Aside from Eric Brown, I can’t
name any respectable modern authors who can push out two novels a year. John
Brunner was prolific in the 1960s and 1970s, Greg Bear had two novels published
in 1985, and Joe Haldeman had two novels publish in 1983. But since this time,
I can’t point to any respectable author which has a consistent turnout of two
novels per year. If you disregard the adjective “respectable”, one could
include Kevin J. Anderson in this affair, but his inclusion is any list besides
“Authors I Avoid” is a dubious distinction (averaging 3.54 novels per year
since 2000).
Eric Brown, however, has produced two novels in one year on four
occasions: Penumbra
and Walkabout (1999), New
York Dreams and Bengal Station (2004), Xenopath
and Necropath (2009), and The Devil’s Nebula and Helix Wars (2012).
Here in 2013, Eric Brown is
again publishing two new novels; on May ninth he released a
stand-alone featured here, The Serene Invasion, and on July thirtieth he’ll release Satan’s Reach, a sequel to The Devil’s Nebula. While
he matches the quantitative definition of success, Brown has been letting me
down on the qualitative side. He is a cauldron of ideas akin to Brian Aldiss or
John Brunner, but his books tend to be more longer yet more mediocre. But with
the drought of decent new novels published every year (eons of pain waiting for
Banks, Reynolds, and Hamilton, mainly), I look to Eric Brown for a spritz of
modern sci-fi. Thankfully, The Serene Invasion delivers, albeit after a
bumpy ride.
Rear cover synopsis:
“In 2025, the Serene arrive
from Delta Pavonis V, and change mankind’s destiny forever. The gentle aliens
bring peace to an ailing world—a world riven by war, terrorism and poverty, by
rising conflicts over natural resources—and offer an end to need and violence. But
not everyone supports the seemingly benign invasion. There are those who
benefit from conflict, who cherish chaos, and they will stop at nothing to
bring back the old days.
When Sally Walsh is kidnapped
by terrorists and threatened with death, it seems that only a miracle can save
her life. Geoff Allen, photojournalist, is contacted by the Serene and offered
the opportunity to work with the aliens in their mission. For Sally, Geoff, and
billions of other citizens of Earth, nothing will ever be the same again…”
------------
In northern desert plains of
Uganda, Sally Walsh is a doctor on a humanitarian mission healing the ill of
the impoverished region, but much of her disheartening work is caring for the
dead rather than the recovering. Contemplating an early retirement after five
years, Sally is kidnapped with her colleague by extremists from the Sudanese
border. If she and Ben can survive the ordeal through common sense, Sally is
assured of her retirement, but the radical ideas of the extremists have one
mission: the beheading of the infidels. Ben’s head is literally on the chopping
block and a gun is pointed at Sally, but the impulse to kill either is
vanquished by, what seems at the time to be, a miracle.
Geoff Allen is aboard a flight
from London to Entebbe to see Sally while on a photojournalism jaunt to capture
images of elephants in the wild. He’s abruptly stricken with a sense of time
lag, followed by a hallucination of being laid out, examined, implanted with a
device in his skull, and told “Do not be afraid” (53). Surfacing from his
torpid state, Geoff realizes that he alone experienced the time lag, yet far below the plane on the
African desert are enigmatic domes. Common sense suggests blaming the Chinese.
All around the world, the urge
to commit acts of violence with met with a sudden lapse in muscle control; wars
cease, hate crimes halt, and even suicides stutter to an unfulfilled desire.
Suddenly at 11:31 GMT, Eight starships appear in the skies of earth, silent in
their spectacle and mysterious in their silence. Their point of convergence
seems to be an isolated region on the deserts of Mali; ground zero is an arid
wasteland with no significance to the human race. The ships join in a massive
snowflake-shaped ensemble and send an intense beam downwards to the desert,
from which springs an oasis of flora and fauna unknown since the myth of Eden.
