1984 would be a much more plausible result than this socialist utopia. (The Cassini Division - Ken MacLeod)

Member Name: jdkane

Product:	The Cassini Division - Ken MacLeod
Date:	19/03/01 (19 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Imagination; daring at least; B+

Disadvantages: Science; extremely soft, no better than Star Trek ; D+

Ken MacLeod's third novel, which has been out for some time although not in softback. This seems to be a month for great oddity; nanotech economies, deviant sexualities, and now one of the very few, if any, works of any quality that purports itself to be socialist science fiction. Yes. Our very own Red Ken. God help me, I love it.

I bought my copy at a book signing he was doing with Iain Banks in 'M' Mode - McLeod was touting this, Banks had Inversions, review of which to follow - basically a Special Circumstances sting from the mark's point of view, with strong reader baiting elements; rather good, really. Everyone was queuing up for Iain Banks, and poor Ken was just sitting there. So I bought a copy to help cheer him up. I'm actually lying. I have the previous parts in the trilogy, and intend to buy the Sky Road - the fourth volume- as soon as it appears in softback. I'm starting to notice a problem about this. If you have to think of a work in the context of criticism (a fancy phrase that essentially means the same as Pilate's washing his hands), you soon find yourself being critical of it - nitpicking, really. A great work is one that sweeps you along at such an intensity that you choose not to be critical until long after it is all over.

The circumstances also help- late at night or first thing in the morning is good for helping to escape critical notice- but by and large it holds true across the spectrum. This, well, I'm far from sure that it's that good, and it would have made much less sense without the previous parts of the trilogy. (At least it's not as bad as Gene Wolfe's New Sun quaternary, which I could only find, and had to read, in reverse order.) it is good enough, though.

To summarise the universe; once, long ago, there was a fascist empire - otherwise known as an American-dominated United Nations, prepared to beat and whip anyone into line for the good of the metropolitan uni
ted states. We have seen this in embryo in Kosovo, remember. Hell, we saw it in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan...do I have to go on? After a sufficient time, socialism actually seemed like a credible alternative. The lesser of two evils, for the first generation, with a few dynamic nutcases (central characters, one of them) for charismatic leaven. This is the point of least departure from the world as we know it. They and their wild plans - I suppose with nanotechnology everyone really can own the means of production, but I refer you to Neal Stephenson for an analysis of the problems therein. The Movement always had plans for space, and the climax of The Star Fraction can pretty much be described as a heroic defeat for both sides- but one that exhausts the forces of repression and leaves Our Heroes in a position to try again. The second novel begins on the Trans-wormhole colony they do establish, which has gone very wrong indeed, and it is another struggle for freedom- an unsuccessful one, this time, relieved by some legal rights and escape.

The Cassini Division is set several years after the end of The Stone Canal. The situation; Earth is a rather techie socialist republic. The Solar Union stretches out from there to embrace the rest of the system, except Jupiter - which is the holding of the rogue AI units that built the wormhole, and then went down onto the planet and bred. They radiate computer viruses (modulating Jupiter's natural radio noise?) as a defensive system; also brain hacking viruses, something simply not possible without a very carefully and expensively prepared brain; but this is fiction, after all. The centrepoint of the book is a mission to the side branch of the wormhole by the Solar Union, a colony run by capitalists who still rely on electronics - and who are not really very nice people at all. They kidnapped the central character's parents for use as slave labour building the wormhole, for one thing.

McLeod does admit
that he's a sloppy scientist, that the only discipline of physics he really tries to get right is good old-fashioned Newtonian; which is just as well, because I'm damned if I can work out why his wormhole works. Not how - he details all the practical considerations, but it very much has the feeling of a logic problem, starting with a 'given that...' so far outside ordinary experience that you only have internal references to go on. Compared to the meticulous number-crunching, text-fathering Contact wormhole, this is very poor, almost definitively wrong science. The wormhole collapses as the result of an altruistic act at the climax of the book - no more details - when so much weight moves from one to the other that the other side would have to have negative mass to exist, and so collapses in on itself and ceases to do its wormy thing. Any damned fool - well, and gravity specialist - can tell you that wormholes only function if they have negative mass, not the other way around. Major cockup there. The electronics, the ultraminiaturised artificial intelligences on which the plot turns, are on much surer ground- but this is a quantitative, not a qualitative, problem. Also a highly dubious plot element - surely it's the information the hardware controls which is the target and the medium of infection?

As for the characters...I have extreme doubts about the psychological plausibility of their society. It feels as if a little brain hacking has already gone on. Their socialism is based on a theory of human nature that makes it a last resort; it does not follow- if there ever was a structured, political theory of man, socialism is it, or have we forgotten Homo Sovieticus so soon? Their total nihilism is both not socialist and not compatible with civilisation. It also does not even remotely approximate the behaviour of the characters with respect to one another. One is left with the conclusion that they are all bullshit artists to a very large e
xtent, especially as they really cannot be said to open up for the reader. When someone has a dark secret, it is only good manners for the author to foreshadow, lay down markers, and give the reader some hint that Something is Up. There are numerous flashback sequences - well done, but they are an intrinsically clumsy thing to attempt, a device of a writer informed by film rather than print and therefore out of place at the best of times. It is an advance on the bare mention, but not much of one. In the last resort, when people can remake themselves according to whatever demented desire was uppermost at the time they did so - as is the case with the technology here - the writer has to cover a hell of a lot of personal ground, an end which cinema gestures do not serve. He also has one of the lamest, least convincing scientist characters in science fiction. Everyone is a little too laid back for their own good. Wasn't it the rather great Martin Amis who said that he felt motivation was something of a spent force at the end of the 20th century - people no longer did things for reasons anymore? Given the political-ideological premises they start with, 1984 would be a much more plausible result than this socialist utopia. There's a big blow-up at the end, anyway, and the good guys win, sort of.


Imagination; daring at least; B+
Science; extremely soft, no better than Star Trek ; D+
Scene-setting; relies on hitting buzzwords; C+
Characterisation; no connection with their society, but decent in themselves; C+

Overall; different, but could have stood much more polishing; B-

Summary: