All reviews copyright 1984-2008 Evelyn C. Leeper.
BLIND LAKE by Robert Charles Wilson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/26/2003]
The "something borrowed" was Robert Charles Wilson's BLIND LAKE, which I borrowed from a friend. Somehow it's not up to his previous work, perhaps because I found the character of the ex- husband to be a bit over the top and not really necessary to the story. I would have thought the idea of a secret installation observing alien life on a planet circling a distant star enough premise for the story. I also thought the premise of the "viewer" to be a trifle too unbelievable--too much fantasy and not enough science fiction. (Of course, I have the same complaint about some of the "science" in Arthur C. Clarke's CHILDHOOD'S END, about which I will say more next week. I guess it's just Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.")
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DARWINIA by Robert Charles Wilson (Tor, ISBN 0-312-86038-2, 1998, 320pp, hardback):
In S. M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time, the island of Nantucket is hurled back to the Bronze Age via a mysterious "Event." In Greg Bear's Dinosaur Summer, the lost plateau of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World is real. In Robert Charles Wilson's previous book, Mysterium, our history took a different course and Gnosticism prevailed. Darwinia seems to be a combination of parts of all four, but ends up very different from all of them.
In 1912, the "Miracle" happens, and Europe as we know (knew) it vanishes, replaced by a primeval continent with virtually identical geography and geology, but different plant and animal life. Apparently it is from a timeline where evolution took a different path. As a result, the history of the world is very different from that point on. (For starters, it's hard to have a World War based in Europe when all the inhabitants of Europe no longer exist.).
Guilford Law signs up with the Finch Expedition to explore the neo-Europe, or Darwinia, as it is called. (This leads to some confusion, as the term "Darwinian evolution" refers specifically to the evolution of the life-forms on Darwinia, not evolution as described by Charles Darwin.) Not only does the expedition run into various dangers (natural and man-made), but several members are haunted by strange dreams that we recognize as being related to their possible lives in our timeline, and Law gradually becomes aware that the struggle is not merely global, but cosmic.
However, this is not so much an alternate history as an analysis of what might cause an alternate history, because in addition to everything else, this is connected somehow with the Archive, a record of all history created by the far future. Wilson uses interludes to try to explain this, but it is such a departure from the main action (at least at the beginning) that it feels very jarring--which is probably the idea. Even though the basic situation is mysterious, the reader thinks she understands somewhat what is going on and then Wilson pulls the rug out.
John Clute seems to feel that Darwinia (along with Wilson's other work) expresses Wilson's feeling of "apartness" that comes from Wilson's being Canadian. While there is a sense of apartness and isolation, I think it is more universal than Clute perceives it as being. There is also a thread reminiscent of Harry Turtledove's Between the Rivers and its echoes of Jaynes's bicameral mind. I realize at this point that it sounds as though Darwinia is a real hodge-podge, but it isn't. Wilson has taken several themes that have appeared elsewhere recently, but woven them into a tapestry all his own. I definitely recommend Darwinia.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/07/2006]
Our science fiction group chose DARWINIA by Robert Charles Wilson (ISBN 0-812-56662-9) for this month's selection. I reviewed this when it came out seven years ago; see http://geocities.datacellar.net/evelynleeper/rev-w2.htm#darwinia for that review. Briefly, I compared it to the alternate histories of S. M. Stirling's "Island in the Sea of Time" series, Greg Bear's DINOSAUR SUMMER, and Wilson's own MYSTERIUM. Though DARWINIA starts out similarly--in 1912, the "Miracle" happens, and Europe as we know (knew) it vanishes, replaced by a primeval continent with virtually identical geography and geology, but different plant and animal life--it goes in a very different direction.
A few additional comments over what I said in that review. The phrase on page 21 describing the change as being "nothing but wilderness north from Cairo and west at least as far as the Russian steppes" has been corrected to "east at least as far as the Russian steppes." I am not convinced that William Jennings Bryan was as involved in the "age of rocks" before the Scopes Trial as the comment on page 77 would imply. And page 226 implies that the magazine "Astounding" appeared similarly in this new world--would it have?
