Richter 10 | The Bones of Time | The Memory of Whiteness

Richter 10

Driven by childhood tragedy and submersed in political manipulations, a scientist seeks to tame the earthquake

• By Arthur C. Clarke and Mike McQuay
• Bantam Spectra
• $22.95/$31.95 Canada
• Hardcover, Feb. 1996

n 1994, Lewis Crane lost his parents in the Northridge earthquake. Thirty years later, after a life devoted to seismological study, he makes his first public prediction -- a major earthquake on Japan's Sado Island. The quake occurs on schedule, with heavy media coverage.

Hoping to gain political and financial support, Crane hosts a meeting with the leading world dignitaries. Li Cheun, a top executive with Liang International, which dominates America, offers conditional aid -- Crane must produce another accurate prediction before the November elections. Mohammed Ishmael, the leader of the outlawed Nation of Islam, however, regards the prediction of earthquakes an attempt to thwart Allah's will.

Crane hires Elena (Lanie) King to work on a globe simulating the Earth's tectonic activity. Lanie and Crane's top assistant, Dan Newcombe, were once lovers, despite his past ties to the Nation of Islam and her Jewish heritage. With some effort, they renew their relationship. When Crane tells Newcombe of his real ambition, to end earthquakes forever by fusing the tectonic plates together with thermonuclear explosions, Newcombe is appalled.

Crane predicts a major quake in the Mississippi River Valley, but the data is sabotaged, and the prediction is too early. Now disgraced, Crane must regain his reputation and financing. Through Lanie's globe, they discover that a huge quake will split California along the San Andreas Fault in 2058, and within a few years, fusing the plates won't prevent it. Meanwhile, Newcombe joins the Nation of Islam, ending his relationship with Lanie, and putting Islam and Liang in direct conflict.

Richter 10 is remarkable for the range of social and environmental issues Clarke and McQuay manage to examine in a novel about earthquake prediction. In their dystopian world of 2024, African-Americans and Hispanics in America are primarily confined in "War Zones," walled enclosures in the major cities. The Nation of Islam is their primary voice, and it demands a separate homeland. The United States is owned and run by Chinese corporations, down to the sponsoring of political candidates. Israel has destroyed the Middle East by exercising its Masada Option -- detonating its entire nuclear weapons stockpile -- ruining Europe economically in the act. The Masada Cloud still circles the Earth, and the ozone layer is nearly depleted.

Upon this foundation, Clarke and McQuay place a cast of complex characters. Few of them are totally likable, but they all have realistic motivations. If there's an exception among the major characters, it's Ishmael, who seems mostly a violent religious zealot. In this world, the earthquakes become a metaphor for Crane's internal turmoil. Clarke and McQuay even manage to find a utopian vision among the wreckage. Richter 10 is an outstanding novel, deserving of serious consideration for next year's major awards.

At first, I wondered if this dystopian world was necessary; by the end, I realized that without it, this would have been a much weaker novel. -- Clint

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The Bones of Time

Time travel, quantum consciousness and a visit to Hawaii too!

• by Kathleen Ann Goonan
• Tor Books
• $23.95/$34.95 Canada
• Hardcover, Feb. 1996

s befits a time travel novel, The Bones of Time starts out in three different times -- in 19th century Waikiki with the death of a princess; in 2034 Honolulu where Lynn Oshima, scientist daughter of a wealthy family, miscarries while contemplating her brother's offer of some illicit genetic material; and then a jump back to 2007, where 15-year-old runaway Cen encounters what seems to be a ghost on the Honolulu docks.

The story follows Lynn and Cen as each looks for meaning in lives turned upside down. For Lynn, this involves risking her life to help a young man fulfill an unknown potential. For Cen, it's following a dream back through time to find the living princess Kaiulani and save her. Both must survive the machinations of InterSpace, the unethical corporation that may or may not be working on a way to send manned ships into space. And both find that all roads seem to lead back to the strangely important bones of the dead Hawaiian king, Kamehameha.

The Bones of Time is a difficult book -- hard to get into, hard to follow and hard to recommend as fiction. And yet, as science fiction, it contains such mind-blowing concepts of time and consciousness that to dismiss it on the basis of its literary flaws would be snobbery.

The biggest problem in the book is simply the volume of undigested information. Nearly every sentence is an information dump explaining some piece of tech, some aspect of Hawaiian history or some cutting edge theory. Yet what is wrong is also what's right: This is fascinating stuff -- well researched, brilliantly extrapolated and ingeniously synthesized to make travel through time and space plausible in light of current theories. Goonan's depiction of a future Hawaii is equally frustrating -- she does a great job of making it feel real, but she stops too frequently to point out the neat, the nifty and the historical.

Ultimately though, what really makes for hard reading is the lack of a strong, unifying narrative line to weave all these ideas together into a story. Goonan uses numerous intertwining threads, but the main thematic elements (Hawaii, time-travel, consciousness) never really gel. Instead, as the interconnections continue to multiply, the stories lose their focus. The characters end up less like people and more like constructs whose motivations arise from plot or story needs rather than their hearts.

Like Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, Bones exemplifies science fiction as the literature of ideas -- in this case, great ideas -- but not as literature. Overall it made for a confusing and frustrating, yet intellectually exciting, read.

I hope Goonan continues to write about these ideas but also takes the time to complete the admittedly enormous task of integrating the science with the fiction as she did so beautifully with Queen City Jazz. -- LRC

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The Memory of Whiteness

The new master of a one-man orchestra finds himself the target of conspiracies while on a Grand Tour of the solar system

• The Memory of Whiteness
• by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Orb Books
• $13.95/$19.95 Canada
• Trade Paperback, Feb. 1996

hree centuries ago, Arthur Holywelkin developed theories that made the settling of the outer solar system possible. But Holywelkin eventually gave up physics to create Holywelkin's Orchestra, a complex musical instrument played by a single person. Now in 3229 A.D., Johannes Wright has become the ninth master of the orchestra.

Wright begins his first Grand Tour of the solar system on Pluto in the city of Lowell, home to the Orchestra and the Holywelkin Institute. But the first concert is a near-disaster and incites a riot. Meanwhile, Wright's staff hears rumors that the Greys, a mysterious religious sect, plan to kill him during the Tour.

Ernst Ekern, the head of the institute, is weaving his own plots to eliminate Wright. He opposed Wright's apprenticeship, and now he questions Wright's plan to play original music during the Tour, rather than classics. But Ekern's real motivation comes from his hatred of Wright, who he thinks is not fit to be a master.

Dent Ios arrives too late for the concert, but in the aftermath he is attacked by a red-bearded assailant. When the Tour leaves for Titania, Ios unexpectedly ends up on the same ship with Wright, and they become friends. Someone destroys the stage during the Titania concert, nearly killing Wright, and Ios witnesses the red-bearded assailant fleeing the scene. The mysteries intensify when they later find the red-bearded man meeting a Grey they have contacted.

Orb continues its classic reprints with Kim Stanley Robinson's third novel, first published in 1985. In The Memory of Whiteness, Robinson creates a solar system rich in variety and detail. Holywelkin's theories, which involve expanding the conventional four dimensions into a universe with five macro- and five micro-dimensions, provide the ability to sustain the outer colonies. The new worlds evolve according the desires of their inhabitants -- one even simulates the African Savannah.

I first read this novel ten years ago, and on the second reading, I still find it just as strong. -- Clint

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