Subject: The Gap Cycle, by Stephen R. Donaldson

From: [email-masked] (Wayne Throop)
Date: 31 Jul 92 22:28:21 GMT

The Gap Cycle, by Stephen R. Donaldson

I have a sort of love/hate relationship with Donaldson's work.  His
characters moan and whine, and a large portion of his work is taken up
in internal dialogue explaining why his characters don't do something
straightforward and simple and staring them right in the face to
resolve the plot, but instead do something self-defeating and stupid,
but which advances the plot.  But, despite their basic irrationality
and silliness, his characters, situations, and settings seem to have
some pull on me.

The Gap Cycle is no exception.  The characters are as twisted and
psychologically convoluted as ever, and the plot twists, settings, and
general angst are as compelling to me as ever.

This series is set against a background somewhat reminiscent of the
"rebel" series by Busby, with a basically corrupt monopolistic
industrial enterprise having taken over most functions of government,
and regulating essentially all interstellar commerce.  We have pirates,
secret bases, and people who go through quite startlingly horrible
experiences while they develop their character.

So far, two of the books of the series are available in paperback.
"The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story", and "The Gap into Vision:
Forbidden Knowledge".  Next in the series is "The Gap into Power: A
Dark and Hungry God Arises".  There are (I think) two more to follow.
I qualify by "I think" above, because Donaldson explains in an
afterword that there are four books in the cycle, but I think that "The
Real Story" is not part of the count of four.  I could be wrong, but
that's my impression.

I won't try to summarize Donaldson's afterword in "The Real Story",
which gives some backstage details about this series, but I will
comment on it a bit.  For myself, I certainly saw the first, simpler
theme he was trying to get across in "The Real Story" (it's really too
blatant to miss, even for me), but without reading the author's
explanation of the rest of the cycle, I wouldn't have interpreted it as
what Donaldson states it to be.  Not that this is a fault of Donaldson's:
he himself says that the basic source of his material is pretty
cryptified in this incarnation, certainly beyond my ability to decrypt
without hints.  My point here being that I'm not sure whether one is
better off reading the afterword of "The Real Story" before proceeding
to read the rest of the series, or reading it (if at all) after reading
the rest of the series.  My own taste is always to read spoiler
information, and always get the annotated versions of things, perhaps
simply because I'm slow on the uptake.  But your mileage may vary.

So, what we have so far is a complex stew of tortured abnormal
psychology, dark convoluted motivations, archetypical characters
charging around an exotic setting.  Typical Donaldson.  About what
one might expect after reading the Covenant and Mirror works.

( As a digression, it *isn't* quite what I'd expect from reading
  his shorter works, which I consider superior to his novels.  My
  favorite is "Worthy of the Angel", which I found in the book
  "Daughter of Regals", and which I recommend.  Of course, even in his
  shorter works, the Donaldson hallmarks are there, but they seem to
  me to be better balanced than in his novels/series/cycles. )

But before concluding, I'll focus on something I *didn't* expect.  And
that is the uncomfortable and distracting technical gaffes with which
Donaldson sprinkles this series.  None of them are extremely bad, or
even all that annoying.  But they disturb the flow of my reading,
like hitting a rock while boating down a dark and powerful river.

This sort of thing is unexpected to me because I feel he did fairly
well on several points in the Covenant and Mirror works.  For one
example, the Sandgorgon seems to me to be a pretty nicely thought
out creature, with interesting adaptations to its peculiar situation.

But for three examples of ill-thought-out points in the 
Gap series, we have:

A passing mention of a "thermonuclear pile".  Now, OK, we can give the
phrase some meaning and pass on, but it jumps out and grabs me by the
throat, disturbing the flow of my reading: thermonuclear processes
simply don't go on inside "piles".  Never have, never will.

There are several computer terminology incongruities, perhaps the most
annoying being the notion of setting up "batch commands" in the
computer system running a spaceship.  "Batch" commands?   "*BATCH*"
commands?  Maybe the term is revived sometime in the future, either out
of the original notion of "batch" (as opposed to timeshare), or the
MS/DOS use of the term to simply mean an automated command script.  I
even know I'm overreacting even as I overreact, but....  "**BATCH**"?
Yuck!  Much better to use the more colorfully descriptive "demon",
"daemon", "dragon", "ghost" or whatnot, or the simpler and more neutral
"script", "file", "command", "process", or "program".  Maybe even
"macro" in a pinch, though I'd still probably wince as I read it.  But
"batch".  Hmpf.  OK, so it's a very small nit... it still jarred me
out of the storyline.

Probably the worst is a can of technical worms opened up by having a
ship accelerated by mysterious means to .9 lightspeed.  From the
technology level portrayed up to that point, I expected there to ensue
a great deal of activity in trying to rescue the "marooned" ship.
Instead, Donaldson just treats this matter-of-factly... but wrongly.

To start with, in the ensuing scene, Donaldson has this spaceship
approaching a station at .9 lightspeed, another approaching the station
at .4 lightspeed in the same direction, and then casually mentions that
of course the two ships are closing at .5 lightspeed.  AAAUUUGGGHHH!!!
It probably wouldn't bother anybody else, but it was like running into
an unseen brick wall to me.  I expected him to say *anything* but .5
lightspeed.  The actual closing speed of the two ships should be
something like .78 lightspeed.  That, and he has his ship decelerate
from .9 lightspeed to a near standstill in just a few hours, with no
"inertial dampers" or "cosmic energy source" or other magical notions.

Maybe he just forgot to mention the magical energy source that his
spaceships use or the inertial dampers or other acceleration shielding
equipment... But he makes a big deal about the computers doing
"relativistic corrections" on the incoming data.  And his descriptions
elsewhere are pretty clear that there IS no acceleration damping going
on (this is required for one of the plot twists early on).  And the
technology portrayed would have no hope in hell of generating that much
energy from a portable source in a spaceship.

As you might suppose, I'm quite disappointed in the stories because of
the technical "potholes" that jar me while reading.  On the other hand,
the books *are* typical Donaldson, and quite effectively squeeze angst
from stones as well (or as badly, if you don't like Donaldson) as
ever.  I'll probably read the rest of them as they come out, despite
the marred reading surface.

%A   Stephen R. Donaldson
%T   The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story
%I   Bantam Spectra
%C   New York
%D   1991
%G   ISBN 0-553-29509-8
%P   241 pages
%S   The Gap Cycle

%A   Stephen R. Donaldson
%T   The Gap into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge
%I   Bantam Spectra
%C   New York
%D   1991
%G   ISBN 0-553-29760-0
%P   455 pages
%S   The Gap Cycle

--
Wayne Throop  ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw