Michael Swanwick
1991
Awards: Nebula
Nominations: Hugo
Rating: ★ – – – –
I
started out excited to read this book because of the setting. It takes
place on a planet called Miranda, which has a very long annual cycle
around its sun lasting several of our years. Miranda has one large dry-land continent
(named “Continent”) and one ocean (named “Ocean”) surrounding the continent. During
half of the year, the polar ice caps melt and the tides come in and
Ocean rises to cover half of Continent. Any creature living on the land
who is not prepared for the annual tides gets swept into Ocean and
drowns.
The indigenous animals of Miranda, collectively called
the “haunts” by the colonizing humans, have evolved to be able to change to either land-suitable or water-suitable form, as necessary. Miranda’s native mice, for
example, change into sort of swimming mini-otters when the tides come
in.
Unfortunately, although the setting has great potential, the plot is
confusing and ill-defined, and the characters are all either annoying or
just plain boring. I don’t know how William Gibson and Kim Stanley
Robinson could have given it the stunning reviews they did.
Basically,
the story is about a bureaucrat (“the bureaucrat”) visiting Miranda from its governing
worlds, which are many light years away. A mysterious Mirandan wizard named
Gregorian is rumored to be in possession of proscribed technology, and
the bureaucrat has been sent to find him and get him to give it back. Over the course of completing his mission, the bureaucrat has life-threatening adventures, learns
Gregorian’s true identity,
experiments with mind-altering drugs, and has pretty kinky, very
explicit sex with a witch. It all takes place on the coast in the last
days before the tides are scheduled to come rushing in, adding a certain
urgency to his task.
My major problem with the book is that Swanwick has a Vernor Vinge-like
habit of continually bringing in new ideas and plot lines and
technology, and then never carrying them through. From the Mirandans’
vaguely restrictive census bracelets, to the feverdancers that affect
your brain when you’re on drugs, to the weird TV drama that everyone is
always watching, many of the early details you think hold promise and
are going to be explored further are just left amorphous and hanging. And
some elements essential to the ending are brought up for the first time
in the last five pages.
To make matters worse, many of the ideas in this book are
painfully derivative of better earlier work by other people. For
example, one of the characters has to go through a test of strength and
character that involves sticking their hand in a pain-box in a scene
that could have been copied directly from Dune. And the dual nature of Miranda’s haunts seems similar to, although not as well developed as, the local fauna and flora in Speaker for the Dead. (Note:
I did appreciate the overt homage in which the massive, multi-towered
granite government buildings the bureaucrat works in are called “the Mountains of Madness” by the employees.)
Swanwick sprinkles references to The Tempest throughout
the book, undoubtedly inspired by the ocean forces that hover in the
background, threatening inundation at any moment. Celestial bodies are
all named for characters in Shakespeare's play – the sun is Prospero,
one moon is Caliban and the other is Ariel, and then of course there is
the planet Miranda itself.
None of the references are carried
through with any meaning, though. He throws them out but feels no need
to incorporate any deeper parallels to The Tempest into
the story. That would have been quite possible; after all, one of the
main characters is a powerful magician, and it takes place on what is
essentially an island whose inhabitants feel constrained by their
colonial government (although they are also kind of colonizers
themselves). (I have to admit, though, I never really liked The Tempest either. I don’t like Shakespeare’s plays about fairies and romances nearly as much as the ones about despotic rulers.)
Our lives may be such stuff as dreams are made on, but this book definitely is not.
An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.
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