[Paleopsych] NYTBR: It Was a Dark and Stormy Galaxy

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It Was a Dark and Stormy Galaxy
New York Times Book Review, 5.8.7


    THE future, as a literary device, was invented in the 19th century.
    Works of fiction purporting to describe the shape of things to come
    proliferated in the late 1800's, more or less keeping pace with the
    advance of evolutionary science. Many of these works took the form of
    utopias or dystopias -- anti-utopias, often depicted ironically.
    Earlier, such stories would have been set in obscure corners of the
    world, like the imaginary land where Lemuel Gulliver encountered the
    Lilliputians. But with most of the real world already mapped by
    European explorers, the future inevitably became the location of
    choice for writers who wanted to illustrate alternative ways of
    organizing society.

    Wesleyan University Press has been reissuing some of these early works
    in scholarly editions complete with context-setting introductions and
    extensive notes. The latest in the series is THE COMING RACE ($34.95),
    by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a British aristocrat who pursued a successful
    political and diplomatic career (he was once offered the throne of
    Greece but declined, returning to his Hertfordshire estate) while
    becoming one of the most popular writers of his day. First published
    in 1871, ''The Coming Race'' represents a curious hybrid. Its premise
    is unflinchingly futuristic: the inevitable displacement of today's
    humanity by a more highly evolved ''race.'' But the story unfolds in
    perhaps the last unexplored place on earth -- the ''hollow'' interior
    of the planet, a conceit that Bulwer-Lytton borrowed from earlier

    The inhabitants of the interior, who call themselves the Vril-ya, have
    developed a civilization that far surpasses 19th-century Europe and
    America in its enlightened use of power. Drawing on an inexhaustible
    energy source called ''Vril,'' which is controlled by sheer willpower,
    they have created what the narrator, a naive American who literally
    stumbles into their realm, sees as a utopia -- a society without
    crime, war, poverty or gender inequality. In time, he comes to realize
    that this perfect society is inhospitable to ordinary humans like

    Bulwer-Lytton was also a playwright who wrote, ''The pen is mightier
    than the sword.'' Yet he was not noted as a stylist; the opening words
    of an early novel -- ''It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell
    in torrents'' -- have become iconic as bad writing. In ''The Coming
    Race,'' his narrative strengths are most apparent in the opening and
    closing chapters, where his hero must reconcile the evidence of his
    senses with his own cultural prejudices. But as with most utopias and
    dystopias, the bulk of the book consists of elaborate recipes for the
    good life. No Vril-ya community exceeds 30,000 in population, on the
    grounds that ''no state shall be too large for a government resembling
    that of a single well-ordered family.'' Democracy is scorned as ''the
    government of the ignorant.'' Female Vril-ya, ''bigger and stronger''
    than the males, are the aggressors in courtship. Once married,
    however, they are ''amiable, complacent, docile mates'' -- so much so
    that they freely abandon the Vril-powered wings that allow the young
    of the race to enjoy the effortless flight of angels.

    Critics disagree on how many of Bulwer-Lytton's prescriptions are
    meant ironically. But there is no doubt that he saw Vril itself as a
    scientific realization of the life force that mystics have tapped into
    from time immemorial. Readers of his own time were fascinated with it,
    as were early-20th-century occultists. In his introduction, David
    Seed, who teaches American literature at the University of Liverpool,
    notes that Bulwer-Lytton's writings may have influenced Hitler's
    ideology of a superrace destined to control the world by harnessing
    ''cosmic forces and ancient wisdom.''

    THE TRAVELER (Doubleday, $24.95), by John Twelve Hawks, is a
    movie-ready thriller that conflates science and mysticism in the
    modern paranoid manner. Psychically gifted individuals known as
    Travelers have the ability to visit other dimensions. Because the
    Travelers often bring back insights that undermine the powers that be,
    a secret group called the Brethren devotes its considerable resources
    to wiping them out. Another secret group, the Harlequins -- trained
    warriors who have no psychic powers -- zealously defend the Travelers.
    With the advent of computers, surveillance cameras and other tools of
    the modern security state, the Brethren have almost succeeded in
    bringing all humanity under the control of what the Harlequins call
    ''the Vast Machine.'' Will they succeed? Or will a disaffected
    Harlequin named Maya, teamed with a potential Traveler named Gabriel
    and assorted pure-hearted folks who live, in Gabriel's phrase, ''off
    the Grid,'' save the world from the hidden puppet masters?

    The pseudonymous Twelve Hawks knows how to hide the holes in a
    fast-moving narrative by piling up believable details about everything
    from Japanese sword making to the latest eavesdropping technology. And
    as a metaphor for modern paranoia, the Vast Machine seems a lot closer
    to the mark than the fantastic apparatus in the ''Matrix'' movies.

    What is known as near-future science fiction offers visions of
    contemporary society as it may evolve over the next hundred years or
    so. Far-future science fiction cuts the imagination loose from current
    trends to consider transcendent matters, like the meaning of life and
    the origin and fate of the universe. Robert Reed's novel THE WELL OF
    STARS (Tor/Tom Doherty, $25.95) is a sequel to his estimable
    ''Marrow'' (2000), which posited a mysterious interstellar ship,
    apparently constructed by long-dead aliens, that was so big it could
    accommodate a population of 100 billion humans and other life-forms
    without crowding. In ''Marrow,'' individuals and entire species
    battled for control of the ship in ways that suggested the struggles
    of all self-aware beings to control their destiny. ''The Well of
    Stars'' continues the story but forfeits the larger dimension. This
    time, the threat comes not from within but from outside. A life-form
    the size of a nebula stands in the ship's path. When the alien's
    gestures of friendship prove deceptive, the ship's inhabitants must
    cooperate to survive the encounter.

    At his best, Reed approaches Arthur C. Clarke in the ability to
    combine scientific extrapolation with poetic diction. Here, despite
    some finely conceived nonhuman cultures, the very scale of the
    confrontation overwhelms the telling. After pages and pages explaining
    the strategies and weapons employed by the two sides, I still had no
    clear idea of what was happening or what grand principle, if any, was
    at stake. The questions raised in the first book of the series remain
    unresolved. Mere survival seems too narrow a goal for a creation as
    awesome as ''the Great Ship.''

    THE CARPET MAKERS (Tor/Tom Doherty, $24.95), by Andreas Eschbach, is
    set in an unimaginably far future, after the fall of a galactic empire
    that lasted 250,000 years. Eschbach, an award-winning author in his
    native Germany, wisely begins with a tightly focused scene that
    introduces us to a backward planet dominated by a single enterprise:
    the laborious knotting of ''hair carpets'' for the Imperial Palace.
    The beautiful carpets are made of human hair, cut from the heads and
    armpits of the wives and daughters of the carpet maker, who spends his
    entire life completing one carpet. The society that supports this
    enterprise knows little or nothing about the larger culture to which
    it supposedly belongs. Its customs may seem cruel, but they appear at
    first to have the virtue of serving a higher purpose. Then Eschbach
    widens the exposure to reveal, in a series of carefully calculated
    moves, the immensely crueler truth behind the carpet makers' labors.

    This is a novel of ideas that evokes complex emotions through the
    working out of an intricate and ultimately satisfying plot, with
    echoes of Gene Wolfe, Ursula Le Guin and Isaac Asimov. The smooth
    English translation is by Doryl Jensen.

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