Subject: FUTURE QUARTET by Bova, Pohl, Pournelle, and Sheffield

From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C Leeper)
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 22:51:51 GMT

FUTURE QUARTET by Ben Bova, Frederik Pohl, Jerry Pournelle,
                         and Charles Sheffield
           AvoNova, ISBN 0-380-71886-3, 1995, 294pp, US$5.50
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1995 Evelyn C. Leeper

     Well, since the directive given to the authors here was for each
to write a "speculative essay" and a story set in 2042, one very
pessimistic, one very optimistic, and two in between, it's not
surprising that what resulted was pretty didactic and preachy.  After
all, that's basically what was asked for.  It is certainly possible to
write stories set in the future that are entertaining first and give
the reader a message almost as a side effect--but that was not the path
taken here.

     Bova leads off with "2042: A Cautiously Pessimistic View,"
supposedly a speech given by the Chairman of the World Council in 2042,
and follows with "Thy Kingdom Come" (which has the Chairman as a
character).  The story has speeches almost at the level of the
essay/speech itself, and I was somewhat irked that all the main
characters found their common heritage (rather conveniently for the
plot, I might add) in the Lord's Prayer.  Yes, it's possible, but given
that the Chairman is Vietnamese with a Chinese name, it seems contrived
(in my opinion).

     Frederik Pohl's essay, "A Visit to Belindia," is as much a story
as his official story, "What Dreams Remain," but again, both spend a
lot of time in lectures and speeches by various characters.  Pohl says
he was chosen to give the most pessimistic future, but even here there
much have been a lower limit, as he doesn't postulate any massive
nuclear, chemical, or biological wars.  And just as Bova MAKES his
future "cautiously pessimistic" with his particular story ending, so
does Pohl make his pessimistic.  The worlds the two of them draw could
be swapped, or become optimistic, without much change to the stories,
so in that sense they aren't drawing their society to order--they're
meeting their goal only in how they end their story.

     Charles Sheffield's "Report on Planet Earth" would lead the reader
to believe his future was to be the most optimistic one, yet his "Price
of Civilization" is not what I would call a positively portrayed
future, but rather a fascist one of superior and inferior classes,
secretly enforced anti-miscegenation policies, and so on.  Whether
Sheffield realized what a negative picture he was painting is not
clear, since superficially his characters seem to be the best off of
those in any of the four scenarios.

     And finally there is Jerry Pournelle's "Democracy in America in
2042" and "Higher Education."  This is the "cautiously optimistic"
scenario, but it reads like a lot of other science fiction: rookies
being trained in the dangerous job of asteroid mining.  And true to
what one friend predicted, it has a character who explains it all to
the young newcomers.

     This book might work as a catalyst for discussions about the
future in a high school classroom, but even there one can find better
stories to trigger discussion.  These are merely preachy, and not at
all satisfying.

%A      Bova, Ben 
%A      Pohl, Frederik 
%A      Pournelle, Jerry 
%A      Sheffield, Charles 
%T      Future Quartet
%I      AvoNova
%C      New York
%D      February 1995
%G      ISBN 0-380-71886-3
%P      294pp
%O      paperback, US$5.50 [1994]

-- 
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked]
"No one is ever fanatically devoted to something they have complete
confidence in.  No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to
rise tomorrow.  They *know* it is.  Whenever someone is fanatically
devoted to a set of beliefs or dogmas or goals, it is only because
those beliefs or goals are in doubt."  --Robert M. Pirsig