Good Science, Bad Characters
Apr. 27th, 2014 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselAug 2013
The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton - Larry Niven - Orbit, 1980
* * * *
A few months ago I commented on the dearth of science fiction murder mysteries. My dear friend Mistress Ingaborg recommended this trio of linked novellas as it contained a good example of an SF locked room puzzle, and it does. But it's not perfect.
It is set in the early period of Niven's Known Space, a Gernsbackian backdrop where humanity has split into the fiercely independent space-dwelling belters mining the asteroids and the mass of earthsiders dwelling in huge cities of tower blocks under a global government run by the United Nations. Gil Hamilton belongs to both worlds, an ex-belter who became a officer in the ARM ("Amalgamation of Regional Militia"), the law-enforcement arm of the UN. He stopped being a belter when he lost his arm in an accident and had to come back to earth to get a new one. In the first story, Death by Ecstasy, this history turns out to be highly relevant when one of his ex-crewmates is found dead in a lonely apartment room with a short-circuited joy-giving electrical plug in his head, and the man who sold it to him turns out to be a contact for one of the chief organleggers in the city.
Organlegging appears in all three stories and is a nice extrapolation of the idea of transplants, Niven's observation being that when they become routine, replacement of worn out body parts will provide a way of living forever. The demand will always massively exceed supply leading to a lucrative black market in organs taken from unwilling kidnappees. The government's attempt to provide a legitimate alternative source is a significant factor in the second story, The Defenceless Dead, in which corpsicles (people flash-frozen at the moment of death in the hope that their illnesses will be curable in the future) are considered fair game.
The first two stories are police procedurals and while both are satisfying in themselves, they are best seen as setups for the third, ARM, which is the locked room mystery. The mummified corpse of the brilliant but reclusive inventor Raymond Sinclair is found in his room at the top of a tower block, enveloped in the glowing field of a device that he was working on. He has been dead for at least six months but was last seen alive yesterday. The only ways into the room are via an elevator from the ground floor and a helipad on the roof. How did the murderer get in, switch on the field without damaging him- or herself and get out without anybody noticing? And what does the mysterious device do?
We soon learn the answer to the last question - I won't give it away to avoid spoiling the story - and extrapolation of its effects are highly germane to the resolution of the plot. This is what makes it a proper science fiction murder mystery and Niven, I think, does a far better job of explaining the rules and giving the reader a shot at solving it for themselves than Adam Roberts does in his stories.
However, it is not perfect. Niven is a writer of quirks rather than characters and this can become annoying. I soon got tired of characters saying "yah" rather than "yes", "boob tube" instead of "television" and "expletive deleted" or "bleeping" in place of swear words. Even worse is when he applies this technique to characters. Gil has an imaginary third arm (a manifestation of PK powers associated with phantom limb syndrome) that he uses a couple of times but which could easily have been left out.
Crucially, the possible perps in all three stories are utterly unmemorable and the recurring characters are little better. Given that womens' lib was in full swing at the time he wrote the story, it is odd that Niven did not extrapolate feminism and give women a bigger place. ARM is an almost all-male affair, with the single exception of the resident empath (naturally) who is there mainly for colour and contributes nothing to the plots. Gil's girlfriend Taffy is pure male fantasy with almost no agency of her own.
So my quest for the perfect SF murder mystery continues. ARM gets the science right, but is let down by the lack of sophistication in the characterisation. It's still a good read, though.
The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton - Larry Niven - Orbit, 1980
* * * *
A few months ago I commented on the dearth of science fiction murder mysteries. My dear friend Mistress Ingaborg recommended this trio of linked novellas as it contained a good example of an SF locked room puzzle, and it does. But it's not perfect.
It is set in the early period of Niven's Known Space, a Gernsbackian backdrop where humanity has split into the fiercely independent space-dwelling belters mining the asteroids and the mass of earthsiders dwelling in huge cities of tower blocks under a global government run by the United Nations. Gil Hamilton belongs to both worlds, an ex-belter who became a officer in the ARM ("Amalgamation of Regional Militia"), the law-enforcement arm of the UN. He stopped being a belter when he lost his arm in an accident and had to come back to earth to get a new one. In the first story, Death by Ecstasy, this history turns out to be highly relevant when one of his ex-crewmates is found dead in a lonely apartment room with a short-circuited joy-giving electrical plug in his head, and the man who sold it to him turns out to be a contact for one of the chief organleggers in the city.
Organlegging appears in all three stories and is a nice extrapolation of the idea of transplants, Niven's observation being that when they become routine, replacement of worn out body parts will provide a way of living forever. The demand will always massively exceed supply leading to a lucrative black market in organs taken from unwilling kidnappees. The government's attempt to provide a legitimate alternative source is a significant factor in the second story, The Defenceless Dead, in which corpsicles (people flash-frozen at the moment of death in the hope that their illnesses will be curable in the future) are considered fair game.
The first two stories are police procedurals and while both are satisfying in themselves, they are best seen as setups for the third, ARM, which is the locked room mystery. The mummified corpse of the brilliant but reclusive inventor Raymond Sinclair is found in his room at the top of a tower block, enveloped in the glowing field of a device that he was working on. He has been dead for at least six months but was last seen alive yesterday. The only ways into the room are via an elevator from the ground floor and a helipad on the roof. How did the murderer get in, switch on the field without damaging him- or herself and get out without anybody noticing? And what does the mysterious device do?
We soon learn the answer to the last question - I won't give it away to avoid spoiling the story - and extrapolation of its effects are highly germane to the resolution of the plot. This is what makes it a proper science fiction murder mystery and Niven, I think, does a far better job of explaining the rules and giving the reader a shot at solving it for themselves than Adam Roberts does in his stories.
However, it is not perfect. Niven is a writer of quirks rather than characters and this can become annoying. I soon got tired of characters saying "yah" rather than "yes", "boob tube" instead of "television" and "expletive deleted" or "bleeping" in place of swear words. Even worse is when he applies this technique to characters. Gil has an imaginary third arm (a manifestation of PK powers associated with phantom limb syndrome) that he uses a couple of times but which could easily have been left out.
Crucially, the possible perps in all three stories are utterly unmemorable and the recurring characters are little better. Given that womens' lib was in full swing at the time he wrote the story, it is odd that Niven did not extrapolate feminism and give women a bigger place. ARM is an almost all-male affair, with the single exception of the resident empath (naturally) who is there mainly for colour and contributes nothing to the plots. Gil's girlfriend Taffy is pure male fantasy with almost no agency of her own.
So my quest for the perfect SF murder mystery continues. ARM gets the science right, but is let down by the lack of sophistication in the characterisation. It's still a good read, though.