Book Review: Riding The Torch by Norman Spinrad

 

Riding the Torch by Norman Spinrad

172 pages, Paperback
Published June , 1984 by Bluejay Books (NYC)

Full review coming: 

My Dickheads podcast Interview with Norman Spinrad 

 When I interviewed Norman Spinrad for the Dickheads Podcast he told me my first question was stupid. In fairness, I was trying to break the ice and I asked how he discovered Science Fiction. I get it, he was on a Philip K. Dick podcast and I am sure he assumed I was nothing but a super fan of his late friend who died in 1982. Spinrad eased up on me when it was clear I was a nerd for his books and knew his canon pretty well. Riding the Torch is my 10th Spinrad experience and 11th if you could the brand new novella The Canopy in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Published 8 years into his Science Fiction career, Spinrad had already made a name for himself, still a part of the Southern California scene. At the time he had already written two episodes of Star Trek one that was made (The Doomsday Machine), and had a controversy with the British banning of his novel Bug Jack Barron.

Riding the Torch is one I had heard was great but didn’t have it until I picked it up recently on a trip to Los Angeles. I think I got it at the Illiad, shout out to Lisa Morton. This novella comes with great illustrations by Tom Kidd and two afterwords that break down some of the themes and ideas at play. I wish more books would include essays like that.

The story is an entry in a classic subgenre of the generation ship. From Heinlein’s Universe to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora and River Solomon’s Unkindness of Ghosts the diversity of these tales that approached this theme are vast. Decades apart and done with very different tones and styles Spinrad seems to be making a similar point.to Aurora the KSR novel that I consider to be one of the best Hard SF novels in this century.

Spinrad doesn’t write hard or so-called realistic science fiction. My favorite of his space-faring SF novels The Void Captain’s Tale is so strange that it borders on fantasy. Riding the Torch is similar in this vein. For a thousand years or more “The Trek” (the intentionally ironic) name for the wagon train to the stars that humanity has been on since the human race destroyed their home. When our story opens the council of pilots is sending a probe to a world that may be a new home for our species.

“We’re all refugees too. We’ve killed the living world that gave us birth. Even you and I may never see another.”

The harsh message of this novel is nothing new, ecologically minded science fiction was common but Spinrad is doing more than saying killing the earth is bad. He is making a point that might seem sacrilegious to the genre – The earth is the planet we evolved on, and Spinrad is challenging the idea that any other planet could ever sustain us. That was the bummer message of Robinson’s Aurora as well.  It is a bummer in part because we morons are destroying the sustainability of the only planet we have. Science Fiction often presents false hope that Mars or some other world could be our new home.  

Riding the Torch is an interesting read in part because the way it makes the point is so oddly new wave while having a slight fantasy feel. The Trek feels odd and that is right because it is supposed to depict a human civilization that has spent generations in space. So the way society functions is strange and Spinrad has thought out many aspects – but keep in mind that is mostly just world-building. One way it is deeper than world-building is in the form of the Voidsuckers.

“The voidsuckers have been out there in the flesh for over half a millennium, spending most of their with no tap connection to the Trek, to everything that makes the only human civilization there is what it is.”

While most of the people who live on the Trek are in denial, the Voidsuckers are the ones who embrace the void.. They have these religious experiences when they go out alone into space. I was fine with how these scenes were written but honestly, I would have enjoyed even more of this stuff.

“We man the scoutships to reach the void, we don’t brave the void to man scout ships.” She said. “We sacrifice nothing but illusion. We live with the truth. We live for the truth.”

The truth is something hard to come by in the Trek.  Because it would kill morale, it is interesting because I kept thinking for our species to survive we need to do the opposite. Stop protecting people’s feelings. But protecting their feelings is what they do.

“We already know that 977-Beta_II is dead,” Sidi said. “We knew it before we reported it to the council of pilots. This whole mission like hundreds before it, is an empty gesture.”
“But why have they been lying to us like this? D’Mahl shouted. “What right did you have? What-“
“What were we supposed to say? Bandoora shouted back. “that it’s all dead? That life on Earth was a unique accident? That nothing exists but emptiness and dead matter and the murderers of the only life there ever was? What are we supposed say D’Mahl? What are we supposed to say.”

We are not on the Trek. Spinrad seemed to write this novel to remind us. You don’t want to be on the Trek. This planet is special, and there may not be another habitable planet in our reach, it seems unlikely but we may be alone, or at least in this region of space. Spinrad writes political science fiction. He likes to challenge doctrine, he likes to write genre that is outspoken and with a clear point of view. Riding the Torch is that, it is short but a masterpiece in my opinion but I have always been partial to Spinrad.