The Technologists by Matthew Pearl

Published by Random House on February 21, 2012

In 1868, the navigational instruments on every ship in foggy Boston Harbor go haywire at the same instant, causing a disastrous series of shipwrecks.  Soon thereafter, all the glass along a Boston street liquefies.  The baffled authorities, fearing that “the darkest reaches of science and mechanical arts” are responsible for the disasters, need expert assistance to find an explanation.  Will that help come from venerable Harvard or its fledgling rival, the Institute of Technology?  The conflict pits a professor at Harvard against the president of MIT, and William Blakie, a leading Harvard student and pompous moralizer, against Marcus Mansfield, a working class kid who was plucked from his job as a machinist to become one of MIT’s first students.  Mansfield and two fellow students turn to practical science to solve the mystery.  The call themselves the Technologists.

At times The Technologists seems like an extended science lesson, but it is never dull.  There are moments of wicked humor; college students and pranks go hand-in-hand while making fun of the pretentious is always good sport.  The possibility of romance arises with each appearance of the frosty Ellen Swallow, MIT’s lone female student, although not with Mansfield; Agnes the chambermaid is more his speed.  Flashbacks to the Civil War add another layer of interest.  The novel eventually mixes elements of a thriller with an intriguing whodunit that invites the reader to puzzle out the identity of Boston’s saboteur.  Matthew Pearl employs misdirection to good effect, yet still plays fair:  there are subtle clues to the culprit’s identity planted along the way.  Shrewder readers than I might identify the villain before his or her identity is finally revealed.

The Technologists pursues a number of interesting themes, many centering around educational models that were undergoing a revolution in the latter half of the nineteenth century.  Harvard represents the “classic education” that values tradition and faith while upstart MIT favors factual accuracy and scientific investigation.  There is no room for the “new sciences” -- chemistry and physics -- at Harvard while they are the bread-and-butter of MIT.  Academics and politicians debate the wisdom of teaching science to women, of educating students who are not “morally fit” (i.e., are not devout Christians), and of waiving tuition for students from the lower classes (who, in the view of some, will never be the sort of gentlemen who can benefit from their studies).  Should education remain entirely in the lofty realm of theory or should students get their hands dirty performing experiments?  Although the reader knows which side prevailed, the debates offer a fascinating look at the evolution of modern education.

Sometimes the characters in The Technologists seem a bit too Dickensian, but that’s also part of the novel’s charm.  I prefer characters with greater depth and endings that are a bit less formulaic (even the last chapters are a throwback to Dickens), but I can’t fault Pearl for writing a novel that is exciting, interesting, and fun.

RECOMMENDED

The Coward's Tale by Vanessa Gebbie

First published in UK in 2011; published by Bloomsbury USA on February 28, 2012

When we take the time to look beneath the surface, people are not always what they seem to be.  Sometimes those who seem cowardly are not cowards at all.  Sometimes atonement is mistaken for guilt.  In her unapologetically humane novel, Vanessa Gebbie reminds us of the patience and effort that is required to understand another person, and of the rewards awaiting those who make the effort.

Eccentric doesn’t begin to describe the characters in The Coward’s Tale.  In Chaucer-like fashion, their stories are related by Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, the town beggar, in exchange for coffee and toffee.  Some of the stories teach lessons; some are gossipy; some are funny and some are heartbreaking.  Occasionally it’s difficult to grasp the point of a particular story, but getting to know the peculiar characters is reason enough to read The Coward’s Tale.

Jenkins has a story about everyone in town, as well as their ancestors.  A few examples will give a flavor of Gebbie’s creations:  Icarus Evans, the shop teacher, is consumed by the challenge of making a wooden feather that will float on currents of air; he never stops trying to achieve the impossible.  Jimmy Half (for halfwit or half-alive) Harris, born dead and buried before coming to life, cannot speak, although he was born to be a poet.  Factual Philips, a deputy librarian who covers his walls with diagrams, maps, charts, and lists, with particular attention to the clues and deductions that lead Sherlock Holmes to the truth that lurks behind mystery, finally gets a chance to solve a mystery of his own.  Also obsessed by maps is the town undertaker, Tutt Bevan, who revisits his childhood as he walks through the town in a straight line.  Touching stories explain why the son of a man who died in a coal mine became a window washer, why the son of a thief sneaks into houses at night, why Ianto tells stories while others toil.

In addition to Ianto, a boy named Laddy Merridew furnishes a common thread to bind the stories together.  Laddy wanders about the town, observing and interacting with its inhabitants, feeling lost and unsettled, worrying about his divorcing parents and trying to decide where he should live, listening to Ianto’s stories and wondering whether they are true or just more lies told by an adult.  In many respects Laddy is a young version of Ianto, while Ianto sees his lost brother in Laddy.