Soon, Geoff Allen and 9,999
others like him congregate at the request of the peaceful invaders. The aliens
from Delta Pavonis V, representatives of a scare but benevolent race called the
S’rene, have a message for the selected few of earth, chosen for their humanity
and empathy:
We are intervening here on Earth because your
race has, in the past few hundred years since what you term your industrial revolution,
grown exponentially, a growth fuelled by a fatal combination of political greed
and lack of foresight. What is even more tragic in your situation is that many
of you—both on an individual level and on that of institutions—know very well
what needs to be done in order to prevent a global catastrophe, but cannot
enact change for the better because power and vested interest rest in the hands
of the few ….No shame should accrue in light of these facts; no individual is
really at fault. The process was vastly complex and incremental, a slow-motion,
snowballing suicide impossible to stop. A hundred, thousand races across the
face of the galaxy have perished in this way, before we had the wherewithal to
step in and correct the aberrant ways of emerging races. (161-162)
“The galaxy teems with life,
with civilizations, a concordance rich beyond your imagination” (139) yet not
everyone on Earth is especially happy with the inescapable non-violence—mainly
the makers of arms, the war machines, and, above all, James Morwell Jnr., owner
the American corporate entity of Morwell Enterprises. In addition to the
complete cessation of arms sales and the resulting dive in his company’s stock,
James is also unable to partake in his form of pleasure: masochism. For this,
he damns the passive aliens and establishes a digital community of directed
distrust of the S’rene. Coddling James’ hatred for the Serene are the opponent
alien species, the domineering Obterek, who contact James and supply him with
five devices which enable them to “read” the minds of any human Serene representative
they can find; however, the representatives are not easily tracked and the
Serene are not easily defeated. The two races have been at odds for millennia and
each knows the other’s weaknesses.
The representatives of the
Serene describe themselves as “self-aware entities” and are “living, biological
beings, self-aware, individual, conscious” (171) but grown and programmed with
the interests of the Serene, their mentor race and benevolent saviors. The
honor of meeting a living Serene is a rare occurrence as they are spread across
the many light-years and none are found in Earth’s realm. Their projects for
the human race include terraforming Mars and Venus, yet at the edge of the
solar system, an aberration in the occlusion of some stars causes concern for
astronomers and the pessimists.
By 2035, the people have Earth
have grown use to the munificent offerings of the S’rene; kilometer tall towers
of habitation spire above urban landscapes, oases of paradise dot the most
desolate regions of terrain, and the aliens maintain they have “the best
interests of the human race at heart” (475). The 10,000 or so human representatives,
less now because serving the interests of the Serene is always an option, are
subsumed for two days per month on mysterious duties related to the Serene
Invasion. With no memory of their two-day duty, speculation of the Serene’s
greater intentions is at the top of some representatives’ minds while others exalt
the invader’s benevolence and ignore any doubts.
Eventually, the Obterek are able to penetrate
the quantum-state of the Serene’s non-violence sphere around Earth, resulting
in an outright assault by the neon blue bipedal figures of the Obterek and
dozens of human victims. Yet, the golden hued translucent bodies of the “self-aware
entities” to the scene, entomb the human victims within themselves, and heal
them in the giant ebon obelisks which tower above every major city. At the same
time, the Serene also penetrate the bodies of their militaristic opponents,
stopping the carnage and saving every human life at the scene.
Even in 2045, with twenty years
of serenity on Earth, the peacefulness has spread to the colonies of Mars,
moons, and asteroids. Humanity expands and flourishes under matriarchal supervision,
but the Obterek are not without their ploys to subvert the progress. Dreams of human
utopia seem to be realized with nations dissolving, selfish interests waning,
and self-righteous exfoliating from the human ego:
They worked together increasingly without the
boundaries of nations to impede progress with concerns of petty national
interest, freed from the malign influence of multinational business corporations.
Religions had mellowed even the more radial sects of Christianity and Islam
which in the past had threatened head-to-head conflict; millions still
believed, but without the self-righteous fervor of old. New cults had sprung
up, many with the Serene at their core. Of the old faiths, Buddhism was
increasing in popularity, as citizens drew parallels between the ways of the
Serene and the philosophy of Siddhartha Gautama. (459-460)
Still, the humans, and the
10,000-odd representatives among, question whether the Serene have any ulterior
motives and whether the Obterek represent a legitimate opposition to the
efforts of the Serene. Perhaps humanity isn’t destined to populate the galaxy,
their local stars, or even their home system.
