Book Review: The Unfinished Land by Greg Bear

Bear’s final novel returns to a subgenre he is not well known for writing: fantasy

Sadly in 2022, we lost one of the “Killer B’s” of Science Fiction. Greg Bear.  Best known probably for his award winning story Blood Music, Greg Bear spanned a number of subgenres of science fiction, including turns in multiverse (Eon), technothrillers (Quantico),  softer SF with a focus on action (Darwin’s Radio), and Hard SF ( Hull Zero Three). He also wrote a little fantasy, and his fantasy was in the same signature writing style as his other work.  His last work, The Unfinished Land, is in fact, a fantasy novel, and what I want to discuss today. 

The Unfinished Land feels of a piece of a somewhat dreamlike SF novel he wrote, City at the End of Time, as well as the fantasy world he invoked in The Serpent Mage and The Infinity Concerto. This time, however, Bear had gone for a historical fantasy approach. It’s August 1588 (although we are never told the date) and we know this because Reynard, our young protagonist has just survived a portion of the battles between the English and the Spanish Armada (The Battle of Gravelines).  While the Spanish have been defeated, Reynard’s own ship (donated by his uncle) has been lost, and he is on some driftwood. He is apparently the only survivor.  He is picked up by one of the surviving Spanish ships.  In our history and world, the Spanish regrouped, sailed around and attacked Scotland and Ireland and failed.  

Reynard’s fate, however, is quite different. He and the Spanish ship, lost in storm and mist, wind up sailing north and north toward the mysterious islands of Tir Na Og. In this world, on this Earth, there are seven such islands and our hero not only is thrust into a much more magical world than he is used to, but that he has a tie to these islands and the Powers that rule them.  And that such Powers (and to be clear, in the deity sense of the word, or near-deities) have use for the Spanish soldiers who have arrived as well.

The novel, like what has happened before, then follows our protagonist as he is cast and tossed from situation and situation as he traverses the island and slowly toward his destiny.  Reynard (and the meaning of his name, Fox) is continually shown time and again to be of interest by a variety of people as conflict, battle, war and change revolve around him.  Reynard encounters vampires that steal time, a magic user of dubious ability, warring Queens, and much more. All of this takes place on this scenically and well described mysterious, old, island that is the titular unfinished land. 

And there are some fascinating ideas and worldbuilding on The Unfinished Land. Although mostly off in the distance, we do get a sense of Gods and their immediate servants going to war with each other over the Land, and that the arrival of the Spanish captain Cardoza and his men and guns is just another gambit in this long standing conflict. We get some really interesting things such as the insectile Drakes, Dragons, really. Dragons are dangerous unless tamed and bonded, and there is a whole set of people who set out to make that happen on the island. Giant dragonfly like Dragons is a great piece of invention on his part. (I expect the square-cube law of physics does not apply on Tir Na Nog, though --a subtle bit of magic)

And with things like the Dragons, the landscapes and the adventures Reynard finds himself in, Bear’s ear and voice for prose, to this last book. It flows well to the page and to the ear alike, and immerses us on Reynard’s journey to a place that starts off mundane (England) but gets strange and more dream like (recall my mention of CITY before) as the novel progresses.

However, for all of the good that I have described, the novel fails on a basic level for me. We have a character in Reynard who thinks he is ordinary, but gets tempest tossed from one situation from another as he makes his way from his little English village all the way to the mysterious center of the Tir Na Og island, and back again. Even given everything, Reynard is for the vast majority of the time, if not all the time, just a vehicle to show characters and to show landscapes and for Bear to explore his Big Idea here. 

And it is an interesting Big Idea, that the world is magical, that this Unfinished Land is, in essence, where the world began, and that the world is a creation, no matter what Reynard thought growing up in the Church of England. The world is a making, but it is as yet unfinished, and it is in the Unfinished Land that things begin and that the world actually revolves around those who control it. And that the most unfinished portion of the world they have made is, paradoxically, it’s source and center. It is as if the center of creation is itself a fluid and dynamic thing, and not a static perfect seed from which all else flows. 

You will notice that I have not talked about Reynard character or personality throughout this entire review. That is deliberate because, if you haven’t guessed it by now, he doesn’t have much of one. He isn’t even an archetype, he’s a cypher. He has a few vague ideas (“I don’t want to go to sea like my Uncle!”) and that is about it. He’s not even given the opportunity to become a character, he’s a method for us to meet more interesting characters than him. Some of whom are rather intensely interesting and I would rather have spent time with them. Valdris, for example, gets a little bit of POV (the book vastly is in Reynard’s POV).  She was given to the time vampires to become one of them, and she is clearly ambitious and curious, and yet still somewhat human in a way, and I would have rather had more from her POV than Reynard. Or, even more to the point, Manuel/Widsith. We get a good sense of his story, who goes out from the Unfinished Land to explore and see the world and then report back on it to its creators, get rejuvenated and de-aged and do it again. There is a fascinating history to him. HIS story in even more focus would have been interesting to follow, and more of a character than Reynard.

