Novedad. The Will to Battle, de Ada Palmer

Hoy se pone a la venta The Will to Battle, tercera entrega de la serie Terra Incognita de Ada Palmer. Podéis leer aquí mi reseña de esta estupenda novela. 

Esta es la sinopsis del libro:

The long years of near-utopia have come to an abrupt end.

Peace and order are now figments of the past. Corruption, deception, and insurgency hum within the once steadfast leadership of the Hives, nations without fixed location. 

The heartbreaking truth is that for decades, even centuries, the leaders of the great Hives 

bought the world’s stability with a trickle of secret murders, mathematically planned. So 

that no faction could ever dominate. So that the balance held. 

The Hives’ façade of solidity is the only hope they have for maintaining a semblance of 

order, for preventing the public from succumbing to the savagery and bloodlust of wars 

past. But as the great secret becomes more and more widely known, that façade is 

slipping away. 

Just days earlier, the world was a pinnacle of human civilization. Now everyone—Hives 

and hiveless, Utopians and sensayers, emperors and the downtrodden, warriors and 

saints—scrambles to prepare for the seemingly inevitable war.

Reseña: The Will to Battle, de Ada Palmer

Banda sonora de la reseña: Sugiero leer esta reseña escuchando Prepare for War, compuesta por Justin R. Durban (Spotify)

Decir que esperaba The Will to Battle, la tercera entrega de la serie Terra Incognita de Ada Palmer, con muchísimas ganas sería quedarse muy corto. A pesar de que se han publicado en los dos últimos años, Too Like the Lightning y Seven Surrenders se encuentran ya entre mis cinco libros favoritos de todos los tiempos y, de hecho, han hecho que me replantee el criterio por el que juzgo las novelas de ciencia ficción hasta el punto de que creo que no he dado cinco estrellas a ningún otro libro del género desde que los leí. El listón estaba muy alto, como podéis imaginar, pero me alegra decir que este nuevo libro ha cumplido con casi todas mis expectativas.

The Will to Battle comienza justo después de los sucesos descritos en Seven Surrenders e inmediatamente se reconoce la característica voz de Mycroft Canner, que es de nuevo el narrador (no confiable) de la historia. Como ya es habitual en la serie, el lector se ve inmerso en un fascinante universo de Hives, sensayers y bash' houses, esta vez con una creciente tensión política que hace que el mundo esté al borde de un conflicto bélico. Pero no os asustéis si no recordáis todos los detalles, personajes y bandos de los anteriores libros. De hecho, mi memoria es horrible, pero, como ya hizo en Seven Surrenders, Palmer destaca por hacer que el lector rememore cada hecho y cada protagonista con increíble facilidad y sin necesidad de recurrir a flashbacks o largos infodumps.

Probablemente lo que más me gusta de The Will to Battle es que llegamos a conocer con mucha mayor profundidad el funcionamiento interno de los aspectos políticos del mundo imaginado por Palmer. Aprendemos mucho más sobre cosas que sólo habíamos visto mencionadas (las revueltas de los set-set o la diferencia entre Blacklaws, Greylaws y Whitelaws, por ejemplo) e incluso presenciamos un juicio, una reunión del Senado y hasta los Juegos Olímpicos. Realmente ha sido un placer descubrir que la autora tenía planeado con increíble cuidado cada pequeño aspecto y que pequeños detalles que parecían arbitrarios son, en realidad, de crucial importancia.

The Will to Battle es un libro que resulta incluso más político que Too Like the Lightning y Seven Surrenders. Si en las entregas anteriores el foco se situaba en examinar las diferentes maniobras usadas para obtener y mantener el poder, en esta novela Palmer explora los mismísimos fundamentos de la sociedad y la ley, llevando al lector por un tour filosófico con paradas en las teorías de Hobbes y hasta en los orígenes de las culturas griega y romana. Además de eso, como el título del libro sugiere, la guerra es uno de los temas principales de la novela, y somos testigos de cómo los diferentes Hives se esfuerzan por mantener la paz al mismo tiempo que se preparan por si se llega a la batalla. Todo esto da lugar a una trama intrincada y compleja, en la que hay espacio para la logística de los preparativos para la guerra, la política de la elaboración de las leyes y hasta una investigación policíaca.

