Space with Meaning What makes intelligent space opera intelligent? Readers will disagree on some of this, but I would posit the following: it is fiction in which knowledge of science actually matters, as does the ability to create drama, plot, and intriguing and realistic characters that are not cardboard stereotypes. And at their best, the stories will either explore or otherwise portray the realistic outcomes of scientific achievements that would seem fantastical to us today. Not only is the writing and science and characterizations in these novels very good, but they are politically potent. Today’s writers are proving that space opera isn’t purely escapist action dreaming; it can be every bit as effective at social commentary as was the late ’60s, early ’70s’ new wave of people-oriented science fiction. Ann Leckie made that obvious with her 2013 award-winning novel Ancillary Justice (see review, page 70). In fact, her book is really about politics, even though the ostensible storyline concerns the intelligence of a spaceship in human form (just go with it) out seeking answers and a bit of revenge. Gender, warfare, and galactic governance are all at the heart of the book, which tells a grand tale but focuses in quite closely on a small number of characters. A significant amount of this new, brainpowered space opera is coming out of the British isles. The recent passing of Scotsman Iain M. Banks (see Galaxis #4) served to highlight how aggressively UK writers have colonized this subgenre, and it threw into the spotlight their intelligence and productivity. In a field that was once dominated by Americans such as Asimov, Heinlein, Gerrold, and Alfred Bester, UK writers such as Iain M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds, Peter F. Hamilton, Charles Stross, and others have staked a claim to leading this new wave of deep-space, deep-dive, big-brained science fiction. Americans are not too far behind, with John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War spawning a popular series that helped him earn a $3.4 million book deal. Other Yanks such as Ann Leckie and Michael Flynn keep the home flag flying. Non-SF folks who peer into the genre from outside often associate it with the mindlessly wild, and to them a slobbering space toad is in the same category of entertainment as a detailed exploration of a post-human civilization 100,000 years in the future. But for this sub-subgenre of 24
Galaxis May 2016
intelligent space opera that I’m defining here, slobbering space toads are definitely a lesser element than extrapolation and dramatization of technological, political, social, religious, sexual, and moral change.
The passing of Iain M. Banks highlighted how aggressively UK writers have colonized this sub-genre.
Space for Ideas Iain M. Banks’ series of Culture tales combine political and technological exploration. Banks, reportedly something of an intellectual anarchist, created the human star-spanning civilization of the Culture, which is basically anarchic in that there is no leader or central government. Thanks to material and technological plenty, humans are able to spend their lives doing pretty much whateverthehell they want. They can switch genders, go into intellectual isolation (or even opt out of humanity altogether), live anywhere they want, and, by Banks’ rules, they manage to get along pretty well because the Minds—the super-intelligent AIs running the Culture’s vast ships (some of which are many miles in length)—make all of the important decisions. One can argue about whether that makes the Minds a government; anarchy isn’t a fully logical governmental philosophy anyway. But Banks doesn’t just create the setting as a backdrop for his action; he has many of his stories driven by interactions between the Minds and their interests in taking an action (interacting with a new species, or going to war, for example). It ends up as good food for thought; anarchists often rail against government for taking power away from the people and perverting it to their own ends, and Banks basically shows it happens whether by government or computer or other means. But Banks extrapolates on the technological side, too. His Culture books are made up of the super-intelligent ship Minds, planet-encircling habitats filled with millions of people, and even contact with alien races so far advanced that it is considered to be an epochal change in humanity’s history (see his excellent Excession novel). Alastair Reynolds’ writing style is quite different from Banks’ style, but he too is a practitioner of the big idea, the grand prediction. His 2008 novel House of Suns (see Galaxis #5) covers hundreds of thousands of years in human history, and the story plays out over truly vast interstellar ranges. Dyson spheres (artificial structures encasing entire stars and including entire civilizations) are pretty matter-of-fact in Reynolds’ books, but he doesn’t underplay