is and it's a distraction from the story he is trying to tell.
The tone might have been justified if the stories were good mysteries, but I really don't think that they are. The first - the prison tale - is the most striking and effective, probably because of its setting. Seven criminals are sealed in an asteroid by an outsourced police company. They are eqipped with drilling tools and very basic life-support systems. If they work together, they can survive and turn the asteroid into desirable real estate, after which they will be retrieved. If they don't - well, that's seven fewer criminals to worry about. One of them is the legless Jax, who we soon learn is our hero. But how is he going to survive the brutal pecking order imposed by the others? And why is he obsessed with the little bits of glass produced by the drilling tools?
I guessed what the glass was for, though not one of the other more outrageous twists of the otherwise predictable ending because it doesn't strike me as physically plausible. I had a similar problem with the resolution of the second story, a murder mystery set in the stately home of the Argents, one of the privileged families who run the solar system. The two teenage heiresses, Diana and Eva, are sent by their parents to spend some time in earth gravity. The day after they arrive, one of their servants is found dead in a storeroom, his skull bashed in by a large hammer. Who could have done it and how, when almost everyone was too weak from their time in zero G even to lift the murder weapon?
This story is not being helped by being told through the eyes (and gushing prose) of Diana, who loves mysteries and becomes the detective thanks to some unlikely parental string-pulling. But the real problem is that it turns on a twist of perception that I simply don't find believable. I can't say more without spoilers, but it was really very irritating.
The final story, the locked room (or more accurately, locked environment) murder, is better because it is told in third person narration and its key feature, though once again a physical implausibility, is more fairly trailed earlier on. However there isn't much mystery to it since we know who did it and the motivation is obvious. The political repercussions that have been building through all three stories are also unsatisfyingly resolved.
In accordance with Zerothin's Law of Genre-hopping, it is common for mainstream writers to get the basics wrong when they dabble in SF (P.D. James and Kazuo Ishiguro spring immediately to mind). This is a (rare) example of an SF writer making the same mistake when writing in another genre. It was a brave attempt, though, and I hope that Roberts has started a trend. The cosiness of Agatha Christie-style characters combined with the glitter of a high-tech civilisation is an attractive proposition and I would like to see someone else have a go.
Jack Glass - Adam Roberts - Gollancz, 2012
* * *
SF novels that are police procedurals are two-a-penny, but how many can you name that are classic locked-room or Agatha Christie-style murder mysteries? For me, the list is embarrassingly short - Isaac Asimov's Robot trilogy (The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn) are the only ones that come immediately to mind. I don't think this is just my ignorance. SF whodunnits are relatively rare, which is a shame and a little puzzling because structurally these genres are well suited to each other. As with police procedurals, the investigatory aspect of a murder mystery allows the author to dump the background for their constructed world in a relatively non-painful way for the reader, particularly if the detective is an outsider themselves. And SF tropes, if properly introduced, will surely permit some interesting new variations on the mechanics of the murder and the motivations of the suspects. Even the readership is ready-made - anyone up for some science fictional mind expansion will surely also enjoy the lateral thinking required to solve a good puzzle (although not necessarily vice versa).
Adam Roberts has clearly noticed this, because he has come up with SF takes on no less than three different styles of mystery - a prison story, a stately home murder and a locked room puzzle - all with a common planet-spanning background. They are not whodunnits, however. We are told in the first couple of pages that the murderer in each case is the notorious criminal, Jack Glass. The challenge to the reader is to work out how. Which is Roberts' first mistake.
For most readers of whodunnits are, I suggest, not primarily interested in the logistical mechanics of the murder, but the people. They want to know about the motivations of the suspects - their back-stories and relationships. Agatha Christie's murder mysteries are satisfying not just because of their clever mechanics, but also because they feel emotionally right. When you learn who the murderer is, you realise that it couldn't have been anyone else - they are the only one for whom the psychological and physical clues work together. Depriving the readership of the psychological guessing game - who is lying and why? - is not a smart move.
The second problem is the writing tone, which has an irritatingly smug self-awareness that I generally associate with post-modernist metafictional novels. I don't want the writer to be constantly reminding the reader how clever he is and it's a distraction from the story he is trying to tell.
The tone might have been justified if the stories were good mysteries, but I really don't think that they are. The first - the prison tale - is the most striking and effective, probably because of its setting. Seven criminals are sealed in an asteroid by an outsourced police company. They are eqipped with drilling tools and very basic life-support systems. If they work together, they can survive and turn the asteroid into desirable real estate, after which they will be retrieved. If they don't - well, that's seven fewer criminals to worry about. One of them is the legless Jax, who we soon learn is our hero. But how is he going to survive the brutal pecking order imposed by the others? And why is he obsessed with the little bits of glass produced by the drilling tools?
I guessed what the glass was for, though not one of the other more outrageous twists of the otherwise predictable ending because it doesn't strike me as physically plausible. I had a similar problem with the resolution of the second story, a murder mystery set in the stately home of the Argents, one of the privileged families who run the solar system. The two teenage heiresses, Diana and Eva, are sent by their parents to spend some time in earth gravity. The day after they arrive, one of their servants is found dead in a storeroom, his skull bashed in by a large hammer. Who could have done it and how, when almost everyone was too weak from their time in zero G even to lift the murder weapon?
This story is not being helped by being told through the eyes (and gushing prose) of Diana, who loves mysteries and becomes the detective thanks to some unlikely parental string-pulling. But the real problem is that it turns on a twist of perception that I simply don't find believable. I can't say more without spoilers, but it was really very irritating.
The final story, the locked room (or more accurately, locked environment) murder, is better because it is told in third person narration and its key feature, though once again a physical implausibility, is more fairly trailed earlier on. However there isn't much mystery to it since we know who did it and the motivation is obvious. The political repercussions that have been building through all three stories are also unsatisfyingly resolved.
In accordance with Zerothin's Law of Genre-hopping, it is common for mainstream writers to get the basics wrong when they dabble in SF (P.D. James and Kazuo Ishiguro spring immediately to mind). This is a (rare) example of an SF writer making the same mistake when writing in another genre. It was a brave attempt, though, and I hope that Roberts has started a trend. The cosiness of Agatha Christie-style characters combined with the glitter of a high-tech civilisation is an attractive proposition and I would like to see someone else have a go.
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no subject
Date: 2013-07-29 07:39 am (UTC)I agree, it is an under-explored genre. Have you considered writing a story or two yourself?
no subject
Date: 2013-08-01 08:44 pm (UTC)Hadn't thought of writing one myself, but I did have an idea for a detective team that is a bit... unusual. So maybe I will.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-05 10:50 am (UTC)