Friday, July 29, 2022

Book Review: Skyrmion: Book One of the Sweetland Quartet by Duane Poncy


 

Skyrmion: Book One of the Sweetland Quartet
by Duane Poncy

Paperback, 404 pages
Published May 2022 by Rainy Nights Press



I have no idea how to say the title of this book and the spelling hurts my dyslexic brain just thinking of it. I going to resist just calling it Sweetland as I did in my head. This is a really interesting book and calling it Sweetland might make it sound like a generic Candyland rip-off but this book is far from that. It is a strange book that kinda fits into different genres here and there but there is no simple all-encompassing genre. It is dystopian, it is cyberpunk, and at times it is CLI-FI. It is science fiction but at times surreal and at other times more grounded. At the heart that grounding comes mostly from a father and daughter relationship that drives the main narrative forward.

Duane Poncy is a name I was familiar with knowing that he was a Portland writer but this is the first of his works that I really dove into. It is well written that does make the best SF does – using the future to talk about today.  So for those who want a basic non-spoiler review before the serious breakdown begins…

Skyrmion is the kind of Science Fiction novel that the independent press is here for. While it might not be the most commercial of works it hit plenty of buttons for me. The sad state of publishing means that a doesn’t tick a few narrow boxes is of interest to mainstream publishers. Thanks to indies and the democratizing force of small presses and small publishing we are lucky to get books like this.

 The world-building is top-notch, the main character Joe Larivee and his relationship with his daughter carried me deep into the narrative, and the concept was fascinating. I was interested through the whole book, even if I got a little bogged in the middle. The only drawback is I think a good 50-70 pages could have been trimmed, but I am mostly nitpicking. It is a four-star book to me, a really good example of the importance of small or independent presses.

I enjoyed this book, and now let’s get into it. I went into this book absolutely blind on the topic. I knew nothing of the story, plot, or anything of that nature. So, I was pleasantly surprised that it took place in Portland, a city I lived in for 7 years, and had just visited a few days before starting this book.  I suppose I forgot Duane Poncy lived that. Regardless this is the first future Portland book I have read since Edward Morris's excellent first Blackguard book.  

Poncy writes very effectively about Portland…    

“It was one of her rituals, paying homage to her childhood memories of the city that once existed.

She recalled the vast urban forest that once populated Portland when everything greened in early spring, the dogwoods, and cherry blooming, Dad walking her to school along sidewalks covered in a magic carpet of pink and white petals;…”

Later on this page, the character explains the die-offs and changes around Portland. I started to see coming back to Portland after a few years was a trip.  As beautiful as Portland still is I can see the fears, residents have for the path and how the world will handle the warming future. I saw fewer bikes and more cars. Portland is changing, as a microcosm for our climate crisis Skyrmion carefully and patiently paints a world of the future when most people have sacrificed reality for trans-reality and fake living.

One of the strengths of this novel is how it blends technology with the surreal and spiritual nature of the human species transcending the mess we made.  Consider this paragraph that weaves these vibes.

“Some anomaly had struck him as he scrolled by. Someone had written stealth coding to spare certain nodes. Dark Matter hidden in Grid’s fabric an elusive Skyrion he wondered what hypothetical magnetic particle played in the scheme if any. It was likely nothing more than a code name.”

These are elements and vibes throughout this novel that really gave the book a special vibe. We have read stories of sim worlds or transports like Stargate. We have seen that before, but this novel will not remind you of those books. It has its own thing. The novel doesn’t beat you over the head with the misery of this future just gives you a lived-in feeling.

None of the setting or ideas would mean anything if we didn’t have anyone to care about. Jim and his daughter Jessie are the heart. As a career social worker, Jim is in an interesting place to interact with the narrative and drive the story.  They live in a future where it is understandable that most want to crawl into sim-worlds as real life is miserable. The conflict comes for Jim when his daughter wants to emigrate not just to a sim, but to another world. Sweetland is thought to be just another sim at first but it is more. A totally alien world an unknown location where people are transferring their mind/soul to meet a copy of their bodies.  

“Dad, do you know about Sweetland?”
 She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I’m going to sweetland.”
“Baby, there is no Sweetland.”
“Yes, there is, Dad. I’m Going and I want you to go with me. There is no future left here.”
Jim is not sure that is a sim, a real planet or just a bullshit cult.


This is the question at the heart of the novel. Poncy does well to hook this Sweetland idea in the heart of this teenager. It feels very natural that a child living in a hopeless time would latch to this without fully understanding. As a reader, the mystery is answered just enough to set up another story.

“You mean it is not in Bolivia?”
“It’s another world, Ms. Deluna.”
“You mean like another planet. Like in another galaxy or something? Or do you mean a sim world? Because I don’t think I can survive in a sim world.”
“We haven’t figured out exactly where Sweetland is – not in relationship to earth. The scientists will tell you about quantum transference, and string theory, all of that, but nothing in Sweetland’s sky is familiar to us. The only way to convince you is to show you.”


In that sense, this book almost feels like an origin story or a prequel to an even grander adventure. I admit when I saw book one on the cover I was a bit skeptical. Doing that on a book adds so much weight to a narrative. I am not looking at these books as stories but as opening salvos. Now I am judging a book by the ability to draw me back. The main reason I want to come back is how very different a second would be.  Promising four books is a little James Cameron Avatar to me, but that is not a bad thing for me. It is bold as hell. Poncy has my attention for book two.   

PS on a side note for my Dickheads this part was super PKD and gave me a chuckle...
“The directory was huge, taking up much of the wall. Joe scanned the names of various offices. “Office of Crushed Dreams. Office of Delusions. Office of Rationalizations. Office of Mental Acrobatics.”


 



Saturday, July 16, 2022

Book Review: Conditionally Human by Walter Miller Jr.


 

Conditionally Human by Walter Miller Jr.

191 pages

Published 1962 by Ballantine



Walter Miller Jr. is a strange case in Science Fiction. His novel A Canticle for Lebowitz is a hands-down classic that is not only canon but beloved as many readers’ favorite. It is a towering achievement of science fiction and yet, it is the single novel that Miller produced in his lifetime. There was a sequel he was working on when he died, but it had to be finished by another writer (Terry Bisson). Most of the classics of the genre were penned by writers with entire catalogs of work.

When ACFL won the Hugo in 1960 it didn't come out of nowhere for fan voters of the era. Miller was a regular in magazines like Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction with short stories and novellas. In fact, the classic novel started as a series of serialized novelettes in F & SF.  The surprise of course was that after dropping a true masterpiece Walter Miller essentially disappeared. In his decade of active writing, he won two Hugo awards.

Miller was a tail gunner in World War II and flew in over 50 missions over Italy. After the war, he became an engineer, which explains the science-heavy take on the genre he had even if those elements feel out of date these days. Miller’s novel is so assured and well done I was shocked to learn that was his first and only completed novel. Stranger, still he won the Hugo award and still disappeared. He sold so many stories in those 10 years it is just amazing that he quit. His stories often earned cover art and promotion, as he was clearly a fan favorite.  From everything that is available and public, it appears while his one novel remained in print Miller became a recluse not even talking to family.

I read ACFL only a few years ago, we covered it on the Dickheads and it was so great I knew I had to read more. But where to start? His books are rare and a little hard to come by. This collection and this edition that I read were three novellas issued shortly after the success of the book. I got my copy at Artifact books in Encinitas, shout out to Greg up there his store is amazing.  It features three stories including his Hugo award-winning novella from 1955 for the story The Darfsteller

It was time to read it as the first title novella Conditionally Human, was mentioned in Sherryl Vint’s book about Animal rights in Science Fiction Animal Alterity Soon after I read that repeat guest on Dickheads Mark Conlon shouted the third story Dark Benediction. These were all signs.  No more waiting on this book, that I just happened to buy. Glad I did as with ACFL this book was incredible. If you want to not be spoiled at all this is your jump-off point…

We can start with the title story. Having just spent a month for the 40th anniversary of Blade Runner deep diving Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K. Dick. It was amazing how similar the themes and stories are. I know, I know as a PKD podcast host you might think I look at clouds at seeing the themes of the Bay Area writer everywhere.  You’ll see what I mean. This novella takes place in an ecologically devastated future when humans have to apply to have children, an act that is very strictly regulated. To replace the need to nurture in this future a hilariously named device called “Evolvotron” is used to give Cats and Dogs the intelligence and emotional state of children ages 2-10.  These animals are referred to as Neutroids. This clearly has shades of the DADES theme of the way humans collect animals in a dying world.

The main character Norris is what he calls “An up-to-date dogcatcher,” working for the pound. He and his wife have a debate about the ethics of his job. If this sounds familiar the novella has the same opening scene as DADES. So much so that I don’t think it was an accident. Tessa Dick has commented online about Phil’s love for Lebowitz and he often nods to novels he liked in his outlines so if he was a fan of Miller this appears to be an overlooked homage. As Vint points out “Like Deckard in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Norris gradually finds himself less and less able to adopt the ideology of absolute separation between human and non-human that he requires to do his job.”

