Mini-Review Part Two

Finity by John Barnes (Tor, $22.95)

John Barnes is often compared to Robert Heinlein--fittingly for some of his books, less so for others. In his new book Finity, though, he is remarkably close to Heinlein in a number of ways. In fact, he is remarkably close to certain highly specific Heinlein novels, though he has done a very clever job of integrating them and of coming up with a new premise on which to erect his narrative.

At the start of Finity, its first person narrator is an academic living in an American expatriate community in New Zealand, engaged to another American expatriate academic. Gradually we learn that the expatriate community was established by successive generations of refugees from a Nazi-conquered America, one of the Twelve Reichs that emerged from a German victory in World War II. This seems to indicate that the reader is on the familiar territory of an alternative history novel.

As the action starts, the narrator is offered a new job at a fabulously wealthy corporation. After his interview, he falls into a series of intrigues and misadventures, during which his life is endangered. His fiancee saves him, displaying combat skills and possession of weapons that are no part of her background as we know at. At this point one of Barnes's Heinleinian sources becomes visible: Friday, and secondarily various other Heinlein novels of espionage. The unexpected lethality of the narrator's fiancee is just what we would expect.

But Barnes has further complexities in store for the reader. For it emerges that the fiancee has no idea how she learned those skill or came into possession of those weapons, and indeed had not idea that she had ever had either. In trying to figure this out, both characters and a number of their friends experience inexplicable lapses of awareness and find strange gaps in their memories and equally strange disagreements with each other's histories. All of them are exiles from America, but apparently no two of them from the same America.

To say more about how Barnes resolves this situation would give away far too much. Let it suffice to say that he does tie everything together in the end, and does so with a premise that derives plausibly from current scientific theories and from hoped-for future technologies. And both in the problem he poses, once it emerges into full view, and in the ultimate resolution of that problem, he is revisiting the ground of the other best of Heinlein's late books, Job.

In the process he offers us a number of other pleasures. His characters are a mixed lot, but even the less appealing of them carry a vivid sense of real personality. His intrigues are complex and often baffling, but they convey a sense of conviction, perhaps not least by the sheer depth of their hidden motives. His ideational content is sophisticated and starts out from an accurately presented understanding of real physics, though it makes that physics a springboard for a leap into weirdness.

It was an added pleasure that he told his story in as few pages as served for most of the classic science fiction novels, with a manageable cast of characters and with no unresolved elements set up to drag the reader back for a sequel or three. I find Barnes an uneven writer, but when he wrote Finity the muse was with him.

Reviewed by William H. Stoddard

Rockets, Redheads and Revolution by James P. Hogan (Baen, 1999, $6.99)

James Hogan is emerging as a favorite among libertarian sf fans, if only because because he is often "volunteered" to accept the Prometheus Award for nonattending authors. Like many folks of a classic liberal, i.e., libertarian bent, he shows a strong contrarian impulse and this is both a strength and a weakness of this collection of science fiction stories (most previously published) and opinion pieces. The only piece of fiction which hasn't appeared elsewhere, "Madam Butterfly," is an interesting extrapolation of the consequences of small changes and the title does have a double meaning relevant to the story, if you remember your Arthur C. Clarke.

It is, however, Hogan's nonfiction which makes the strongest impression in this collection. Pieces range from personal in nature, "How They Got Me at Baycon" (the redhead reference in the title), to taking credit for the end of Communism ("What Really Brought Down Communism"), to addressing the question of writing a sequel to a nonsequelizable book ("Uprooted Again"), to the trials and travails of buying and remodeling a house in Ireland ("Sorry About That"). His opinion pieces begin with "Boom and Slump," exploiting the irony that it took a centrally planned and directed program to get the US to the Moon, immediately prompting the idea that strong goverment control could solve social problems as well. (How many times have I heard, "If they can put a man on the moon, surely. . . .")

His concluding piece, "Fact Free Science," follows up on three previous essays in this volume, "AIDS Heresy and the New Bishops," "Evolution Revisited," and "Ozone Politics," and it is in these essays that his contrarian impulse is most apparent. In each essay, he examines the prevailing scientific wisdom and compares it to work by dissenters from the scientific party line, essentially asking science to keep an open mind away from political influence. (In fact, I've just received a review copy of his new novel--look for a review in this space!--whose science hook derives from the theories of Velikovsky.) While I would agree with some of his view of the politics of science, I do think he has a tendency to take dissenters too much at face value. For example, in his AIDS essay, he accepts the ideas of Peter Duesberg, but ignores the fact that Duesberg's theories about HIV/AIDS fail to account for HIV/AIDS among heterosexual Western women with good nutrition and strong immune systems. Even critics of science must be viewed with a critical eye.