La prosa de Palmer es tan maravillosa como siempre. Requiere cierto esfuerzo por parte del lector, como ya sabréis si habéis leído las novelas previas, pero es diferente (en el buen sentido) de la de cualquier autor que me haya encontrado y el tono es simplemente perfecto. Esta vez, la autora introduce nuevos trucos para hacer la lectura incluso más original y satisfactoria. El libro es extremadamente metaficcional, ya que se nos cuenta que está siendo escrito mientras Too Like the Lightning se publica en el mundo de la novela, y hay muchos nuevos personajes que interrumpen la narración de Mycrof Canner para clarificar, corregir o, directamente, discutir con él. Además, en los primeros capítulos hay ciertos cambios repentinos de escena que están magistralmente realizados. Creo que ya lo he dicho muchas veces, pero dejadme repetir que me parece increíble que esta serie sea el debut de Palmer, porque es uno de los escritores más consumados que he tenido el placer de leer.

Otro aspecto muy positivo de The Will to Battle es el papel central de uno de los personajes más fascinantes de la saga: J.E.D.D. Mason. Tras las revelaciones de Seven Surrenders, no es sorprendente que todo el mundo se polarice en torno a su figura y que el destino del mundo dependa en gran medida de sus decisiones. De hecho, buena parte de la novela está dedicada a explorar sus motivaciones y su personalidad, algo que es realmente maravilloso. El único aspecto negativo es que el resto de los personajes, incluyendo algunos de mis favoritos, tienen menos cuota de pantalla de la que merecerían. Donde Too Like the Lightning y Seven Surrenders eran novelas claramente corales, The Will to Battle se centra más en un grupo reducido de personajes, probablemente una de las pocas cosas en las que esta novela es algo inferior a las anteriores.

Otro pequeño problema es que el comienzo del libro es un tanto lento y el ritmo algo irregular. Palmer se toma su tiempo para colocar todas las piezas en el tablero, pero tras el primer tercio de la novela, la acción comienza a despegar y el tiempo invertido en los preliminares empieza a rendir dividendos. Hay algunas sorpresas y varios giros inesperados y, lo que es más importante, todo queda preparado para un cuarto y último volumen que se antoja increíblemente interesante.

En resumen, The Will to Battle es uno de mis libros favoritos de este año, como esperaba, y sólo está un peldaño por debajo de la casi perfecta Seven Surrenders. Esta serie es una de las mejores cosas que le han pasado a la ciencia ficción en el siglo XXI y apenas puedo esperar para ver a dónde nos lleva Ada Palmer con Perhaps the Stars. 

(You can also read this review in English at SFFWorld/También puedes leer esta reseña en inglés en SFFWorld)

Interview with Ada Palmer

Today I have the pleasure of teaming up with Leticia Lara, from Fantástica Ficción, to interview Ada Palmer, the author of two of the most fascinating novels I've read in a long while: Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders. Hope you enjoy the interview and remember that you can read the translation into Spanish at Leticia's blog!

Leticia Lara & Odo: When did you know you wanted to become a writer?

Ada Palmer: I wanted to write fantasy & science fiction novels ever since I was a tiny child.  All through school I worked on extra writing projects in my free time, and did writing courses over the summers whenever I could.  Writing is a skill which comes very slowly, only with practice—some skills like music and mathematics have prodigies, but others genuinely only come with years and years of practice, and I think writing is one of them.  Every word I wrote, whether essays for class, drafts of early stories that will never be published, poems for a poetry course, even e-mails if you work on crafting them well, everyone of them is a tiny step forward for a writer.

LL&O: Which authors have influenced you the most?

AP: My father has a big library of classic SF, so I grew up reading Alfred Bester, Heinlein, Asimov, William Tenn, and especially Gene Wolfe and Samuel R. Delany.  Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun became my model for how dense and real world building could feel, and how complex and intense a first person narrator could be. But I also read a lot of historical literature, so many influences on Terra Ignota come from outside F&SF: 18^th century literature like Voltaire and especially Diderot’s Jacques le Fatalist et son Maitre, and also Robert Graves’ I Claudius was a strong source, both for the narrative perspective and the way of looking at politics through family and dynastic relationships.

