Subject: Review: MacLeod's "Cassini Division"

From: [email-masked] (P.D. TILLMAN)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 18:02:47 -0400

Cassini Division, Ken MacLeod
	review copyright 1999 Peter D. Tillman

Rating: "A" -- a fresh look at future politics, married to solid hard-sf
extrapolation. Short & sweet, fast & funny, but with a rather appalling
protagonist and ideology, and a weak, pat ending. Even so, highly
recommended.

%A Ken MacLeod
%T The Cassini Division
%D 7/99 US
%I Tor
%O $23
%P 240 pp
%G ISBN 0312870442

*SPOILER ALERT* You really shouldn't read past here if you haven't read
the book.  Much of what follows won't make sense if you do.

So there, Mr. College Professor (Pfhuut), Mr. Non-Cooperator (PFHHHOONT!),
Mr. *Banker* (!!PFFHHOUNGT!!)

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"A brilliant novel of ideas" -- front-cover blurb by Vernor Vinge.

The central anarcho-socialist idea -- the "True Knowledge" -- is,
well.... "Might Makes Right". Ugh. I've always thought the best way to
judge a person's character is to watch how they treat someone who has no
power over them -- think back to good & bad bosses you've had.
Fortunately, the "comrades" don't seem to apply this principle in their
everyday lives. But the protagonist, Ellen May Ngewthu, is an appalling
individual, a close analog to Gen. Curtis "Bomb 'em back to the Stone Age"
LeMay. Unlike LeMay, she has the freedom to act, and completely destroys
the "post-human" Jovian civilization for the offense of hijacking a
third-party spaceship. Even the crudest SF carnography trots out a
stronger casus belli to trigger mass genocide (at least for human
aggressors).

Ellen has a remarkable ability to dehumanize her opponents -- bluntly,
she's a violently paranoid racist. Even after personal contact with
legally-human "robots" on New Mars has, kind of sort of, made her accept
them as "part of *us*, whereas the Jovians --
     'You mean you would contemplate a union -- with *them*?'...."

".... Time for Plan B," Ellen decides, disregarding a direct order from
the Solar Council delegate -- Plan B being genocide by comet
bombardment. Worked, too. And the Jovies *were* baddies, through &
through, in the pat, weak & rather disappointing ending. Feh.

Post-socialism (or anarcho-socialism) in MacLeod's Solar Union adopts the
form, but little content, from present-day socialism and communism --
irony? (At least, I hope the character who says that Lenin was "just
misunderstood" is intended as irony.) The Union economy isn't described in
enough detail to judge whether it might actually work (though with enough
to succeed as a fictional device).  Perhaps there's more detail elsewhere
-- this is the first MacLeod book I've read (but it won't be the last).

MacLeod has clearly read his Vinge -- though, curiously, the Union's
policy is to avoid a Vingean singularity at almost any cost, and to
destroy any culture that reaches it. For a more convincing (IMO) snapshot
of a successful democratic anarchy, read Vinge's "The Ungoverned." Another
sfnal predecessor that likely influenced MacLeod is Ursula K. LeGuin's
wonderful "The Dispossessed" and related works. And read Hans Moravec's
recent "Robots" for another view of the coming post-human era.

Humans as aliens: the MacLeod future history has encountered no aliens, so
they've made their own -- the "fast folk" or post-humans are the most
dramatic example, but all three societies here -- the post-socialists, the
anarcho-capitalists and the fast folk -- are quite different from today's
cultures, and quite strange to each other, a welcome relief from the more
usual "futures" that are today with tailfins stuck on. And it's a pleasure
to read a lean, non-bloated novel.

Not that there aren't some future-anachronisms here: helicopters, elevator
attendants(!), brass-&-steel(!) mechanical computers....  Memo to MacLeod:
brush up on your Drexlerian molecular rod-logic nanocomputers. Or if those
won't work -- DNA-based biocomputation. Or if you *have* to go
macro-mechanical, you'd use lightweight composites & light metals --
inertia in the gear trains, y'know? And anyway -- how likely is it that
non-networked electronic computers would be crippled -- or taken over --
by "radio viruses" from Jupiter?

Tin Ear Dept: ".... I weren't that worried. Had you lot figured.... Just
gosh-darn lucky...." (p. 168, US hc ed). Umm. Mebbe this rancher emigrated
to Texas from the lil ol' UK?

Enough of this grumbling & nit-picking -- I had a great time reading
"Cassini Division", which you might not have guessed, I just realized,
from reading this far. I found myself deliberately slowing down to savor
the book, something I last did for Phyllis Gotlieb's lapidary "Flesh &
Gold". And it makes you think. A definite keeper, highly recommended
despite the appalling genocidal "heroine."  [note 1]

PS: How do you pronounce "MacLeod"? I presume it doesn't rhyme with Cleo?

PPS/Memo to PNH/SFBC: when do we get the rest of MacLeod's books here in
the USofA?

Note 1) Hey, it could be worse. Consider, for example, Barnes'
"Kaleidoscope Century", or Barton's "When Heaven Fell." At least Ellen has
self-doubts...

Read more of my reviews:
(including Moravec's "Robots" & Gotlieb's "Flesh & Gold")
http://www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman