Review:
The Sky Road, by Ken MacLeod
Series: |
Fall Revolution #4 |
Publisher: |
Tor |
Copyright: |
1999 |
Printing: |
August 2001 |
ISBN: |
0-8125-7759-0 |
Format: |
Mass market |
Pages: |
406 |
The Sky Road is the fourth book in the Fall Revolution series, but
it represents an alternate future that diverges after (or during?) the
events of
The Sky Fraction. You probably
want to read that book first, but I'm not sure reading
The Stone Canal or
The Cassini Division adds anything to
this book other than frustration. Much more on that in a moment.
Clovis colha Gree is a aspiring doctoral student in history with a summer
job as a welder. He works on the platform for the project, which the
reader either slowly discovers from the book or quickly discovers from the
cover is a rocket to get to orbit. As the story opens, he meets (or, as he
describes it) is targeted by a woman named Merrial, a tinker who works on
the guidance system. The early chapters provide only a few hints about
Clovis's world: a statue of the Deliverer on a horse that forms the
backdrop of their meeting, the casual carrying of weapons, hints that
tinkers are socially unacceptable, and some division between the white
logic and the black logic in programming.
Also, because this is a Ken MacLeod novel, everyone is obsessed with
smoking and tobacco the way that the protagonists of erotica are obsessed
with sex.
Clovis's story is one thread of this novel. The other, told in the
alternating chapters, is the story of Myra Godwin-Davidova, chair of the
governing Council of People's Commissars of the International Scientific
and Technical Workers' Republic, a micronation embedded in post-Soviet
Kazakhstan. Series readers will remember Myra's former lover, David Reid,
as the villain of
The Stone Canal and the head of the corporation
Mutual Protection, which is using slave labor (sort of) to support a
resurgent space movement and its attempt to take control of a balkanized
Earth. The ISTWR is in decline and a minor power by all standards except
one: They still have nuclear weapons.
So, first, we need to talk about the series divergence.
I know from reading about this book on-line that
The Sky Road is an
alternate future that does not follow the events of
The Stone Canal
and
The Cassini Division. I do not know this from the text of the
book, which is completely silent about even being part of a series.
More annoyingly, while the divergence in the Earth's future compared to
The Cassini Division is obvious, I don't know what the
Jonbar
hinge is. Everything I can find on-line about this book is maddeningly
coy. Wikipedia claims the divergence happens at the end of
The Sky
Fraction. Other reviews and the Wikipedia talk page claim it happens in
the middle of
The Stone Canal. I do have a guess, but it's an
unsatisfying one and I'm not sure how to test its correctness. I suppose I
shouldn't care and instead take each of the books on their own terms, but
this is the type of thing that my brain obsesses over, and I find it
intensely irritating that MacLeod didn't explain it in the books
themselves. It's the sort of authorial trick that makes me feel dumb, and
books that gratuitously make me feel dumb are less enjoyable to read.
The second annoyance I have with this book is also only partly its fault.
This series, and this book in particular, is frequently mentioned as good
political science fiction that explores different ways of structuring
human society. This was true of some of the earlier books in a
surprisingly superficial way. Here, I would call it hogwash.
This book, or at least the Myra portion of it, is full of people doing
politics in a tactical sense, but like the previous books of this series,
that politics is mostly embedded in personal grudges and prior romantic
relationships. Everyone involved is essentially an authoritarian whose
ability to act as they wish is only contested by other authoritarians and
is largely unconstrained by such things as persuasion, discussions,
elections, or even theory. Myra and most of the people she meets are
profoundly cynical and almost contemptuous of any true discussion of
political systems. This is the trappings and mechanisms of politics
without the intellectual debate or attempt at consensus, turning it into a
zero-sum game won by whoever can threaten the others more effectively.
Given the glowing reviews I've seen in relatively political SF circles,
presumably I am missing something that other people see in MacLeod's
approach. Perhaps this level of pettiness and cynicism is an accurate
depiction of what it's like inside left-wing political movements. (What an
appalling condemnation of left-wing political movements, if so.) But many
of the on-line reviews lead me to instead conclude that people's
understanding of "political fiction" is stunted and superficial. For
example, there is almost nothing Marxist about this book it contains
essentially no economic or class analysis whatsoever but MacLeod uses a
lot of Marxist terminology and sets half the book in an explicitly
communist state, and this seems to be enough for large portions of the
on-line commentariat to conclude that it's full of dangerous, radical
ideas. I find this sadly hilarious given that MacLeod's societies tend, if
anything, towards a low-grade libertarianism that would be at home in a
Robert Heinlein novel. Apparently political labels are all that's needed
to make political fiction; substance is optional.
So much for the politics. What's left in Clovis's sections is a classic
science fiction adventure in which the protagonist has a radically
different perspective from the reader and the fun lies in figuring out the
world-building through the skewed perspective of the characters. This was
somewhat enjoyable, but would have been more fun if Clovis had any
discernible personality. Sadly he instead seems to be an empty receptacle
for the prejudices and perspective of his society, which involve a lot of
quasi-religious taboos and an essentially magical view of the world.
Merrial is a more interesting character, although as always in this series
the romance made absolutely no sense to me and seemed to be conjured by
authorial fiat and weirdly instant sexual attraction.
Myra's portion of the story was the part I cared more about and was more
invested in, aided by the fact that she's attempting to do something more
interesting than launch a crewed space vehicle for no obvious reason. She
at least faces some true moral challenges with no obviously correct
response. It's all a bit depressing, though, and I found Myra's
unwillingness to ground her decisions in a more comprehensive moral
framework disappointing. If you're going to make a protagonist the ruler
of a communist state, even an ironic one, I'd like to hear some real
political philosophy, some theory of sociology and economics that she used
to justify her decisions. The bits that rise above personal animosity and
vibes were, I think, said better in
The Cassini Division.
This series was disappointing, and I can't say I'm glad to have read it.
There is some small pleasure in finishing a set of award-winning genre
books so that I can have a meaningful conversation about them, but the
awards failed to find me better books to read than I would have found on
my own. These aren't bad books, but the amount of enjoyment I got out of
them didn't feel worth the frustration. Not recommended, I'm afraid.
Rating: 6 out of 10