Child of Venus | ||||||||
Pamela Sargent | ||||||||
Eos, HarperCollins, 464 pages | ||||||||
|
A review by Greg L. Johnson
By the time of Child of Venus, the big dramatic events of
terraforming Venus, bombarding the planet with ice asteroids and the
construction of the Parasol to shade and cool the planet, are generations
in the past. The work now is a slow process of chemical reactions and
bacterial seedings that will steadily transform the planet, but it's going
to take a long time.
Perhaps this is why the novel itself starts off almost languidly.
The story centres on Mahala Liangharad, a young girl descended from some of
the main characters in the previous novels. We follow along as Mahala grows
up, learning of her family's past roles in the shaping of Venus, and trying
to find a place for her own talents in the Project.
But for young adults of Mahala's generation, there is little choice
in what they will do in their lives. Venus will not be inhabitable for many
generations, and there is a growing dissatisfaction among those who see
themselves as having little control over their own future, with no hope of
seeing the end of the Project. There is also a rising political tension
between the Habbers, who live in space and have aided in terraforming
Venus, and the Mukhtars who control all access to wealth and information on
Earth. (In what could be read as a tip of the hat to Kim Stanley Robinson's
Mars series, the Habbers oppose terraforming Mars, believing it should be
left in its natural state.)
Those two strains of tension take over the story about halfway
through the novel. The plot moves away from the nuts and bolts of
transforming Venus, and takes on larger concerns. It's interesting here to
note the similarities between Sargent's story and the story Octavia E.
Butler has been telling in her novels, Parable of the Sower and Parable of
the Talents. Neither woman is known as a hard-core science fiction writer,
yet both have created female characters who see not only hope but a kind of
salvation in humanity moving out into space. That is a character trait that
has been at the core of many a hard SF novel. Both writers have created
characters whose hearts are firmly in the tradition of the literature of
the stars. Mahala, like Lauren Olamina, knows herself and longs for the
universe.
Child of Venus is not an action story or a suspense story, though it at times
has elements of each. It's not a novel about speculative engineering, though
it has as its central conceit one of the largest engineering projects human
beings could hope to accomplish, and it has enough engineering details to
make the Project seem real. The trappings are there, but the story runs
counter to the current fondness for large-scale space opera flavoured
science fiction. Child of Venus is a novel about human beings trying to
understand themselves and their place in the future they envision. This is
science fiction that asks us to question ourselves as much as we question
the universe. And if that's not one of the main reasons for the existence
of science fiction in the first place, I don't know what is.
Reviewer Greg L. Johnson noticed lately that Venus can hardly be seen. It can only mean that the Parasol must be in place. His reviews also appear in The New York Review of Science Fiction. |
If you find any errors, typos or other stuff worth mentioning,
please send it to editor@sfsite.com.
Copyright © 1996-2014 SF Site All Rights Reserved Worldwide