In the end, while I don’t regret reading The Unfinished Land, and there are some interesting things here, it is an exercise in sifting through a LOT of dross, too much dross, for most readers. Completists of Bear? Yes, go and see what he has done in his last work. Others...frankly, there is way too much else out there to read and you may be as well frustrated with Reynard and the structure of this book as I was. Caveat Lector.

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Highlights

• Insectile Dragons, Time stealing vampires and other interesting worldbuilding

Reference: Bear, Greg., The Unfinished Land, [Harper Voyager, 2021]

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

The Hugo Initiative: The Novels of 1999: A Retrospective: A Preview of My Genre Future (2000, Best Novel)

1999 was a banner year for me. A couple of years (at the age of 28) into starting to read “seriously” in science fiction, I had been subscribed to Locus for a couple of years now, I was reading past and current Hugo nominees and Nebula nominees and winners for a couple of years, and I had decided, in that fateful year, to do something I had not done previously: Vote in the Hugo Awards. I was pretty disconnected from any sort of organized fandom, I had only been to one con, but I dutifully became a member of the 2000 Worldcon (held in Chicago, but I didn’t have the temerity to actually attend), and proceeded to vote in the Hugo awards for books in 1999.

The Hugo nominees for the 2000 Worldcon were as follows:

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge [Tor, 1999]
A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold [Baen, 1999]
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson [Avon, 1999]
Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear [HarperCollins UK, 1999; Ballantine Del Rey, 1999]
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling [Bloomsbury, 1999; Scholastic, 1999]

At the time that Hugo voting had ended, I had read four of them, and voted on that basis. (I had not yet read any Harry Potter and did not feel inclined to read through the series, I would feel different several years later) 2000 was about the first time I started to dip my toes into getting review copies, but it would be many more years before I got my “break” in that regard. I fondly remember getting an ARC of Darwin’s Radio, it was quite the surprise and delight.

So without further ado, let’s look at the Hugo Finalists (called Hugo Nominees then) for the year 1999.

A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge

At the time I was just so delighted to have another novel in the “zones” verse of A Fire Upon the Deep, even if it was a very loose prequel, just having Pham as the only link between the two novels. Still, the ideas of the Zones from an outside perspective, thanks to the conceit of a solar system right on the edge of the boundary, and the idea of  a three way first contact situation, this was the kind of SF I ate up with a spoon. A Deepness in the Sky was exactly what I thought that modern science fiction should be about, this was fueled by at the time of a renaissance of space opera after a fallow period for the subgenre.

Now, looking back, like its predecessor , some of the technology and assumptions feel a bit dated. There are some interesting conceits here, and the weird high concept of Unix versus Windows except expressed as polities and their operating parameters was something I just didn’t get, then, but I sure see now. Those frameworks do not hold up quite as well for me in 2019 as they did in 1999. Technology and the modes of computers are a very different beast in this day and age. The computing world was a smaller place, then, and now, for many people, operating systems and their fundamental principles just aren’t relevant. I also think, now, in this day and age, the Spiders could have been handled a bit better. Perhaps I have been spoiled by writers like Adrian Tchaikovsky, but Vinge’s spiders do not seem alien *enough*, and the revelation that they have been secretly in on a lot of the communications and spying on both sides could have been foreshadowed or flagged earlier in the narrative for best effect.

A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold

Deep within the Vorkosigan series, A Civil Campaign is the “Romance novel” of the set, as the plot revolves around Miles Vorkosigan trying to win the heart of Ekaterin, who met Miles, and  in the course of events became widowed, in the previous novel, Komarr. Miles fell head over heels for Ekaterin, and while Barrayaran customs mean that she should not be openly courted so soon after her husband’s death. And since Ekaterin’s husband’s death is tied to Miles’ investigation, there are all sorts of political and social landmines in Miles way. Meantime, Barrayar is a changing, with a sex change to make a woman eligible to inherit an estate, and another putative heir to another estate may have Cetagandan ancestry.