As they progress, Ianto’s stories become more serious.  They begin to echo each other:  broken windows and shadows and reflections are recurring images.  The stories share and develop themes.  Maps are bad because “they stop us from finding new places” or they “make places different to how they are in our heads,” although a self-made map can help you confront fears and find your own path.  A nearby coal mine inaptly named the Kindly Light appears in many of the stories, eventually becoming the novel’s central focus.  It is the site of a disaster that worked unexpected changes upon the town and its people -- Ianto most of all.

Witty, wise, and charming, intense and powerful, The Coward’s Tale offers a remarkable blend of humor and pathos.  The novel illustrates the importance of storytelling as an instrument of healing and community bonding.  Ianto’s stories inspire hope even in their saddest moments.  They encourage forgiveness and understanding as they reveal the frailties and faults of the townspeople.  The sad but perfect ending is the final knot that ties the stories together.

Gebbie writes musically rhythmic prose, forming sentences as sharp and shimmery as broken glass.  Both in style and content, The Coward’s Tale is an outstanding novel.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Exogene by T.C. McCarthy

Published by Orbit on March 1, 2012

Germline, the first novel of The Subterrene War series, told the story of a journalist who became a part of the war he was covering, participating in battles and growing emotionally attached to genetically bred female soldiers called Germlines.  In Exogene, the second novel in the series, the focus is on one of the Germlines, a genetic named Catherine.  “Faith and death” is the genetic creed.  Combat is a test of faith; death is the welcome reward, the entrance to a promised afterlife.  Yet the reality of war changes people, even people who have been nurtured in vats and programmed to kill.

Catherine is a perfect killer. At 16 1/2, she is the finest genetic soldier ever produced in America.  Yet Catherine begins to feel an unnatural (for a genetic) will to survive, a fear of death that may or may not be an early onset of the “spoiling” that awaits her at the end of her service.  We know from the first novel that Germlines begin to rot away when they turn eighteen.  We also know that despite being conditioned to accept that fate (while craving a more meaningful death on the battlefield), genetics occasionally try to run, to escape the war before reaching their expiration date, an effort that will prove to be futile -- or so they are told by their human creators.

Catherine’s story initially centers on her attempt to escape her makers and her engineered fate.  She eventually falls into the hands of male genetics bred as Russian soldiers.  The Russians are working on something new -- an Exogenic Enhancement, a hybrid of human and machine -- and who knows what the Chinese are doing (not to mention the Koreans).  Hating Americans and Russians about equally, Catherine must make a choice about her future, and it is that choice that drives the novel’s second half.  Since Catherine is handicapped by hallucinations in the form of flashbacks as her mind begins to erode, the second half blends Catherine’s present with snatches of her gritty past.  Yet as the story unfolds and as Catherine’s conception of her purpose evolves, we begin to suspect that Catherine’s moments of superficial clarity are unhinged from reality.  Whether due to spoiling or the drugs she was given or religious rhapsody, Catherine sometimes seems a tad crazy.  That, of course, makes her an interesting character.

While T.C. McCarthy writes combat scenes that are as vivid and exciting as nearly any I’ve encountered in military science fiction, he also writes with poignancy that is too often missing from the genre’s war stories.  McCarthy imbues his characters with greater depth than is common in action-driven stories.  His vision of the future is interesting and more credible than most military sf novels I’ve read.

McCarthy makes impressive use of religion as the force that motivates the Germlines.  The belief that killing is the path to salvation is a common feature of religious zealotry, a point that has been made often enough in fiction, but McCarthy takes it a step beyond the ordinary:  What happens when a zealot begins to suspect that she is not serving God but is killing to serve secular masters? Or, in terms of McCarthy’s story, what happens when a genetic begins to worry that she is not a perfect instrument of God, but a flawed creation of man?  When a genetic who is conditioned to hope the war will never end begins to long for -- not exactly peace, but a chance to kill on her own terms, to destroy an enemy of her own choosing?  There is something both intellectually and emotionally engaging about Catherine’s redefinition of her life’s purpose.  Perhaps Exogene is about the true meaning of freedom (nothing left to lose?) but I think its meaning is open to other interpretations, particularly in light of an unexpected ending that made me question my understanding of Catherine.  That’s one of the things I like about Exogene and Germline:  the novels work as high energy action stories but they operate on other levels as well, giving the reader political and philosophical meat to chew upon.

I felt for the journalist in Germline more deeply than I connected with Catherine, but I think Exogene is in many ways a more cohesive work than its predecessor, and the better of the two novels, albeit only slightly.  Both are worth reading, and I look forward to the next installment.

