March SF BOTM: "Natural History" by J. Robson

[Archren]

Well, I just finished reading this one. I liked it quite a bit, although I can see why some people had trouble finishing it. There were definite pacing issues, and the ending seemed horribly anticlimatic. Still, the politics were interesting (if a little simple), I loved the characters of Zephyr and the Abacand, and I thought it raised some very interesting questions.

If you thought it was your only avenue to freedom from a system you deemed oppressive, would you give up your individuality? It's a tough question. I might do it just to be able to join in the experience of the truly alien, more of a "go out and get new knowledge" sort of thing, but even then, would "I" really appreciate it? I'm not sure. It might be worth it.

BTW, I am totally dense when it comes to themes & symbols in literature. What was up with the "American Pie" song leitmotif? I didn't get that at all.

[intensityxx]

Well I'm a refugee from Natural History. I tried, really I did. And for awhile there I liked it even. But I quit 1/3 through it.

Then I read more comments by other people, and many of them said something like: when you get to discover the Big Ending, it makes everything that happened in the rest of the book pointless and obsolete.

So at some point I want to know the Big Ending so I don't have to read the rest of the blasted thing.

[FicusFan]

I am still reading. I do enjoy it, and I like the ideas - but the writing is tough. I am only at about page 170 and have been reading it seems like forever. Of course I read a little and put it down, so it doesn't get much mileage. But I do plan to finish.

Nice to know the Big Ending makes it all pointless -- just what I want in a tough to read book.

[intensityxx]

...many of them said something like: when you get to discover the Big Ending, it makes everything that happened in the rest of the book pointless and obsolete.

I am still reading...Nice to know the Big Ending makes it all pointless -- just what I want in a tough to read book.

Whoops. I thought it was okay to discuss now. Well, most likely those people I mentioned lack the depths of insight that FicusFan and the rest of you would bring to the book. *whew!*

[FicusFan]

Go ahead and discuss if you want to. This is the book group and it is the right month. I view the thread as enter at your own risk if you haven't finished reading yet. Spoilers don't usually bother me anyway, which is why I signed up before I was done.

I have now passed page 200 -- only 192 to go ....

[Kamakhya]

Yes, indeed. The BOTM books are obviously full of spoilers. You are free to discuss any aspect of the book you like.

I wasn't able to get a copy of this book, so I will not partake in the conversation. However, thanks to the comments so far, it is unlikely I will try too hard to get a copy!

[intensityxx]

Thanks. I just read that there's a sequel coming out.

[Archren]

For intensityxx so she doesn't have to live her life wondering:

In the end it turns out that beings that spend much time around Stuff end up being integrated into it's conciousness. This happens to Corvax, Zephyr (on the planet) and Isol. Meanwhile Tristan(?) is still handing out Stuff to other Forged in the system, refusing to believe that it will happen to him. There are a couple problems with this. Corvax, becoming the spokesman for the conciousness of Stuff mentions that it won't integrate with someone that doesn't want to. But Isol completely and totally doesn't want to and ends up being integrated anyway. I guess this is because she kept using the FTL travel capability. The story mostly ends with Zephyr being integrated. it doesn't deal at all with the continuing poltical implications of a bunch of Forged becoming one with the Stuff and other choosing not to and any other ramifications. Disappointing.

I can see where it naturally leaves itself open to a sequel, and maybe I'll read it, but the ending was so badly handled that I'm not sure.

[FicusFan]

OK I finally finished it. Yeah ... It took forever to read, though I did like a lot of it. But parts of the story read more like a text book, and a badly written one at that, than a story. Many times I would start a sentence and by the time I got to the end it of it, I had no idea what it was about, though I understood all the words used. I cut her some slack because she was trying to write about stuff that didn't exist, and she was trying to be Miss Hard SF geek. I also got very strong 'trendiness' vibes at the start ala Light (M. John Harrison), which I disapprove of strongly.

This is the first Justina Robson book I have read, so I don't know if she normally writes like this, or if she made a special effort. I have Mappa Mundi an earlier book, but haven't read it yet.

Ok I didn't mind the ending, and I look at the book on 2 levels: the story on the surface, and what I think she is writing about. The story on the surface had some interesting and good scenes, but it never really jelled together as a real seamless tale. I also had some problems with how she set-up/told her story.

First problem: the Incoherence and trendiness at the start - once I got to Corvax's asteroid I was ok - but that was were the trendiness kicked in. Until then it was very hard to care about Isol, because there was no description of anything - you didn't know who she was, where she was, what she found, or what was going on. Of course JR had to make it all up so I hung in there.

I thought the forged was a neat, if black and white idea. The story was set so far into the future that people can be made to mesh and grow with machines and computers - but here's the catch (2nd Problem): by the time they get that far there won't be any 'unevolved' except for small groups of religious nuts who refuse all technology. We already have people who have titanium and plastic replacements, and the replacements are getting better and better. They help people live longer, and more normally - I don't see humanity suddenly saying no. By the time you can make a human/metal insect mixture that can cruise space, there are going to be no large numbers of 'pure' humans left, to feel this supposed revulsion and superiority. So the two groups that she posits, and the conflict they have, don't really ring true to the story.


