Subject: _Mother of Storms_ by John Barnes

From: [email-masked] (Christina Schulman)
Date: 11 Jul 1994 19:48:20 GMT

_Mother of Storms_ by John Barnes

Just in time for hurricane season, John Barnes brings us science fiction
for meteorologists.  _Mother of Storms_ will probably be labelled as "a
chilling ecological thriller!" but it's much more than that.  A military--
excuse me, peacekeeping--strike by the UN causes sudden, rapid global
warming, which results in the birth of a superhurricane of unprecedented
size, strength, and longevity.  This storm spawns a number of daughter
storms, which proceed to rampage around the planet, doing a pretty good
job of bringing civilization to its knees.  This book has flood, pestilence,
and war; there's famine too, but it's mostly offstage.  There's death and
destruction of incomprehensible magnitude.  Nations and coastlines crumble.
Despite all this, a certain cheerful cynicism that pervades the book keeps
it entertaining and amusing. 

That cheerful cynicism is also what makes Barnes' near-future society of
2028 so plausible.  The world is quite different politically; the UN is
the dominant political and military power, and the President of the United
States is waging a constant battle to regain some measure of the States'
former sovereignty.  TV and newspapers have been largely supplanted by XV,
which lets the public experience the full range of sensory experience being
transmitted by a character.  (Needless to say, this has revolutionized the
porn industry.)  The net still exists, but in a greatly expanded state (has
to be; XV consumes an enormous amount of bandwidth).  Cars drive themselves.
There's a wonderful digression about a group of self-replicating robots
on the moon who start to model some of the more unpleasant behaviors of
societies.

Unlike Barnes' previous books, _Mother of Storms_ has a fairly large cast
of viewpoint characters.  This usually irritates me, but I didn't mind it
here, and their interactions are well-handled and informative, although
occasionally in moving them about the author's manipulations are a bit
blatant.  (Especially when one character's ex-girlfriend, who has just
undergone a sudden and not entirely credible change in personality, is
swept up by a Plot Device in Shining Armor and transported directly across
most of Mexico and a good bit of the States to where she happens to bump
into another viewpoint character.)  They're not all necessarily good guys,
either, although with the hurricanes wreaking wholesale destruction upon
the world's coastal areas, ethical categories tend to become irrelevant.
But even the Evil American Corporate Magnate is a pretty likable guy.

There's an undercurrent of thoughtfulness in the theme of the role of the
media.  In the world of 2028 there has ceased to be any distinction between
news and entertainment; for instance, the romance/porn network sends its
characters to world hot spots, where they observe momentous events, think
carefully scripted thoughts, and have mad, passionate sex as often as
possible.  But when subscribers all over the world are plugged into
"reporters" who are shot, or drowning, or just angry and scared, those
sensations are echoed by the "viewing public," which can cause global riots
with a death toll approaching that of one of the superhurricanes.
Conversely, the government can calm the rioters and encourage docility
by having the nets broadcast feelings of peace and brotherhood.  Does this
constitute censorship or mind control?  Who's at fault when people refuse
to unplug, even to evacuate areas endangered by the storms?

I realize I'm in the minority here, but I would have enjoyed this book more
had it been a little less, um, graphic.  I have this vision of an editor
reading the first draft and saying, "Great book, John, but it really needs
more sex and violence!"  There's a subplot concerning full-sensory "snuff
films" that contributes very little to the book, except to kick off a
spate of assassinations that I could also have done without.  (There was
already plenty of senseless tragedy to go around by this point.)  I was
also rather disturbed by some of the graphic descriptions of violent death,
such as a woman's head being squashed like a pumpkin, or, well, quite a
bit of it can't be described on a family newsgroup.  I realize the point
of these tragic little vignettes was to illustrate on a personal, graspable
level what was occurring on a global basis, but I still found some of the
descriptions a bit offputting.

I also think that the ending would have been improved if the last 50 or
so pages had been compressed into about 20 pages; the end drags out to a
bit of an anticlimax, although it's still full of nifty science, continuing
slaughter, and messages of hope.

Incidentally, _Mother of Storms_ is written in the present, rather than
past, tense.  This isn't nearly as distracting as you might expect, and it
gives a certain sense of immediacy to the story.

I have yet to read a John Barnes book that I don't like, and _Mother of
Storms_ didn't disappoint me.  I'll be very surprised if it isn't nominated
for a Nebula.  It's a very ambitious book, but Barnes manages to handle
the large cast of characters, the proverbially dull subject of the weather,
and the nigh-destruction of civilization as we know it with humor and flair.
Find this book, but read it somewhere inland.

%A   Barnes, John
%T   Mother of Storms
%I   Tor
%C   New York
%D   July 1994
%G   ISBN 0-312-85560-5
%P   432 pp
%O   hardback, US$22.95

-- 
Christina Schulman   Pittsburgh NMR Institute   [email-masked]