Robert J. Sawyer has written quite a few stories in Analog that I’ve enjoyed so when he turned up in the January 2002 issue with another multi-part serial called Hominids I was more than ready to read it. After the third part I was really enjoying it and couldn’t wait to get the issue with the conclusion. At the end, though, I was more than a bit sad because it turned out to be a poorly chopped out portion of what was clearly a bigger story; sure enough, a few months later a novel by the same name was in the bookstores and, even worse, it was the first of a trilogy.
To me, trilogies are a disease infecting recent science fiction authors and publishers. I understand that a big part of it is economics, that SF novels tend not to sell that well and so getting readers to pay three times can make a big difference to the P&L, possibly even enough to make publishing SF viable. Fans, to be sure, have a share of the blame for always asking for more stories with the same characters and storyverse.
Most people would spend more or less the same amount on books so the reason I see trilogies as a disease rather than just more reading material is because almost all of them suffer from content inflation. That is, material which might generally work best at about 400-600 pages (one somewhat long or two just below average volumes) is padded and blown up to double or triple that length–in this instance the three volumes are exactly 1200 pages according to Amazon listings. Coincidence? Makes me wonder. Not that some writers don’t deliver on trilogies and even longer series; for instance, Peter Hamilton and Louis McMaster Bujold have created massive masterpieces in the Naked Dawn and the Vorkosigian Saga, respectively, and then there’s Douglas Adam’s five book Hitchhiker’s Guide and the seminal trilogies: JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy.
A good portion of the padding comes from summarizing what came previously because, of course, publishers won’t (or don’t want to) assume that all readers purchased them. Even so, authors like Sawyer have taken this one step further and include passages within the volume that recap the current book so far. A few paragraphs here and there and soon enough you’ve got an extra 10 or 20 pages that bulk up the book to justify charging $25.95 (hardcover) or $7.99 (paperback) three times.
The thing of it is, Sawyer actually has some really good ideas and characters to explore in this set but extra characters, disconnected subplots and the aforementioned recaps and reminders weaken the result. The key science fictions that he builds from are that the Many Worlds and Theater of Consciousness hypothesis from quantum physics are correct taken together and that human conscioussness arose when the polarity of the Earth’s magnetic field shut down 40,000 years ago, something which really did occur.
He puts them together by positing that instead of many universes, each created at (scientifically speaking) frequent occurence, there are really only two of significance: ours and one created 40,000 years ago when, instead of Homo Sapiens, Neanderthals became conscious. Other ‘verses were spun off from each subsequently. The other species died out in each Earth. The Neanderthals develop very differently from us though I got the feeling that Sawyer for the most part just gave them his own idea of the perfect society: far fewer people, lots of open space, violence and inherited disease purged from the gene pool through common consent, everyone on their best behavior because their every movement is recorded in the Alibi Archives.
The story opens when two Neanderthal physicists developing quantum computing technology attempt a calculation larger than their system’s capacity. The underlying theory is that a quantum computer works by using other instances of itself in parallel ‘verses but Ponter and Adikor push unknowlingly past that limit and the machinery contacts a ‘verse (ours) where no parallel machine exists so instead a hole opens to it. Ponter, of course, falls through into our world. Much philosophical hemming and hawing ensues.
Bottom line is that Robert Sawyer is a good author and he writes enjoyable science fiction. Since I borrowed this trilogy from the Mountain View Public Library, I don’t even feel too bad about the padding.
recommended
BillSaysThis 