Customer Reviews

Permanence

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"Permanance" is Karl Schroeder's followup novel to his amazing "Ventus," and it doesn't come close to that stunning debut novel. It tells the story of Rue Cassells, who discovers an interstellar object that turns out to be an abandoned alien artifact, and her friend and onetime lover Michael Bequith, an assistant to a truly nutty professor, who comes along for the ride.

The tale is jagged, confusing, jumbled. Its characters do what they do because Mr. Schroeder wants them to, not from any sort of internal motivation--at least none discernible to me. The science is dippy: tool-making species, intones Michael's boss, Professor Herat, in a plot stopping interlude, are doomed because their tool making is a compensation for their failure to adopt to their environment (duh). There's FTL, but it doesn't work everywhere and not everybody has it (but they all want it), but everybody bops around free of the problems of time dilation, etc. etc. (eh?).

There's a villain, of course, Admiral Crisler, who used to be a scientist (oh please!) and he does everything but twirl his cape and go bwaa haa haa. (Anyone? Anyone? Whiplash? Whiplash?)

You'll probably stay till the end; there's some good space opera here and the final invasion of Crisler's domain is well-done. But maybe you'll feel exhausted rather than elated when you reach the final page.

This book is so unfocused (especially compared with the author's debut novel) that you may wonder how it came to be. I have an idea. I think that Mr. Schroeder's editor asked him if he had anything else in the pipeline post-"Ventus." Voila! Mr. Schroeder pulled this out of his drawer (or out of his computer?) and the editor set to work trying to make something coherent of it. But there was just no way.

Ah well, maybe next time Mr. Schroeder will deliver a winner. For sure he's capable of it.

Karl Schroeder is a fairly new Science Fiction author ("Permanence" is only his second novel in this genre). The author writes on an epic scale, and has big ideas that are liberally scattered throughout his novels. I bought this book because of an automated recommendation from Amazon.com, and I am glad I did.

"Permanence" is both the name of a space-age religion and the desire of a space-faring humanity, in a universe where no civilization is truly permanent. The protagonist is a young girl, Rue, who escapes from her abusive brother, discovers an alien spaceship, and goes on to have world-shaking adventures involving the ship and its alien technology. The author's use of high technology in his stories is easy and natural, for example, shared virtual reality (inscapes) and nanotechnology are seamlessly integrated into the way of life for Rue and her contemporaries.

The plot of "Permanence" revolves around a clash between the Cycler Compact (worlds united by spaceships capable only of slower-than light travel) and the Rights Economy (worlds united by faster-than light spaceship travel). The scope of the plot spans numerous planets and living environments, with aliens and alien cultures and concepts. The plot involves a clash of cultures, economies, politics, philosophies, and religions. The book is chock full of new ideas and concepts.

I read "Permanence" straight through from start to finish. It was a thoroughly engaging read with a satisfying ending. The only reason I am giving this book 4 stars and not 5 is that the author's characterization still needs a bit of work, as the emotions and thoughts of some of the characters are slightly juvenile. Nonetheless, it was a very enjoyable read, and I hope the author continues to put out excellent hard Science Fiction, well into the future.

I'm sorry to say, I couldn't bring myself to finish this one. The ideas behind the novel are somewhat interesting; not fascinating, just enough to make you go 'Hmm.' Once you marvel at the civilization Schroeder built around brown dwarfs, all you're left with is a poor plot that is childish and amateur.

There's something annoyingly artificial about the way the characters are written. They go along with mad ideas just because the plot requires a crew for the protagonist's quest. The events that litter the book seem dangerous on the surface, but feel like book-padding, and are never really engaging.

One example is Max, the protagonist's cousin. He somehow shows up at the start of the novel, and conveniently turns out to be very rich, which conveniently solves the heroine's problems. Not only is he rich, but he also conveniently won the lottery, so there's nothing to explain about it. Such events occur at a maddening frequency, painfully linking what certainly sounded like good plot points in a synopsis.

