Customer Reviews

Ventus

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The planet Ventus is a marvel of the terraformer's art. Rather than shoving around great loads of soil, gasses and liquids to make the world hospitable, Ventus' designers deployed a mere 70 kilos of intelligent nanotechnology. When the nanos landed, they used the world's fabric to copy themselves, absorbing the world's foundations as a sponge absorbs a bucketful of water, until the very planet was intelligent -- or rather, intelligences, a collection of autonomous gods and demigods and sprites and spirits, collectively called the Winds.

Ventus sings. The ocean sings, "I am an ocean," and the waves sing, "I am a wave." The Winds sing their songs as they negotiate among themselves for the preparation of the world for the human masters to come. The clouds negotiate with the crops to provide water, the earthmovers negotiate with the sod over mineral allocation. Ventus is a Garden, a jewel of a world in a universe populated with innumerable humans and post-humans, and machine-human intelligences that embody as entire planets.

Ventus is a garden, fallen. A thousand years after the terraforming project, the Winds have forgotten their human masters. Now the Winds barely tolerate the fallen inhabitants of the garden world, capriciously manifesting as avenging angels that smash overly technological artifacts and their makers; manifesting as sinister morphs that maintain ecological balance by tearing bears apart to make gophers; manifesting as the attenuated, magnetic celestials whose Heaven hooks crush masonry and rend bone as they seek to expunge infectious humanity.

Jordan Mason, the boy-hero of the story, has been unwittingly implanted with off-world technology that turns him into a spy for Armiger, the avatar of the fallen God/world 3340. It's this very technology that makes him a target of the ruling machines, who come to perceive him a foreign technology that must be eliminated by the world's all-powerful immune system. Aided by the bounty-hunters Caladria May and Axel Chan, Jordan learns to control his technology and finds that the world itself is alive, shouting and singing in a billion variegated voices. Gradually, the boy comes to communicate with the planet itself, and to discover the internecine battles that have turned Ventus from Heaven to Hell.

Schroeder's a voracious autodidact, and he weaves his multifarious backgrounds into the storyline, burying clues to Ventus's mysteries in avant-garde linguistics, in pervasive computing theory, in cryptography, and in the theology of his apostate Mennonite forefathers. The book is as epic in scope as The Lord of the Rings, but more nuanced; it's as technologically daring as Snow Crash, but better controlled, with a narrative that makes its many pages fly past. Schroeder's created a startling, thought-provoking marvel of a book, a voice to equal any of the new guard that the Commonwealth has materialized of late: Scotsmen Ken MacLeod and Iain Banks and Aussie Greg Egan have a new contemporary.

I almost didn't read Ventus because I was disappointed in my first Schroeder novel, Permanence. I'm glad I gave it a try. Ventus suffers from some of the same problems present in Permanence: Schroeder's writing style is undeveloped, as are his characters. Indeed, he suffers from the classic characterization flaw of telling rather than showing (we basically have to take the narrator's word for it that Calandria May is unhappy with life, for example). Nevertheless, Ventus is overall a success. Schroeder keeps the plot moving and deftly handles the large cast of characters. The real centerpiece here is the planet, Ventus, and as we slowly learn more about its history and purpose, it becomes the most interesting character in the book. Although Schroeder doesn't develop them as far as he might, his ideas concerning the uses of nanotechnology, the nature of humanity and sentience, and far-future lifestyles and ethics are original and thought-provoking. Ventus is good SF.

Ventus could be heaven--every drop of water, grain of sand, flake of snow is created and shaped by the nanotechnology that has teraformed the planet and made it earthlike. Yet the self-replicating and fractally self-aware nanos that make up this world view humans with suspicion and bare tolerance. They may have been created to serve humans, but they have left this behind them.

Into this world comes Armiger, once a part of a God (a self-programmed artificial intelligence with superhuman powers and knowledge). If he can subvert the nanotechnology to his own ends, Ventus can become a power base stronger than anything known in the Universe.

Against Armiger stand a pair of off-planet near-humans who defeated the God he served before, and Jordon Mason, a local implanted with a portion of Armiger now turned to be a tool against him. All of their off-world powers offer little help, though, in a world where anything external is treated as a disease and eliminated.

Karl Schroeder makes this intriguing concept a powerful reality. Both characters and philosophical arguments are fully developed and convincing. The growth of Jordon, as he discovers that easy answers don't answer, the humanization of Armiger against his will, and the parallel changes in Calandria May (the off-worlder who seeks Armiger's destruction) are all sympathetic and believable.

Ventus is the best SF novel I've read this year.

A few years ago, back around 1999, I was throwing together ideas for a novel. It was going to be a fantasy that wasn't a fantasy, a hard sci-fi novel about agents of a transhuman "god" trying to bring down another such entity on a backwards planet impregnated with nanotechnology that seemed like magic to it's primitive inhabitants.

Karl Schroeder beat me to it.

