The Quiet War

[sawyl]

A little while ago I mentioned that I was reading Paul McAuley's The Quiet War, which I've now finished and which I enjoyed very much.

Set in the 23rd century, it imagines a society split between the conservative forces of Earth, ruled by Machivellian aristocratic clans, and the radical post-humanists Outers of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and through the interplay of the two factions, it explores the frictions that arise when different groups hold different views of what it means to be human.

The two principal characters of the novel, Macy Minnot and Sri Hong-Owen, are both from Earth and both have similar backgrounds, but choose to make quite different moral choices. Lacking any blood relation to the aristocratic families, they've both had to depend on a combination of ability and patronage to make anything of their lives. But while Macy dedicates herself to the truth in a slightly naive way that, Prince Myshkin-like, leads he to be tied in knots by the anarchic politics of the Outers, Sri remains caught up in the machinations of the Peixoto family, trying to balance the anti-war sentiments of her mentor against the ruthless threats of the pro-war members of the family. Both characters start out as virtual serfs, bound to their respective families, helping to assuage the damage of runaway climate change and to restore the balance of Gaia. But as events unfold, they each come to see their positions as untenable and try to find a way out; Macy by requesting asylum from the Outers, Sri by trying to associate herself with the Outer gene wizard Avernus. But both find their plans constantly undermined by the work of the pro-war factions both on Earth and on the Outer moons.

Ultimately it comes down to Avernus, a character who remains largely absent from the narrative despite a passionate desire on the part of almost everyone else in the novel to talk to her and to know what she thinks, to express the problems of the pro-war approach: if humanity is a spectrum where the two extremes oppose each other with violence, the elimination of one extreme will only result in the violence being re-targeted at the next most extreme view, until all dissent has been elimated. But if, as she suggests, humanity actually forms a ring species with the conservative Gaians at one extent and the radical trans-humanists at the other, this does not mean that either group ceases to be completely human.

Reading The Quiet War, I found myself put in mind of Kim Stanley Robinson's Blue Mars, partly because of the grand tour nature of the book and the relatively restrained view taken of technology, partly because Avernus' occasional appearances reminded me of the deep absence of Hiroko Ai from Blue, and partly because McAuley's willingness to take on and explore big ideas reminded me of KSR in its ambition. But I also noticed more than a few hints of Carl Sagan here and there — in particular the Church of the Divine Regression, an religion dedicated to finding God in the digits of pi, was an obvious nod toward Eleanor Arroway's obsession in Contact. None of this cleverness, however, prevents the plot from ripping along a rapid pace or prevents the characters from being anything less than convincing and real. If anything, it makes events more real by providing a consistent and coherent set of motives for actions that drive events towards their apparently inevitable conclusion.

In summary, then, a clever, highly enjoyable page-turner of a novel with an ending that suggests more to come in future. I'm looking forward to it already.