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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Science fiction for social workers,
By
This review is from: Marcher (Mass Market Paperback)
Remember that TV show "Sliders" from the late 90s? Where a small group of people could travel from one parallel universe to another? Every week they would go to a new earth that was slightly different from the one we live in. Well, imagine that instead of just one small group doing this, there is a pill that allows anyone to do it. The pill is illegal and in the hands of the same people in society who use crack or meth.
The main character in this novel is an immigration officer assigned to a special unit that deals with people from alternate universes. There is a series of murders and violent crimes being committed by people who know that they can just skip to the next universe. It's a bit more complicated than just evil people skipping from universe to universe versus good immigration officer trying to solve a riddle. The main character is himself tempted to use the pills for his own reasons, and the society he is part of and the government agencies he works with have their own problems. This is science fiction written by a social worker, and, as someone who works closely with folks in that field myself, I really appreciated the perspective the author brought to this book. I found it very insightful, and I recognized the moral ambiguity that social workers have in their jobs. The book does get a little lost towards the end, but overall it was one of the best science fiction novels I've read in some time.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting social SF,
By Mike Fazey (Perth, Western Australia) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Marcher (Mass Market Paperback)
Science fiction is a great medium for exploring social issues and Marcher is an excellent example of this. The story draws on the `many worlds' theory (in which reality is composed of an infinite number of alternative worlds created by different choices) and revolves around attempts to stop people crossing between realities using a strange drug known as `slip'. This is interesting in itself, but there's a lot more to the novel.
Perhaps more fascinating is the setting - an England in which those who are on the margins of society are physically marginalised in euphemistically named `social inclusion zones' where their interests are guarded by armies of social workers and bureaucrats. Beckett is himself a social worker who now lectures in that field and has written several textbooks on the subject. This gives the social aspect of Marcher authenticity and the insight of one who knows the territory very well. Beckett's portrayal of this hyped up welfare state is less than flattering, and while it is more extreme than the forms of welfare prevalent in western societies today, there are also significant parallels. Also fascinating is the psychological portrait of the novel's protagonist - an immigration officer who specialises in apprehending the illegal reality jumpers, known as `shifters'. Together, the science fictional, social and psychological elements of Marcher form a thought-provoking novel that should be enjoyed by anyone who appreciates intelligent SF.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thoughtful, thought provoking, good letters,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Marcher (Mass Market Paperback)
Chris Becket has a short story in the current year's best anthology - so memorable, thoughtful and neat that I promptly checked his other work - including his university text on child protection.Messrs Recchia and Fazey neatly cover the broad strokes, but I'd like to emphasize a couple of elegant small gems. Chris Becket probably wrote himself into the story as Cyril Burkitt an older social worker. Instead of writing novels and texts, Cyril ends up a specialist in registering the feckless but invites deskies (Zone keeper social workers) and registered feckless clients to a memorable retirement party at a zoo/Zone. To get means-tested welfare (US food stamps, AFDC, Section 8 rent vouchers or traditional public housing) in this world social workers must find "fecklessness" in order to register citizens into a status eligible for benefits but not voting rights. Such can get out of the Social Integration Zone (an Orwellian name) by getting a job and moving to a suburb, but obviously quite a few don't even think about that, let alone try. Like US center city public schools or UK state schools, schools in the Zone barely function as control, with education at most a theoretical possibility. Put another way, if the underclass did not conveniently self-segregate into a few areas with grossly higher crime, drugs and other pathologies, with schools and welfare run by public sector unions - how could a selfish majority get them into concentration camps, err council estates or public housing or bainlieus? Ghettos. Privatized Zones resemble the politics of Britain or the US, where ghettoes are largely a way to protect surrounding normal communities from pathology. Becket probably never read Charles Murray's presentation to the US House Republican caucus, which intellectually shaped and then energized the welfare reform, but they share the vision of race-neutral underclass populations which arise by creating a parallel social universe where no one works, studies hard or imagine much beyond sex, drugs and perhaps rock music. Given the welfare states in Europe collapsing like dominos because the deficits and debt are not sustainable, Becket's fascist privatized welfare system is radically unlike Sweden, where school vouchers and daycare vouchers were implemented by socialists and unions focused on clients and achieving goals, creating a functional or sustainable welfare state. A culture of dependence and isolation is not desirable, and better public policy, including libertarian pipe dreams and "ending welfare as we know it" can wildly out perform. Borrowing huge sums, on top of huge taxes, is not sustainable. The travel between parallel or alternate worlds is more like Heinlein or even Philip K. Dick (pre-mystical experience) - mental state, a self that may transcend three dimensions and recover memories of one's identity in other worlds. There's some hand waving about Norse myths and a mad scientist with flashing lights and simulcast feeds onto computers from alternate worlds branching, but character and dialog are front and center. Perhaps Becket imagined a super-Thatcherite Britain, but today his command-and-control welfare state looks eerily like the more rousing Thatcher speeches in the Commons from "Iron Lady." If someone as smart, idealistic and humane as Becket missed Sweden's implementation of Milton Friedman, one wonders if the British left has not built themselves Social Integration Zones or even a parallel universe?
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