Title: Paradox
Author: John Meaney
Publisher: Random House
Rating: Warty!
John Meaney is described as a British science fiction writer, but his name seems to be of Irish origin, and this book definitely has an Irish flavor, even though it's set over a thousand years into the future when races and ethnic groups are likely to be far more mixed than they are now. This only bothers me because the Irish have way too many stereotypes attached to them. I've only just begun reading this and I'm hoping it doesn't go that way. It definitely has too many sci-fi stereotypes attached to it so early!
One sci-fi trope I dislike is to have a story set in the future using what is essentially today's technology, but give it a different name to try to make it sound cool and advanced! This does serve a purpose in that it sets the familiar in an unfamiliar setting, but it's irksome. For example, the people of Meaney's world still wash dishes, but they do it with a 'clean beam'! Even though this novel is set over a thousand years into the future, the protagonist uses an 'info tablet'. Seriously? Even now we're having body implants, and we're investigating using skull implants to give the blind some semblance of vision, but a thousand years from now Meaney thinks we'll still be using iPads? BTW, I'm transcribing this review from my cuneiform notes on my clay tablet.... How come no smart-alec has actually used that name for a pad computer? It would be too cool, that's why!
Anyway, as our protagonist, Tom Corcorigan, is sitting in an out of-the-way cave in the underground city in which he lives, a mystery woman appears and gives him some sort of tiny data storage device, and hastily disappears. Trope! Throw the protagonist into something and give us nothing? But at least the story gets moving early, which, after two volumes of wading through molasses in the Fallen-Torment series, believe me, this is a welcome relief! So I'll press on and hope for the best.
At about a quarter the way through I'm liking this novel despite the rocky start we got off too. I don't like the constant repetition of the place and the year at the start of every chapter, like the chapter auto-titler got stuck, although I can see why it’s being done. It just seems ham-fisted to me, but the story is different and interesting, especially if we overlook some rather gauche writing (such as Meaney's habit of writing 'span' when he evidently means 'spun', but maybe that's the Irish in him). And the chapter headers do take on some more meaning alter on as time seems to fly by a lot faster. But what's with the front cover picture being repeated, in gray scale, inside front cover? Just to waste a bit more tree?
I have some issues with his use of language and the implicit assumption that it will be largely unchanged a thousand years from now! We only have only to look at the English language a thousand years ago, and consider how much it has changed in our own lifetime to see how misguided this is. Not only is it changing, but the rate at which it's changing is increasing.
This was highlighted just this morning on NPR on a feature they did about an English town considering removing apostrophes from the town street signs because people don't understand their usage! Thats (yeah, I did that on purpose) a misguided approach IMO, but it does serve to illustrate how much language can change. There's no reason it shouldn't! Language isn't a fat, stuffy dictionary on a shelf, it's a dynamical means of communication, and like all living things, it risks becoming extinct if it cannot evolve to meet new conditions. This is problematical though, when you're writing about the future. You can't change things too much or people won't have a good handle on what it is you're saying. Meaney has this same kind of problem with technology, but this is slightly different in that some things remain the same in Meaney's world, whilst others change dramatically. This is inconsistent, but I'm willing to go with it for a good story!
So Tom lives underground on Nulapeiron. We're not given any information about what this is - an asteroid, a space ship, a planet - but from the chapter title(!) we know that the year is AD 3045. Every single chapter tells us this until Tom gets access to this information module from the mysterious woman, which tells us Karyn's tale from Terra in AD 2122, although at this point I see no value whatsoever in the information she's imparting, but I suspect that the woman who gave it to him is actually Karyn, who has lived so long - or at least had up to where she was killed - because she existed in some timeless hyperspace region.
There are many levels or strata in Tom's (under)world, and he's way down on one of the lowest, but not the lowest. At the start of the novel while hiding out in one of the tunnels writing poetry on his info tablet this curious-looking woman with black eyes and a pointy chin gives him a small information capsule which is secreted in a medallion he wears which was created by his father. As Tom starts accessing this, one module at a time, each being released when Tom correctly solves a logic puzzle, he learns of the life of the pilot - a legendary breed of people who are considered in that day and age, to be a myth, but which are nevertheless hunted - and evidently to extinction if possible.