Indeed, there are more human-like Neutroids that are illegal beings who are almost human-like except having tails, an attempt to circumvent the no breeding laws, this is off-handily introduced in a scene when Norris walks into the shelter.  DADES explores new ethical grounds because the andys are so close to being human but still not they are somewhere between human and something else. The irony, of course, is that the empathy tests in Dick’s novel are based on the ethical treatment of animals again I starting to think that was a tip of the hat to this novella.

“Their human appearance was broken only by two distinct features: short beaver-like tails decorated with fluffy curls of fur, and an erect thatch of scalp hair that grew up into a bright candle flame. Otherwise, they appeared completely human, with baby-pink skin, quick little smiles, and cherubic faces. They were sexually neuter and never grew beyond a predetermined age-set which varied for each series.”

They are excited because Norris feeds them Apple cores when he arrives. The novella deals with many of the subtle ways society adapts to this ecological crisis and new technology. The first family Norris interacts with is looking to replace their dog with a copy, magazine ads that sell “Mutants for the childless, buy a bundle of joy.” Miller also mentions a popular TV show involving evolved animals like the Soap Opera about an Evolvotron operator called “A Chimp to Call My Own.” Considering how new TV was that is a fascinating bit of world-building.

One of the most powerful scenes is when Norris catches the owner of a “pet shop” who is hiding a very intelligent mutant dog named “Peony.”  This leads to a heartbreaking scene. Norris is disgusted and tells the O’Reilly couple they will lose their license to sell animals. Peony is scared and sad when Norris takes her away. By the way, Animals do have this experience even if they can’t use words as Peony does.

“Daddy’s eyes are all wet,” she observed.”
O’Reilly began trembling again. Never mind, child. You go get your coat.”
“Whyyy?”
“You’re going for a ride with Mr, Norris.”


Dogs as they are today, don’t need words to express their connections to their families and humans, and certainly, we connect to our companion animals. What I found interesting is the idea that words and made-up technology like an Evolotron being used to break down the human/animal boundry as if that was needed for Miller to express to his readers in the 1950s the idea of animal rights. For the record, the shelters still in the 21st century are filled with the former companion animals of humans who need this point expressed to them. So many so-called pets are dumped on the streets or shelters when families grow tired of these beings. Many cats and dogs are confused and mourning,  not understanding why they have lost their family.

This leads to the central debate theme of the story. The Human/animal boundary. Norris has to turn in Peony his wife argues it is murder. Eventually, Norris tries to come up with a solution, new better beings. The idea Miller is playing with is moving this boundary between human and non-human animals closer. As Vint pointed out in Animal Alterity “The story challenges the human-animal boundary with its population of talking dogs and cats, able to express love for their owners, as well as the quasi-human neutroids who occupy a liminal space between human and animal.”


It is an amazing piece.  The novella creates this interesting third ethical standing that is not quite human or non-human animal, which reminded me of the underrated Neal Barrett Jr. Novel Through Darkest America when a post-ecological human society started to breed unintelligent food-use humans who were called “stock.” Seven decades later the themes are important and sadly still in need.

The second novella won the Hugo for novelette and it is called The Darfsteller (1955) and appeared in Astounding. Reading this in 2022 it seems comically out of date/time with the weird retro-future tech that I will always find charming. The story takes place in an Autodrama theater, where plays are acted by robots who run on tape recorded by actors at another location. It is of course reading a 70-year-old story that takes place in the future that looks back wistfully to the good old days when actors still appeared on stage.

While it didn’t turn out how we expected it, look at the deep fakes, and de-aging that Marvel, and Star Wars have been doing.  The Darfsteller explains the technology and how the tape works all directed by a stage Maestro who gauges audience reactions live and controls the tape feed. I really loved this line…

“Art!” He hissed. Theater! What’d they give you a degree in, Richard? Dramaturgical engineering?”
 
Of the three novellas, this was the one that moved me the least but I did enjoy it.

Dark Benediction was the earliest and while this 1951 novella didn’t win any awards but it was Miller’s fourth sale and appeared in the September issue of Fantastic Adventures. It has since become the title story in SF Masterworks edition collection. This is a pandemic story set in post-apocalyptic Texas. The disease was carried to earth by alien-infected meteors. “Neuroderm had no first cousin among Earth diseases.” It slowly destroys the skin while driving people insane. The victims are called Dermies, and it only affects humans. The implication is that the disease was sent to target humans. 


It is a very character-driven story about Paul who saves a young girl who is infected but not presenting the full danger of what is yet to come. “After all, if she lived, and the leg healed, she would only prowl in search of healthy victims again. She would never be rid of the disease, nor would she ever die of it – so far as anyone knew. The death rate was high among dermies, but the cause was usually a bullet.”

Dark Benediction was released three years before Matheson’s I Am Legend, seventeen years before Romero’s Night of The Living Dead, and Fifty-one years before 28 Days Later. It is a groundbreaking work of character-driven political SF horror, pretty timeless and powerful enough to have earned SF Masterwork status.  One of the most powerful moments is when Paul discusses the nature of the parasites and admits some heavy ideas about the nature of human beings. Pretty deep political issues about the destructive nature of humans in 1951. Sadly we have not turned it around.

In the end, all three novellas are ahead of their times. I am not sure that any of the three comes as close to the high bar of A Canticle for Lebowitz. That said they are all three tales of well-realized characters and even better ideas. I want to leave with you will something Miller wrote in the 1950s and imagines a character from the start of the 21st century looking back at the 20th:

“There was no escaping the past. The last century had gutted the earth with its children and grandchildren, had strained the earth’s capacity to feed, and the limit had been reached. It had to be guarded. There was no escape into space either. Man’s rockets had touched two planets, but they were sorry worlds.”

There is no other planet.   I know that is supposed to be dystopian, but one theme in vintage Science Fiction is the society that is ecologically devastated and reproduction is rare and strictly regulated.  That sounds utopian to me at this point, because the alternative where flooding, heatwaves, wildfires, and droughts get the response of reusable bags ain't working for your grandkids.   

Read Walter Miller Jr. that is the Bottomline.


 

Sunday, July 10, 2022

Essay: Trump in the High Castle: Philip K. Dick’s Classic novel of Post-truth America



Trump in the High Castle: Philip K. Dick’s Classic novel of Post-truth America by David Agranoff

In 1961 Philip K. Dick didn’t set out to write an award-winning novel that explored complex social and political issues he just wanted to get out of polishing jewelry for his third wife Anne’s business.  Without a plan, he started writing. More than half a century later his daughter Isa Dick-Hackett was a producer on a TV series based on the novel and facing a strange reality. In the Trump years, that novel The Man in the High Castle[i] was more relevant than ever.

It was something she discussed with Indie-Wire before the second season in 2017. “I just think about the fact that the novel is an anti-fascist tale. It’s about freedom and democracy, and it’s about how people, at least in that world, were defeated and they start to accept things and normalize things. In our world now, those same things worry me. I worry about certain kinds of rhetoric. I worry about the ‘them vs. us’ dividing people.” [ii] 

In the years following the Trump presidency and attempted insurrection there is an argument that Dick’s novel The Man in the High Castle is just as predictive as SF novels that predicted space travel and the internet. Alternate history is science fiction not built on the future but the inherit what if is based on the idea of the path not chosen. It is tempting to cast Dick’s novel as an exercise in simply looking at how frightening an Axis victory would have been. Obviously, that didn’t happen but if we look at the novel with a deeper lens we see not only the theme of insidious acceptance of fascism but the complete breakdown of truth under authoritarianism. It is in that sense that the way it depicts the current political climate is all too scary.   

Prediction is not the job of science fiction, however, using genre as a form of warning to the dangers on the horizon is the responsibility of justice-minded authors. TMITHC is not the only respected novel to use the What if to explore an American style of fascism. Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here[iii] went from speculative fiction when it was published (before SF was coined term for marketing) to becoming alternate history in retrospect. It briefly returned to the bestseller status 82 years after being published when a series of articles pointed out how familiar the novel felt in the Trump years.

University of Connecticut Professor Chris Vials wrote about this in his 2013 paper “What Can Happen Here? Philip Roth, Sinclair Lewis, and the Lessons of Fascism in the American Liberal Imagination: “On the most basic level, “It Can’t Happen Here” is a phrase that calls into question the presumed foreignness of fascism. Since 1935, it has served as an instantly recognizable, ironic rebuke to the assumption that fascism is fundamentally alien to “the American Way.” As such, Lewis’s narrative underscores a fundamental component of dissonant antifascism that has been consistent since the 1930s. That is, fascism is not seen as something located merely in Europe or Asia, nor is it something fully incompatible with American political life”[iv]

Indeed, Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America[v] also challenged the idea that America was immune to fascism. It was deliberately adapted for TV on HBO by producer David Simon in the lead-up to the 2020 election. Simon was clear when he spoke with NPR. “I think I'm fairly convinced not only that it can happen here, but that we are right now on a road that it will happen here, that unless there's a sufficient level of awareness of how vulnerable we are and how fragile democracy actually is.”[vi]

In 2004 when Philip Roth released The Plot Against America it was written as a very personal alt-history that looked at his actual life in this other world. There were no Science fictional explanations or reasons given for this other world but that is hardly different from Dick’s alt-history.  The mechanics of Axis strength are different but the results are the same an America that grows to accept fascism. While not as stark as the Nazi occupation of Dick’s Novel, Plot was also influenced by the specter of Nazism.