This book is, to say the least, fantastic. Schroeder blends Vinge-esque transhuman themes and nanotechological "fantasy realism" with a coming-of-age quest reminiscient of Robert Jordan's "Eye of the World". (I have a suspicion that it's more than just coincidence that the main character's name is Jordan) Thrown into the plot are interesting characters- transhuman assassins, a cyborg demigod, noblemen and royalty who can communicate telepathically with nanotech devices, a sentient starship, a cosmopolitan anthropologist, and more, thrown together in a mission that could decide the fate of the galaxy. Schroeder's intense, fast pace writing style echoes the best cyberpunk, while never succumbing to that genre's attitude. Best of all, the last section of the book explores an interesting philosophical discussion of the relationship between man, science, and nature, one that will hopefully provoke dialogue between environmentalists and transhumanists alike.

All in all, a fantastic book, and a worthwhile read for science fiction and fantasy fans alike.

Two things I'd add to the customer reviews already posted:

Although it's an epic, it's told on a human scale. Little of the narration is from a god's-eye point of view; it's mostly from the point of view of people on foot or horseback, tired, cold, hungry, lonely and lost. Schroeder made me feel, hear and smell the planet Ventus.

Also, there are deft "culture shock" touches which I enjoyed, like a nobleman laughing at (under-cover) off-worlder Axel's idiom, "I'm all ears."

In 'Ventus' Karl Schroeder creates a science fiction premise that is well established - a fallen colony, with technology equivalent to the middle ages. A high tech McGavin from a defeated enemy, and undercover heroes going after it. Add to this a coming-of-age story and a whole group of opposing factions (in the climax, there are three AI groups and 5 human groups alternatively cooperating and struggling), and you've got all the elements for a good planet based Space Opera.

But Although 'Ventus' is not a classic like Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos and the 'Deepness' books by Vernor Vinge (an obvious inspiration for Schroeder - and why not learn from the best?) it manages to be more than just another good SF tale.

One element that works well is the focus on nano-technology. Yeah, Nano is the early 21st century equivalent to Atomic power in the 1940s - it's the technology everyone in the present (and thus also in the future) is obsessed with. And yet Schroeder manages to do some very interesting things with Nano, including the cool idea of 'Winds' working together to terraform a planet, and some interesting musings about how nano may be used to resurrect the Platonian notion of 'the essence' of things.

Also good are the characters, particularly Generals Armigar and Levin. The former, a god learning to be human, is portrayed realistically, and the predictable love interest is nonetheless effective. Some spooky scenes in which he eats wood and stones are cool, too.

Levin, conflicted between love and duty, is also a very sympathetic and tragic character, and his scenes are the most effective in the novel.

Although the pace is a little slow, the writing is effective and sometimes inspired, and Ventus is an enjoyable novel of action and ideas.

The "lost colony" story, in which a otherworldly settlement forgets its roots and becomes a sort of ersatz fantasy setting, is an old one.

_Ventus_ is a fun, thoughtful, adventuresome update of this tradition. The aristocracy of Ventus's vaguely medieval civilization are those who are able to influence the Winds, machine intelligences responsible for maintaining the world's delicately balanced ecosphere. A bit of magic is provided in the form of nanotech devices woven into the flora, fauna, and landscape.

As long as the book is, I wish a bit more time was spent looking at the society from the point of view of the inhabitants. As it happens, our viewpoint native, Jason, soon finds himself drafted by off-world mercenaries who have come to Ventus to hunt down the last remnants of a menacing superbeing. We get brief and tantalizing glimpses of a interstellar civilization, perhaps influenced by Vernor Vinge's space opera but unique enough to be interesting.

Despite these nits, I highly recommend this one, and look forward to more by Schroeder.

A good story in which all the many dangling threads are resolved, but without seeming overly tidy about it. As others have pointed out, Vernor Vinge is probably the best point of comparative reference here: the numerous, complex characters (including women); the multiple, intersecting plotlines; and most of all, the contrast between a low-tech, quasi-medieval society and an advanced, space-faring culture. I could have used a bit more of the latter, especially further elaboration of the rogue AI backstory, which was intriguing. (I understand that he picks up some of that thread in his later novel Lady of Mazes.) I definitely can recommend this one, though, and I certainly think Schroeder is a talent worth watching.

This is a science fiction novel even though it starts out sounding like a feudal fantasy. Stay with it and the plot runs the gamut of big idea SF. The majority of my SF book discussion group enjoyed this book. As a computer professional, some of the ideas appealed to me because of their basis in nacient current computer technology.

(...)I thought it was an intriguing book, one that starts out deceptively akin to a standard fantasy, but which quickly transforms into something much more interesting.

With an engaging set of characters who undergo substantial shifts in circumstance and morality throughout the book (a rare phenomenon in standard fantasy, and welcome here), a good, swift pace and a really interesting piece of world building, Ventus is a piece of science-fantasy that is a credit to both genres.