I hate to downright bash a novel, but this one should have been reworked and re-edited before it hit the shelves.

Spoiler ahoy!

After the majesty and brilliant imagination of Ventus, the author's previous novel, I had high expectations for Permanence. Schroeder showed such a competence for world-creation and characterisation in Ventus, I felt like I wanted to live in his book, and was sorry to have to read the last page. It was like an enormous, delicious feast that left me wanting more. So it was to my immense disappointment to find that in contrast, reading Permanence is like eating a bowl of mud. To wit: Thin, underdeveloped characters (excuse me, but how old is Rue Cassels? She acts like a teenager, but is apparently much older. All I could see through the entire book was a shrill, emotionally overwrought child wandering around like she owned the place and somehow being wooed by a 45 year-old sexually repressed subservient monk), a plot that packs a million things in, but still manages to feel meandering, pointless and dull (I honestly thought part one was an experiment in plot drift), a central conceit that seems clever and imaginative at first but quickly becomes frustrating and repetitive (I never want to read the word "cycler" ever again), and an irritating propaganda-like push for something called NeoShintoism (note the pretentious CamelCase), whose practitioners are the most smug, self-satisfied douche bags this side of a Tibetan monastery. And to top it all off, just as the most interesting aspect of the book starts to get going (the discovery and utilisation of the Jentry's Envy), suddenly we're trapped on the most boring, insipid, poorly developed planet I have ever experienced in a sci-fi novel for a quarter of its length! Why?? What made Schroeder think it would be a good idea to abandon such a fascinating concept as an alien spacecraft designed specifically for other aliens to use and have his idiotic characters wander around aimlessly for two-hundred pages working through their bland childhood angst? Is his editor a naked mole rat? How could you not see that this makes for bad storytelling? It boggles the mind. And don't get me started on the ending. This book should have been titled "Deus Ex Machina, and How Not To Utilise It". People who say Absolution Gap's ending is bad (which it isn't if you read the rest of the stories set in the RS universe, but that's neither here nor there) should read this book and have their eyes opened to how truly bad endings can be.

You may be wondering, if I hated it so much, why I gave this book two stars instead of one. Well, there's genuinely interesting stuff in here. The exploration of the Jentry's Envy is fantastically imaginative and gripping, and the expectation that they would return to it is basically what kept me reading. The first chapter is tense and exciting and shows a promise never quite fulfilled, and the sense of cold, remote, empty space is palpable and something that I genuinely enjoy. But I can get that in pretty much any Alastair Reynolds or Greg Egan novel, and without all the lameness that comes with it in this case.

If you like deep space hard sci-fi, you will more than likely enjoy the first half of this book (although a word of warning, there is FTL travel), and especially if you enjoy the BDO style. But as soon as the Jentry's Envy is under human control, close the book, put it down, and walk away; there is nothing more for you here.

Seriously, how do you go from Ventus, to this? I am baffled. Baffled I tell you!

___________________________________________
Permanence is set in the 25th century, when humanity has
settled dozens of extrasolar planets -- the so-called "lit worlds" -- and
thousands of brown-dwarf colonies -- the halo worlds. All the
colonies were linked by big, NAFAL [note 1] starships, each travelling
a fixed circuit of worlds -- the cyclers [note 2]. The cyclers never stop, as
the energy cost to boost them to relativistic speeds is, well,
astronomical. Ultralight shuttles transfer passengers, crew and cargo at
each port.

Permanence is a quasi-religious order set up to support the great
starships, and to preserve human civilization for the indefinitely long
future. It's a noble and admirable organization, which has been
seriously disrupted by the recent discovery of FTL travel -- which, it
turns out, will only work near a full-size star. FTL travel is *much*
cheaper than the sublightspeed cyclers, so the halo worlds' economies,
and the Cycler Compact, are near collapse. It gets worse -- the lit worlds
are joining the new Earth-based Rights Economy, an aggressively-
centralized property-rights setup that forbids any non-commercial
transactions. Hmm -- could this be socially-conscious Canada vs. the
great, grasping Colossus of the South? (The halo worlds are cold, too...)

