| Pushing Ice | Contributor: Amfo | Posted: 08/02/07 | 12:34 |
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page 3 of 4 Most of the character interaction in the novel orbits the long conflict between the two dominant female members of Rockhopper's crew. Bella Lind is the closest thing we have to the "good guy" - she is after all referenced by the politicians living in the Year 18,000 during the prologue as "The Benefactor". Then there's engineer Svetlana Barseghian. Yes, that really is her name. She's the bad guy because... well mostly because she's the anti-Bella. Bella and Svetlana enjoy a novel-length dance of dominance and suppression, with one or either in control of the fates of the rest of the humans who are literally dragged kicking and screaming into the distant future by Janus, the alien moon. You can tell Reynolds is striving to avoid casting either woman as explicitly "good" or "bad" but the prologue ruins this by making Bella a heroine of antiquity in the Year 18,000. (Haters of "high concept" SF will be folding their arms and pursing their lips self-righteously right about now.) Everything Svetlana does seems petty and selfish because you already know Bella's destiny is to be a beacon of hope for all humanity, and attempting to derail her destiny is tantamount to being not merely anti-Bella, but anti-human. Still, the relationship between the two women is probably the most interesting and original aspect of a novel that pretty much constantly reads as a tribute to Arthur C Clarke and any other author who has tried to think intelligently about actual aliens, as opposed to men with fake noses standing in front of a digitally generated set. The more I think about Pushing Ice, the more its similarity with Clarke's work strikes me. It's positively uncanny - the way time dilation is a significant plot element, the way the aliens are discovered, introduced, even the method in which they get their human names. The whole setup where Janus is the product of a vastly superior but departed super-intelligence, while the extant aliens the humans actually meet are merely along for the ride isn't just like the whole concept of The Garden of Rama, it is that concept. It's identical. So why is the novel so good to read? Is it because of the very human conflict between the two women, flawed in execution but faultless in intent? Is it because of the cool interactions between humans and aliens? The groovy near-future tech? It's hard to say, because the reasons not to bother with this book really start to stack up. There's the whole thing with names. Svetlana Barseghian? What the hell? And the main human settlement that gets founded halfway through the book is called Crabtree. A far cry from Commander Norton of the Endeavour, exploring the Central Plain and sailing the Cylindrical Sea. |