------------
I was chary of the effectiveness
of novel’s theme: aliens come to Earth and save humanity from their human
nature. The caginess validated itself in the first 300-400 pages of the novel
where various predictable elements manifested themselves: an unforeseen alien adversary
(Obterek) and a skeptical human with the power to influence others (James).
Surely, these two forces would join to attempt a disestablishment of the Serene
presence, somehow parry the quantum-state non-violence enforcement, and
ultimately allow for the Obterek to “supplant the Serene” (435).
Then the last 100 pages started
to expand on the efforts of the Serene to establish humanity amid their solar system
with colonization of numerous celestial bodies. The 20-30 years of serenity had
failed to produce a single human-on-human act of violence; therefore, their
initial intention of creating a non-violent humanity had been successful and
who are the puny humans to question the “authority” of a non-violence which
their own religions stipulate in their respective texts. Eventually, the habit
of tranquility mutes any sensation of contempt or ungratefulness; allow the
humans a period of adjustment and the consistency of habit and they’ll follow
you anywhere. The Serene read the humans perfectly… after all, they had over a
hundred years with which to observe us in situ.
But Serene Invasion isn’t
about creating a human utopia or peopling the orbiting bodies of sol; Serene
Invasion is about acceptance and forgiveness. Over time, Sally is able to
forgive her captor; Ana, an Indian woman and part of the human representative body,
is able to forgive her brother’s desertion; and again, Sally is able to forgive
the subterfuge which her friend Kath has led her through for most of her life.
These characters accept, forgive, progress, and succeed while adjusting to all
scenarios. Then there’s James who doesn’t forgive his abusive father, doesn’t
forgive the Serene for disallowing him to commit suicide, and doesn’t forgive
his assistant for treachery and abandonment. Predictably yet suitably, his fate
isn’t as glamorous or glorious as the those with peace of mind. While the
aliens are able to enforce a physical peace in society’s eye, it’s up to the individual
human to achieve peace of mind.
Serene’s blanket non-violence
isn’t without its controversy, however. James takes it upon himself to somehow undermine
the quantum-state aura of non-violence so that he may achieve a small victory
against the Serene: violence against self, the death of self through suicide.
The Serene deprive humanity of this last grip of self-control, the control of
one’s fate at one’s own hand. James takes his idea to the extreme: isolating himself
asea with no provisions, walking in the Amazon without heed to heat, thirst,
hunger or danger, and free soloing a rock edifice with a gun in hand (this
method abusing the Serene’s intervention of “spasming” when committing
violence). But the omniscience of the serene invaders quash his attempts and
fuel his commitment to their defeat.
------------
Serene Invasion, regardless of its utopian aim and
predictable elements of confrontation, comes out extolling positive human
virtues and shining optimism in parallel to Alastair Reynolds’ Blue Remembered Earth (2012). The novel exhibits the common, yet typically suppressed,
human emotions of forgiveness and virtue over those more flamboyant and cynical
kneejerk reactions of pessimism, suspicion, and illogical obduracy. The Serene’s
blanket issue of non-violence isn’t without flaw; while the Obterek orate the
of the Serene using the humans to spread “their own unnatural edicts, their own
perverted ideals” (435), humanity must take what it can get, take the lesser of
two evils: possible self-destruction through mankind’s own during or guided
like a child to an earthly utopian diaspora, albeit without control over one’s
own life, suicide or not.
Serene Invasion doesn’t ooze as much emotion as The Fall
of Tartarus (2005), but it does give the reader more room for reflection upon the standards
by which we judge benevolence, generosity, self-directed volition of self and
society, and, most importantly, of doubting the hand that feeds you:
There is nothing
more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison
that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn
that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills. --- Siddhartha Gautama
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