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The Star Fraction
Ken MacLeod's vision of the 21st century - and beyond - is highly politicized. He has won two Prometheus awards for libertarian science fiction despite his positive appraisal of much of the Left in his writing. His four published novels involve a society very different politically from our own. His work has fanned out from his first novel, The Star Fraction to offer alternative viewpoints - often sympathetic but possibly contradictory - on where humanity could be heading. The breadth and cross-pollination between the books gives each a greater depth, regardless of the order in which they are read.
The Star Fraction opens around the middle of the 21st century. Britain has been fractured by turbulence at home and abroad. Division on every issue and the failure of central government has left independents of every stripe in enclaves throughout the country, from London to the Scottish Highlands. Many of these have a broad sympathy for the former Socialist government and the attitudes of the Left but are involved in feuds at the expense of the dream of a re-united Republican Britain. A Royalist government retains power over the rump of the country, but their power is further limited by the U.S./UN. The U.S./UN itself maintains global power through space based weaponry and control of new technology which has paralyzed the development of biotechnology and artificial intelligence.
The primary underlying "science" of this science fiction is politics. The interference patterns created by such a thought experiment are the very lives and livelihoods of the people in the book. Characters include a communist mercenary who works for a collective protecting (capitalist) property, a university researcher and a programmer/stockbroker from a Christian fundamentalist group. These people are powerfully realised. They care deeply about the society they live in and their political beliefs are a deep and genuine expression of their concern. The process of exploring politics through character makes the factional complexity of ideology more accessible. It also results in a visceral experience rather than a novel of ideas.
The speculative elements of The Star Fraction are in no way limited to politics. Space is a place where people go to work. This is significant, both for the influence that this all-seeing perspective offers the major powers and for the increasing freedom from Earth of those above. On the ground, the Green movement is seen to be deeply affected by global warming - what can they do when the environment is so clearly falling apart and it seems that still too few respect Gaia? There is also machine consciousness which works its way towards full artificial intelligence. The centre of this novel has much to say about artificial intelligence and its possible relationships with humanity. The idea of a life form springing from the silicon is opposed by those - both ignorant and computer literate - who fear the potential power of AI.
In the final third of the book the plot languishes somewhat as the populus works to reach a future bright with possibility. This final outcome remains open to re-interpretation and revelation. This novel brims with political pizzazz, wry humor and unusual insight. The struggle of the masses is brought to life in a manner which matches its fervency for a better world with brilliant action and convincing description.
It's only availible overseas, however.
2) I thoroughly enjoyed the book (heck, I did read it twice:) and recommend it to anyone who can find it.
3) (Three things!) Gotta love that Kalishnikov (?). That was one hell of a gun.
Not only does the Star Fraction go into politics and AI, it also covers computer virii and virtual reality. A very thought provoking book.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Oddly, Tor Books, his US publisher, decided to start with "The Cassini Division" (arguably the weakest book) then follow up with "The Stone Canal".
According to Patrick Neilsen-Hayden of Tor (posting on rec.arts.sf.written), "The Star Fraction" will be published in the USA, but after the other books. If you really can't wait, you can probably find it at Waterstones (large UK bookseller with e-tailer outlet).
(Personally, I rate Ken as one of the two most important Scottish SF writers currently working -- the other being Iain Banks. Highly recommended!)
...which is where I'm getting my copy, the next time I'm back in Canada. Try www.chapters.ca.
It's novels like this that give me some hope that the left might still have some place in English-language science fiction. The dominance of reactionary capitalists in SF is getting really old, and awfully annoying. I've had all I can take of retread space army stories, lawless "high frontiers" stolen from a largely mythical memory of the Old West and how either welfare or environmentalism will destroy America. Enough is enough! (This means you, Jerry Pournelle!)
I was shocked to see Tor put out The Cassini Division, given the politics of most of its stable of writers.
Ken MacLeod's left seems to be a materialist (in the old-fashioned Marxist sense), pragmatic, moderately revolutionary and not even vaguely Green left. He takes a very dim view of the Greens in The Sky Road and proposes a socialism based on only the most cynical view of human nature in The Cassini Division. It's a socialism which expects people to do whatever they think they can get away with.
He obviously has little truck with American academic Marxism or luddite Green sentiments. Oddly, this makes him seem more conservative than most of the American right, who seem to want to tear the country down and rebuild it, in the same way the left did 30 years ago.