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THE DIVIDE by Robert Charles Wilson (Doubleday Foundation, 1990, ISBN 0-385-26655-3, $8.95.):
Let's clear something up right away: this book is *not* by the co-author of the "Illuminati" books. That is Robert *Anton* Wilson. No, this is by the author of A HIDDEN PLACE. MEMORY WIRE, and GYPSIES, all of which I read, liked, and recommended previously. So it should come as no surprise that I liked this book as well. (My delay in reviewing it is due to the relatively poor distribution trade paperbacks get, coupled with an apparent change of publishers--Wilson's three previous novels were with Bantam Spectra and I expected his future novels to appear under that imprint as well.)
John Shaw is the result of a government-sponsored experiment in enhancing intelligence. (The back blurb compares THE DIVIDE to FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON, but there is something of *Firestarter* here as well.) But John found that greater intelligence was a curse as well as a blessing, and so Benjamin was born. Beginning as a role that John played, Benjamin became an independent personality, a normal person who lived a normal life. And now, to complicate matters, John/Benjamin gets a message that he is dying.
It is difficult to portray convincingly a genius so that the non-genius reader (or viewer) can comprehend it. This was one of the major failings of the film LITTLE MAN TATE, for example. Wilson knows this, and even has John comment on this in regard to Olaf Stapledon's ODD JOHN, a classic work on this theme. Wilson succeeds in his portrayal by avoiding the specific--he doesn't show John solving polynomials in his head or doing esoteric scientific experiments. Rather, he is shown as subtly different in outlook, successful at anything he sets his hand to, and alone.
On the other hand, THE DIVIDE does have problems. The "psychotic boyfriend" subplot seemed unnecessary (one might almost say gratuitous), and the resolution was singularly unsatisfying--it was just too fortuitous. (This is similar to the problem that Wilson had in his second and third novels, MEMORY WIRE and GYPSIES, whose endings I felt were too predictable.) Because of these flaws I can't recommend this book as strongly as Wilson's previous works, but if you are interested in the subject of enhanced intelligence and its effects, this book is of definite interest to you.
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GYPSIES by Robert Charles Wilson (Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-37365-X, 1989):
In GYPSIES, Wilson's third novel, he returns to the realm of fantasy in our current world without totally abandoning science fiction. Karen discovers at a very young age that she can "sidestep" into other worlds, opening a window or a door into them by force of will. But it's not only she--it's her brothers also who have this talent. Where did it come from? What does it mean? And what is the meaning of the Gray Man whom she sees in these other worlds?
As in MEMORY WIRE, his second novel, Wilson eventually has the military trying to exploit these talents, and this is what Wilson uses to create the major tension at the end of the book, but that is not what I found the most memorable aspect of the novel. (In fact, in many ways the end of the novel was fairly predictable.) Rather it is his description of Karen's gradual discoveries about herself and her talents that make this a worthwhile work. GYPSIES has the same almost-mystical quality that made his first novel, A HIDDEN PLACE, a memorable debut. The prose style of GYPSIES is more polished than that of A HIDDEN PLACE, and as I have with Wilson's previous two books, I give this a strong recommendation.
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HARVEST by Robert Charles Wilson (Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-37110-X, 1993, $12):
What if aliens offered us the chance to live forever--if the only price we had to pay was to give up being human? That is the premise of Robert Charles Wilson's latest book, HARVEST.
As might be expected from the premise, HARVEST is more a study in characters than an action story, though there is a very impressive storm sequence. Wilson looks at the world through the eyes of those few who chose to remain human. And they are a motley crew--a doctor, a fundamentalist Christian, a car salesman, a politician, two teenagers, a farmer's wife, an Army colonel, a retired worker. They have little in common--except their decision. What makes some choose one way and some another is one of the main questions of the book, but Wilson never satisfactorily answers it, and indeed, towards the end HARVEST becomes very much like an update EARTH ABIDES, as the remaining humans cope with lack of electricity, the search for food, and so on. Wilson also makes a few flubs. He says that on election night, "a long Republican ascendancy over the White House had come to an end," obviously expecting Bush to win in 1992. (Internal evidence says the story takes place in 1996.) He also seems to think Lima is in a time zone between Los Angeles and Anchorage, while it is actually in the same time zone as New York.