Vials said “Plot portrays an alternate past in which FDR loses the election of 1940 to the isolationist, Nazi-sympathizer Charles Lindbergh. Emerging this time out of the Republican Party, Lindbergh’s America is more subtly fascist than that of Windrip: it does not abolish political parties nor erect concentration camps on US soil. Rather, it allows Axis victories overseas to continue unchecked while maintaining cordial relations with Nazi Germany. At home, it embarks on a campaign to assimilate the Jews that ultimately leaves them exposed to antisemitic mob violence.”

The parallels to the Trump years are impossible to deny. Trump often talked of his good relationships with strongman dictators and when white supremacists marched chanting “Jews will not replace us” the sitting president told the press that there were good people on both sides. It was no shock that in 2019 there was a 12% rise in antisemitic crimes and it was the highest level since 1994.[vii]

Considering the role the 2020 presidential election played in our timeline, it is no surprise that all three classics about American fascism hinge on the results of presidential elections.  

It Can’t Happen Here – Trump-like fictional politician, “Buzz” Windrip modeled after Louisiana Governor Huey Long defeats FDR.  Windrip sets up concentration camps and abolishes political parties.

The Plot Against America - FDR loses to Charles Lindbergh who is an isolationist and Nazi Sympathizer.  The U.S. never enters the War.

The Man in the High Castle – FDR is killed by Giuseppe "Joe" Zangara and Republican Governor of Ohio John W. Bricker becomes President. He is unable to pull the U.S. out of the depression and is an isolationist leading to the quick defeat by the Axis powers.

The Roth and Lewis novels are more respected as literature and never forced into the SF ghetto but it is Man in the High Castle that addresses the post-truth world of Donald Trump best of the three novels.

 

High Castle and Post-Truth

One of the key moments of Philip K. Dick’s novel happens when Japanese trade minister Tagomi buys a piece of jewelry he is told is a genuine piece of Americana. For reasons never explained he briefly travels to another San Francisco and is surprised by the freeways and the amount of trash. These are the first subtle signs that he has ended up in an America that the Japanese never colonized. He pays a young boy to run looking for a rickshaw and just like that he is back in his universe.

Comedian Jordan Keppler probably felt like Tagomi crossing into another reality every time he covered a Donald Trump political rally for the Daily Show as a correspondent.  There is no finer example of two groups of people who seem to inhabit the same world but exist in separate realities. When Keppler returned to his first Trump rally in Iowa after the 2020 election despite overwhelming evidence his supporters believe firmly the election was stolen. Some of the most hilarious observations include “Trump is a "rock-star superhero president" and "a man for all the people." The one that actually seemed to break Keppler was one Trump fan saying “Trump has a thick skin - about as thick as it gets." [viii] Anyone paying attention knows that Trump responded to almost every critical statement with insults like “Sleepy Joe” or “Pocahontas.”  The New York Times published a list of 598 people the President insulted on Twitter alone. [ix]

It is clear that supporters of Trump are fine accepting whatever he tells them to believe regardless of what can be proven as objective fact. This is so dangerous because Trump is compulsive about mistruths. According to the Washington Post Trump had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency averaging about 21 misleading claims a day. On Nov. 2nd, 2020, the day before the 2020 election, Trump made 503 false or misleading claims as he campaigned.[x]

It should not be surprising that one of the most popular figures on the right who fashions himself a journalist is Tucker Carlson. Despite Fox News successfully defending themselves in court by proving that Carlson’s show is not to be believed. Fox News lawyers argued that Carlson "cannot be understood to have been stating facts, but instead that he was delivering an opinion using hyperbole for effect…"  The ruling by the court also said. "This 'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that he is not 'stating actual facts about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.’”[xi]

Tucker Carlson is legally defined as a bullshit artist who airs on a network with the title news. But post-truth is an essential ingredient of the authoritarian which Carlson is on record as supporting. This was most visible when he took his show on the road to support the strongarm autocratic leader of Hungry Viktor Orban or when suggested the idea that the U.S. should be on Russia’s side during the invasion of Ukraine. His continued attempts to minimize the events on January 6th also show that Carlson supports the idea of American-style fascism and Post-Truth is his tool.