And then there are the butterbugs, the most fun part of the plot. So this novel is relatively light on the sciences, and strong on the manners and courtship. There was a movement in novels back there, particularly in fantasy, called “mannerpunk”, where works by writers like Sherwood Smith were a noticeable theme in Fantasy. At the time, I saw ACC being an SFnal version of the same. So, I didn’t think too much of the novel at the time. I wanted more Miles as Lord Auditor, not Miles as moonstruck young man (disclaimer, I was in a rough place, relationship speaking, at the time)

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

By this point, I had read Stephenson’s Snow Crash, because it seemed to be the thing to do. I had really really liked The Diamond Age, because I felt I kinda understood the basics of computing thanks to the primer within the novel. At the time of Cryptonomicon, I was also somewhat interested in codes and cyphers and always have been, really. So when Cryptonomicon dropped into my lap in 1999, it was very much a dive into delight. Paralleling time frames, lots of historical characters, a ton of detail and research that comes out onto the page, I think then and now, it’s clear to me that the novel is the first “modern” Stephenson--a big sprawling book that reflects the author’s desire to go down deep deep rabbit holes and take willing readers with him. At the time, I definitely was a willing reader.

Today? I’ve cooled quite a bit on Stephenson’s work and it doesn’t quite excite me to the level it once did. Oftentimes thee days, I want something more than the rabbit hole, and frankly, reading Stephenson these days is a big investment in time and effort that for me doesn’t always pay off as it once did. The digressions sometimes are “get to the POINT” rather than “oh nice, here we go down a mini rabbit hole within the rabbit hole. In Cryptonomicon itself, I am thinking particularly of the erotica side story within the novel.

Sometimes you need an stronger hand from the editor.

Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear

Back in the 80’s the Eon sequence brought Greg Bear to my attention (Blood Music came later). Novels like that sequence, Songs of Earth and Power, Moving Mars, Slant...I didn’t get a good sense of his real range until a couple of years before Darwin’s Radio, when he popped up with an alternate history YA novel, Dinosaur Summer. I began to see that Bear had a wide range indeed to his pen.

 But even so, when I dived into Darwin’s Radio, I read it with the wrong protocols, at the time. I kept expecting this to be a science fiction novel, or a hard science fiction novel, in any event. I was underprepared at the time and kept waiting for the hard SF to kick in. I didn’t quite realize until relatively late in the novel’s narrative (which involves “junk DNA” turning out to be not so much junk and instead a mechanism for speciation of Humans into a new species) is really a technothriller with a lot of biology, rather than a science fiction novel. I was expecting something far more akin to Nancy Kress’ Beggars in Spain and didn’t get it in the book, which was confusing to me at the time.

These days, having read more technothrillers and understanding and grokking the form and style, I can see what Darwin’s Radio is and what it’s trying to do much better now. It is a technothriller with an extra dollop of SFNal setting and backmatter, something that I have decided since is not usually to my taste. Bear’s writing, and Darwin’s Radio are an exemplar of the form, however. If you were an SF fan who wanted to step into Technothriller waters, The book would be a good choice. (Coincidentally, the more recent and unrelated The Darwin Elevator by Jason Hough also would qualify in that regard).. Whether a novel that is mostly Technothriller something that should be nominated, or win the Hugo award--I am in favor of a big, broad tent. But I can see how some people might demur.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

At the time of the 2000 Hugos,as  mentioned above, I had not read any of the Harry Potter series. I had seen the first three movies, and enjoyed them, but my feelings about MG and YA novels had not evolved to the point that I had felt inclined to pick up the books for myself. (This would eventually change with the release of Half Blood Prince, whereupon I decided I would dive into the series). I did find Prisoner as a movie to be intriguing because of Cuaron’s directorial style.

As far as the novel, when I did read the book, I felt that the movie was the first where they really started to have to excise whole rafts of the novel in order to fit the plot into a 2 hour movie. When I read the book, and then rewatched the movie after, I was impressed how much the movie captured the overall spirit of the book, even as I realized how rich the book was. I began to see how much young teenage readers were in having the series at hand, Books of Gold for readers to try genre fiction. I may not see it as the best book of 2000 but I can see why it broke through the nomination list and became a finalist.

In the end, A Deepness in the Sky won the 2000 Hugo. Did Hugo voters get it right? Did I get it right for myself? I think that it really did. Even with the nits above, its head and shoulders better than the other nominees.

What I voted then:
1. A Deepness in the Sky
2. Darwin’s Radio
3. Cryptonomicon
4. A Civil Campaign
5. Left Blank

(I didn’t understand the real nuances of No Award, I just stopped my list at four. What I probably meant at the time was to put No Award as my fifth.)

What I would vote today:
1. A Deepness in the Sky
2. A Civil Campaign
3. Darwin’s Radio
4. Cryptonomicon
5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 


What other books in 1999 did the Hugo voters miss? That I missed?

Walter Jon Williams’ catastrophe novel, The Rift, came out in 1999 and sank without a trace. Pat Murphy’s retelling of The Hobbit in space, There and Back Again, also came out, and I missed that one for years, too. Judith Tarr teamed up with Harry Turtledove for their novel Household Gods, a time travel novel in the tradition of Lest Darkness Fall, but with a female protagonist. I read that one at the time and liked it. I think it’s even stronger today. Dragonshadow, by Barbara Hambly, was also a strong novel. But in that day and age, fantasy was rarely on the Hugo ballot, Harry Potter being an outlier in that regard.