Meadow-Rue Rosebud Cassells lit out from Allemagne station when
her bullying brother got to be too much. Enroute to Erythrion, Rue
discovers, and files a claim on, a new comet. [Minor *SPOILER*
warning -- but no more than is on the dust-jacket.] Her claim is denied
-- her 'comet' is really a spaceship -- but then reinstated: it's not
a *human* spaceship, and it doesn't answer calls, though the drive is
still working. Rue must take physical control of the ghost ship to make
good her claim, but Powerful Forces want the ship for themselves...

The framework of the novel is Rue's growth from scared kid to
respected starship captain. I like bildungsromans, and this is a good
one. But the real power of Permanence is the good old sense-of-
wonder techstuff: "[The colonies] swarmed like insects around
incandescent filaments hundreds of kilometers in length. Each
filament was a fullerene cable that harvested electricity from
Erythrion's magnetic field... The power running through the cables
made them glow in exactly the same way that tungsten had glowed in
light bulbs... on twentieth-century Earth." I love this stuff. And it's
even plausible -- see Schroeder's neat website, kschroeder.com

At times Permanence may remind you of Ken Macleod's political SF,
though Schroeder is much less in your face (which I prefer). You'll
see nods to Pohl's Gateway, Norton's Forerunners, Brin's and
Pellegrino's hostile-universe Fermi-paradox ideas... Schroeder's still
looking for a distinctive voice, which is pretty standard for a
writer's early books, and anyway he s/t/e/a/l/s *borrows* from the
best...

Schroeder's very good at delivering the short, sharp shock: Rue's
poor, then she's rich! Oops, bad claim, poor again. Wait, she's rich
after all! This 'Perils of Pauline' plot structure works pretty well for
most of the book, but was wearing thin towards the end. Again,
these are sophomore-book teething problems, easily forgiveable
within the terrific story (and backstory!) that Schroeder's got to tell.
Which is: classic, wide-screen space-opera with a sharp hard-sf edge
-- my favorite kind of SF! Folks, this is the good hard stuff, which is
never in oversupply. So if you haven't yet tried Schroeder's brand of
thinking-being's hard-sf adventure stories, Permanence is an
excellent place to start. Then you can go back and pick up on last
year's Ventus, which might even be better. They're both terrific
books. Happy reading!
_____________
Note 1.) Not as Fast as Light, an Ursula K. LeGuin coinage. Or is it
Nearly as Fast? And did you know that her ansibles are an anagram
of lesbians?

2.) The cyclers are the neatest part of the backstory -- see
Schroeder's website for the
details, which are interesting of themselves (for spaceflight buffs like
me, anyway) and spoiler-free. I was a bit disappointed that the cyclers
had become obsolete by Permanence time -- well, sort of -- and I hope
that Schroeder returns to earlier times in the future history of the
Cycler Compact. And I wouldn't be surprised if Ventus turned out to be
in Permanence's future...

Review copyright 2002 by Peter D. Tillman

Permanence, is at once exhilarating and frustrating. Exhilarating because it attacks a truly worthwhile larger SFnal theme in an original fashion, coming to original conclusions; and because it is packed with clever technological and scientific notions, and with some awe-inspiring vistas. Frustrating because much of the impact of this is dissipated by the unconvincing characters, and by an overwrought plot complete with sneering cardboard villains. The good outweighs the bad, I think: this book is fun to read and thoughtful, and its resolution is believable. But it falls short of its potential.

The two main characters are Meadow-Rue Cassels, a young woman from a poor comet-like world who stumbles across a valuable object that may be of alien origin, and Michael Bequith, a scientist and monk who helps study the ruins of alien races. The book also concerns some political machinations between the richer worlds linked by Faster-Than-Light travel, and the older, decaying, "Halo" worlds linked by Slower-Than_Light "cyclers".