In spite of these minor quibbles, however, I would still recommend HARVEST. Wilson at least touches on the nature of humanity, and his characters and their reactions to the situation and to each other may give us some clues, if not to *the* answer, at least to *an* answer.
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A HIDDEN PLACE by Robert Charles Wilson (Bantam Spectra, 1989 (1986c), ISBN 0-553-26103-7):
A hobo camp during the Depression may not seem the most auspicious opening scene for a fantasy novel, but at least one has to agree that it has not been over-used and that, more than likely, the book it begins is not just another Tolkien rip-off. And A HIDDEN PLACE is most definitely a different sort of fantasy.
From the very first scene, which introduces Bone, who seems to be a cross between a psychotic and a mental defective, the reader finds herself (or himself, but hey, I'm the reviewer so I should at least get top billing) involved with a most unlikely set of characters. There's Bone, of course, but there's also Travis Fisher, who drifts into town to live with his Puritanical, Bible-Belt-religious relatives after his less-than-Puritanical mother has died. And there's Anna Blaise, a strange young woman who lives in the attic of his relatives' house and affects everyone's lives most unexpectedly.
These characters soon find themselves swept up in the bigotry and narrow-mindedness of the times, or for that matter of any time. To say what develops from this, how the characters interact, and how it is resolved, would of course be giving away too much, and I wouldn't want to do that, because (as you might have guessed) I'm going to recommend that you read this book. It probably isn't a spoiler to say that Anna and Bone are as much symbols for aspects of our own humanity as they are characters, and that this is perhaps paradoxically what makes them in turn the fleshed-out characters they are.
This is not to say that sometimes the prose isn't, well, overripe. For example, this sentence (on page 14) made me feel as if I had fallen into the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest: "Haute Montagne ('where the railroad meets the wheatfield') might once have wanted to be a city, but that ambition had died--or at least had been set aside, like the hope chest of a young woman destined for spinsterhood--in the Depression that had come like a bad cold and stayed to become something worse, some lingering if not fatal disease." (For those who don't know, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a contest for the WORST starting sentence of a novel.) Maybe the fact that I just read the third volume of winners [?] in that contest influenced me here. On the other hand, one wonders if bad writing is not sometimes in the eye of the beholder and if some of the "bad" beginnings were presented as good beginning sentences, we wouldn't belive that as well. But now I'm drifting off into my regular rant against the Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition....
But overly florid writing notwithstanding (or perhaps even contributing), A HIDDEN PLACE is a book well worth seeking out.
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MEMORY WIRE by Robert Charles Wilson (Bantam Spectra, 1990 (1988c), ISBN 0-553-26853-8):
Where Wilson's first novel, A HIDDEN PLACE, is a fantasy, this is science fiction. Yet both cross the boundaries between the two: A HIDDEN PLACE has elements of science fiction (especially towards the end) and MEMORY WIRE, for all its high-tech beginning, draws on the idea of dreams and visions as a part of life.
The main character in MEMORY WIRE, Raymond Keller, has implanted in his head electronics that make him the perfect reporter: they record everything he sees and hears perfectly. He is sent to Brazil, where "they" ("they" being the usual corporate and government baddies) have discovered an alien artifact that may contain the total knowledge of the aliens and hence give the holder of limitless power. The fact that it also can bring out eidetic memories makes it valuable to anyone who wants to remember or relive their past. Most of the novel is spent with characters chasing and being chased, though while this is going on we do get to see Wilson's vision of the 21st Century.
The major weakness of this novel is the ending--all the villains are too easily defeated or give up. And, needless to say, the end is very predictable. The strengths are Wilson's descriptions of 21st Century life and of the dream-like states of his characters. On the whole I found this a disappointment after Wilson's promising beginning with A HIDDEN PLACE, but not enough so that I would totally give up on him. Rather, I would hope that he would concentrate where his strength is, on fantasy rather than on science fiction.