LL&O: Is there any current writer that you admire?

AP: Many, yes!  The two who still make me speechless with awe when they walk into a room are Gene Wolfe and Samuel R. Delany.  There are also authors I really admire for how they’ve both produced brilliant work but also used it to address important issues in the world and make real change, people like Ken Liu, Cory Doctorow, and Daniel José Older.  One of the great pleasures of beginning to publish has been getting to know so many great writers as friends, people like Jo Walton, Pamela Dean, and Susan Palwick.  And there are fantastic newer writers that I’m honored to be writing alongside, people like Malka Older, Ruthanna Emrys, Yoon Ha Lee, Charlie Jane Anders, and Max Gladstone.  I especially admire masters of short-form fiction, since I’ve always struggled with shorter form and find it immensely powerful.  Some of the most exciting to me are Ted Chang, John Chu, E Lily Yu, and Alyssa Wong, but there’s so much great short F&SF being written and published now, it feels like living in a fiction treasure trove.

LL&O: Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders have been published as two books but they feel like just one novel. Could you tell us a little bit about their writing and publication process?

AP: Guilty as charged.  I planned the series as two long books, and wrote what are now Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders as one book, but Tor decided to divide it up into four.  For the third and fourth books it works well, since I wrote them knowing they’d divide like that, but the first two were written as one thing, and had to be cut in half after the fact.  I did my best to make the first book give as much resolution as I could, showing the reader shape of what is going on, and bringing lots of threads together, but it was challenging rewriting it to end when so many themes and elements were mid-stream.  I think I did a pretty good job, but I do feel it’s imperfect, and that it’s best to read the first two books close together.  Books two and three both have fine endings to stop on, though.

LL&O: Both Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders are profoundly philosophical (and political) books. Do you think that science fiction is especially suitable for exploring this kind of topics?

AP: Yes, very much so.  Science fiction lets us explore other ways human societies could be set up, alternate kinds of politics and crisis, and it lets us preview kinds of moral dilemmas and moral decisions that advancing technology will cause before we actually get there.

LL&O: One of the questions you pose in Seven Surrenders is whether the end justifies the means. What do you think of mental experiments such as the “trolley problem” in which you have to decide if you “kill” one person to save five? Do you think that these philosophical issues will become more important in the future, for instance with the development of self-driving cars and all that?

AP: The trolly problem is delightful for debate, but happily the real world (and realistic fiction worlds) don’t correspond to it because we have the ability to change the situation over time, to gradually develop better trollies and safer walkways to prevent something like that from happening.  We have the ability to reject the terms of the process in the first place.  For example, one of the steps of the trolly problem is whether you would kill a person to harvest organs you could use to save the lives of five people—the real-world answer is that we are working together to develop artificial organs so everyone can live.  I’ve been following this with self-driving cars, and those who’ve been designing them expected to face the trolly problem, but have discovered that in actuality their simulations can’t design any realistic situations where endangering the driver is the only way to save others; in reality there are always multiple possible actions some of which are good for the driver too, and things which endanger the driver tend to be the same ones which endanger passers-by.  So in many ways the aspect of the trolly problem that the books look at—and which I think is more relevant to real life—is the question of whether or not you accept the status quo.  If trollies are killing a small number of people, does the society leave them that way considering these deaths and acceptable loss for the greater good, or does the society reject the terms of the trolly problem and dedicate itself to solving this so no one has to die?  The Utopians, for example, are dedicated to “disarming death” and whenever anything kills one of their members they put it on a list and keep working on improving the situation until it can’t recur—even if this requires large sacrifices, like using their own flying car network which is slower and thus is a bit of a drain on their economy compared to using the faster ones.  In many ways it’s a question about complacency, and about responsibility—whether society is content to continue sacrificing a few lives in order to enjoy peace and plenty, or whether the society refuses to accept that and continues to work to reduce the body count, even if it means the majority giving up a life of ease for a life of working harder.  To use a real world political example, a few years ago they did a poll in Canada asking if Canadian citizens would be willing to pay higher taxes to give people in the USA better healthcare, saving and improving lives (not Canadian lives, people in the USA).  The Canadians strongly answered “Yes.”  That is a society which rejects the terms of the trolly problem, preferring to work harder to help everyone instead of settling for “acceptable loss.”  The characters in Terra Ignota face a similar question, though with much higher stakes.