Also central to the book is the pursuit of the goal of "Permanence": the formation of a culture with the prospect of permanent existence. Rue's discovery, of a hitherto completely unknown alien artifact, may be a key to this goal.

The eventual explanation of the nature of the artifact is very interesting. Furthermore, the conclusions reached about the prospects for true "Permanence", and about the differences between an STL culture and an FTL culture, are also nicely handled. In addition, there is a neat alien race, and a fair amount of very clever tech. Set against these positives is a set of villains who seem mostly motivated by the generalized desire to oppress and kill other people, the rather fuzzily described "Rights Economy", a not quite convincing or sufficiently involving love story, characters that don't quite come to life, a rather flabbily-structured plot, and some annoying woo-woo mysticism in the description of Michael Bequith's "kami". In other words -- Permanence has got many of the strengths of the best Hard SF, and many of the weaknesses as well. Which means, if you're a fan of Hard SF, this book is definitely for you. Schroeder is playing in Vernor Vinge's league, and if Vinge is still the champ, Schroeder is definitely a promising newcomer.

I bought this book following a paper enthusing about some of its ideas in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS Jan/Feb 2005). Unfortunately, I have to agree with earlier reviewers who have highlighted a pedestrian writing style, implausible 'characterisation' and character motivation, and the unengaging 'by numbers' plot development.

I abandoned the book at page 78 as unreadable, not something I do often. My advice to the author is to read the books which you just can't put down, and really think about how their authors achieve that effect. Even in plot-driven stories, the characters have to be real and must be able to invoke empathy from the reader.

Here's the thing -- the other reviews can give you the plot summaries and the evaluation of the characters and so on, but I read this book when it came out and that has now all pretty much faded from my memory; but there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think back to the subtext about our economy and microtransations, and this SF novel has completely changed the way I look the world around me -- I seriously cannot use an ATM machine without getting angry after reading this novel. It reads like SF, but it is a thorough-going critique of capitalism gone wrong. And the universe he is building in this novel, along with his other works, really makes one think about implications of social networking software... This is what SF is all about -- a thought experiment to make us think about and question the real world around us. The fast-paced action adventure is just icing. You have to read this novel.

A fairly straightforward space adventure. A girl from a small backwater joint escapes from her brother who basically wants to sell her into servitude.

While on the lam she stumbles across a rare alien spaceship, and meets up with a relative on another planet.

A mission to get to the ship and claim it turns into struggle and conflict between different political groups.

Schroeder satirises the rabid corporate copyright/drm/activation software mentality here by having one group actually live their whole lives like this, with their basic 'inscape' view of reality showing objects by their costs and rightsholding, so a rose would show it was worth 24.23 rather than look like a rose.

I admire authors who think about the their fictional universe, and then liberally fill that universe with clever ideas. Schroeder's book Permanence is stuffed with ideas. I wished he would slow down a bit a more thoroughly explore the exotic sites he dreams up - each section of the book takes place on a different place, and each of these new locations is interesting enough to warrant much more exploration. I like the idea of the Permanence, and why there is such a dirth of interstellar species.

(I don't know if this is a plot spoiler - but here comes a short summary of his explanation for all the missing intersteller species:)A species that adapts ideally to its environment has an advantage over a species that requires tools to survive in the environment. Eventually, the non-tool using species will win (species that are tool users evolve into non-tool users as they grow accustomed to their environment. A neat idea, but I wonder - if the species keeps moving/expanding through the galaxy, won't keep encountering new environments? Thus, the species will never adapt to all environments? This puzzle is only reason I didn't award the book 5 stars.

I also recommend Look to Windward by Banks, Marrow by Reed, Child of the River by McAuley and Revelation Space by Reynolds.

thanks for reading