Stations of the Tide

Rating:
Summary: Blew me away
Review: First I read Vacuum Flowers, which amazed me: humans vs. Earth. Then I found The Iron Dragon's Daughter, and read that. I hate most fantasy, but TIDD was, again, amazing.

Stations of the Tide left me agape, jaw hanging open, eyes bugged out. I read it voraciously, thinking, Me o my, this is the best sf I've ever read. Not hard sf, oh no, but in my eyes, Swanwick is the best, bar none, auteur of space opera.

I like Swanwick's jump-cut style and transcendent themes. Amazing, simply amazing.

And let's face it: I *want* that briefcase.

Rating:
Summary: Most wonderous
Review: Here you have a far-future tale which doesn't use Wolfe/Vance medievilism nor shiny hard-SF like A. Reynolds. Instead it relies on a personal vision of its author which is very convincing.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, canny, and powerful
Review: I finished reading STATIONS OF THE TIDE last week; I would have written about it sooner, but it's taken me this long to process and digest my thoughts about the book into something approaching a coherent whole.

The book's plot feels like nothing so much as an SF take on Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS. Like that book, its protagonist is a nameless functionary (he is called simply "the bureaucrat" through the entire length of the novel) sent to a backwards hellhole (here, a decaying colony world) in search of a dangerous renegade. The world, called Miranda, has an erratic orbit that causes its ice caps to melt every couple of centuries and drown every inch of dry land; the native life has evolved to thrive under these conditions, but the human settlers have not. As the inept and corrupt local government tries to evacuate the populace in the last few weeks before the flood, the renegade - a man called Gregorian, who claims to be a wizard or magus - gains a following by offering to remake the Mirandans into amphibious creatures capable of surviving the deluge, for a price. The offworld authorities aren't sure if Gregorian is a simple fraud, murdering his followers for money, or if he's employing forbidden offworld technology; either way, he must be dealt with.

The book is difficult to get into at first, and part of this is because Swanwick respects our intelligence enough to throw us into the deep end right from the beginning. As with Mamet's movie Spartan, rather than giving us exposition, he expects us to follow along and patiently assemble the facts of the story by picking them up in context. Once we get over not having everything spoonfed to us, the sense of discovery as the text progresses is intoxicating. The prose is finely-honed and cutting, getting to the truth of a scene in a few skillfully-chosen words. These two factors combine to keep the book brief but dense - it clocks in at less than 250 pages but feels as packed with character, ideas, and incident as a book twice its size.

Swanwick is a disciple of Gene Wolfe, and this is most evident in the way the book's plot takes (or at least seems to take) a backseat to the meandering travelogue of the world on display. And that's fine, because Miranda is a fascinating place: kept forcibly low-tech by the offworld authorities for reasons that are not immediately made clear, it is a planet of swamps and rotting manor houses and superstitious villagers, where travel is effected not by spaceship or hovercraft but by zeppelin, motorboat, or foot. The local religion is a strange blend of voodoo/tribal ritual with Aleister Crowley/Grant Morrison/Alan Moore-style sex-and-drug "magick", and secret brotherhoods of witches and shamans are more feared and more obeyed by the locals than the ineffectual planetary government - but as the planet's watery end approaches, the locals increasingly ignore all authority and give themselves over to either lawless violence or frenzied, nihilistic partying. The resulting atmosphere could best be described as Sci-fi Southern Gothic, like William Faulkner remixed by William Gibson. The bureaucrat doggedly slogs through this milieu, encountering smugglers of alien artifacts, looters, shamans, a family straight out of a V.C. Andrews novel, and possibly a shapechanging alien.

Despite its charms and fascinations, the novel isn't fully emotionally engaging for a lot of its length, and much of this has to do with the rather unsympathetic nature of the main character. The bureaucrat seems to be everything his title would imply: a colorless, charmless, unimaginative automaton, meticulous in the performance of his job and utterly inattentive to everything else. Even his talking briefcase has more personality than him, and his detached blandness makes the starkest possible contrast to the fascinating and intricate world he moves through. Nobody cares about the bureaucrat's mission but the bureaucrat, and despite his dutiful, passionless persistence he seems ever more unequal to his task: the local authorities will not cooperate with him, everyone he talks to lies to him and stonewalls him simply out of spite, he is armed with apparently no knowledge of the world or its customs and culture, and Gregorian's followers are fanatical, ruthless, and seemingly know his every move even before he does.