Leadership defines the people that follow them, Trump has left an America that is drowning in post-truth with a good portion of the country willing to live in a separate reality defined by a pathological liar who refuses to accept that he lost an election. Of all the novels to explore the alternate rise of fascism in America, it is the one by the science fiction writer that spent his life publishing in the genre ghetto that appears to capture the mood and reality of this era most directly.  

In the article The Man in The High Castle: An Awry Reality Through Post-Truth by Timuçin BuÄŸra Edman, Davut Peaci, and Hacer Gözen they make the point that post-truth is at the heart of the novel and “reality is transformed into simulation, and then simulation presents reality as an alternative reality. It is precisely this fact that makes such an approach post-truth.”[xii]

The Man in the High Castle does this on a metatextual and subtextual level, in this sense, Philip K. Dick was commenting on our times in style superior to his alt-history contemporaries.  In the world of the novel, the Allies lost World War Two to The Axis power that has divided America into two occupied countries with a neutral zone in the Rockies. Set in 1962 main character is Juliana Crane who is obsessed with a popular novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy that envisions a world where the Allies won the war.

It is important to note that the world of Grasshopper is not our world, the events that lead to allied victory are different from our world.  In the TMIHC world, Roosevelt is assassinated, The U.S. never makes it out of the depression and an isolationist president John Bricker is elected. In that Grasshopper world Roosevelt survives but is replaced on the ticket by Rexwell Tugwell and the U.S. enters the war in 1940, In our world, FDR survives is still President and the U.S. enters the war in December 1941. The importance of the three realities to Dick’s narrative is important to the idea of questioning reality. There is no real history in the novel, not our world. Not their world. Dick plays with subtext in the form of a cast of characters who all struggle with what is real and what is truth? Robert Childan for example is an antique dealer who sells pieces of Americana history to Japanese occupiers who have become interested in the history of the land they conquered. Childan knows he is selling fake items.

It was Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels that was famous for saying “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” It is hilarious that this statement of Post-Truth gospel which has also been attributed Vladmir Lenin. The ultimate irony is the statement has a much older origin in the book The Crown of a Life (1869) by Isa Blagden. [xiii] “If a lie is only printed often enough, it becomes a quasi-truth, and if such a truth is repeated often enough, it becomes an article of belief, a dogma, and men will die for it. We, who are of neither extreme in politics, neither pure red not pure black …”

In our world, we have lived in a global experiment to prove Isa Blagden correct, and many have not survived having a pathological liar as the most powerful in the world. How different could this reality have been if the mob found Mike Pence? We know the crowd had constructed a gallow with a noose.  So far Trump has remained safe unindicted, and free to lie at will.

In the article The Man in The High Castle: An Awry Reality Through Post-Truth the authors point out “…In the post-truth era, doers are safe at home, as in the “action law of inertia”. The “mass craze” is the target audience of post-truth leaders. They gather the ones who enjoy fiction and fictional heroic actions. They become the army of post-truth presenters to enlarge their own force. The masses transform into robotic armies who get the order to fire, take action without reasoning. Enjoying a chivalrous experience at home in bed is joyful for them. They can herd others into gas chambers or ovens. Dick presents the notion, “Listen, I’m not an intellectual—Fascism has no need of that. What is wanted is the deed. Theory derives from action. What our corporate state demands from us is a comprehension of the social forces—of history. You see?”

It is too bad that we don’t have Philip K. Dick still with us to comment on this post-truth world. It was a subject he touched on in novels like Flow My Tears the Policeman Said [xiv]and The Penultimate Truth[xv]. The genre will be writing about the post-truth experience we collectively lived through for decades but the real question is will we avoid the authoritarianism that Dick was worried about. Will we passively learn to accept it?  The first step to defending freedom as we know is to recognize Post-Truth for what it is and demand our leader live in the same reality with us.

 

 



[i] Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick 1961 Putnam

 

[ii] Indiewire ‘The Man in The High Castle’: What It’s Like to Make A Show About Fascism in The Age of Trump” by Liz Shannon Miller

 

[iii] It Can’t Happen here by Sinclair Lewis Published 1935

[iv] “What Can Happen Here? Philip Roth, Sinclair Lewis, and the Lessons of Fascism in the American Liberal Imagination by Chris Vials University of Connecticut 2013

[v] The Plot Against America by Philip Roth Published 2004 Houghton Mifflin

[vi] In 'Plot Against America,' David Simon Finds Present Day In An Imagined Past NPR Moring Edition interview by David Greene. March 13 2020

 

