Astrology, drivel
and whims ruin a promising novel (2/5)
Taking a moment to
consider it, there are five ways I purchase novels: (1) on a whim,
like when books are only $1 and I have an entire suitcase to fill;
(2) for romantic nostalgia, like when I read a book’s synopsis and
it makes me long for the days when Is first started to read the
genre; (3) due to solid research, like when I track down a specific
novel for a specific reason; (4) recommended to me by other bloggers;
and (5) with much trepidation, like I book need to read from
an author I don’t like.
Macroscope is
a case of the latter two ways. I knew, of course, the name Piers
Anthony but I hadn’t ever read any of this work before, so I bought
one of his collections to see how I liked his writing (a damned good
indicator in my opinion); I bought Alien Plot (1992) and hated
nearly everything, nothing ranked above 3/5 stars. From this alone, I
put Piers Anthony on my to-avoid list.
Tom Rogers, a
trusted connoisseur of science fiction over at the Amazon science
fiction forum, has recommended Macroscope twice [1]
[2], so I thought I’d trust his
instinct and pick the novel up. And there is shat
sat on my shelf for four years being unread. As my pile of
long-ago-bought books dwindled, Macroscope came nearer and
nearer to the top of my to-read stack. Then the day hit: I opened
Macroscope and willed myself to finish it.
Rear cover synopsis:
“EXISTENCE
IS FULL OF A NUMBER OF THINGS… many of them wondrous indeed—and
those are the things of this soaring novel.
First
among them is the Macroscope—a doorway that leads to all time and
all space, and confronts the four who dare enter with challenges
mankind has never dreamed of.
Among
the things the travelers find is a place so unthinkably distant in
space and time that it may in fact be at the other end of the
continuum—within us—a place where ancient symbols come to life
and battle with the souls of men.
And
perhaps most wondrous of all in the crowded, adventurous universe of
this novel, a boy become a man; a spirited girl achieves womanhood; a
man’s deepest beliefs are vindicated; and a woman finds a purpose
in being…”
------------
In the very distant
but visible background of humanity’s existence, the celestial
events of our solar system’s planets continue on their journeys
around the sun ignorant of anything to do with the humans on Earth.
In the foreground, an alternative history stemming from United
States’ Civil War sees blacks and other so-called minorities
(aside from White Anglo-saxon Protestant) persecuted well into
the far future. In this alterative universe, the 1980s is acceptably
rife with racism. “Overpopulation, pollution or environment,
savagery” (46) are all pushing the species to extinction, now in
its subjective death throes of “hunger, frustration, crime (43).
Though the world is a segregated place, one group of forward-thinking
scientists endeavored to mix the genes of all the races under a
crèche in order to produce superiorly intelligent children. These
332 children actually became rather unexceptional, with a spirited
few surpassing everyone’s expectations. The crèche’s singularly
most gifted child seemingly died in an accident and years later, the
group disbanded and each sought their separate paths in life. Ivo
Archer is one such man who has styled himself on the poetry and music
of the 19th century Confederate Georigian named Sidney
Lanier, whose poem Individuality is often quoted by Ivo: “What
the cloud doeth, the Lord knoweth; the cloud knoweth not” (479).
Concerning a project, Ivo is beckoned by his
crèche-friend Brad who mans a station one million miles from Earth.
The station is funded by many nations of Earth who use the
macroscope, housed within, to gather data about activities on their
planet and events across the solar system and through the galaxy. The
macroscope is able to peer, with 1:1 scale, anywhere across the
Galaxy but the macrons are only able to travel at light speed, so
whatever viewed through the ‘scope is actually decades, centuries
or millennia old. A few civilizations have been found, but all of
these aliens also had macroscope technology and have been seen to be
decaying into extinction, much like humanity.
This macroscope
works under weakly understood principles: “[T]he macroscope is a
monstrous chunk of unique crystal that responds to an aspect of
radiation unrelated to any man has been able to study before” (31).
Not only can the macroscope remote view places scattered throughout
the galaxy, but it can also accept signals from thousands of
different macroscopes once owned by other alien civilizations and
which contain “science, philosophy, economics, art—anything that
can be put into the universal symbology. Everything anybody
knows—it’s all there for the taking. An educational library”
(150).