But this is science fiction, and science fiction is about overturning expectations. Nothing in this book is what it seems; not the central conflict, not the bureaucrat, and least of all the plot, which is about as "meandering" as a Swiss watch. The chief pleasure of the novel, aside from Swanwick's prose, lies in seeing a million utterly disparate threads skillfully drawn together before our eyes and woven into something much greater than the sum of its parts, something not only intellectually engaging but emotionally powerful: we know the bureaucrat at the end, and against all odds we care for him, and his fate moves us. So many SF novels peter out in the final act, but the last fifty pages of STATIONS OF THE TIDE are among the most intensely satisfying I've ever read. We leave the book with a feeling of profound contentment and toe-tapping joy, as if we've satiated a need so deep-seated that we were heretofore unaware of its existence. It's one of the best reading experiences I've had in a long, long time; it's one of those books that burns to be shared with everyone you know.

Rating:
Summary: Smart and haunting
Review: In one tiny little volume, Swanwick takes on technology, alien races, witches, oceans, and the nature of time. The bureaucrat goes after the wizard/criminal and nothing at all is what it seems.

I tend to agree with the reviewer who found the characters to be a little too allegorical, and that did (for me) hurt the overall quality of the book. I felt somehow that the characters needed more weight to carry so much material, and I was ultimately unconvinced by the bureaucrat's final changes as a result.

Still, more creativity than most writers hope to attain...

Rating:
Summary: Challenging plot, challenging style
Review: Michael Swanwick is one of my favorite short story sci fi writers. He has an excellent sense of purpose and pulls off so much excitement in so few pages that it's hard to believe.

A few weeks ago, I picked up both Vacuum Flowers and Stations of the Tide based on his short fiction. Vacuum Flowers was a great read, with clearly set out goals, a great plot, and a fast pace. Stations of the Tide, while a good book, is much more challenging than Vacuum Flowers.

To clarify items in earlier reviews: Stations of the Tide might (and that's not 100% certain) be set in the same universe as Vacuum Flowers. However, it is a radically different story and the connections between the universe of Vacuum Flowers and this book are tenuous at best. Yes, there are some items in common, but don't get this book thinking you are going to get another story like Vacuum Flowers. The style of the story, the pace, and the theme are radically different than Vacuum Flowers.

Stations of the Tide is written in a very formal style. The narrative actually seemed rather stiff. The technology in the book is pretty much limited to an impressive briefcase that has many different functions and something sort of like virtual reality (used for communication). The overall plot is more like a sociological study than sci fi. In addition, there is a pretty heavy plot line relating to magic which seemed flat to me. It just never grabbed my attention and didn't keep me very interested.

Did I enjoy reading this book? That one is kind of a toss up. I think by the time I was about 1/4 through it, I was bored with it. But it did make me think about what makes someone human (hmmm, that's a similarity to Vacuum Flowers) and about what people are capable of. However, unlike Vacuum Flowers which made me think but also let me have a really good time with it, this book seemed to be attacking me with it's message without giving me some fun in return. I still think Swanwick is a GREAT writer and I am glad that I read this book. I also think that this book might be a good read for someone who does not normally read sci fi, because it is much more focused on the personal level than on technology.

