"Dead Iron (The Age of Steam, Book 1)" by Devon Monk

Dead Iron by Devon Monk

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Devon Monk's Dead Iron: The Age of Steam is a mash-up urban fantasy-meets-steampunk-meets western. Set in a 19th century Oregon small town facing change as the rail comes closer, Dead Iron is a satisfactorily well-written but by-the-numbers example of how steampunk ought to be written.

In Monk's formulation, the veil between faery and Earth is very thin, and a mysterious, rare substance called glim enables those blessed with the Gift of Artifice to empower marvelous steam-powered "matics" with force and capacity and will. Monk's world features mad agents of The Faery King tracking down a banished prince of faery and his dark magics, a college-professor cursed to be a werewolf by a god of an other-than-faery and now turned bounty hunter, and a witch whose only spells are vows and curses, and a chaotic good zombie. Dead Iron is the kitchen sink.

Monk's prose style is amazing. Every character's voice is utterly unique, and Monk attunes both grammar and vocabulary chapter by chapter to the needs of the point-of-view character: Bounty Hunter Ceder Hunt is lettered and well-mannered, but brutalized by his curse; witch Mae Lindstrom is simple, home-bound, but determined; the zombie's thoughts are stuttering, guttering, but driven by a savage force of will. Monk's language gives every character the room he or she needs to be clear and expressive.

The plot is solid, but predictable. Monk is very good about getting her characters center-stage and setting things in motion. It's steampunk clockwork, and not a piece is out of place as the chess game goes from opening moves to its explosive ending. She pulls new pieces into the plot smoothly and without raising your sense of disbelief, she lays down foreshadowing with skill and experience.

However, the book is not perfect. The heroes are all too damned Good, the villains too damned Evil, the ordinary townspeople too damned Stupid. Dead Iron's morality is pure fairy tale, and none of the main characters really grows much during the course of the book. Each character is led by circumstance and reconcilition with one's existing values, rather than growth and maturity or avarice and decay, from one scene to the next. They're all wonderful people, but that's about it. The book relies on language, likability, and a predictably relentless buildup to the final cinematic confrontation to sell its successor. It works, but just barely.

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Blindsight, by Peter Watts

Blindsight by Peter Watts

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It occurred to me that I've never written a full-on review of Blindsight, so here it is:

Peter Watts's Blindsight is, without a doubt, the most important science-fiction novel written in the past 20 years. No other novel written recently comes close to matching Blindsight's attempt at prescience. Most science fiction novels are either fantasy (see: Iain M. Banks, David Weber, or me), or are books about the present (see: Charles Stross, William Gibson). Only Peter Watts has attempted to talk about the future in a meaningful way, and Blindsight is the novel that does that better than any.

Blindsight is, for its plot, a first-contact novel: the main character, Siri, recounts how the Earth was visited by alien probes that, all at once, imaged all of the Earth. A frenzied attempt to discover where the probe came from leads to the discover of a massive slower-than-light visitor approaching the solar system. The spaceship Thesus, an antimatter-powered ramscoop STL vessel, is sent out to visit it, determine the threat level, and act accordingly.

But Blindsight is really a confrontation: between human beings and aliens who are really freakin' alien. These are neither the rubber-forehead humanoids of star trek or the transformed demons of archaic memory, but just about the most alien aliens a human being has ever imagined. Within that confrontation, Watts has room to discuss the many different kinds of humanity, reflected in his crew: the linguist whose mind has been fractured into six different personalities, each with its own language processing specialties; the science officer whose nervous system has been rewired so he can become the ship; the military specialist who can see and act through six or more robot soldiers at one time; the commander whose brain is wired to be the perfect leader by being the perfect psychopath, so hyper-attuned to manipulating human beings he thinks of ordinary human beings as prey; and the autistic translation specialist, whose job is to translate what these people do into "meaningful" reports to the ordinary human back home who think they control this crew. Each of these brings a unique view, and Watts does a masterful job of showing these views. And each shows how technology dehumanizes and disenfranchises; only those willing to sacrifice some essential humanity have the tools necessary to survive Watt's almost transhuman but still frighteningly plausible future.

Within this confrontation, Watts tells us a story about human consciousness, and how it gets in the way: if we think about dancing, we fall. If we think about thinking about writing, we falter. What is consciousness for?

There are so many ideas in Blindsight it's hard to discuss which ones I like best. As an erotica writer, was fascinated by Watts' observation that technology can perversely satisfice human desires. By the time of the setting of the book, robots and virtual reality have so satisficed the sexual market that dealing with real people, with their real problems and their meaty, sweaty bodies, was considered kinky.

Science fiction readers love "sensawunda," that moment when the books makes you go "Oh, wow." Watts is the anti-sensawunda. When the linguist figures out what's really going on, when she delivers the final blow that tells the POV character, it was, for me, a sensahorra unlike any a book has delivered. It wasn't the shock of The Wasp Factory or Use Of Weapons, it was "Oh my ancient gods, if he's right, we are all so fucking doomed."

And not in the sense that the characters in the book are all doomed. In sense that we, you and I are all doomed. Because Watts' book has a central thesis, the mention of which would be the biggest spoiler of all. No, really, read Blindsight. And realize that Watts makes a convincing argument, and we really are all fucking doomed.

Blindsight has been in and out of print. An ebook edition is available for free at Peter Watt's website.

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