repugnant, a failure of characterisation beyond the bounds of the imbecilic. (River of Dust - Alexander Jablokov)

Member Name: jdkane

Product:	River of Dust - Alexander Jablokov
Date:	19/03/01 (9 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Imagination; borrows so much from past and other authors of Mars, none was necessary; D

Disadvantages: Characterisation; shoddy, stereotypical, rather highly dubious- no pshrink he; E-

A minor work from an almost unknown author that infuriated me deeply. I really cannot keep silence on this matter; it is repugnant, a failure of characterisation beyond the bounds of the imbecilic. This is postmodernist science fiction, written by the kind of weevil so wound up in politically correct wholesomeness and mushbrained quasi- intellectualism that he never quite got around to looking at his fellow being. Alexander Jablokov is the name, and I wish you could give you an address and a promise of a decent sum of money for delivering me his head, because people like this really shouldn't be allowed to write.

It is set on a thoroughly remade Mars - why, I can't tell you. Cashing in on the boom, I expect. It is fumblingly done - Mars appears to have been colonised by religious fanatics, who have gone about naming townships and the like after all kinds of religious icons, according to personal preference; all very well and good, but rather improbable- and Jablokov doesn't seem to know any; the post-modern, generation-X, rather harsh and lawless life of the ordinary Martian is as utterly alien from the fervour and simplicity of true religion as you or I am from life as a Melnibonean noble. Any damned fool who has even as much knowledge of people as comes from totting up the record would know that it doesn't work that way.

All the characters are ridiculously randy. Sexual tension yes, but you cannot lard it on this thickly while retaining much of any moral framework. Long term pair bonding should be obsolete. They bounce from bed to bed in a way that, while turning this Puritan's stomach, seems to require at least a happy-go- lucky approach to life, a hollowness at the heart of the psyche, that I can't see the the politics of the novel- and it is a political novel, whose plot if anything is of terrorism and revolt- running in tendem with. I don't think the revolution has any ideology, as such; it's simply a matter
of idiosyncrasy, outcast hate and personal feeling coming to a head. Charismatic leaders should at least be charismatic, although this mysterious process is very hard to explain in print; and a man seen through the eyes of his enemies loses much of his appeal.

This is also one of those novels of double-cross that I fail to see the charm of. It can be an interesting headgame in the hands of someone like Ian Rankin or Colin Dexter, but any science fiction author has trouble filling in enough background to give you a feel for what the characters' options and moulding influences are; only the very greatest can do it convincingly at all. In the last analysis, there is nothing here that you should devote any time to finding out about. There are far better novels of Mars and of high-science revolution.

Imagination; borrows so much from past and other authors of Mars, none was necessary; D
Science; only in the vaguest terms; D-
Scene- setting; vastly cluttered set with many unused props- more than properly used or usable; D
Characterisation; shoddy, stereotypical, rather highly dubious- no pshrink he; E-

Overall; I wonder why he felt he had to write this? Goes no good where; D

Summary: