Electronic OtherRealms #20 Spring, 1988 Part 3 Waste of Trees Quarterly [Part 2] Alan Wexelblat The Tomorrow Makers Speaking of how the future will handle computers, all you future- oriented people might be interested in this work. Grant Fjermedal is a science writer, with interests and publication credits mainly in physics and medicine. For The Tomorrow Makers he moves out of these worlds and into the worlds of the midnight hackers and the robot builders. The Tomorrow Makers is somewhat like a diary. It chronicles Fjermedal's travels across the country as he visits the futurists' labs first at CMU, then at Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Thinking Machines, and on to Japan. It is chock full of interesting stories and quotes. The author is quite good at conveying the atmosphere of the places he visits. We start out meeting Terragator, the creation of Carnegie-Mellon's Autonomous Mobile Robot Laboratory, and its builders. These people are struggling to build something that may one day become the world's first robot warrior, or that might be the first miner on the moon; meanwhile, the Japanese are building robots that can play the piano. One of the strongest points in the book is Fjermedal's careful examination of the relationship between robots, AI and society. He takes a look at questions of machine feeling (could we hurt or enslave our creations? would they know it if we did?) and of the uses to which robotic and AI technology might be put. After CMU, we move on to the AI creations and parallel machines of MIT. Here Fjermedal gets to play with one of his favorite topics. He, and many of the researchers interviewed in the book, believe that it may be possible to analyze the contents of a human brain and reproduce them in silicon. This process, called downloading, would theoretically allow humans to cheat death, to travel to the stars, and so forth. While many AI critics and non-scientists publicly sneer at this idea, it is interesting to see that most of the 'names' in the AI field agree that this is a likely possibility. There seems only to be disagreement about when. Some think that we will be the last generation to die in carbon-based bodies; others think it's something that their children or grandchildren will live to see. It's hard to give a sense of the book to someone who hasn't read it. It's not really a story in the conventional sense, but it's something more than a simple chronology of Fjermedal's travels. It's a strong book, with strength in the feeling you get that you are looking over Fjermedal's shoulder and in the feeling that he is really capturing the edge of emerging technology. Despite its overall strength, I found the book somewhat lacking. It is a little disorganized; Fjermedal is constantly referring to meetings that the reader hasn't been taken to yet. Also, he has the 'gosh-whiz' attitude of a newcomer to the computer field and this comes across in The Tomorrow Makers. He is aware of the implications of what he is investigating, but seems overly optimistic about the probabilities of success. Overall, I found this to be an excellent bedtime book, and it makes a pleasant change from SF authors who don't know their science. The Artificial Kid Before we start, it's personal notes time: at the last Armadillocon, I had the pleasure of making Bruce Sterling's acquaintance. Over the succeeding months we've traded fun information back and forth and I hope to interview him for a future issue of OtherRealms; I am therefore reading everything of his that I can lay my hands on. I hope that won't color my reviews of his books, but at least you were warned. The Artificial Kid is an unusual and very original book. It is futuristic SF, but not cyberpunk in the sense that others have characterized cyberpunk. It is set on the world of Reverie, which has been terraformed and colonized by humans. The society is divided between ground dwellers, who live in a semi-anarchic technocracy, and orbitals who live in space colonies. At its inception, Reverie was ruled by a Board of Directors founded by Moses Moses. However, Moses had himself frozen and hundreds of years later, his cryocapsule and the reigning board of directors were destroyed by an assassin's bomb. Stories of a mysterious Cabal abound, but no one is really sure who did what. Now entering its five-hundredth year, the planet's society as a whole is supported by mineral wealth which is divided more or less evenly among the citizens. Consequently, leisure activities have assumed heightened importance to the point where a Decriminalized Zone is established. In this zone, punks and gangs fight for territory, blood, and prestige. Each combat artist is constantly surrounded by his or her cameras, which record every detail for later editing and broadcast. One of the fastest-rising of these self-made stars is the Artificial Kid. With the help of his backer, Mr. Money Manies, he is establishing himself on the fight circuit. Manies is a very eccentric, very rich gentleman. At one of Manies' regular social breakfasts, the Kid earns the enmity of a powerful enemy, Professor Angeluce. Angeluce is an old enemy of Rominuald Tanglin, the Kid's father, and Professor Crossbow, the Kid's mentor and guardian. The argument quickly heats up and ends with the Kid tossing Angeluce off a balcony into the sea. The Professor sets out to destroy the Kid, and incidentally take over Reverie. At this point, the unconventional nature of The Artificial Kid begins to surface. Most authors place their protagonists square in the center of the action. Sterling operates more in the manner of a Greek tragedy, however. Most of the action takes place offstage or around the Kid, with the Kid only reacting to it as news reaches him or when people seek him out. It makes for an unusual story. The Artificial Kid was Sterling's second novel, and as such it has some weaknesses. At one point, Sterling dumps his characters onto the ocean so they can tell each other stories so that the reader gets necessary background information. A bit amateurish, but still interesting. I enjoyed the book in part because it is written at a fairly intellectual level; Sterling assumes a high level of educational in his audience, making the book somewhat more challenging than average. Schismatrix Until cyberpunk burst on the scene, Sterling was best known for his Shaper/Mech stories. These stories told of the ongoing war between the two basic branches of human evolution: the Shapers, who use biological techniques of mind self-control and body regeneration, and the Mechanists (or Mechs), who replace their worn-out body parts with mechanical limbs and organs. In addition, there are also the sundogs, dregs of both societies who prey on whatever is available without concern for which side is winning. Schismatrix is the story of Abelard Lindsay, Shaper exile, sundog, and his quest for revenge on Philip Constantine his one-time friend who, for political reasons, murdered the woman they both loved and tried to kill Lindsay. It is also the story of the end of the war between Shaper and Mech, and its restart and final end. It is also the story of the first contact between human and alien. It is a story that covers centuries. Naturally, this much story couldn't be told in 288 pages in conventional narrative style. Just as The Artificial Kid used the style of Greek tragedies, Schismatrix uses the style of the Greek epics like the Odyssey. What Sterling does is follow Lindsay through several series of important episodes. The book is divided into three sections, each of which tells a mostly complete story. Enough threads are left to spin into the next section, but they are thin enough threads that Sterling can slip past decades of time between the sections. The story begins with Linsday banished to exile in the sundog colony of Mare Tranquilitatus People's Circumlunar Zaibatsu. Here, exiled from family and friends, he must depend on his wits and his training to rebuild. The kinds of talents he shows here will remain with him throughout the story. He is a facile liar, extremely competent at 'handling' people. He is quick to analyze a situation and take advantage of it. He uses these talents to insinuate himself with the powers that be in the Zaibatsu, and ultimately to escape from it. The second section of the book shows Lindsay in his prime. He is one of the first to have contact with the Investors, the aliens who are revolutionizing human history. For the first time, the warring factions of humanity are united by a peace as they jointly deal with the outside forces of trade and diplomacy with the aliens. This section also covers Lindsay's downfall at the hands of a resurgent Constantine and the final meeting between the two. Along the way, the alien presence is reduced and humanity begins to recover from the culture shock imposed by the outsiders. The last section shows Lindsay in his final years, first as the head of a family, then as the architect of an impossible project -- the terraforming of Mars. The pace of the story accelerates until we are covering years in a single section and at the end, Lindsay meets his final destiny. Schismatrix has none of the rough edges that The Artificial Kid demonstrated. The characters are well-drawn and complex. The technology is fascinatingly present, but it never overwhelms the reader. The aliens are also well-drawn, though sometimes they seem less alien than some of the strange people that make up the Shaper/Mech universe. Readers may have some trouble finding this book. With the imminent release of Sterling's new novel, Islands in the Net, the hardcover of Schismatrix has been remaindered, and I have yet to see it in paperback anywhere. Watchmen To call Watchmen the comics sensation of the year would be an understatement. Coming, as it does, on the heels of Dark Knight it will make the graphic novel impossible to ignore. It's hard to know where to start in describing Watchmen. Let's begin with the form. A graphic novel is unique in that it provides a medium in which the author can do things that would be impossible in pure print. This was done well in Ronin and is essential to Watchmen. There