In fact the whole political situation seemed more like welding the Communist worker's rebellion ala early 1900 Russia onto a far future SF story. You have the people in power who are using the military and secret police to repress a larger group of people. The larger group wants to have a voice in their lives. Some are violently millitant, some are just go-alongs, and some are turncoats. The outcast workers are used as spies. Within the workers group you have players with different ideas competing to be the one in charge, and you have the same in the traditional power structure that is trying to repress them. It just never worked for me that either group was realistic both from the inside or in conflict with each other.

The 3rd problem I had was with Zephyr -- who was not a believable person, or scientist. She was pretty boring. She was like Athena springing fully-formed from Zeus' brow. She had no past, no real family, no friends, no outside interests, and no real lovers,( she even chose a married man, and an ocean breathing forged to keep herself isolated). In many ways she was the human equivalent of Isol. I just didn't buy her as a human, and I really didn't care what happened to her.

In terms of her job as an archeologist, I thought she was much too interested in 'ideas' and 'ancient people and civilizations in an abstract way'. She was supposed to be a physical scientist, a stone and bone person and she hardly paid any attention to the artefacts. That was how she would have been sucked into her profession - back when she was a child, they would have been her passion -- the ideas, the people would only exist to explain the artefacts. She perhaps should have been an anthropologist, or a sociologist.

I suspected the rock on the planet was in fact the people, but not a meshing of the people and their technology. I just thought they were silca based and moved, and lived in geologic time and that we couldn't see them doing anything because of the difference in time frames. The idea of the technology is cool, but I still have a problem with 'rock' being technological.

I am not sure how I feel about the fact that the technology was dangerous and came with a price. On the one hand it make sense and seems right, on another it could be, and was, exploited by the surface story for hysteria, and excuses for grand gestures, and that was tiresome.

I thought the whole idea of the planet that wasn't ZDN (what was up with that) responding to the Gaiaforms was cool. I just wonder what happened with the smaller life -- the bacteria, and insects, and animals and plants. If it wouldn't take the Abacand because it lacked sentience, why would it take the living but really non-sentient population of the planet ?

I think the idea of not taking any but those who want to go, does mean that if you use the technology, and want something from it, then you have agreed to its terms of consent, even if later you find it was for more than you bargained for (ala Isol and Tatresi).

I really liked Trini and the hive and her time on the Moon.

I thought the ending on not-ZDN with Isol and Zephyr was very Thelma and Louise and I thought it worked with what JR was really writing about.

To me it was about identity, who you are, and how you define yourself. I thought she was actually talking about us-- since the industrial revolution we have defined ourselves by our function. There are those who think that not too far in the future most professions will be obsolete. I am not talking about the singularity. I am talking about the gradual move towards better economies so that any job that has any type of repitition will eventually be done by robots and/or computers. Who are we, when we can no longer identify ourselves as what we do ?

The groups in the novel seemed to be those who existed for their function, and those who had found another organizing principle. The forged were the ones who were tied to function. Those who had other outlets were represented by Zephyr and Machen. Machen had the dog, the walk in the park, the sillyness of the two spy-birds. He concentrated on the smaller things in life, the little pleasures of life, on just being. Zephyr on the other hand was unhappy, and restless, because she really was ready for more. The 'more' was presented to her on not-ZDN. She got to join with others in her passion of learning and exploring. She disappeared into her passion, and she gave up her past physical aspect that held her back to do that.

So that is my first stab at what I want to say about the book. I did enjoy it, but I am not sure if I will read a sequel, because the enjoyment was more for the novelty, and the ideas, and not so much for the characters or the story.

[Archren]

I'd just like to second a bunch of Ficus' comments and add a few more.

Definitely her characterization needed a lot of work. As Ficus pointed out, it was really hard to get a handle on Isol' character, which should've been central. Her character was described by other characters instead of shown in scenes involving her. Didn't make much sense.

Has anyone else noticed that sometimes the AI are the best characters? I loved the abacand, and there are several other books where this seems to be the case. Dan Simmon's "Illium" also springs to mind.

There were a bunch of threads in "Natural History" that the author seemed to simply drop. The consquences of the Stuff planet being in a totally different galaxy; anything having to do with the Stratgos, any of Zephyr's interpersonal relationships (as few as they were), the consequences of the Gaia robots choices, etc. She'd bring up these interesting things and then simply never get back to them.

BTW, I totally agree with Ficus on the unbelievability of there still being completely "unevolved" humans in a future with such extensive forged humans. Even the fairly simple humans would still have improvements, I imagine.

I saw in Locus that she has delivered a sequel to her publisher. I'm honestly not sure if I want to read it or not.

[intensityxx]

Ficus:

by the time they get that far there won't be any 'unevolved' except for small groups of religious nuts who refuse all technology.

Archren:

BTW, I totally agree with Ficus on the unbelievability of there still being completely "unevolved" humans in a future with such extensive forged humans.