Rating:
Summary: This was an award-winner?
Review: SF has never lacked for ideas, which is why it's such a good genre to read, because of that constant inventiveness. However, unless you like to read the equivilent of a physics thesis parade, most readers want a little more "meat" to their books, if not in terms of plot, at least definitely in charactization and layers of meaning. This book has that in spades. I've read once that it was based on Shakespeare's "The Tempest" which having not read that play I can't confirm but I am slightly familiar with some aspects of the play and I'd say it's a good bet. Nothing like some literary allusions to kick a good SF novel off, right? But it gets better, because this novel is heavy on the symbolism and the thinking stuff, though it never gets in the way of the interesting world and culture that Swanwick has developed. In a nutshell, a bureaucrat without a name comes to the world of Miranda to search for a man who barely appears, but apparently can do wonderful things. Why is that? Because he stole something he shouldn't. From there the novel jackknives wonderfully, as Swanwick unravels line after line of evocative prose that eloquently brings to life this water logged and doomed world, in all its grime and grandeur. By far the best part of reading this book is meeting the at first apparently bumbling bureaucrat and then slowly realize that not everything is what it seems and the man isn't so clueless after all. This isn't a novel designed to be instantly pleasurable though those just going by the surface story will find much here to enjoy simply by watching the mechinations of what a lesser book could turn into a simple suspense thriller, instead there are passages to be read again, if only for the way the prose flows so brilliantly, or the levels of allergory that I'm pretty sure went over my head. The moving ending alone, which will guarenteed leave you thinking after you put the book down, is nearly worth the price of admission. A fast read (I finished it in like two hours, it's two hundred and fifty pages with not so small print) that never feels rushed or padded, but just the right length, if you're looking for SF with some brains that isn't totally geared toward cyberspace or relativity, this may be well worth your time.

Rating:
Summary: Uneven - when its good, its good. When its not, its painful
Review: The hero of this Nebula Award-winning book is a bueaurucrat. That Swanwick would choose someone with such a job as his hero, and then leave him unnamed for the entire book, is indicative of the nature of the narrative. It's at times quirky, fun, enjoyable, but also irritating, confusing, and silly.

This future world has that the galaxy colonised by humans (and one other intellegent race) who have enormous technological abilities. However, much of the tech is proscribed, especially from the peoples of the colonial planets. This leads to resentment on these colonial worlds, one of which is Miranda. It is this planet's fate to suffer a planet-wide flood (due to a shift in its axis of roation). A 'magician' named Gregorian has appeared, apparently with access to proscribed technology. He appears (to the tech controllers) to be murdering people in the guise of "metamorphosing" them into sea-dwelling creatures. Thus, the bureaucrat is dispatched to investigate.

We follow as the bureaucrat tries to track Gregorian down. There are some neat touches, especially his sentient briefcase/matter transformer, a 24/7 soap opera that everyone is watching (that we see in parallel with the characters), and a system of "surrogates" - remote controlled robots that project the image of the person they are representing. Unfortunately, the system of surrogates leads to a great deal of confusion because the characters (and author) treat each surrogate as the real thing, and multiple surrogates are possible. This leads to a number of unnecessarily confusing passages of "himself talking to himself, while his real self listens in".

Another unfortunate characteristic of the book is to leave interesting ideas dangling. For example, resentment of the people from whom technology being withheld is ubiquitous, but nowhere is the bureaucrat's rationale for withholding it justified or even explained. Likewise, bizarre (and scientifically impossible) events are described in detail as being true, presumably because the author thought they were too good an image to drop. This, to me, is lazy writing in a science fiction book, and is especially irritating because long passages are very good/interesting but they alternate with long passages that are confusing/annoying.

At any rate, it's an interesting read, with some neat ideas, and worth the cost of the paperback. I would not consider it a classic, in spite of its Nebula Award.

Rating:
Summary: Vastly intelligent, but not without flaws
Review: This far future cyberpunk detective story is only a thin mask for the underlying speculations on the emptiness of life, existentialism, and mortality. Though only 250 pages, it take times to drink in the poetic prose; Every thought and conversation is wrought with philosophical meaning.

A bureaucrat is sent out to Miranda to track down Gregorian - a mystic whom, after speaking to the cybernetic embodiment of "Earth" was given a box of unnamed technology. In this far future, use of this techonology on small worlds on Miranda is illegal and the bureaucrat is sent out to hunt Gregorian down and retrieve the mystery technology. While humans are fleeing the creeping tidewater, native Mirandan animals prepare to morph into sea-dwellers and the bureacrat races with the tide to catch an elusive criminal.

