Book Review: Feersum Endjinn, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Where the Ships Die

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Feersum Endjinn | Gibbon's Decline and Fall | Where the Ships Die

Earth is threatened with global catastrophe, but will a power struggle prevent its salvation?

Feersum Endjinn
By Iain M. Banks
Bantam Spectra
$5.99
Paperback, August 1996

Review by Clinton Lawrence

cosmic dust cloud is slowly enveloping the solar system, threatening to bring about a catastrophic ice age on Earth in Iain M. Banks' novel Feersum Endjinn. The ancients have long since traveled to the stars, although they may have left behind the technology to save Earth from this menace, known as the Encroachment. But Earth's remaining inhabitants don't know what this secret to their salvation is, only that it could lie in the vast artificial intelligence network they call the Cryptosphere.

Meanwhile, King Adijine is waging a war against the Engineers' clan over what might be a secret passage to safety. The Engineers don't know how to operate it, but the Crytographers loyal to the King might. A group of conspirators, seeing that the King and the Engineers are acting only to save themselves, embark on their own mission to awaken the planetary defenses. To further complicate matters, someone is trying to eliminate Count Sessine -- he has been assassinated seven times, leaving him with only one more life. Finally, Bascule, a young man who communicates with the Crypt, comes across strange events while searching for the bird who stole his talking ant, Ergates.

Into this world, the data corpus of the Crypt sends an asura -- a sort of helpful incarnation -- in the form a young woman to activate the defenses against the Encroachment. But the King gradually becomes aware of these new forces against him, which will ruin his plan, and sets his security forces against them, thus threatening continued life on Earth.

In Feersum Endjinn, Banks weaves several parallel subplots into a compelling story of mystery and intrigue. It takes some patience to get through the early chapters, where Banks' world of fallen virtual reality, nanotechnology, and biological engineering seems so strange that it's difficult to comprehend the events as they unfold. But patience is richly rewarded by the end as he shows more of both the base reality and virtual world within the Crypt, and the parallel plots coalesce into a single climax.

Some of the most enlightening moments come in the sections devoted to Bascule. These are the only ones written first-person, and Banks has chosen to use phonetic writing. The result is a very effective characterization of Bascule, who superficially seems rather simple-minded, especially in his hopeless obsession with rescuing Ergates. But his observations are often astute, and Banks uses Bascule more than any other character to show the range of culture in his world. Unfortunately, while the phonetic writing is effective in its primary purpose, it does tend to slow the reading down considerably.

Banks infuses his marvelously inventive world with some fine wit in places, and despite the time it takes to begin to sense what's happening, it's always interesting. To throw all these fashionable science fiction technologies together and make a coherent whole is quite an ambitious task, and Banks pulls it off very successfully.

This is one of the most genuinely creative books I've read in quite a while.-- Clint

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Gibbon's Decline and Fall

Welcome to the year 2000...

Gibbon's Decline and Fall
By Sheri S. Tepper
Bantam Books
$22.95/$31.95 Canada
Hardcover, August 1996

Review by Curt Wohleber

t's the year 2000. Islamic militants have bombed women's colleges, and family-values shock troops wage a terror campaign against women who dare to pursue careers, seek independence or wear short skirts. The Vatican, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists, right-wing militias and the media establishment covertly join forces to put women in their place.

But opposing forces are also at work. Mobs of bag ladies stage riots at fashion shows, shoe stores and lingerie shops. And a mysterious epidemic is making men lose interest in sex, sparking a steep drop in rape and domestic violence.

Caught within this millennial maelstrom is the Decline and Fall Club, a group of women who met in college in the late 1950s and who vowed that, in a world ruled by men, they would nevertheless refuse to "decline and fall." The club reunites at the end of the millenium when club member Carolyn Crespin comes out of retirement to defend a 15-year-old girl facing the death penalty. Impregnated during a gang-rape, the girl is charged with murder after giving birth in an alley and leaving the newborn baby in a dumpster.

A coldly ambitious prosecutor named Jake Jagger plans to use the case to vault himself into the political spotlight as a presidential candidate. Jagger is an old opponent of Crespin's and a pawn in the global women-hating conspiracy, and the Decline and Fall Club finds itself drawn into a conflict of cosmic proportions.