I'm driving along thinking about all this (gods, I'm a geek), when I remember that Unevolved do use MekTek improvements. In fact, I was surprised when an Unevolved character made use of one, or was described as having one. What I understood was that these were specific, task-appropriate improvements, as opposed to the Forged, who were completely specialized in function, and who were human/machine melds to a much different degree. I think this is a much more believable scenario than the more black-and-white one you're both describing.

[FicusFan]

I thought that use of Mek-Tek put you into the Forged group, albeit at a lower lever (you couldn't cruise to Mars). I thought the Strategois was Mek-Tek and I wouldn't consider him an unevolved human. He had copper lines embedded into his skin and some type of crest. Perhaps the Mek-Tek group was a waystation between the 2 groups. I thought the Abacand was what unevolved humans used to help them use technology without it changing them.

It also seems that Mek-Tek was something the human chose to do to him or herself. You are born a normal human and you decide to have some work done -- like plastic surgery now. The people who were Forged were probably designed and picked to be like that before birth and were sculpted, and grown into what they became -- all at the will of an outside agency or person. The unevolved human wasn't changed by an outside agency, and also chose not to change him or herself. They seemed to be in charge from what we saw, and both the Mek-Tek and the forged worked for them, thought they were more willing to accept the Mek-Tek socially.

You know the more I think about the consequences of the technology, the more I like it. Because it seems so true. You invent A to do Y and you have no idea the ripples and changes that it will create down the time line. How it will force other changes, or other decisions, or close off avenues -- all with no real intention, but as a side effect of change.

Did you think that not-ZDN was in another galaxy or just made up ? I couldn't figure out why it wasn't ZDN, and then when Trini realized that they (forged hive) had created the inside of the Moons to be what they wanted I thought maybe Isol had made up not-ZDN. Of course if that is so, why was there the left over stone civilization on it. I can understand it being totally bare, because the gaiforms needed to use their entire beings, but how come she 'made' the aliens ?

I think this book is really cool to talk about, I just wish the reading experience had been better and more enjoyable.

[Erfael]

Well, I've spent all month so far not commenting on this book, and now it's been probably five weeks since I finished it. So I'll do what I can. If I say something really dumb, I may have just forgotten something along the way.

I have to say this is one of the most enjoyable books I have read in which no part of the book was enjoyable. Taken individually, I don't think there were more than a very short handful of sections that I really enjoyed, but somehow, on the whole, I liked the book.

I guess my biggest gripe about it was that I sort of feel like I was led to believe that it was archaeological-SF, something I tend to like quite a lot when I run into it. In the end there seemed to be very little of that and much more of....other things.

I think she actually spent a little too much time trying to be literary rather than telling a good story in an enjoyable way. I'm all for meaning in my books, but not when I can't discern what that is and why the indivual parts to the book are so dull. I'm still not really sure why we had American Pie running through the beginning. Also not really sure why we had to end with the collie. In many ways it reminded me of Light, which is also by the same publisher. I wonder if I need to be wary of what I pick up by this house.

I felt there were a lot of ideas that she could have run with that she just stopped flat on. (Can't remember names....) When the roc fellow from the asteroid belt showed up, it seemed there was a really good opportunity to explore people's addictions to the internet and the problems it can cause, which she sort of just touched on and then moved on to other things.

It also didn't sit well with me that the Stuff would only take on people who wanted to be taken on, BUT once you say yes, there's no going back. It's sort of like they get to make the decision, but they're not really given the information to really decide well (reminds me of every fourth year in the US, actually). If it is really such a powerful and fair organism, one would think that it would give people the proper information before taking them in. It rather seemed like some sort of plague or something that tempted people into opening up to it and then sucking them in...except that by the end, it leaves Earth relatively alone. Confusing.

So I DID like it, but maybe for the same reasons Ficus did, novelty, not substance. Also, I really liked the color scheme on the cover. That stood out to me a great deal.

[FicusFan]

I actually liked how you didn't have all the info to make the decision to accept the stuff, and once you accept it there is no going back.

I think it mimics invention and technological change very well. Something is invented, and people only look at it one way, and don't see the associated changes until too late. Generally once something is out of the bag, you can't go back. Like un-inventing nuclear weapons.

I don't know if its the publisher you need to be aware of or just when they publish UK authors -- which both Harrison ( Light ) and Robson are. There often have a different take on what is meant by a good story. You probably want to avoid Steph Swainston too, she is the latest UK flavor of the month to be published here and her book also has ' clarity/lack of enjoyment' issues.

And I agree there should have been more archeaology, the whole world was wasted.

[odo]

I can see where it naturally leaves itself open to a sequel

The feeling I had all the time when reading the book is that JR was prepairing an scenary for something big, but that something was not going to happen in the book. I didn't know there was going to be a sequel, but somehow from the beggining I felt that the book was part of something bigger.

I didn't like the book much. It was too slow paced. But I did like the universe JR describes and the ending was open enough for that BIG thing to happen in the sequel. I may give it a try...