are images and actions that would be impossible to convey in print. Moore and Gibbons have created a tight, multi-layered, visually-oriented world and the story moves the reader around in it. The art as art is not that revolutionary. There are none of the new techniques that were tried in Ronin, for example. However, the layers of detail and background are well-done and subtle. Points are made almost without the reader being aware of what is being shown. The story, however, sets Watchmen apart from any graphic novel that has come before it. The story is as complex and multi-layered as a print novel. There are well-developed characters, love interests, conflicts, and finally resolutions. The basic plot is fairly simple. Watchmen takes place on an alternate Earth where there were no real superheros. Instead, there were groups of normal people who, for different reasons, enjoyed dressing up in costumes and playing at being heroes and villains. The heroes had some successes and some failures and eventually vigilanteism was outlawed in 1977. However, three heroes remained. The first was Edward Blake, the Comedian, a cynically amoral mercenary who avoided enforced retirement by becoming a government agent, first in Vietnam, then in Nicaragua. The second was Jon Osterman, Dr. Manhattan, an ordinary man who got trapped in a physics experiment. He became a true superman, able to control matter and overcome the barriers of space and time. The government used his abilities to keep the Russians in check, to win in Vietnam, and in general to maintain US dominance in the world. His ideas on technology have reshaped the world. The third is Rorschach, a psychopath of the highest order. His reply to the Keene amendment was to dump the body of a wanted serial rapist- murderer on the steps of a police station. He sees himself as a man with a mission to cleanse the world. The story begins with the discovery of the murdered Comedian; Rorschach sets out to investigate it and the story unwinds around him. There are a number of themes running through the book. The simplest of these is the question of "who watches the watchmen?" from which the novel's title is taken. Moore and Gibbons examine issues of social and political responsibility in both a personal and a global context. Other ideas, such as the morality we claim to live by, are also examined. I found the treatment of these ideas very interesting. No sermons are delivered; instead, Moore and Gibbons allow the characters' actions to speak for them. Last time around, Chuq opined that Watchmen might not be a good Hugo candidate for the future of graphic novels. I disagree; I think that the visual and story complexity rival most print novels and the combination of the two makes this a definite contender for a Hugo. In addition, it is something that will make people new to graphic novels sit up and take notice. Even with all its good points, Watchmen has two problems which are worth mentioning because they are problems that future graphic novelists may face. First, Watchmen was written in twelve parts -- published as individual comics. Thus, readers had weeks between issues to assimilate all the material. However, the majority of readers will read the softbound volume with all the issues back-to-back. Given that the level of the story is extremely intense, the cover-to-cover reader is easily overwhelmed. By piling on image after image, Moore and Gibbons can easily lose the casual reader who does not take time to sink into the world of Watchmen. The second problem is one that print novelists have faced for some time -- Watchmen lacks a sympathetic character. There's almost nothing for the reader to latch on to -- no one to identify with. Unlike a conventional comic, which revolves around a central hero designed to appeal to readers, Watchmen really has no central character and none of the major players is designed to be identified with. In fact, insofar as it is Rorschach's story, it alienates the reader. I confess that I really 'got into' Rorschach; he is starkly beautiful in a sick way. Insane characters are hard to make real and not caricatures. Still, I didn't identify with him and I certainly didn't like him. So where does that leave us? Watchmen will be hard to top, but I look forward to seeing who will try. And if you don't already own a copy, go out and buy one. But read it slowly. Burning Chrome There's hype and then there's hype. William Gibson is just about as hyped as a new author can get. He's been written up everywhere, given credit for siring an entire new subgenre of SF, won a Hugo and a Nebula, and been copied to death all within the space of the last four years. But can he write? Unequivocally, YES. He has a flair and a talent that are awesome to watch. As Sterling says in the intro to Burning Chrome: In Gibson we hear the sound of a decade that has finally found its own voice. He is not a table-pounding revolutionary, but a practical, hands-on retrofitter. He is opening the stale corridors of the genre to the fresh air of new data... What makes Gibson so wonderful