[vii] Watchdog reports record number of anti-Semitic incidents in U.S. last year by  Kanishka Singh May 3rd 2020 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-antisemitism/watchdog-reports-record-number-of-anti-semitic-incidents-in-u-s-last-year-idUSKBN22O1LK

[viii] Jordan Klepper Tackled the MAGA Mindset in Comedy Central Special by By Ainsley Andrade https://www.mediavillage.com/article/jordan-klepper-tackled-the-maga-mindset-in-comedy-central-special/

 

[x] Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years By Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly

  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/

 

[xi] Fox News won a court case by 'persuasively' arguing that no 'reasonable viewer' takes Tucker Carlson seriously

Sonam Sheth  https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-karen-mcdougal-case-tucker-carlson-2020-9

 

[xii] The Man in The High Castle: An Awry Reality Through Post-Truth by Timuçin Buğra Edman, Davut Peaci, and Hacer Gözen 2020, Interactions

[xiii] The Crown of a Life by Isa Blagden Published in 1969

[xiv] Flow My Tears the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick Published in 1974

[xv] The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick published 1964

Saturday, July 9, 2022

Book Review: Sweep of Stars (Astra Black #1) by Maurice Broaddus


 

Sweep of Stars (Astra Black #1) by Maurice Broaddus  
Hardcover, 368 pages
Published March  2022 by Tor Books
 
I got lots of love in my heart for some authors. Although we only hung out in the flesh once, Maurice Broaddus and I grew an hour's drive away from each other. We grew up on the same TV horror host and the thing is he is an amazing and one of kind author I have read and reviewed over and over. When the deal was made for this trilogy, it was sold as an Afrofuturist take on The Expanse. These kinds of marketing comparisons are often reductive but, in this case, I think that is a fair take. I mean I was totally sold on that. It is not hard SF in the way The Expanse has wormholes, but Sweep also has time travel, and other light fantastical elements.  
 
When writing about his short story collection I said this. “The Voices of Martyrs will largely be overlooked because short story collections rarely sell as much as novels. This finely-tuned collection is a must-read for anyone interested in high-quality dark literature. The most powerful collection I have read since Brian Evenson's A Collapse of Horses. Both are important reads however Voice of Martyrs goes beyond just being good, it is a book of deep meaning.”

I bring this up because if you want to know how good of a writer Broaddus is that is the best example. That being said this is the most fun I have had reading a MB book. That is saying something as he has a series that is “The Wire” -ish retelling of King Arthur and award-winning Steampunk novellas. My feeling is once the trilogy comes together the strength of the greater narrative will only increase. This book will lose some lazy readers, but hey I have been told by lots of people they couldn’t get into Dune. Those people are wrong but it is understandable I suppose as Dune is dense as gluten-free bread. As a fan of intense world-building, it works for me but sometimes it is unexplainable alchemy. There were times I was a little lost on who was where, and who was who but that doesn’t always turn me off. I am along for the ride until I figure it out.

Thankfully this book came with a handy list of families and a timeline in the opening and a glossary in the closing pages. I tried not to refer to these but I read the timeline at the open and checked in on it a couple of times.  This novel is set against the backdrop of The Muungano Empire, an African Diaspora set after post ecological collapse of the earth spread through the solar system mostly on the Moon, Mars, and Titan. LISC represents O.E. (Old Earth) interests. There is a bit of a cold war stalemate until in 2120 the Orun Gate wormhole is discovered.

This opening to another star system is firmly in control of The Muungano Empire and that is the jumping-off for the novel that takes place in 2121. Before I go deep into the story where minor spoilers might exist let's say that this is a 5-star book to me and a recommendation. MB does a great job of World-building what feels to this outsider like a credible solar system spanning neo-African culture. Their dominance is a result of a time travel accident that gave the crew a chance with modern tech extra time to re-build in the past but they spent most of that time hiding on the moon creating “The Dreaming City” and positioning themselves to become a dominant power. Considering the colonial history Africa dealt with this new culture is trying something different
 

 Sweep of Stars mixes deep cultural mythology and African vibes with characters who keep it real. Characters who give their family members shit and curse like normal people. That really helped me relate to the characters. I made the mistake of reading some of the reviews and I couldn’t help but notice how many of the reviewers failed to comment on many of the social-political commentaries that is dripping off the pages of this book. There is some lip-service #ownvoices in some of the reviews folks need to slow down and look a little closer at what Sweep of Stars is laying down.