The next day at the market, where he and his father sell the wares his father creates, he sees that same pilot woman, now a prisoner. She tries to escape and is killed. Afterwards, the local police start searching for, presumably, the info capsule which Tom now has. They do not find it. Very soon after this, Tom's mother, who is an exotic dancer (which carries far more value, repute, and connotation than it does in our world) is taken away by one of the nobility from an upper level, without any warning, rhyme, reason or compensation. Shortly after this Tom's father dies, and Tom, being a minor and unable to maintain his hovel, is tossed down two more strata to attend a school which apart from the inevitable school bullies, is not too bad of a place. He befriends a kitten which he calls Paradox and feeds it regularly.
At the school Tom befriends a boy of Chinese origin, who takes him on one occasion to visit his family, who are circus performers. His friend is to leave with them soon thereafter and Tom is given a wrist pass to visit him on one of the upper levels. The school bullies know this and take advantage of it to travel with Tom on the visit, going several strata upwards. They cannot believe the riches they encounter at that level. It's so overwhelming that one of the bullies steals a jacket and as he's being chased, dumps the stolen garment on Tom and gets away. The justice non-system being what it is, Tom is found summarily guilty of the crime and after all is done and sealed, he's actually allowed to speak. He's too scared to say anything except when they bring up his sentence of death. He uses some logic to sway them into recruiting him to the palace as a servant, but he has to pay the rather Biblical penalty of having one arm cut off.
At the palace he's attached to the kitchen staff, where he lives in more luxury, lowly as it is, than he ever had in his previous "life". He starts learning how to fit in there, and thanks the palace wall one time for showing him which direction to go when he gets lost. He also impresses one of the children with a logic response to her confronting him with Zeno's dichotomy paradox.
I had to drop off Fallen and Torment at the library this afternoon, so I checked for the other two volumes in this series, but of course they were not there!. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so, having spent so much time on those, finishing two in a row, I find I miss Luce somewhat but no, I don’t miss her enough to want to dive back into that mess! It does, however, present an interesting motive for the success of a series. It’s like a shaky marriage: even if things are bad, it seems better inside than having to face the world outside! Maybe that's one reason why some series which ought to have failed are still going strong? Addiction?! Maybe I should rethink my aversion to writing a series!
Anyway, back to the future: Tom gets on well, up the palace; he's working in the kitchen, and enjoying his life. As long as he does his job acceptably, he has a lot of freedom, and finds himself drawn to the martial arts classes - fencing and hand-to-hand. The instructor seems to take an interest in him, too. He also wins favor when he's instrumental in saving the life of one of the young lords (yes, trope alert!). He earns himself a thousand merit points which he can trade for personal items. Unfortunately, the night that he learns this, he's accompanying one of the important visitors, who appears to have taken a shine to him, along with the visitor's fiancée (to whom Tom has taken a shine even though she was the one who had his arm cut off! Go figure!) to a "lev-bike" race. I had an issue with this name. It seems to me that they would hardly call them lev-bikes if they were the only kind of bike known, and certainly wheels seem to be a thing of the dim and distant past, so these would simply be called bikes. Minor quibble!
The unfortunate bit I got distracted from up there is that a suicide bomber, whom Tom knows because she's related to his Chinese friend - the one he knew down below - sets herself off and kills some people after the bike race, and Tom is very badly injured, but makes a recovery. His missing arm is not replaced during his time there, however.
One of his companions during his recovery is a girl called Arlanne, a fellow servant, who seems to have lost an eye (perhaps in the same way he has lost an arm, although he never asks her about it). When Tom learns from her what he can do with his merits, he resolves to buy a new info tablet (his old one was apparently confiscated) for himself and also one for her so they can both pursue an education. Why he's so generous with her, I guess I missed! Anyway, now they can both earn more merit points and Tom can continue reading the modules the pilot gave to him - that is until the palace's security net is upgraded, whereupon Tom stops accessing the modules in case he's detected. He and she pursue the same instructional modules to begin with but soon veer apart as he progresses ever deeper into math.