to read is his ability to catch the reader up; reading his writing is a bit like shooting the rapids in a kayak. It requires a level of attention and intensity from the reader that is not often required. Burning Chrome is a collection of all of Gibson's short fiction -- seven originals and three collaborations. Nine of the stories have appeared previously, most in Omni. The most well-known -- and perhaps most prototypically cyberpunkish -- of the stories are the Sprawl series: "Johnny Mnemonic," "New Rose Hotel," and "Burning Chrome." These three stories sketch the future world of the cyberpunkers -- urban decay, bio-enhancement, cultural fragmentation, and individual rebellion against enormously powerful corporations. Central to it all is the concept of cyberspace -- the idea that the information webs of these corporate giants and smaller players could be linked. In this shared artificial reality run the cowboys who are the central characters of most cyberpunk works. And of course, there's the ICE (Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics), the corporate defense against the cowboys' raids. Of the three sprawl stories, I liked "Burning Chrome" best, in part because it's something of a surprise. For ninety percent of the story, you're running with Gibson at his normal intense pace and then the ending comes and ... well, read it for yourself. The other stories of the collection are also interesting. "The Gernsback Continuum" is something of an off-handed swipe at the Hugo-Gernsback type SF writer -- the Utopia-seekers. Gibson's brand of realism doesn't tolerate the starry-eyed SF writer who refuses to see the problems of society and meet them head on; Gibson calls them "...uninhibited technophiles." His protagonist in "The Gernsback Continuum" is a photographer, assigned to do a photo essay on "The America That Never Was." In the course of the assignment, he tracks down the architectural relics of failed predictions, like aircars, boundless cheap nuclear power, and so on. Unfortunately, as he gets deeper into the job, the job gets deeper into him and the boundaries of reality begin to blur. It's a good story, not least because Gibson is not too heavy-handed in getting his message across. "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" is indicative of the style Gibson and his contemporaries are working in. At first glance, it appears to be a story about a piece of technology: the ASP or Apparent Sensory Perception. This technology uses the recorded sensory perceptions of a subject to give the user pre-recorded experiences of almost any variety, with full sensory feedback. In fact, though, the story is really about the aftermath of the narrator, Parker's, breakup with his girlfriend. The technology is only a support vehicle for the real story. "Hinterlands" is an unusual first-contact story. It purports to be about contact between humans and aliens who pluck human spaceships from the heavens almost at random and send them back with bits and pieces of knowledge -- the table scraps of races far more advanced than we. In fact, the story is really about the kind of person who wants to be a spaceman, who would risk his or her life on a one-way ticket to the unknown. "The Winter Market" is a hard story to describe. It's about a lot of things -- a girl with an all-consuming ambition, about the people who make the ASP tapes from the artists' raw input, and about the dream that some people have of cheating death. As I mentioned earlier in talking about The Tomorrow Makers, many futurists believe we may be able to avoid dying by preserving ourselves in silicon. Gibson looks at the dark side of downloading -- what might it do to the people who want it when it's only available to the very rich, and what might it do to those of us still in the flesh, when our 'dead' lover calls us on the phone? As good as he is alone, Gibson also excels in concert with others. "The Belonging Kind," cowritten with John Shirley, is a creepy story about aliens in our midst. The story is a little weak in that it seems to lack purpose. The narrator encounters the aliens and tracks them, eventually being caught up in the pursuit as an end in itself. But his motivations are not made clear and this lessens the story's impact somewhat. On the other hand "Dogfight," cowritten with Michael Swanwick, is a startlingly clear story. The narrator is a single-minded lowlife and we follow him as he schemes and tramples his way toward his objective, never realizing how hollow a victory can be. Hidden just below the surface of the story is a message of warning about a government which is callously cruel both to those who attack it and those who serve it. In my opinion, "Red Star, Winter Orbit" is the best story of the collection. Cowritten with Bruce Sterling, it deals with affairs leading up to the Russians' abandoning of their space station. On the surface it is the story of the last crew of that station and their struggle to survive. As with the other stories, the subtext is about people, in this case the types of people who want to move