| Iris | ||||||||||||
| William Barton and Michael Capobianco | ||||||||||||
| Avon EOS Books, 436 pages | ||||||||||||
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A review by John O'Neill
The cover, in fact, neatly communicates the central plot device, depicting five teeny-weeny suited figures
trekking across a snowy alien landscape towards a gargantuan craft protruding from the ice. Just so you don't
mistake this for an X-Files novelization, there's also a ringed gas giant towering over the
scene. Iris is, as advertised, an intriguing novel of exploration, discovery, and ancient alien
mystery in the year 2097. Can never have too many, in my book.
I know what some of you are thinking. Hmmm, hard SF. Been a while since I tried it. Stuff causes sterility in lab rats, right?
While that may or may not be true, the real problem with hard SF these days is two-fold. First off, as a genre
whose primary concerns revolve around originality of concept and rigorousness of science, it's often saddled
with a rep for under-developed (and even unsympathetic) characters. Barton and Capobianco have cast Iris
with the 10 scientists and artists of the sub-light ship Deepstar, and they are certainly more skilled
in the art of character development than many of their contemporaries. I'm afraid I can't award a lot of points
for sympathy, though -- the most well developed member of the crew, software genius and Olympic boxer Brendan
Sealock, is one of the most repugnant characters I've encountered in years: a self-absorbed, borderline
psychopath and rapist. He's also the lead protagonist, which caused me no end of reader angst.
While few of the other crew members are as off-putting as Sealock, they are perhaps the most unlikely spaceship
crew you'll ever encounter. John Cornwell, the wealthy musician who finances and leads the Deepstar
expedition to Titan in the hopes of founding a utopian colony, proves utterly incapable of making
decisions -- which makes you wonder how he managed to escape Earth's gravity in the first place. Young Aksinia
Ockels spends her time doing addictive drugs and wandering the ship's corridors looking for sex. Flawed characters
are far more interesting than perfect ones, but this crew is so deeply dysfunctional -- not to mention openly
contemptuous of each other -- that it's difficult to believe they could bake a cake together, much less plan
and execute the first extra-solar expedition in human history.
But, they do just that. Before the Deepstar reaches Titan, the rogue gas giant Iris and its moons wanders
into the solar system, and the ship is diverted to Iris in the hopes that it will prove a more adventurous and
rewarding colony site. When one of Iris' moons proves to contain a submerged alien craft, this tiny crew of
bickering artists and engineers soon finds itself confronting an ancient -- and very deadly -- alien mystery.
Did I mention the two-fold problem with modern hard SF? Now we're at the second one. Like most science fiction
readers I like being challenged, particularly by authors who know their stuff. Barton and Capobianco know their
stuff, and they clearly enjoy tossing new concepts and complex ideas at their audience. But they seem to have
no clue when to ease up on the throttle. Here's a fairly typical bit of descriptive text from the first chapter:
True hard-SF aficionados will unquestionably eat this stuff up. Apparently I am not one. Me, I had to set the
book aside and have a bit of a lie down.
As bothersome as these two quirks may be, they're probably not fatal.
Besides, if the dedication page -- in which the authors dedicate their novel to a computer command
sub-system -- didn't help prepare you for the road ahead, you deserve what you get. What's harder to get
used to is the authors' bizarre obsession with sex. By page 8 over two-thirds of the crew have had sex, and
the pace never really lets up. We don't get the first full-fledged orgy until chapter two, but by that time
it's practically redundant. Even the aliens, when they finally appear, are having sex in the first 6
pages. During the inevitable flashbacks each of the crew members pasts are revealed, but almost exclusively
in terms of sexual history -- which begins as early as age 8, in some cases with parents or siblings.
There's very little that's erotic or even interesting about most of these sexual encounters beyond the first
chapter, but they keep coming anyway.
Even the shock value of the occasional sexual assaults among the small crew wears off quickly. Although it's
clear we're meant to understand that these characters treat sex lightly -- so much so that a woman raped by a
stranger is happy to have consensual sex with the same man a few hours later -- I could have dispensed with a
dozen graphic, frequently unpleasant, and often boring reminders every chapter.
A fellow reviewer I greatly admire once told me that the ultimate test of his enjoyment of a book is how much
time he'd like to spend with the characters. If any of the Deepstar crew wandered into the cafeteria
where I eat lunch, I'd pull a paper bag over my head and leave immediately.
But despite its deficiencies, Iris still manages to be a compelling narrative. The action moves along
briskly, and you'll likely find yourself growing accustomed to the irksome crew and the regular dosage of
scientific jargon soon enough. Barton and Capobianco have a flair for describing technology, both human and
otherwise. Although Iris was written in 1990, well before the advent of the Web and the rise of the
Internet, you'd never be able to tell. The authors exhibit the same poetic infatuation with complex virtual
networks as the cyberpunks, only here they serve a plot purpose without overwhelming the narrative. If you
enjoy hard science fiction, and are looking for a tale of alien mystery and truly vast scope, you could do
worse than Iris.
John O'Neill is the founder of the SF Site. | |||||||||||
 
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