Subject: Review of Mother of Storms by John Barnes

From: [email-masked] (James Terman)
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 1994 22:19:14 GMT

Review of MOTHER OF STORMS by John Barnes

John Barnes is one of my favorite writers of what I like to call, for want of 
a better word, "soft" science fiction. In contrast to hard science fiction, 
which tends to emphasize a universe run by cold physical laws uncaring of 
human concerns, people are always the focus of soft science fiction. This does 
not mean that hard SF cannot have three dimensional characters, or that soft 
SF has to have technobabble science; it is merely a statement about what 
drives the story. In soft SF, the science is not so important except in how it 
creates a background that the characters must react against. Frequently, a 
whole society has to react the changes that technology has made. I realize 
that by making this divide, I may hide more than I reveal. Similar problems 
come from trying to divide stories into the categories of fantasy and 
"regular" SF. It is easy to point out the extremes, but there are plenty of 
stories on the boundary that could go either way. 

Stories that lie on the boundary between categories can often be very bad or 
very good. The danger of writing a story that lies on the boundary between 
genres (no matter how arbitrarily that genre line is drawn) is that the author 
has to get the story elements of two genres working instead of just one. A 
genre can be a limiting to a good writer, but it has its compensations. 
SF writers in theory have to invent the worlds their stories are set in 
from scratch. In reality, most writers use the traditional plot elements of 
SF that have been built up over the decades such as "hyperspace", "robots",
"talking computers", "Galactic Empire", etc. This is not bad, if authors use 
this to focus and expand on the elements of their story that are unique. 
However, a story that is on the boundary of two genres has more things it 
must get right, and therefore more things that might go wrong. These 
types of stories are a challenge to a good writer and often the Waterloo of 
beginning writers.

Fortunately, John Barnes is very much up to the challenge, and in MOTHER OF 
STORMS he creates a story that deftly weaves the indifferent destructiveness 
of an environmental disaster with the very human reactions of the people that 
have to live through it. From his earlier books, such as the critically 
praised ORBITAL RESONANCE, A MILLION OPEN DOORS, SIN OF ORIGIN, and THE MAN 
WHO PULLED DOWN THE SKY, John Barnes soft science fiction credentials are 
certainly in order. Yet, on a hard SF level, MOTHER OF STORMS works quite well
(although I would quibble with his rather casual use of anti-matter as a power 
source). This novel truly works on both the levels of hard and soft science 
fiction, and I certainly hope this novel is considered come award time.

MOTHER OF STORMS refers to a hurricane that is created in the wake of a super-
greenhouse effect sparked by a sudden release of methane from the ocean bed. 
This hurricane quickly grows to unprecedented proportions and starts wiping 
out pacific islands one by one. What is worse, the tittle of the book not only 
refers to the hurricane's size, but also its tendency to spawn other 
hurricanes as it weaves its destructive path across the globe. As fantastic as 
this seems, I was very impressed with Barnes ability to make this seem 
plausible with his extremely well done explanations of how a hurricane works. 
A less scientifically literate person than I might find these passages 
tedious, but I thought they were very well done. Most of these passages are 
put in the mouths of the characters with only a few narrative injections.

As a working scientist, I was fairly impressed with the way science and 
scientist were treated in this novel. At no time does the book ever descend 
into the polemetical on either side of the debate about how we must respond 
to the man-made changes in the environmental. I would certainly recommend this 
book to anyone who enjoyed David Brin's EARTH. To those who did not enjoy 
EARTH, I would still urge them to give this book a try.

To give a human face to the destruction wrought by the hurricane and her 
progeny, Barnes uses three or four threads, that often intersect and divide, 
spread over the globe to give us an intimate but widespread picture of the 
environmental changes that occur. The future society was not unconvincing, 
but somehow I found it a bit shallow. Of course, that may have been on 
purpose, for Barnes describe a world in which everyone can be wired to the 
network to such an extent that their own real lives can pale into comparison 
to what they can experience vicariously on the net. Dennis Miller once joked 
that when Joe Six-Pack will be able to have sex with any supermodel he wants 
through virtual reality, "it's going to make crack look like aspirin." 

To be honest, I found the multiple sub-plots annoying in the beginning. He 
jumped in and out of them quite a bit, and it made hard going to keep track of 
the characters. This is a common fault of many novels today which can often 
force you to read a 500 page book in one weekend if you do not want to get 
hopelessly confused (either that or take down notes). However, I must admit 
that once the novel gets going, he uses these threads to very good effect, and 
even manages to weave them together very well. Niven and Pournelle often put 
a dramatis persone in the big novels, and I do not think it would be a bad 
thing if this became a standard practice.

Aside from the too fast switching between threads in the book, my major 
complaint with MOTHER OF STORMS is the ending. I do not think it goes as far 
to ruin the whole story, MOTHER OF STORMS has too many good points for that, 
but I was disappointed. Aside from being, almost literally, deus ex machina, 
the ending reminded a little too much of the way EARTH ended. While the 
endings are not really the same, and Barnes ending is well motivated by the 
story, it was a bit jarring to come up against such an ending in a novel that 
was so original otherwise.

Still, the above is really a minor complaint in what is a very enjoyable read. 
SF books with an environmental theme to them are all the rage nowadays. This 
is hardly a surprise as SF often reflects the concerns of the times it is 
written in. With the end of the Cold war, environmental disaster seems to have 
replaced nuclear warfare as our top concern (hey, how could you enjoy life 
unless you believed there was the possibility that everything you have could 
be taken away from you - carpe diem!). Of course, the granddaddy of all these 
novels is Frank Herbert's DUNE, published nearly 30 years ago. As is often the 
case when something is ahead of its time, it often takes a while before it 
is appreciated (not that DUNE wasn't an instant classic). I believe that DUNE, 
EARTH, and MOTHER OF STORMS, stand out the best because they confront 
environmental problems head on without sentiment, but without ignoring human 
needs and desires, either. They do not argue for ecotopias, nor do they 
dismiss worrying about the destruction of the environment as "tree-hugging".
I am sure this book will continued to be read long after vice-presidents find 
other topics to write deeply serious books about.

%A Barnes, John
%T Mother of Storms
%I TOR/Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
%C New York
%D 1994
%G ISBN 0-312-85560-5
%P 432pp
%O hardcover, US$22.95, CA$31.95

-- 
| James L. Terman                          | Science may set limits to know-  |
| [email-masked] (for email)  | ledge, but should not set limits |
| [email-masked] (for .plan)  | to imagination.		      |
| [email-masked]  (for both)   | 		   - Bertrand Russell |