out into space -- the pioneer types who first settled the majority of America. I liked this story in part because of its ending -- it's more upbeat than the rest of the collection -- and in part because Gibson's talents mesh very well with Sterling's. The result is a pleasure to read. I really enjoyed Burning Chrome; it's nice to see that sometimes there's some substance behind the hype. Count Zero There's a concept in cyberpunk writing called "edge." Turner, the protagonist of Count Zero, characterizes it this way: It was that superhuman synchromesh flow that stimulants only approximated. ...the edge let him collate the factors he had to deal with at the site, balancing clusters of small problems against single, larger ones. ... Instincts sharpened, on the edge; things got witchy. Count Zero is all edge. It takes place in the world of the Sprawl, some decades after the events of Neuromancer. There are three main threads to the story. In the first, Turner, a mercenary, is hired to stage the defection of Mass Biolabs' top technical man, the man who holds all the basic patents for the new biochips which no one else has been able to duplicate. In the second, a young would-be cowboy named Bobby Newmark almost gets killed on his first run, in large part because he's using an untried icebreaker on a well-prepared target. In the third, Herr Josef Virek, the world's wealthiest single individual, hires Marly Krushkova, disgraced art-gallery manager, to find the anonymous artist who has produced some works Virek is interested in. Turner's story is fairly straightforward: he sets up and executes the extraction as best he can, then tries to put the pieces back together when things go wrong. Marly's story is also fairly simple: she finds a lead on the artist and follows it back as far as she can, in almost classic detective style. Along the way she is aided by Virek's agents and money. Bobby, the self-named Count Zero, has a more convoluted tale. Having been rescued from certain death in the ice by an unknown force, he goes looking for Two-A-Day, the stringer who loaned him the icebreaker. He ends up involved with people whose primary interest is in the presence that saved Bobby. They believe that the presence came from the uninhabited section of the consensual reality called cyberspace. Uninhabited by humans, that is. They claim that the ancient gods of Vodou inhabit the matrix and that one of these gods saved Bobby. They want to know what makes Bobby special enough that one of those gods would notice him at all, let alone exert the effort to save him. These people -- Lucas, Jackie and Beauvoir -- help Bobby trace the icebreaker back to its source and initiate him into the mysteries of their interactions with cyberspace. On reflection, it seems to me that these characters are the spiritual descendants of the black mafiosi James Bond fought in "Live and Let Die," though here they are heros instead of villains. The three main stories of Count Zero are told round-robin fashion, alternating each chapter. As the novel goes on they begin to draw together, something Gibson handles well. Each story has its own edge and reading Count Zero is like watching a three-pronged spiral grow tighter and tighter. In addition to the peoples' stories, there is a meta-plot about the nature of cyberspace and the artificial intelligences that have grown up there (despite the efforts of the Turing police). Gibson is deliberately ambiguous about whether there are unexplained forces in cyberspace. As with other Gibson works, the characters are developed through the non-stop action of the plot. Each starts off sounding like a stereotype and quickly grows into much more. Unfortunately, this style doesn't work well with the secondary characters who aren't on stage a great deal. They never develop beyond one or two dimensions, and this weakens the book a little. Some, like Finn from "Burning Chrome," already have some history in the readers' mind, but most are lost in a blur. Nonetheless, Count Zero is still an intensely enjoyable book. I don't think it's fair to say the book is better or worse than Neuromancer. Each has its strong points and it's clear that Gibson is still developing as a writer. Along with the majority of the civilized world, I am eagerly waiting to see what he will produce next. OtherRealms #20 Spring, 1988 Copyright 1988 by Chuq Von Rospach All Rights Reserved One time rights have been acquired from the contributors. All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors. OtherRealms may not be reproduced in any form without written permission of Chuq Von Rospach. The electronic edition may be distributed or reproduced in its entirety as long as all copyrights, author and publication information remain intact. No individual article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author. OtherRealms is published quarterly (March, June, September and December) by: Chuq Von Rospach 35111-F Newark Blvd. Suite 255 Newark, CA 94560. Usenet: chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ CompuServe: 73317,635 GENie: C.VONROSPAC