Did I keep voting and nominating in the Hugo Awards? Well, reader, sadly life sort of got in the way. I voted in 2001, but then 9/11 and its aftermath led me to a path that caused me to leave New York, forestall my nascent reviewing chops for a while, and I would not get myself settled in that regard and begin reviewing, or voting in the Hugos, for several more years. But in retrospect, the 2000 Awards, and the year 1999, was a preview of my genre future.


POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Microreview [book]: War Dogs, by Greg Bear

Commendable Attention to Logistics, Lamentably Lackluster Ending

Bear, Greg. War Dogs. Orbit, 2014.

Buy it here.

Irrelevant Note: while reading this, I just could not shake the feeling that the true title is, or should be, "War Bears" by Greg Dog. I confess to a glimmer of disappointment that this is not the case. But be that as it may...

Finally, a story about Mars that doesn't demand total suspension of disbelief! Bear has carefully crafted a tale that is both consistently entertaining to read, thanks to the snappy dialogue and descriptions, and yet also serious about exploring the practical difficulties that would ensue in a near-future interplanetary war. It's a scenario in which technology is much more advanced than today but not unrecognizably so, and logistical problems like supplying air, water and weapons to the "Skyrines" landing on Mars to fight the Bad Aliens on behalf of the mysterious Good Aliens have been taken seriously. It was a refreshing change to read a story that doesn't simply skip all that pesky logistics by concocting some pseudo-scientific, deus ex machina uber-tech solution (FTL drives! Ansibles!), but instead delves into the nitty-gritty about how in seven hells one could possibly arrange to fight anywhere but on Earth.

We follow a not-as-dumb-as-he-seems-but-still-kind-of-dumb protagonist, Michael Venn, through his adventures on Mars, which he narrates mostly in the historical present, but this chronological retelling is complicated by periodic cut-scenes, so to speak, to the true present, back on Earth, where he is trying to make sense of all that happened. I know this is a common literary device, and I further acknowledge that in the vast majority of stories the survival of the main character(s) is never seriously in doubt, but I still have qualms about it, since why remove all hint of suspense about the main character's ultimate fate? That said, I can't get on Bear's case too much, since I don't have the faintest idea how to tell the sort of tale he's telling in any other way but this suspense-less split-time approach or the plodding, 'chronological order' method.

It is hard not to empathize with Venn and the other Skyrines as they land right in the middle of a planet-sized SNAFU, and as they (and we) spend the rest of the story trying to figure out what's gone wrong and why, and who they can trust (pretty much nobody, of course). But while the story requires considerably less disbelief than most that deal with the Red Planet ("Quaaaaid...start the reactor—free Maaaars!" and whatnot), certain elements felt like false notes in an otherwise pleasant melody. 

Whatever other objections to War Dogs you might muster, at least it had no Weird Stuff As Hard To Believe As It Is Creepy!

First off, is there any force in the universe that could convince people to stop saying Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo (if you know what I mean)? And given all the advanced tech granted us Earthlings by the Gurus, and the importance of the Skyrines' mission to and on Mars, it seems unlikely, to say the least, that Venn would have made it back to Earth yet avoided being mobbed by the rich and powerful, and all by means of the simplest subterfuge regarding his identity. There were other false notes here and there, but I dare not say more since I am already teetering on the edge of blabbing about the Big Reveal.

The ending to the book was surprisingly anticlimactic, even considering it's obviously intended to be only the first installment in a larger story arc/series, and I expected rather more from sci fi veteran Bear, who judging from his other work certainly knows how to close the deal story-wise. But Bear handled most aspects of this intriguing story very well indeed, and has, in me, a reader eager to devour subsequent books on Venn and his decidedly unusual life!

The Math

Objective assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for witty banter, +1 for taking the practical/logistical science involved in the story seriously (so no tech-as-magic solutions, except maybe for the cryogenic goop)

Penalties: -1 for the 'not with a bang but a whimper' ending, 1st book of a trilogy notwithstanding

Nerd coefficient: 7/10 "An enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws"

[See here for more info about why a 7/10 is 'a bit of alright,' as my Aussie friends might say!]

Zhaoyun, longtime connoisseur of the finest SF/F (plus, it must be admitted, a bunch of not the finest SF/F, e.g., I keep watching The 100 even though I know it's a steaming pile of crap), has provoked literally dozens of laughs, guffaws or energetic chuckles worldwide since beginning to write for Nerds of a Feather in 2013.