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MYSTERIUM by Robert Charles Wilson (Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-37365-X, 1994, 288pp):
I have liked all of Robert Charles Wilson's previous books (THE HIDDEN PLACE, MEMORY WIRE, GYPSIES, THE DIVIDE, THE BRIDGE OF YEARS, and HARVEST), which is even more interesting when you consider how widely they vary. THE HIDDEN PLACE is a fantasy set in a hobo camp during the Great Depression, MEMORY WIRE is a science fiction story of cybernetics in 21st Century Brazil, GYPSIES is about the military trying to use children who can "sidestep" into other worlds, THE DIVIDE is about the experimental enhancement of intelligence, THE BRIDGE OF YEARS is about time travel, and HARVEST is about aliens who come to transform the human race into something higher. If there's a pattern here, I don't see it. (And lest there be any confusion, this book is *not* by the co-author of the "Illuminati" books. That is Robert *Anton* Wilson.)
And now we have MYSTERIUM, a book based on gnosticism. I must admit that gnosticism in the early Christian church is not one of my strong points. From a historical perspective, I know that gnosticism led inpart to Manichaeism and the religion of the Bogomils, but I am less clear on their doctrines, so I have to take MYSTERIUM based on what Wilson conveys within it. (I hope he's more accurate on gnosticism than on mathematics-- where he refers to the "anthropic principle in the language of set theory"- -or physics--where he describes a thirty-degree incline ass "not steep.") Of course, one might claim that since one of the basic principles of gnosticism is hidden knowledge Wilson doesn't have to convey it clearly. After all, in Luke 8:10 it is said, "Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand," a very gnostic concept.
The town of Two Rivers, Michigan, is happy when the government builds a secret laboratory nearby, disappointed when they discover the employees won't be pumping money into the local economy, and surprised when they wake up one morning to discover that their entire town has been transported to a world like theirs--but different. Their country--whatever it is--seems to be at war with New Spain, and the Proctors have arrived to bring the town under control. No one is quite sure what has happened, but Howard Poole is sure it has something to do with his uncle, Alan Stern.
The three parts of MYSTERIUM are entitled "Mysterium," "Mysterium Tremendae," and "Axis Mundis" (reminiscent of the three sections of A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ). Each begins with a brief excerpt from Stern's diary, heavy on the Greek terms but somewhat helpful in understanding the religious basis not only of this new world but also of the book itself. Because gnosticism is the key to what's happened to the town of two rivers.
I have a couple of minor quibbles. Given the time of the "world- split," it seems unlikely that names such as Boston and Meso-America would be use. (Wilson attempts to explain this by having Graham note, "The movements of people, the evolution of language. It's as though history wants to flow in certain channels. Broad ethnic groupings persist, and there are roughly analogous wars, at least up until the tenth or eleventh century. There are plagues, though they follow different patterns. The Black Death depopulated Europe and Asia no less than five times," but I'm not convinced.) And his science is sloppy (see my comments about set theory and thirty-degree slopes earlier). But in spite of these problems, I found MYSTERIUM to be an engrossing novel. I may not believe the religious underpinnings of it, but then the same was true of A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ and that didn't stop me from liking that. This uses religion slightly differently, of course, but read it for yourself to see how.
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SPIN by Robert Charles Wilson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/05/2006]
In SPIN by Robert Charles Wilson (ISBN 0-765-30938-6), the stars don't go out slowly, one by one--one instant they are there and the next they are not. The moon is also gone, but the sun apparently is still there (though Wilson erroneously has the *western* horizon growing light the next morning--or maybe things are different in Canada). Soon we discover--SLIGHT SPOILERS-- that Earth has been put into a stasis field with an artificial sun, and although no one can see it, the aging of the solar system continues and will destroy Earth in about forty or fifty years, Earthtime. What exactly has happened, why it has happened, and what Earth's reaction to it is form the basis of Wilson's book. Great cosmological mysteries, human reaction to change--what more could one ask for? I have recommended all of Wilson's novels up to now, so it should not surprise you that I recommend this as well.
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