Without a doubt, Stations of the Tide is an intelligent book and compared to most adolescent grunts in SF, it's deservedly a Nebula winner. However, I give it 3 stars as its style is more like a short story where the strength is in morals and themes but weak on characters and plot. Swanwick's unnamed protaganist - the "bureaucrat" and Gregorian are more allegorical puppets than real fleshed out human beings. Furthermore, for a compelling take on philosophy, Sophie's World is a far better novel.

...Scenes switch erratically between reality and the cybernetic world without much adjustment for the reader. Thats easy to do in a movie but in a book it gets confusing when at the end of the paragraph you've just realize the person's "plugged in". The haunts, supposedly extinct aliens that take on human form, were an interesting element, but were not integrated well enough into the plot. The side story of Gregorian's mother and the sisters was a weak device.

Read it - its a surrealistic mind-bender where robot briefcases walk and wish to evolve, witches teach tantric sex and leave you tattoos as a trophy, planets rain down mushroom showers, and the wistful ending will leave you pondering about life.

Rating:
Summary: It didn't win the nebula for nothing!!!
Review: Wow! Any book who's coolest character is a briefcase seriously needs checking out! This is the book that earned Michael Swanwick all the praise that the science fiction community so lavishly distinguishes him with.

The book takes place in the distant future of the world he created in "Vacuum Flowers" but you don't have to read that book at all. It is a totally different story. (In fact I read this one first, a really cool combination). The book follows the 'bureaucrat' as he searches the doomed oceanic world of Miranda for a wizardlike scientist by the name of Gregorian, who has stolen "unperscribed" technology. Sounds confusing? Boring? WRONG! This book is nothing at all like what it seems. Halfway through the book you are still trying to guess what it's REALLY about, but not in a yawning type way like a lot of current science fiction. The book is jammed packed with some of the coolest ideas, innovations, and cut dialogue scenes that I have ever read.

Still, like any Swanwick novel, (except maybe "In the Drift") this is a very complex read. If you couldn't get five pages into Moby Dick, or don't even KNOW who Beowolf is, you may not like this novel at all. In fact, it could give you a migraine the size of Wisconsin just trying to figure out what the paragraph you JUST READ said! It is a pretty tough read, but that's another thing that makes this book great. Swanwick doesn't spend three pages explaining each totally foreign and new piece of technology, he just throws it out there on the page and you're forced to think, "What? How could the entire planet of Earth have it's own surrogate?!!" or better yet "Did his BRIEFCASE just beat the crap out of the people who stole it and then walk back to him??!!" GREAT STUFF!!!

Rating:
Summary: Stunningly Gorgeous Piece of Work
Review: _Stations of the Tide_ is, on the surface, a story about an intergalactic cop going forth to catch intergalactic criminal.

Thankfully, it goes much deeper than that.

Office politics, plantation society, magic, sex, and apocalypse all play primary roles in this compelling and challenging tale. The world on which the Bureaucrat (the unnamed protagonist) pursues Gregorian (the distant, subtly menacing, string-pulling antagonist) is in flux, preparing for the thousand-year flood that will immerse most of the land on the planet. The impending doom/rebirth of the world brings with it strange imagery: masquerade balls lit by furniture too heavy to move, or too cheap to bother with; a group of daughters watching their family fortunes crumble as their possessions become less and less able to finance the cost of moving them to safety, and the dying matriarch revels in their impending poverty; a fortress hidden, not by camouflage, but by centuries of studied neglect. The carnival atmosphere of the world in which the Bureaucrat gamely tries to find his quarry (for he knows he has been sent on a fool's errand) quickly turns sinister, and yet retains its lush, unearthly beauty.

The action, for the most part, happens at a distance, the book being more about discovery and ideas than anything else. The denouement is truly stunning, and will leave the reader thinking about it for a long time.

I highly recommend _Stations of the Tide_ to anyone tired with the usual science fiction. It is utterly magical, and totally unforgettable.