LL&O: Another philosophical issue at the root of your novels is what the natural state of people is. Do you think that we are born as “noble savages” or do you agree with Hobbes on this one?

AP: While I’m glad sciences is helping us learn more and more about what part nature plays in human character, studying history makes it very, very clear to me how completely different people are when raised in different ways and different societies.  Children’s brains are incredibly good at learning, absorbing, analyzing patterns, and repeating them, and children raised in different ways can have profoundly different values, world views, and fundamental human capacities.  A few of the characters involved in events in the book believe that humans are naturally bellicose and that violence will inevitably recur no matter what, but most of them don’t—most believe instead (much as I do) that humankind certainly has the capacity to achieve permanent peace, but that doing so will require a lot of cultural, political, and educational development.  That it’s not something we can achieve in a few decades—culture is too complicated, and we are too complicated.  But, just like with curing diseases, if we work at it, study ourselves, learn more, we can take steps toward it over time.  Humanity spent many centuries trying to develop medicines before we finally developed really effective ones like penicillin, but that doesn’t mean that we cured all diseases within a few decades of developing penicillin, nor does it mean that all the early doctors whose efforts didn’t bear fruit didn’t contribute anything.  Just so, some characters in Terra Ignota believe that, while humanity in their 25^th century has gotten very good at peace, we aren’t yet so good at it new outbreaks of violence aren’t possible—rather, like doctors armed with penicillin, they’re better at peace than any earlier age, but still have a lot more to learn.

LL&O: The world we see in Terra Ignota is, to paraphrase Le Guin, an ambiguous utopia. Do you think an actual, stable utopia is really attainable?  Or are social and political constructs always flawed in some way?

AP: Stable definitely not—we keep inventing, discovering, and expanding too much too fast.  Even if we somehow completely mastered all of science (which will take many centuries if it’ seven possible) we’d keep innovating in the realms of art and literature, which in turn stimulate social change.  But I do think society sometimes achieves improvements which would feel impossibly amazingly utopian if we showed them to earlier generations, though often at the same time generating accidental bad side-effects which we then need to remedy, and making other changes people from the past would find dystopian and frightening.  Let’s imagine showing 2017 to someone from 1767.  Our medical advances, our globe-crossing airplanes, our flawless industrial fabrics, our automated washing machines, our 80 year average life span, our greenhouses supplying fresh fruit in the dead of winter—all these would feel absolutely utopian.  Other changes, such as the fall of so many eternal-seeming empires, the transformed roles of women, new weapons, new diseases—these would seem alarming, uncomfortable, frightening, like something has gone wrong.  And certain continuities, such as the continuation of religious violence, famine, controversies over the use of torture, these would seem depressingly familiar.  I set out to create a 2454 which would feel like that: utopian in many ways, disorienting and uncomfortable in others, depressingly similar in others.  Because I think that’s very plausibly the kind of future we are going to make.  I don’t think the flaws and merits of the real 25^th century will be the same ones in my imagined 25^th century, but I do think there will be flaws as well as merits, much as I set out to depict.  Because when we talk about making a better future, we also have to accept that it won’t be in our control precisely what develops in that future, and while it will contain many things we wish for, it will contain a few we don’t.  And it will also keep changing.  Because it’s not a stable utopia—its a dynamic, changing, growing world.  The question is not “Is a perfect society possible?” it’s “When a pretty good society is confronted with its deep and toxic flaws, will it succeed in changing for the better?”

LL&O: The society of Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders has, apparently, given up discrimination for reasons of gender, sexual orientation, religion or political affiliation. However, sex, faith, and power are still strong driving forces. Do you think this kind of “urges” are at the root of all human behavior?