I suspect he's something of a reformed Scotish Trotskyite, but I'm just guessing. I note that his socialist revolution is, and can only be, global. That is the traditional position of the Trots.
Anyway, he's putting forward interesting ideas and the two books I've read (The Sky Road and The Cassini Division) are well worht reading.
Most of his ideas aren't new per se, but with the left in such a dismal state in the anglophone world these last 20 years, I suspect they will seem new to his audience.
Asimov is dead. So is Brunner. LeGuin is way past her best years and so is Moorcock. I am encouraged by Iain Banks's books and occaisionally Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson. No, not all SF is right-wing, but not much on the left side has been coming out in recent years.
I'll have to read Freedom and Necessity although Hegel's philosophy isn't exactly my cup of tea. I may have to reevalutate Tor, although a look at their 2000 publishing schedule isn't encouraging. There are two MacLeod book (The Stone Canal and The Sky Road), but there is also a James Hogan novel, a David Drake, Larry Niven (who admittedly is a lot less political when Pournelle isn't around), Vernor Vinge, Poul Anderson and Glen Cook.
There are a few who could be viewed as moderately liberal on their calendar too - Frederick Pohl and Orson Scott Card and perhaps Piers Anthony - but not by me.
I'm not a beliver in censorship - if Tor can make money selling this stuff I'm not bothered to see it on shelves - but I remember the days when SF was a liberal medium where people looked forward to a future of equality and democracy. Back then, a utopia was a place where everyone had a place to live and food to eat and a chance to better themselves, not a place where the rich make the rules and the poor take whatever scraps are left.
No, of course not all SF is right-wing, but more and more of what you can actually find on the shelves is either Tom Clancy wannabes or dull space opera. I suppose Sturgeon's rule still applies: 90% of everything is crap. A lot of the old leftist SF was also, no question, crap.
But there was a time when people like Norman Spinrad and John Brunner were big names who put out a book a year, and the cyberpunks were taking a big bite out of utopian fantasies on both the left and right. Now, I find only a handful of SF authors willing to look at social issues without some kind of right libertarian perspective, and most of those are Greens (blech!)
As a leftist, I find the return to a rational, technologically literate liberal (and even socialist) SF to be a real breath of fresh air, and I desperately hope this is a trend that will continue.
I guess you could make the point that we're getting right-wing pablum nowadays instead of left-wing pablum. Indeed, I might just agree with you on that one.
:^)
I've never developed much of a taste for Moorcock, so I'll take your word that his current work is much improved.
Heinlein - now there was a conservative one could enjoy (mostly - after 1980 I have to wonder about his overall mental health. Expanded Universe has to be one of the worst things he ever wrote.) At any rate, there certainly isn't anyone talking politics in SF today of that calibre. Certainly, as much as I disagree with him, I can at least see where he's coming from.
As for H. Beam Piper, I never took him very seriously, and you're right that Niven and Anderson have already done their best work.
I love Delaney's novels, mostly. Triton is great, and Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand is one of my all time, favourite SF novels. Dhalgren, however, just confuses the hell out of me. Delaney is most of what I still respect about postmodernism.
I've lived roughly half my life in the States, so I'll give The Intuitionist a shot.
We'll have to differ about Glen Cook. He was certainly well to the right of centre in the 70's and 80's. None of your points strike me as especially liberal. Cynical, maybe, but not liberal.
Are you sure you're a right libertarian? As long as you're willing to conceed that government does have some valid functions in maintaining high standards of living other than simply running the courts and police, I suspect there's room for you on this side of the fence if you want to defect. The Greens may be Luddites, but the rest of us aren't. Certainly your literary tastes won't be a barrier.
The mildly amusing issue is that many of us are buying our books online across national boundaries, so when the publishers of this book bring it out in the states it probably won't sell as well in the states as it would in days gone by when you couldn't easily buy it direct. So their figures will become skewed, assumptions now that a book will be very popular in say Europe because it sold a stack in the US will be just plain wrong unless the amount sold online from the states to Europe are factored in.
Its hardly relevent yet as the figures involved are still tiny in terms of the older distribution networks, but something to keep an eye on.
Maybe it will force smaller lead times on books to keep business away from amazon et al or maybe it will lead to the complete opposite where noone republishes an american book in europe or visa versa, but instead just posts the damn things around the world :-)
C.
I sometimes write stuff
The idea of a life form springing from the silicon is opposed by those - both ignorant and computer literate
Geez, it that old bug-a-boo still a staple of sci-fi? I'll beleive that "scientist creates monster that turns on it's creator" when I see it; like 'consciousness', it's nowhere in sight.
CSMA/CD race driver.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It would be nice if there was a "reviews" topic, given the increasing number of book reviews showing up here.
The cake is a pie
Another of MacLeod's books, "Cassini Division" is indeed available in the states here. It takes place in the same world with the same characters. I'm not sure about the order of the series but there aren't any real spoilers in the books at all. A review of the Cassini division can be found on Salon .
-m.d.
Writers still try the concept because it's really hard to pull off right. Describing post-singularity people / beings has to have the feel of a child describing adults- "we don't understand them, but they understand us and can predict our actions; they make arbitrary rules (Eat the Cauliflower! Don't eat the dirt!); they carry us about without much choice on our part"- with the "child" being intelligent adult humans. They aren't published that often, but when they are- Five Star Mental Dining: McLeod, Egan, Vinge, Benford (present topic, Diaspora, Fire Upon the Deep, Great Sky River...).
SF, to be SF, must be a logical continuation or extrapolation from what we know is possible given our science, or plausible given our behavior (with perhaps one suspension of disbelief allowed per universe, a coupon often redeemed for FTL travel. The best writing feels plausible and doesn't require the SoD). Post-singularity fiction usually is flavored with a mix of four events or behaviors we've experienced:
The older-style "monster turns on master" books tend to not be this complex. They'll have the feel of only one event: Arm the barbarians, the barbarians take over civilization and ruin it. There is little sense that the new beings inhabit a word that is bigger than ours- more science, more complex interactions between beings, things happen that we can't quite understand.
So yes, its still around, although not as a "staple"- books this rich can't be done by the ordinary line chefs of SF.
Sounds like a great book, too bad it's only available overseas. Any ideas why they're not selling it here?
Book companies usually sell authors who have great appeal or who are in the business of making the book chain money. If I just start publishing something I am not likely to get Barnes and Noble to put it on their shelves.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
You know, its quite interesting to see someone else's different take on the 'Fast Minds' portrayed in the book. From what we gather (and this isnt a spoiler as its detailed about a 1/3rd of the way through the book) the uploaded consciousness of the 'Fast Minds' arent AI at all, but rather humans who have evolved into being so far _removed_ from humans as to be 'considered' AI. (there is AI in the form of certain robots on the 'colony' planet, but that is hardly 'emerging' at any rate :]
So from _that_ perspective its not really a book all about humanity Vs some alien threat (AI/unknown alien destroyers/Y2k) but more a look at humanity Vs humanity (also re-enforced by the Progressive Communism Vs Libertarianism Vs Fascism and also the Continuation vs Rebirth theme)
The only true 'alien' in this book (or the series of these books) is the aliens that man creates _from_ man.
StefZodiak
ps. the setting is _very_ descriptive of Glasgow
(Scotland) which is refreshing.
pps. the cassini division is probably our
favourite from the entire series. DONT miss it
out.
Ok, maybe not quite that, but Ken MacLeod is the best thing to happen to science fiction in a long time. All four of his books are unbelievably great and those not available in the US are well worth special ordering from the UK.
I've written reviews of all of them, available on my web site:
The Star Fracion
The Stone Canal
The Cassini Division
The Sky Road
Note that the Star Fraction is available in bookstores in Canada. A $10 paperback edition is also available in the US via mail order from Laissez-Faire Books
One of the things I find refreshing about MacLeod -- sort of in the way a slap in the face can be refreshing under the right circumstances -- is how casual he is about exterminating whole virtual civilizations; how callously his characters can say "consciousness is an emergent property of carbon" and deny AIs or 'uploaded' humans any sort of civil rights or social equality just because they ain't natural-born human.
The consensus in SF ever since, oh, the Blade Runner days is that a mind is a mind is a mind, and natural/artificial, carbon/silicon, wetware/software makes no difference. MacLeod's work highlights the fact that this is really just one of SF's social conventions, and just because we hold this particular truth to be self-evident doesn't mean the rest of humanity is going to... and not just the screaming anti-science mobs (has anyone actually seen a screaming anti-science mob?) but the smart, competent, and ruthless good guys, too.
And it's also damned refreshing to read something that doesn't take fin-de-millenaire corporate capitalism as the end-all be-all of human existence, for good or evil. Long live the Last International!
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.