The only barrier
keeping Brad and his team from understanding the information is the
Destroyer, a signal within the transmission which has obliterated
three of the station’s finest minds, turning them into drooling
vegetables. Brad has called upon Ivo for his help or, more
specifically, for Schön’s help whom only Ivo can contact. Ivo is
visibly reluctant to contact Schön for anyone or for anything, a
small mystery which stumps Brad’s crewmates: the alluring polyglot
Afra, the savvy engineer with a penchant for astrology Groton, and
his ordinary unconfident wife Beatryx.
When a nosy American
senator arrives at the station demanding to know what good had become
of their investment in the macroscope, Brad unfolds his plan of
allowing the senator, along with himself, another and Ivo himself, in
viewing the macroscope’s stream of information. Midway through the
Destroyer’s sequence, Ivo tears his mind away from the poison of
its symbolic information while leaving the three others dead or
incapacitated. Brad is the lucky one—he had been reduced to the
mentality of a vegetable, leaving his partner Arfa in a state of
grief. An emergency soon arises when they realize that the senator’s
death will be investigated and the macroscope likely confiscated. Ivo
is unknowingly deemed to lead the small team of five—including
himself and the vegetative Brad—to a more secure location in order
to probe the deeper mysteries of the macroscope.
As they disengage
the macroscope from the station, the team of five finds little notes
inexplicably left by Schön, hinting at his intention and their
destination. With Ivo somehow able to circumvent the Destroyer, he is
thereby also able to extract data from the torrent available. As his
team leaves the station with the macroscope in tow, they know they
would be unable to outpace an automatic rocket headed for them, so
Ivo delves into the trove of data and finds a solution which would
allow them to sustain ten gees for an extended period while on their
way to Neptune: convert themselves to a liquid. After their
liquefaction and coalescence, they arrive at Neptune in order to
establish a far-flung colony where they can (1) live, (2) thrive
scientifically, and (3) explore the nature of the Destroyer and why
it inhibits civilizations from learning its secrets.
Somewhere along the
480-page journey, astrology is important. No, not astronomy,
but astrology.
------------
Aside from the poor,
juvenile and off-handed quality of stories in Alien Plot, two
other things turned me off about Piers Anthony: (1) his use of
terrible puns and (2) his egotistical rants as a stymied author.
(1)
Thankfully, Macroscope isn’t as laden with puns as Anthony’s
shortstory “E Van S” (1992), which were too numerous and too
awful to even begin to stomach—truly terrible. But after that
stomach-turning display of so-called humor, my eye was honed sharp to
nick the protruding follicle of any hair-raising pun. Reflecting his
juvenile stories, Anthony has two recurring puns throughout
Macroscope: (a) one about butts and toilets, (b) one about
sex, and (c) an awkward combination of the two:
(a)
He stopped off at the latrine—and realized suddenly that every
toilet faced the same direction. The arrangement was such that when a
person sat, he had to face the ‘forward’ orientation of the torus
…. ’When you take your inevitable bow, your stern is sternward,’
he said aloud, finally appreciating Brad’s pun—a pun inflicted
upon the nomenclature of the entire station. (100)
(b)
“My ship docks elsewhere,” he said … “I love another
woman, and have no inclination to embrace any but her. I mean no
offence to you.” …. “Your wife?” she asked alertly …. “It
is hard to see what she offers, then, that I do not. You have a very
handsome ship, and I have a very comfortable port.” (296)
(c)
Compared to modern liners, a thousand feet from stem to stern (he
smiled a little wistfully, remembering Brad’s pun) … though this
one did not appear to have much of a stem … or even the
three-hundred-foot sailing ships …. No. This toy dared not stray
far from its port. (266)
(2)
In Alien Plot, Anthony’s parting words to the reader, in
“Think of the Reader” (1989), is one big pat on his own back, a
jolly good job-well-done to himself, in which he endlessly complains
about editors. Additioanlly, through every introduction to the
stories in Alien Plot, Anthony draws his ax in ire toward the
editors who originally rejected his stories and even when they accept
his stories, he finds a reason grind his ax and denounce their
profession; five examples, thus:
(a)
“He [an author of an anthology] accepted both [“Nonent” and “E
Van S”], which shows that he'll never become an editor in real
life, because though it is obvious that he didn't read them, he
doesn't know that it is an editor's job to reject, not accept” (33,
digital).
