River of Gods [Anglais] [Broché]

Ian McDonald's River of Gods envisions India in the year 2047 - a country still torn between the third and first worlds. In the holy and profane city of Varanasi on the banks of the Ganges, ten people come together come together to start wars, end marriages, commit terrible crimes, fall in love and change the world.

McDonald describes Varanasi in loving, intricate and believable detail. He has a wonderful eye for the way technology changes the way people live and yet leaves them essentially the same as they ever were. As foreign as his future can sometimes be, it is also eerily familiar - you find yourself believing in places like a boat town on the banks of the river where extra-legal organizations conduct remote-controlled gender-nullification surgery and create super-intelligent computer programs. McDonald uses this familiarity to discuss topics that have relevance to our lives today, especially the relationship between India and first world nations such as the US and European countries and the internal divisions that threaten to tear this fledgling nation apart. Although he doesn't spare Western imperialism, McDonald doesn't paint India as a despoiled saint. He sees the country in all its contradictory glory and shame, and gives the Western reader an edifying and fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of this fractured nation.

McDonald's characters span all levels of society, and most of them are fresh and original. There are some beautiful touches here, such as Nandha, a policeman so obsessed with doing his job that he forgets about right and wrong, Najia, a reporter discovering her conscience and her humanity, or Khan, a politician who wants to do the right thing but finds himself struggling with socially unacceptable desires. Some of the characters are a little less involving - Nandha's wife Parvati is a standard under-appreciated, bored housewife, and the American scientist Lisa Durnau never has much more to do than be amazed. Even the least developed characters in River of Gods, however, have the scent of reality about them. They form an intricate tapestry of plot that carries the reader along breathlessly, and although the details of McDonald's world occasionally threaten to overwhelm the plot, he masterfully manages to maneuver the reader towards his satisfying conclusion.

River of Gods is the best kind of science fiction you could find - a view of the future that teaches us about the present while still telling a good story. Highly recommended.

Picture this: A novel set in 2047, just far enough ahead so that the reader can be shown some extremely possible developments of today's society, and not just in technology, but in politics, social structure and sexual relations. But a novel set in India rather then western society so that the developments are thrown into a strange side-lighting where the shadows give shape to events. A situation just different enough to show us something we may not have noticed about western society. A group of characters who are well developed enough that we can empathize with them, even when they seem very different from us. A suspenseful mystery that can keep us turning the pages, even when we want to slow down to understand the characters, the society and the science. That's "River of Gods".

Some of the developments seem to be quite reasonable given our present day world. For example, India is no longer a single nation, but rather, has been balkanized into smaller states similar to those that existed before the Raj. Some humans have found ways to change themselves biologically so that they avoid the problems of being either male or female. At the same time, many elements of this society are recognizable and unchanged like the undercurrent of hatred between Hindus and Muslims on the subcontinent.

And picture a society trying to cope with artificial intelligence, not wanting to abandon it, but not wanting to let it get out of hand. And picture a Hindu policeman whose job it is to track down possibly self-aware a.i.'s and who calls each of the programs that he uses to do the job by the name of a Hindu god whose area of expertise relates to the god's role in the older society.

In this world, there is a soap opera that everyone watches, where not only are some of the characters on the show a.i.'s, but some of the actors are a.i.'s. Moreover, the public seems just as concerned about the private lives of the actors, including the a.i.'s, as any current-day fan.

McDonald writes beautifully, occasionally deliberately confusing us as to what is happening with the result that we have a feeling of insight when we suddenly understand. And luckily the author furnishes us with a glossary of Indian words, although one may want to photocopy the list to avoid flipping back and forth as one encounters unfamiliar terms. McDonald also tells the story from the points of view of several characters that are different enough that we are not confused by them, but rather understand what is going on better than any character. Initially it's hard to see the relationship or purpose of these characters but as the book comes together we see how individual lives shape and are shaped by events and other lives.

As you may have guessed, I enjoyed this book, found it exciting, and had my mind challenged to understand how the future is shaped by the past.

As an Indian how do I react to this book? On the one hand I like the idea of a work of science fiction set in India. On the other hand the author gets so many subtle details wrong, that I am left irritated and dissatisfied. A good editor with a brutal pen, and a first hand knowledge of India would have done wonders here.

My gripes in no particular order,

a) people and place names are subtly off, not as wildly as Conan Doyle mixing Sikh and Hindu names, but the name combinations, sirnames and spelling don't feel realistic for the setting of Varanasi. This goes for almost every Indian name in the book. Where he gets the names right, the spellings are off and represent how someone in South India would spell the names, highly unlikely in Varanasi e.g. Nandha is more likely to be spelled Nanda, and Najia as Nadiya. People with sirname like Rana are also unlikely to feature big in Varanasi politics. Same goes for place names, especially villages. They are plausible but unlikely.

b) they way india has divided into separate states seems wrong. Not the idea of division, which is a very likely scenario, but how the future state lines are drawn. For example, there is little chance that Awadh and Varanasi would split - not only because they form a uniform ethnic and linguistic group, but also the Ganges-Yamuna civilisation is tied together with in-extricable supply chains, with no natural boundaries between the landmass.

c) the description of india of the future feels antiquated even by existing standards. If you have lived in India you would understand that modes of thought and speech represented in this book have more in common with Kipling's colonial biases than the reality of even contemporary India, let alone the future.

Overall, I'd rate this book in the 'orientalism' mode as critiqued by Said. No doubt it has been popular as it fulfills a deep contemporary curiosity about India, but it ultimately does disservice to the country and the culture. "Lord of light" still remains a reference science fiction set in an Indian context for me. It is a pity as it was written 30 or more years ago.