He starts taking martial arts lessons with the maestro, and while he is struggling badly, he does not give up and makes slow progress. He starts jogging around quiet parts of the palace - easier now as his freedoms increase with his good behavior. He's still very much trapped in the palace, but he finds a quiet place to run, and soon he's doing much better physically: feeling stronger, fitter, and his body is honing itself. Unlike Arlanne, he does not seem to garner promotion for himself, so by the time he turns eighteen, he's still pretty much doing the same job he was when originally hired.
At this point I'm just over 40% in, and Tom meets an oracle and his abused retinue. The oracles predict the future either singly or in groups, and their predictions, rather recklessly (so it seems) based on future dreams, can be deadly accurate. A flooding disaster is predicted for the trip Tom is about to take: he accompanies Lord and Lady d'Ovraison on their honeymoon. They travel in an arachnargos, some sort of mechanical device that a bit like a cross between a spider and an octopus. The pilots are bother and sister, and Limava assumes she can get into bed with Tom the first night without even asking. If a guy had taken these same steps with a woman it would be considered an abuse at best, or even rape, but since the girl is doing it to the guy, it's okay?!
The boring pointless story of Karyn the pilot continues. She has a lover called Dart! Lol! How pathetic is that? But Dart disappears and is thought lost until a trace of him in "Mu space" turns up and Karyn randomly decides she's going to rescue him. Perhaps this is where her teaching modules should have begun?!
Tom is invited to a function with Lord and Lady d'Ovraison, where he meets Lady V'Delikona (what the hell is this crap with the incessant gratuitous apostrophes in these books for god sakes?? Seriously? Is there no salve for this pain in the ass?). Shortly after they leave, the flood occurs and lots of people die.
Returning to his home, Tom pursues his studies and suddenly years have flown by; next thing we know, Tom is invited to the investiture of the boy whose life he saved - now a Lord, a friend, and being granted academic honors. Tom is also given a chance to present himself before the assembled lords, and lo! and behold! he's granted a lordship himself! Now he gets to move out of the servant's quarters and take over his own "demesne", and he must decide what to do with it. His first visitor is the woman who ordered his arm cut off - now divorced from her lordship, she's single again. Hmm! Does she think she can move in on him now he's no longer a lowly servant? And when is he going to get his arm fixed? Or will he continue to be armless on the side? I'm still enjoying the tale.
Tom seems like he's been planning something evil behind our backs, because, out of the blue - or into the blue, more accurately, he takes off one day and secretes himself into a cargo package that's eventually flung up into the atmosphere to dock with a floating sphere which is a terraforming machine. The reason he wants to go there is because that's where the Oracle lives who took his mom away. He kills the Oracle (no mean feat!) and when he returns to the surface, some three kilometers below, he has garnered for himself an underground reputation. People contact him, and engage his help in rebelling against the system. But now there are people hunting him, too.
Meanwhile, Karyn goes on her rescue mission to mu-space but she can't rescue Dart, who sacrifices himself rather than drag her in with him once he discovers that she's carrying their child. She eventually gives birth to a black-eyed daughter who, I assume, is the woman who gave the data capsule to Tom.
I have now finished this (save for a few pages I'll tackle tonight), and I have to say I'm disappointed. I could still be surprised if he pulls something seriously entertaining out of his hat in the last few pages, but for a novel which began with such promise and was so interesting, it's like Meaney got bored or lost his thread or something, and it shows! This really stopped being a sci-fi novel and turned into a maudlin travelogue, wallowing in Tom's self pity, and frankly, after dealing with Luce in the fallen Torment dire swamp, and then managing to stick with Quinn in the Pretty Dark Nothing wallow - which intrigued me in the end, I admit - I'm a bit overdrawn in my wallow account.
Tom spends two years of self pitying drifting down through the subterranean levels and winds up on the bottom level which is actually the nicest place he's ever lived. Taht makes no sense. He finds a job there, and eventually is teaching at a school but then his ex-friend, the brother of the Oracle he murdered, finds him (how he found him is rather brushed off) to tell him that his dream girl has been captured and is to be given a show trial for the disastrous revolution going on up top. Tom resolves to rescue her.
Honestly? What does any of this have to do with sci-fi? The short answer is very little, and I really cannot dredge up any interest to even consider wading into the next novel in this "Sequence" (at least it's not a "cycle", but it's still pretentious!). I want to write a series about a sci-fi bicycle and call it the Cycle cycle. There! That'll teach em!