In sum, an enjoyable collection of fiction, especially if you haven't read it elsewhere, some interesting memoirs and recollections of fannish and other activities, and some well-crafted essays. Readers of Prometheus will enjoy this collection from a man who knows his Bushmills.

Reviewed by Lynn Maners

Earthweb, by Marc Stiegler

"Earthweb" is a new novel by Marc Stiegler, the author of Prometheus Award nominee "David's Sling." The story has strong libertarian themes and is a fun read. The plot concerns an attack on Earth by aliens and our defense using ultramodern Internet-based and market-savvy techniques for collaboration and coordination.

The characters grow and learn from their experiences through the conflict. A petty hoodlum discovers that his talent for planning details of a heist can be more productively, safely, and lucratively applied to solving problems for legitimate customers. Another character uses a series of simulated battles (reminiscent of "Ender's Game") to extend her talent for split-second decision-making to directing a team in combat.

The real strength of the book is in its depiction of the future of the Internet as a medium for business and collaboration. A little additional technology for tracking reputations and cementing deals on line, and the globally connected network will present a medium for much more information-rich deal-making. The story shows how people with a wide variety of expertise work together to solve problems posed in the middle of battle that today's technologies wouldn't even let them read about the next day. By focusing the problem solver's attention and allowing them to concentrate on relevant topics, the emergent knowledge properties of the market can be enhanced and magnified.

Lots of action, great characters, and pure libertarian, to boot!

Reviewed by Chris Hibbert

Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson (Avon, $27.50)

Cryptonomicon is Neal Stephenson's fourth novel, and I'm pleased to be able to say that it shows a steady progression in his skill as a writer. His previous books offered thought-provoking science-fictional ideas, often with libertarian subtexts. Cryptonomicon has both, and in addition a new mastery of the craft of writing.

Like most current novels, this is a long book with a complex plot and multiple viewpoints. In fact, it approaches its plot from two angles, with narratives set half a century apart. This kind of storytelling is just asking for trouble, but Stephenson pulls it off and even makes it look natural. In part, this comes about through his having a limited number of viewpoint characters, three in the earlier narrative and only one in the later, and staying tightly in control of the information revealed through their eyesa fitting skill in a novel that is essentially about information. In addition, the earlier story is carefully paced so that the reader still confronts unsolved mysteries in the final pages of the book, where they are plausibly resolved.

Is it science fiction? That depends on your definition. It isn't set in the future; its earlier thread spans World War II, its later thread could perfectly well be now. But it has the science fictional property of being about scientific concepts without which the action could not make sense. In this particular case, most of those ideas are real science, centering on the coevolution of computers and cryptography and the social impact of both; but Stephenson still asks the reader to grasp solid scientific content in exactly the style of Robert Heinlein writing about interplanetary trajectories.

Is it libertarian? Not in explicit statement; Stephenson has never included explicit ideological content in his fiction. But he writes sympathetically of the value of gold-backed currency as a basis for a more stable market economy than governmental central banks can achieve; of the value of privacy and of cryptography as a means of achieving it; and of various other things libertarians will greet with a nod of recognition, including a scene that points out the illogic of current firearms control laws. Above all else, his central characters one and all are able to greet new experiences, new ideas, and other cultures with friendly interest and to maintain a deep sense of personal integrity in their actions.

On all these grounds, I think this book will be enjoyable reading for most readers of Prometheus. And in reading it, they will have such incidental pleasures as a pointed satire of postmodernist literary culture and brief visits to two imaginary countries, Kinakuta and Qwghlm. For me particularly, the passage where a character learns of an academic study modelling food energy consumption in hunting/gathering cultures and instantly setting out to turn it into a roleplaying game produced an unnerving but delightful sense of self-recognition. Even better, these little delights are smoothly integrated into the fabric of the book, never running away with it, as a less steady hand might allow them to. Stephenson always knows exactly what he's doing in this book.

reviewed by William H. Stoddard