(b)
“Once an editor learns that a story has been rejected elsewhere,
his limited mind locks into the reject mode, and the game is over.”
(46, digital).
(c)
“I, as a writer, have of course never had a bad notion, only
ignorant editors” (70, digital).
(d)
“For years I tried to market humor, but editors told me that humor
required a special touch, which unfortunately I lacked. I think
editing requires a special touch, which unfortunately most editors
lack” (86, digital).
(e)
“I started out as a natural story writer, and shifted to novels
because the fickleness of story editors prevented me from earning a
living in stories” (95, digital).
Now…
come back to Macroscope, published twenty years prior to
“Think of the Reader”, and Anthony still has this quip to offer,
as if he’s had an ax to grind for a very, very long time:
Lanier
[Anthony’s pseudo-alter ego projected through Ivo] was
crushed by this [rejected] response [to his poetry]. He
believed in his work, yet the unambitious efforts of others achieved
readier acceptance …. Not only in poetry … The entire society
is governed by mediocrity. We never learn …. Several other
prominent magazines rejected “Corn”[the said poem which had
been rejected] …. Were they absolutely blind? (351)
Underneath my steady
abhorrence for reading Piers Anthony’s work, when reading
Macroscope, the dial on my irritation meter begins to stir
annoyingly at first, then it starts to wag haphazardly, then moves to
and fro erratically, then twitches spastically, and in the end the
meter simply convulses epileptically. Anthony wanders through way too
much indulgence for the novel’s own good.
Granted, Macrosope
is largely based on astrology, especially toward the end, but the
entire pseudo-science is written in an oratorical manner, claiming
that “astrology is a highly confirmatory science” which applies
“the scientific method” (97) and also claiming that astrology is
a “doctrine of Microcosm and Macrocosm” (131). Compound this with
nonsense between astrology and astronomy (134-135) and a grand orgy
of gibberish about astrological signs (225-233), if the reader has no
interest whatsoever in astrology, the reader should perhaps stay
clear of this overlong pseudo-science foray into astrology.
Astrology isn’t
the only foray into indulgence Anthony takes; there are an additional
few which really grated me: an abrupt and absurdly biased trail about
an accidental death (234-238), an early excursion into astrological
significance with a Mediterranean story/analogy (268-310), a linear
chronological evolution of animals on Earth (329-331), a prolonged
written history of the birth of the solar system (333-338), a human
commands an alien fleet (371-382), a dichotomous utopia split by
segregated (384-401), an insectoid alien space navy (403-425)… and
then a torrent of ten mini-storylines revolving around astrological
symbolism (436-480).
I don't think any of
the symbolism added to the story as I have very little interest in
astrology and how symbolism in the cosmos supposedly relates to our
personalities and fate. I've always disliked pseduo-science or fringe
science in my science fiction—this also extends to hypnotism, which
Anthony also uses as a plot twist, which I will now spoil for you
here when Ivo says to Afra, “I'm going to implant in you a hypnotic
block against divulgence” (469). The only aspect which draws me to
the novel, which is very little compelled to all that repels me, is
the source of the information streaming through the macroscope and
the source and reason for the Destroyer. For the latter, there is
at least a satisfactory tang of galactic history sprinkled between
some of the erratic drivel (roughly 371-425). However, the taste
doesn't linger long when more and more drivel gets shoveled onto the
pages.
------------
Now that I've read
Anthony's most acclaimed science fiction and I've found it
unsatisfactory for so many reasons, I can finally put to rest any
doubt that Piers Anthony has any writing skill which may intrigue me.
Granted, he has a large following for one reason or another, but the
skills lack of skills I've seen makes me a
borderline anti-fan. Dare I even try to read Chthon (1967)?
