Hugo Reviews: The Fountains Of Paradise and Blackout

I keep meaning to talk more about books on the podcast, but we usually run out of time with all the gaming we’re doing these days. I’m still as voracious a reader of Science Fiction as ever and never gave up on my plan to read every winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, which is actually going quite well!

I can’t enjoy a thing unless there is an arbitrary collection-based secondary gameplay achievement element to it all. And a list! I’ve read a couple since last posting about any of it and here are some thoughts! I’d be keen to see yours in comments!

The Fountains of Paradise - Arthur C Clarke (Winner, 1980)

A relatively short work, The Fountains of Paradise is a fairly hard-sf exploration of the Space Elevator concept, (Which I think is awesome, but not nearly as awesome as the Space Fountain). Being responsible for popularising the idea of the geostationary satellite, Clarke typically examines his sci-fi flights of fancy in meticulous technical detail and the design and construction challenges of the space elevator form the fascinating core of the story as we follow the life and magnum opus of Dr Vannevar Morgan, a kind of 22nd century Isembard Kingdom Brunel.

Intertwined with these tales of heroic mega-engineering is an intricately detailed series of flashbacks to the turbulent times of Kalidasa, the 5th century ruler of the island of Taprobane, a made-up island which becomes the future ground station of the elevator. The B-story here is interesting enough, but I did wonder how much of it was a relevant attempt to draw parallels between the two men’s troubles, and how much was just Clarke wanting to go off on one and write a load of stuff about his clearly beloved home of Sri Lanka and also do something historic for a change. He even admits as much in the foreword!

Overall, it has that excellent ‘old-school sci-fi’ feel very characteristic of its time; the grand projects of The Future which were very much driven by the spirit of the age in which this was written; a vibrant scientific 60s and 70s in which the Apollo Program was merely the start of an awesome age, rather than a highpoint or faded unreproducable history. I love that sort of sci-fi, full of boundless optimism, and conquerable horizons of knowledge and self; an antidote to a more modern, grubbier and less ambitious current age.

Give it a go if you like: The Engineer As Hero, Man Conquering His Universe, Big Stupid Objects, Sri Lankan History

 

Blackout/All Clear - Connie Willis (Winner, 2011)

I’m not sure if I can technically tick this one, since I only read Blackout, and the award went to both novels as a ‘diptych’, which I didn’t even know was a word! Blackout focuses on the trials and tribulations of a group of Oxford University History Students from the year 2060 who use the ever knotty technology of Time Travel to do their coursework through some very primary sources indeed. When four students are sent back to observe different parts of 1940’s Blitz-riddled London with fake personas provided by ‘Wardrobe’, troubles begin as their return-trip ‘drops’ start failing to appear, leaving them stranded in the past during a very inhospitable age.

To be honest, I’ve no idea why this is a Hugo winner in the first place. While ostensibly a book about time travel, the usual examinations of The Rules, Treading On Butterflies, Not Killing Ones Grandparents, Multiple Coexistence, The Trousers Of Time and so on are mostly glossed over in favour of a highly detailed exploration of Life In London During The Blitz, turning this from promising sci-fi jaunt into lengthy period piece. Brief talk of ‘Slippage’ (Time Travel destinations being moved or blocked by other time travelling) and crossing your own stream and so on happens just enough to pique my interest, only to be lost in forty page descriptions of an air raid shelter and everyone in it. Mostly the time travel comes across as hasty handwaved plot device and wouldn’t leave the book in any worse shape if it hadn’t been there at all. It all left me quite unsatisfied really, with a faint hint of bait and switch. Does historical WWII fiction sell worse than sci fi?

Still, credit where it is due; as a piece of believably researched historical fiction it is very good indeed. The horrors of the average person’s life in the Blitz are lavishly painted and interesting characters abound; the ‘contemps’, natives of the time, are interesting and believable people (Binnie and Alf in particular), with a wry Britishness barely masking a genuine terror of sudden death from above in the middle of the night. The problem is with the time travellers themselves, who mostly spend the entire book dithering and second, third and fourth-guessing themselves as they get helplessly buffeted about by unfeasible amounts of bad luck and missed timing. Not only is this highly irritating itself, to the point where I was gritting my teeth, letting out strangled groans and wanting physically shake some them, but it also undermines the credibility of the entire premise. Who the hell allows these idiots to time travel in the first place? Would you install a largely unsupervised time machine in the common room of your university? Exactly! (See Asimov’s’ End of Eternity for a far less aneurism-causing treatment of time travel)

All in all, it was okay, but not really what I was after. Finished it, but not going to buy the second half, as I got so irritated by the protragonists that I no longer care what happens to them in the end.

Give it a go if you like: Second World War Stories, Not Having To Worry About The Details Of Time Travel (a.k.a “Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey“), Hilarious Misunderstandings Which Aren’t Actually That Funny, Smug People With Lists of Historic Bomb Sites Being De-Smugged Quite Abruptly.