RECOMMENDED

Midworld by Alan Dean Foster

First published in 1975

Long before the concept of world building gained currency among science fiction fans, Alan Dean Foster built one of the most imaginative worlds in the genre.  Midworld takes place on an unnamed planet covered with dense vegetation, rising from the surface (Lower Hell) to the sky (Upper Hell) in seven layers.  Although it is filled with predatory plants and animals, humans -- the descendants of a crashed spacecraft -- have carved out a niche in the middle levels.  They have adapted to the world to such an extent that they seem to communicate in an almost worshipful way with the trees and vegetation that make their survival possible.  They “emfol” with plant life, an empathic form of communication that assures the plant’s willingness to be used for their purposes.  A science station, illegally established on the world by a corporate entity, is unaware of the world’s human population until a skimmer flown by two scientists is swatted from the air by a flying nightmare.  The scientists -- Logan and Cohoma -- are saved by Born, who eventually leads them on a dangerous journey back to their station.  When Born learns what the science station is doing, conflict ensues.

Midworld combines a nifty story of corporate greed with a lost world adventure.  Most of the novel -- the best part of the novel -- pits humans against the many dangers that Foster imagines on a world that is both treacherous and (for those who understand it) welcoming.  In the final quarter of the novel, the humans who have adapted to the world and the newcomers who want to exploit it are not playing well together.  In that regard, Midworld develops a less-than-subtle pro-environmentalist message, one that cleverly transplants the Gaia theory to an alien world.  The human inhabitants of the world take only what they need, and only after they emfol with the plant life to determine whether the plant is ready to be taken.  The corporate outsiders are, of course, taking whatever they want, without regard to the world’s needs, and are thus (at least in Born’s opinion) set on a path that will lead to the world’s destruction.  The heavy-handedness of the “good versus evil” storyline is offset in the final pages, which challenge the reader to reconsider the nature of good and evil in the circumstances that Foster imagines.

Foster’s writing style is lively; it occasionally has a literary feel that is uncommon in genre fiction.  For that reason, and for the brilliantly conceived world that Foster envisions, this largely forgotten novel comes close to meriting the status of a science fiction classic.

RECOMMENDED

The Detour by Andromeda Romano-Lax

Published by Soho Press on February 14, 2012

Ten years after leaving Italy, Ernst Vogler returns to the country where he spent five eventful days. To tell the story of those days, The Detour returns to 1938. Vogler is on the curatorial staff for the Sonderprojekt, acquiring art for the Reich, particularly art that is pleasing to the Führer. His mentor, Gerhard, has been seized and taken to Dachau, imprisoned for the crime of having opinions. It is unwise, in this era, to ask the wrong questions, particularly if one questions the wisdom of concentrating all of Europe's most valued art in Germany and Austria, and so Vogler keeps that question to himself. In Gerhard's absence, Vogler is next in line for an important assignment: travel to Rome to transport a priceless sculpture, Myron's Discus Thrower, back to Germany.

Vogler begins a cross-country trip to the German border, accompanied by the sculpture and the brothers Cosimo and Enzo. As the miles fly past, we learn more about Vogler's life: his difficult relationship with the father he continually disappointed; the "strange variation" that set him apart from other children; the source of the scar that makes him so self-conscious; his loss of passion for anything but art, "itself a substitution for other losses." As the trip continues, Vogler learns that the route has been planned so that Enzo can make a romantic detour. One detour leads to another until Vogler meets the brothers' family, including their sister Rosina.

The Detour tells a story that fascinates in multiple ways. On its simplest level, the novel builds thriller-like tension as the reader wonders about the fate of Discus Thrower and the men who are bringing it to the border. The tension builds to a dramatic climax that I didn't anticipate. The Detour also works as an unusual love story in a time of war: "War takes away nearly everything, but perhaps not that final illogical tendency [the possibility of romance] that allows us to continue living." Actually, there are two love stories: one, involving the brothers, is told obliquely; the other, involving Vogler, is eventful but a bit predictable.

From a more intellectual perspective, The Detour looks at pre-war Europe through the lens of art as Vogler and Rosina argue about whether Discus Thrower represents an ideal: the German loves the sculpture's physical perfection while the Italian despises its failure to represent emotion and individuality. Vogler admires the perfection of the human form -- a notion of the Übermensch that the Nazis recast in racial terms -- and seeks it out in art, yet he was raised with an acute understanding of his own physical imperfection and has carried the shame of that defect throughout his life. Rosina, of course, sees things quite differently.

At its best, The Detour is a character study that illustrates the conflict many German citizens experienced during and after Hitler's rise to power. Vogler sees things (like Gerhard's arrest) that he knows are wrong but does nothing to prevent them. He signs onto "the pact of silent paralysis that is to blame for everything." He maintains a sincere sense of duty and loyalty but resents "unity-building drivel." Ultimately the reader wonders whether Vogler can overcome his sense of obedience and order, whether he can make a decision -- the correct decision -- based solely on an emotional understanding of right and wrong.

The Detour is a sophisticated, sobering novel told in a compelling voice. There's a bit too much exposition at the end as the story circles back to the present. The final scene is too obvious; it detracts from the story that precedes it. The novel is well worth reading for the events that occur in 1938, not so much for the much shorter passages devoted to 1948.

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