With more than a dozen novels to her name, Sheri S. Tepper has built a reputation for powerful writing, expert world-building and sledgehammer polemics on overpopulation and gender relations. These issues also drive Gibbon's Decline and Fall, but Tepper mostly avoids lecture and sermon, instead weaving her concerns into a thriller that's both gripping and unusually thought-provoking.

Tepper's feminist take on the human condition neatly inverts the biblical story of the Fall of Man, which blames Eve, and thus all womankind, for the expulsion from paradise. She substitutes a Native American creation myth in which men succumb to temptation and bring misery into the world. Tepper parallels this turnabout with an interesting science fictional backdrop resembling a gene-spliced hybrid of ecofeminist goddess worship and H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.

But the novel strikes a false note with Tepper's biased treatment of sex. The world probably would be gentler -- and less crowded -- if men didn't have testosterone coursing through their bodies. But while Tepper is quick to address the male libido, she strangely sidesteps female sexuality. The few women in the book who show interest in sex are either lesbians or sluts who have been brainwashed by the patriarchy. Intentionally or not, Tepper implies that women relate to men sexually only as victims. The one genuinely decent male character in the book, Carolyn's husband, has the courtesy to sleep in a separate bedroom. (Although it leaves readers to wonder if the author is making a subtle play on words when she has him walk with a limp.)

Overall Gibbon's Decline and Fall stands as a refreshingly mature and sophisticated contribution to science fiction, a genre still dominated by adolescent male wish-fulfillment. Instead of the lone male hotshot hero, Tepper gives readers a group of middle-aged women who team up against the forces of darkness and emerge triumphant.

Few science fiction novels in recent years have given me so much to think about. -- Curt

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Where the Ships Die

The Vosses had it all: money, power and their own wormhole. Until they disappeared...

Where the Ships Die
By William C. Dietz
Ace Science Fiction
$5.99/$7.99 Canada
Paperback, August 1996

Review by Steve Powers

here the Ships Die opens on the planet New Hope, where young Dorn Voss attends the Milford Academy for Young Men. When 17-year-old Dorn is recruited by one of the "rats" (the younger boys at Milford) to intervene in a fight, he discovers fellow classmate Mundulo being brutally beaten by a group of four upperclassmen known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Dorn launches into the fighting and, using moves that his sister taught him, he quickly dispatches the Four Horsemen. When Dorn is later summoned by Headmaster Tull, he expects a reprimand for his behavior and is shocked to find instead that his parents have failed to pay the last installment of his tuition.

Although Dorn has not heard from his parents in six or seven months, it didn't seem unusual because his family owns a fleet of ships and a wormhole -- worth billions -- that keep everyone incessantly busy. But it appears that no one else has heard from Mr. and Mrs. Voss in quite some time...

With this scenario, Dietz launches this intense, fast-moving novel. Howard and Mary Voss have seemingly vanished, and the reasons appear endless. To start with, the Vosses own one of only four wormholes in existence, making them a target for just about anyone. The situation is more complicated because no one is quite sure what the coordinates are for another wormhole, known as the Mescalaro Gap, and everyone is in a race to find it.

Dietz has created a raging conflict that leaps from planet to planet and involves a large cast of characters. Readers are caught in the crossfire as separate scenarios are quickly established on the planets New Hope, Tri-La and Mechnos, all involving Dorn, the alien Traa race, Dorn's parents, and his sister, Natalie, who is a space fleet officer.

The pace of this novel is swift and unrelenting; Dietz expertly interweaves the action as the scenery changes and the characters all move toward a reckoning with one another, a meeting that may well determine the future of the known universe. There's mystery, murder, conspiracy, violence, believable characters: all the components that make up a good thriller.

Where the Ships Die is space warfare at its best; exciting, compulsive and realistic. Most importantly, it keeps readers involved to the very end as the novel races towards an explosive conclusion.

Warfare is not something I usually like to read about, but Dietz's novel caught my interest and kept it until the very last page. I will be watching for future novels by him. -- Steve

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