Learning the World: A Novel of First Contact [Anglais] [Relié]

Ken MacLeod dazzled us all with his original Fall Revolution series, and then delivered below expectations with his fairly boring Engines of Light trilogy. He seemed to be starting a comeback with Newton's Wake, but that appears to have been an anomalously decent book in an otherwise protracted series of boring, half-sketched novels.

In this, his most recent, novel, we alternate viewpoints between members of a sub-light-speed interstellar ship, and the aliens living on the destination planet. This approach is quite reminiscent of Vernor Vinge's _A Deepness in the Sky_. The scheming factions on the starship, and the back-channel communication between one faction and the aliens only further the comparison...which is all to MacLeod's disadvantage, as reminding us of an outstanding novel can only reveal more starkly just how far short his own novel falls.

The characterization is stunningly flat: only the aliens have much personality, and even then, not much: they seem like fictional versions of MacLeod and his pub-frequenting Scottish political chit-chat buddies (the same set that appear in every single novel MacLeod has ever written) - the only difference is these guys have wings, and don't actually live in Scotland, just a place that resembles it.

The plot is fairly uncomplicated, although a few bits that are relevant are presented hastily and then rushed from the stage. When the political denouement comes, how many factions are there on the starship? Two? Three? Four?? It's not quite clear, and the exact reasons that they've factionalized beyond the initial two groups are also only roughly sketched out....and, heck, for that matter, the decision to escalate a minor disagreement into full bore factionalization is also handled sloppily and confusingly.

One ends up convinced that MacLeod pushed his characters into a political crisis not so much because the plot and the characters demanded it, but because that's the only way that MacLeod knows how to end a story: bad thing happens, then Our Heroic Pub Dwelling Street Politicos Race to the Barricades (tm), and using a combination of positive-sum-game thinking, samizdat distribution and organization, and a good close reading of a Manifesto and/or Constitution, defeat the shortsighted zero-sum-game folks.

The banality of this scene is topped only by the boring First Contact scene: door opens. Member of species one steps out, raises hand in gesture of peace, and says something like "hey there; we're not going to hurt you". This is Deeply Symbolic(tm), though (at least in MacLeod's mind) because it indicates that ...umm..."hey there; we're not going to hurt you".

If you're looking for a great novel about First Contact, scheming factions, weird aliens, peace, war, back-channel communications, and stark insights into how people think, you've set your sites high...but you can find something that delivers: _A Deepness in the Sky_. Skip this book, though. MacLeod is either past him prime, or just loafing, and he shouldn't be rewarded with your hard-earned dollars for this disappointment.

Learning the World is, as its subtitle informs us, a novel of first contact. It tells the story of first contact from both sides.

The main human character is named Atomic Discourse Gale, and she is one of the "ship generation" of a starship traveling to a new system. These ships are traditional generation starships, sort of, except that people are so long lived that there aren't exactly generations. Instead there are founders, who mostly pay for the ship and expect to profit from the resources of the new star system, then go on to a new system; crew, who run the ship; and the "ship generation", mostly children born on the journey, who will in general colonize the new system. Humans have been expanding throughout the nearer stars for centuries, never encountering any life more advanced than slime molds, pretty much. They generally set up habitats in asteroid belts, and each star system seeds new journeys to the next system in line. Atomic is a biologgeras her ship enters the new system, where they soon learn ...

that the system is inhabited. By fully intelligent, batlike, aliens. Of a roughly Victorian level of technology. And the main character here is Darvin, a scientist. He discovers an unexpected new object in their system -- obviously, the human ship. And before long he and his lover and a scientist friend are at the center of attempts to understand what they soon gather are human attempts to observe their planet.

The story contrasts the human reaction to a totally unexpected

discovery -- which is in part that of a long peaceful society disturbed nearly to the point of war -- with the alien reaction, which is, surprisingly, that of a long warlike society somehow coming together in peace. This is rather interesting -- but as presented not precisely convincing. The author's hand is much too strongly evident in guiding his characters' and their societies' reactions. There is also a curious and quite intriguing but ultimately kind of goofy (by which I mean I wasn't buying it) explanation for a) the Fermi paradox, and b) the reason the Fermi paradox suddenly seems to be breaking down.

Those are complaints (and I could add the usual complaint that the aliens seem way too human), but set against that I must say that I was fascinated throughout, that I thought the characters quite well drawn and involving, and that the novel buzzes with interesting ideas, and with nice turns of phrase. It's definitely a novel worth reading.

Learning the World is another very good novel from Ken MacLeod. It's both a great first contact novel as well as, like most other MacLeod works, an incisive look into how societies work.

The novel alternates between two separate threads, which come together over the course of the book. The first thread follows a group of humans, many thousand of years in the future, living in a huge starship as it approaches another star system. The society aboard the ship is quite intricate - far more so than that in most classic SF centered around generational star ships. It really is broken into three interacting groups - the founders, who are the original generation, the ship generations, who were born during the 400 year journey, and the crew, who don't expect to stay around when the others leave to colonize a system but will instead continue on. MacLeod does a great job in laying out both the social interactions and the economic interactions of the three groups. MacLeod has an interest in economic models, and the depictions of how the various groups use markets to speculate on what will happen and to finance ongoing efforts are convincing and something generally ignored in most other novels of this type.

The main character in this first thread is a teenage girl of the ship generation, Atomic Discourse Gale. She's a very bright and thoughtful kid, who keeps a biolog (essentially a blog) that is followed by many others aboard the ship. She's a more realistic (and in the end, more likeable, for all her flaws) character than similar ones created by Heinlein. Her reactions with both her own generation and with the other, older groups on the ship are convincing - despite all the differences in the ways characters can interact in her universe compared to ours, the basic motivations and conflicts still underlie it all.

The other thread is set on the planet the ship is approaching. This planet contains a winged humanoid species. These are the first aliens that humanity has encountered, and the humans don't know about them until they are quite close since the aliens are just discovering radio and TV. They are basically at a 1920 or so level of technology. Again, MacLeod does a good job of setting up the alien society and their reaction to the ship they detect coming into their system. I was reminded of Poul Anderson as I read, not just because of the use of winged humanoids (something Anderson was very fond of) but because of the great attention to detail - both scientific and sociological - in the creation of this species.

MacLeod does a very good job with both sides, not only in terms of making them realistic, both on the character level and on the societal level, but in laying out the various ethical choices the characters are faced with. Is contacting a less developed species (or even letting them find out about you) ethical? How about if you leave them alone and only colonize the asteroids? Do you have a responsibility if your mere detectable presence raises tensions and results in war? Is it OK to step in if you think the population is enslaving another species (and is it OK to do so even if you bypass your normal democratic processes in accomplishing it)? From the alien side: what is the right balance between secrecy and the needs of scientific research. MacLeod looks at all of these; he doesn't always come up with answers - in a real situation, there aren't always answers - but he doesn't ignore the questions.

The interplay between the species is well done. As the humans approach, they try to investigate the aliens (who by the way think of themselves as "human") by essentially hacking insects on the planet to monitor and return signals. A fascinating "arms race" ensues in which the aliens discover what the humans are doing, so the humans have to find yet other ways to continue their monitoring efforts and so on.

This is one of the best first contact stories we've had in a while. It's both very inventive and very believable. In the end, the aliens are perhaps a bit too good, but even there this is one of the points MacLeod is making, so it fits.