*****
Surprisingly outstanding
I came
across this book in a jumble sale. The objectively ugly cover (in the Italian
edition), which reminds me of a manual, was almost discouraging me from buying
it, but convinced by the price, I decided to pick it up. When I started reading
it, I was immediately pleasantly surprised by the opening scene featuring some
action, which won my last hesitation due to the many typos.
Although
the original book was published in 1990, the future in it is still fairly
plausible, although some anachronism can be noticed. However, it isn’t much.
The story
goes parallel with the events regarding some characters, which then end up
joining in an unexpected way. I immediately felt a bond with Christopher’s
character, which, because of the remarkable presence in the scenes, and the
fact that his deep psychological introspection is shown, has a role very
similar to a protagonist.
The plot
deals with the imminent launch of an interstellar ship, Memphis, with ten
thousand future colonists of a new world, the method by which they are
selected, and the attempt to boycott this mission by a movement contrary to it,
whose supporters believe that we need to improve the situation on Earth before
going to other worlds and that, in particular, depriving our planet of some of
its brighter minds is wrong. Their conviction comes into fanaticism with acts
of violence, murder, and even terrorism.
The way in
which those who are in this movement reason (if this can be call reasoning) is
really scary. Ignorance, insanity, and cruelty characterise them and suggest a
reflection that can be easily applied to certain aggressive outbreaks made
today on social networks, when it comes to the colonisation of Mars or in
general to space exploration. You feel relieved that they are just words and
that there is no one like Jeremiah (of this novel) capable of fomenting such
people, just because they wouldn’t be able to go beyond the show of their
ignorance and the outburst of their frustrations on the web.
Yet reading
the terrible actions of Jeremiah’s followers in this novel, even if it is
fiction, made me feel the same disgust mixed with fear that such comments on
Facebook are more and more often able to arise in me.
In this
context, which is already interesting in itself, a number of extremely
controversial characters are inserted, as is the kind of future society shown
in the novel in some ways. Among that, for example, the existence of marriages
with more than two people, often even open ones, made me grimace, because the way
it is shown reduces the very concept of marriage to having someone to whom you
are physically attracted available in the same house. The topic seemed to be
put there to highlight some personal problems of a character, without however
having an own credibility. In addition, in the end, I was happy with the way
that particular aspect resolved in the story of that character (and I must say
that this has contributed to the overall liking of the book).
However, I
don’t want to go into detail, because I think that the less you know about the
plot of this book, the more you have the chance to be positively surprised. I
just say it’s a complex novel, but so well structured that it does need to be
too long. This probably depends on the fact that the original plot comes from
an unpublished old short story by the same author, which he expanded,
preventing it to explode in a thousand directions, as it happens when you start
from an idea not quite defined. What came out is a work that combines the
synthesis with a satisfactory development of the narrative strands, embellished
here and there by totally unpredictable twists and accelerations of the action.
If you love
that kind of hard science fiction in which the characters’ introspection is not
overlooked, as it plays a crucial role in the story equal with the one of the
so-called “big themes”, and you run into this text, don’t let it escape.
The Quiet Pools on Amazon.
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