{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1791",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1791,
    "subject": "Child of the River",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-09-22T13:28:59+00:00",
    "last": "1999-09-22T13:28:59+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0129@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Peter Stephenson",
        "address": "pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it"
      },
      "date": "1999-09-22T13:28:59+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Child of the River",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Ciao Leute,\n\nSomeone was remarking a few weeks ago about Paul J. McAuley's `Confluence'\nseries.  I've finished the first one, `Child of the River', quite recently,\nand rather than wait till I've read the second one, I think it would be\nmore fun to say what I make of the first, then eat my words later.\n\nI've had my eye on McAuley since I read `Four Hundred Billion Stars' in the\nearly nineties:  it wasn't perfect, but it showed a lot of imagination, and\nthe much rarer ability to put it all together into something like a whole.\nIt also showed a large range of SF influences:  I thought I detected Wolfe\neven back then, but it was mixed in a sea of Clarke, Niven, Simmons, Bear,\nCherryh and various other possibilities, so it was hard to be clear.  The\nending, in particular, was very well written, and gave me high hopes.\n\nUntil recently, however, they hadn't been fulfilled.  I was disappointed\nwith `Red Dust', which seemed a fairly generic nanotech story (Queen of\nAngels mixed with your favourite Martian novel) with, not incidentally, far\ntoo much about Elvis; I haven't read `Pasquale's Angel' since it seemed a\nbit superfluous with Florence an hour away by train; and unfortunately\n`Fairyland' turned up just when I was thinking `if I read another\nnear-future dystopia I'll scream'.  Hence or otherwise, the last named\nseemed a bit cluttered, and the Shakespeareans references he hinted at at\nthe end didn't seem to come off.\n\n`Child of the River' is another step in the right direction.  It's set on\nan artificial world which we don't explore all that much of yet, except for\nthe large river which seems to be a central feature (more Riverworld than\nWhorl).  There are Wolfean elements from the word go which continue\nthrought the book; the small town is by a vast necropolis (McAuley uses the\nliteral translation of that, City of the Dead); the society is\npost-historic in that it seems to have been left to its devices by the race\nthat created the world; the technological gradient is from slightly above\nmedieval to star-spanning; there are outlaws called Heretics rather than\nVodalarians; the central city is a sprawling metropolis on the river; the\nCitadel of the Autarch is called the Palace of the Memory of the People\n(Citadel of the Mainframe??); there is an apparition in something like a\nsacred window; even the epigram (`Praise the Lord! for He hath spoken /\nWorlds His mighty voice obeyed / Laws, which never shall be broken / For\ntheir guidance he has made') recalls Wolfe's use of `A thousand ages in thy\nsight / Are like an evening gone, / Short as the watch that ends the night\n/ Before the rising sun.'\n\nThere are mysterious entities in control, too; this reveals one difference\nfrom Wolfe, whose superior forces have a religious slant, while McAuley's\nare explicitly tecnological.  Maybe this is a strange thing to say, after\nthe lines I've just quoted from at the front of the book, and certainly the\ndividing line isn't so clear in either case.  What I mean is the veil of\nsuperstition is present, but easily seen through: McAuley seems to have no\ninterest in using Clarke's Third Law to blur the reader's viewpoint, only\ninternally to keep the characters in awe.  This element is more like the\nLong Sun, where Wolfe's computer-based intelligences are similarly\ntransparent to the reader, although the subtle grades of life, from\nprimitive fishermen to starship crews, and the byzantine complexity of the\nsociety put the broader background much nearer to the New Sun.  The\nreligion of Confluence seems to be little more than the usual pulp SF\nexercise in population control based on treating the world's creators as\ngods, a view which the reader, who expects technological solutions and gets\nthem, is unlikely to be able to endorse; there is no Outsider here.\n\nThe hero is also more conventional than Severian.  His main interest\nthrough the novel is a quest to find his roots; this is often mentioned but\nwithout much being discovered --- we know Yama's bloodline is that of the\nworld's engineers (maybe a touch of Ringworld there) --- so we'll have to\nwait for later books for more revelations.  Interestingly, his quest, like\nSeverian's, takes him upriver rather than down --- a comment I might have\nmore to say about if my great work of time in the New Sun ever happens,\nthough thematic use of time is not as strong here.\n\nThis brings me to the characters generally.  McAuley's style is very good,\nwith something of the straightforward but formal feel of the New Sun.\nWhat's lacking is the final touch of humanity and humour; his characters\nare slightly missing something, not because they're badly drawn, but\nbecause they're shaped a bit too precisely to fit the plot.  One of my\nfavourite features of David Zindell's `Neverness' --- a more esoteric book\nthan `Child of the River', more a philosophical romance than a narrative,\nbut not a million parsecs away in terms of theme and setting --- is the\ncynical, willful narrator, Mallory Ringess; it's just the sort of touch\nMcAuley needs (and the same goes for `The Broken God', Zindell's next book,\nwhich was a sad disappointment; the moral seems to be `don't let your main\ncharacter become a deity').  It's maybe a subtlety, but it can make a big\ndifference: for example, the characters' visit to the inside of a starship\nwould be extremely sinister --- the senior elements of the crew use mind\ncontrol to communicate, and seem to be in part parasitic --- were it not\nfor the fact that the characters themselves don't seem to notice, being too\nintent on their own business.\n\nPerhaps where McAuley most touches Wolfean levels is in his ability to\nwrite about strange things in a way that hints at higher levels of meaning.\nHere's the opening of chapter 20, where Yama meets a renegade sailor from a\nstarship who's borrowed someone's body.  (The `machines' mentioned are\nsmall, high-tech maintenance units left by the original architects of the\nworld, so it's no great surprise, and very convenient for the plot, that\nYama has some control over them.)\n\n  Even before Yama reached the bottom of the stairs, he knew that there was\n  a large number of machines ahead of him, but the size of the room was\n  still surprising.  Golden pillars twisted into fantastic shapes marched\n  away across an emerald green lawn, lending perspective to a space perhaps\n  a thousand paces long and three hundred wide.  The lawn was studded with\n  islands of couches upholstered in brilliant silks, and fountains and\n  dwarf fruit trees and statues --- these last merely of red sandstone or\n  marble, not petrified flesh.  Displays of exotic flowers perfumed the\n  air.  Constellations of brilliant white lights floated in the air beneath\n  a high glass ceiling.  Above the glass was not air but water --- schools\n  of golden and black carp lazily swam through illuminated currents, and\n  pads of water lilies hung above them like the silhouettes of clouds.\n\n  Thousands of tiny machines crawled amongst the closely trimmed blades of\n  grass or spun through the bright air like silver beetles or dragonfiles\n  with mica wings, their thoughts a single rising harmonic in Yama's head.\n  Men in scarlet and white uniforms and silver helmets stood in alcoves\n  carved into the marble walls.  They were unnaturally still and, like the\n  fallen guard at the gate, emitted faint glimmers of machine intelligence,\n  as if machines inhabited their skulls.\n\nOne final, rather satisfying Wolfean moment occurs at the end, as the hero\nand his girlfriend ride, at the last minute before they close, inside the\ngates, not of the city, but of the Palace of the Memory of the People:\n\n  A woman screamed and the crowd began to yell again, ten thousand voices\n  shouting against each other. The discs which bore the soldiers swooped\n  towards the crowd as Yama and Tamora raced their horses across the square\n  and plunged through the gates into the darkness beyond.\n\nMaybe more SciFi-Western than Wolfe, in fact, but it makes you want to read\nthe next one.\n\ncorncrake"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}