Sweep of Stars is Space Opera with an African feeling, it is an epic tale with lots of characters, narrative shifts, and twists and at the heart is a story that is entertaining for the events we witness as much as the radical ideas that get a subtle introduction. I found the novel well written, some readers had a hard time that certain chapters slipped into second person. I will be interviewing MB for the podcast soon so we will the exact reason. I suspected this was a way for the narrative to express the idea that you are a part of the future. Maybe I am overthinking it.

So yeah big thumbs up. That may sound highbrow and snooty but there are space marines, battles, aliens, pirates, rasta Jedis, and murder mystery as well. Let's get into details.

Of course, I dug that MB gave a shout-out to his hometown of Indianapolis which is apparently the capital of Old Earth. In this future. Shout out to my future Hoosiers.

“Several figures wearing light scattering masks designed to defeat facial-recognition algorithm stormed about. Some toted phase EMP carronades. The international district of Indianapolis was once the side of town that suffered from benign neglect of city officials. Property values plummeted, money enough to rebrand the area and immigrants moved in. And flourished. Through LISC, the city found money enough to rebrand the area the International District.  This grew into the international marketplace, which soon housed several embassies once the nation’s capital shifted to the booming metropolis.”


There is a scene with the panting of the learning tree that seemed like an even more direct shout-out to real folks in the author’s life.  Muungano culture is an interesting one, a somewhat Anarchist culture. The character of Xola who is murdered as head of a family is a goofball who loves telling stories and embarrassing his family. Sound like someone who has his picture on the dust jacket?
Muungano culture doesn’t fit neatly into western political boxes, collectivist and anarchist in many ways, but is structured on traditions deeply rooted in family legacy.

“All of Muungano’s Territory lit up as a hologram projection, from the Dreaming City to Mars to the mining outpost. No borders, per se, not the way O.E. might define them. Only communities of alliance. This was what they had all fought so hard to forge. They needed a new vocabulary to describe the experiment they embarked on. Empire wasn’t it. A budding cooperative cradled in a sweep of stars.”

This is one of the first elements I have seen ignored in almost all the reviews I have read. This may seem like simple world-building and MB does it subtle and right. These moments are not over-explained, they are naturally told in the midst of the story. You will of course notice the title of the book so it is not a stretch to think this passage is part of the mission statement of this story.

Leguin and Spinrad are some of the most well-known genre anarchists and I am not saying this book goes that far but it is clear MB is suggesting a divorce from western culture and standard capitalist monoculture. At the same time, this future while vastly different and divergent from our timeline is connected by characters like the Hellfighters soldiers who make a point not to forget the struggles the African diaspora had in our times.

This was highlighted in a fun exchange when a soldier who was called the keeper of the belt explained that he was wearing the belt of the Notorious B.I.G.

“It’s true. When you set your eyes on it again, you need to realize that you’re looking at a piece of hip-hop history. A holy relic.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
Their generation, not-quite-affectionately called neoniks, loved the late-twentieth-century era as part of what they called The Remember Revolution. They committed themselves to never forget the tragedies of O.E., from Black Wall Street to MOVE to First World. Admirable in philosophy, though in practice, they basically just adopted the era’s slang.”


I like how this scene begins amusing but ends with a powerful statement letting the reader know that the issues of racism and colonialism are not forgotten in this radically changed future.  While the main focus of the story is the intrigue, the action, and the characters it was the ideas I found radically moving. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed the story but asides like this spoke to me.

“We’ became slaves to wheat,” Stacia said.
“Yes. Wheat, the technology and systematic impact of agriculture, tricked us into serving it and spreading it around the world. Similarly, you don’t own the wormhole and you certainly don’t control it.” 
 

I can’t really say at this point that this is a deeply intentionally radical book. It is however a science fiction novel of radical ideas. Some of the mainstream science fiction fandoms may have a problem with this but fuck a whole bunch of that. The novel speaks to this…

“…We stand in opposition to their entire way of life. We created ways of being and moving. Of valuing and celebrating one another. Allowing our systems – political and economic – to grow out of our humanity. Seeking only the best for one another and our community. That’s why we’re a threat. And will always be seen as one.”  

Or…

“As you can imagine, all of this only fueled O.E.’s paranoia of us, stoking their fears that we plotted against them. They came to believe that it was only a matter of time before we unleashed the destructive force of our military might. Because history has told us that is what they would have done.”

Damn, I love Sweep of Stars. As a piece of space opera, it is fun, every bit as filled with intrigue and action as The Expanse. As a piece of World-building, it is every bit as thought out as Dune. As a work of thoughtful speculation, it is as mindful and literary as Hyperion As a work of radical science fiction, it is every bit as radical as The Dispossessed. Hyperbole, maybe but Sweep of Stars earned it with me.