n the future year denominated 633 under the new system imposed by the global Islamic Nomarchy that long ago unified Earth, beneath one of the sheltering domes that dot the inhospitable surface of a partially terraformed Venus, a child is born. Mahala Liangharad is the result of an artificial gestation from stored sperm and ovum on file from her dead parents. She is the latest generation of a family that has been intimately involved for 100 years with the ongoing transformation of Venus into a planet fit for human habitation. As the inheritor of a century of extraordinary triumph and disaster, glory and infamy, Mahala begins her life with an unusual burden. Raised by her overprotective grandparents, Risa and Sef, she will slowly become cognizant of her mixed legacy. But discovering how to carry the spirit of her ancestors onward in her own unique fashion will take the rest of her long lifetime.
In the first section of this novel, "Ishtar Terra," we follow Mahala from her earliest school days to her transition to a university on one of the floating islands that occupy the upper atmosphere of the planet. We meet all Mahala's variegated and nicely depicted relatives, some of whom are Habbers, residents of artificial worldlets elsewhere in the solar system. The childhood friends who will crop up throughout her life, especially Ragnar and Solveig Einarsson, play their part. In "Islands," Mahala begins to manifest her adult characteristics, showing a determined personality reminiscent of her great-grandmother Iris, the first Earthwoman of their line to inhabit Venus. Mahala gravitates toward biological studies, hoping eventually to learn how to genetically engineer humans to meet Venus' conditions halfway.
"High Orbit" finds Mahala on Anwara, an orbital facility where the tripartite political dynamics of the solar system (Earth-Venus-Habbers) impinge on her life. The most action-packed section, "The Garden," discovers Mahala pursuing her second-choice career as a physician on Venus, and eventually participating in epochal treaty negotiations on Earth, necessitated by the discovery of extraterrestrial life in the form of a transmission from a distant solar system. "The Heavens" follows Mahala on a relativistic starflight to reach the source of the ET beacon, occupying 1,200 objective years, and a brief coda, "Home," returns her to a fully transformed Venus.
Podkayne is reborn on Venus
The vagaries of publishing have delayed the completion of Sargent's trilogy for an inordinate number of years. Reading the older volumes in conjunction with the newest, one detects a remarkable uniformity of purpose and continuation of vision. If anything, Sargent's writing has improved over the past decade, rendering the third book a smoother and less weighty experience than the earlier ones.
In the interval between the second book and this latest one, however, something important happened on the literary scene. Kim Stanley Robinson published his Red Mars (1993), Green Mars (1994) and Blue Mars (1996), setting the standard for realistic novels of terraforming. It is impossible to discuss Sargent's work--even though two-thirds of it predates Robinson's--without making at least a token bow in his direction.
Anyone comparing the two series will immediately note major differences. Whereas Robinson follows the entire rehabilitation of Mars over centuries and in great scientific detail, Sargent's plot spans only about 150 years, until the final 50 pages of Child, where in compressed form 1,200 years pass. And while Sargent is scrupulous in her speculations and in the limited amounts of science and engineering details she supplies, they are not her main focus. Most of her gimmicks for converting Venus--a giant parasol to cut sunlight, gravitational-pulse engines to alter the planet's rotation--are unveiled in the first book, and don't change over the next two. Venus itself alters minimally over 15 decades. Consequently, much of the panoramic drama of a changing landscape that Robinson achieves is missing here.
What Sargent chooses to concentrate on--to a larger degree than Robinson, who utilized quasi-immortal characters for continuity--is generational change, family history and the burden of parental and grandparental choices on those who follow. Essentially a romantic, Sargent is telling a somewhat old-fashioned dynastic story that begins with Iris Angharads on Earth and reverberates through her female descendents, culminating in Mahala's own daughter, herself named Angharad. The resonances and disjunctions down the years are the main epiphanies of this series, a kind of interplanetary Roots. By the time Mahala returns to the town on Earth where Iris was born and spent her youth, the frisson is intense.