AP: Not unchangingly or permanently so.  Societies, people, brains, are all very complex, and right now complicated cultural attitudes toward gender, sex, race and religion are woven all through our society and passed on to our children in a thousand unconscious ways from early childhood.  These aren’t unchangeable or inherent parts of human nature, but they are facts of our current culture, ones we are still learning to understand and affect.  Thus I think that, while we’re making huge changes in them even now, realistically they’re going to continue to be parts of our society in ever-changing ways for several centuries to come, because they are so complicated it will take us that long to fully understand and change them.  The future of Terra Ignota looks at the question of whether progress on these axes might take a long time, and what might make it more or less successful over the next centuries.  For example, you will notice that, in the Terra Ignota universe, social progress on some of these axes has progressed a lot more than others.  Race relations between people of European and African descent, for example, are in great shape, while race relations between people of Europe and East Asian descent are tenser.  We see no evidence of any discrimination related to sexual orientation, but we do see (especially from the narrator) a lot of tension about gender.  And as we learn more about the society, we also encounter a pattern: the elements which have progressed less are the ones where the conversation has been partly or completely silenced.  For example, there’s a severe taboo on even mentioning gender, so gender tensions are not progressing much because without discourse, study, without talking about things, exploring, innovating, progress has stagnated.  But there’s no taboo on talking about sex or who’s having sex with whom, so there things have advanced.  One of my hopes is that people will come away from these books thinking about how destructive silence can be, how invaluable discourse is to progress.  Because sometimes you hear people say things like “Feminism has done what it set out to do, women have equal rights, we don’t need all this gender stuff anymore.”  Trying to shut the conversation down.  Whereas in fact we’re still in the infant days of truly liberating humanity from old rigid forms of gender, gender binaries, and gender inequality, so shutting down the conversation could lock us into a bad outcome, like Terra Ignota where very little progress has been made on gender in four centuries—four centuries of silence.

Seven Surrenders, de Ada Palmer

Tengo el placer de publicar esta reseña de forma simultánea con Leticia Lara, de Fantástica Ficción. ¡Espero que os guste!

Banda sonora de la reseña: Sugiero escuchar esta reseña escuchando Nulla in Mundo Pax Sincera, de Antonio Vivaldi (Spotify, YouTube).

Too Like the Lightning, de Ada Palmer, fue una de las novelas que más me sorprendió el año pasado. Un libro en el que no he dejado de pensar desde que lo leí y del que esperaba con ansiedad su continuación. ¿Podría Palmer mantener el increíble nivel demostrado en su primera novela? Pues me atrevo a decir que no solo lo ha mantenido, sino que incluso lo ha superado con Seven Surrenders, una novela absolutamente espectacular que ha entrado directamente a la lista de mis favoritas de todos los tiempos. 

En esta segunda parte, Palmer retoma la narración justo después de lo sucedido en Too Like the Lightning (en realidad, más que dos libros en sí mismos, habría que considerarlos como una única obra dividida en dos), pero ahora que ha colocado las piezas en el tablero, comienza a desvelar muchísimos secretos y a hacer avanzar la trama a ritmo acelerado. Ese es, claramente, uno de los puntos en los que Seven Surrenders es superior a Too Like the Lightning: en esta nueva novela suceden muchas más cosas, de mayor trascendencia y con un objetivo mucho más claro y centrado. 

Otro de los puntos en los que Seven Surrenders supera a su predecesora es en el desarrollo de los personajes. En Too Like the Lightning se nos presentan tantos elementos y protagonistas que apenas hay tiempo para profundizar en ellos. Pero en este nuevo libro, Palmer dedica prácticamente un capítulo a cada uno de los actores principales, de modo que, sin dejar de hacer avanzar la trama y sorprendernos con nuevos giros de guión, nos hace conocer la personalidad y motivaciones de cada uno de ellos de modo casi perfecto. 

Una de las cosas más destacables de la novela es que la autora consigue todo esto a través de escenas que son, salvo contadas excepciones, diálogos entre varios personajes (en algunos casos, casi podríamos decir que son diálogos socráticos) en localizaciones cerradas y con una cantidad de acción real muy reducida. En realidad, es fácil imaginarse una adaptación de ambos libros al teatro y, de hecho, en algunas ocasiones la narración se transforma momentáneamente en una suerte de obra teatral y se reduce a la transcripción de las conversaciones entre los protagonistas. Lograr transmitir, con estas herramientas, la sensación de un mundo completo, dinámico y en movimiento, de una trama que se desarrolla globalmente y que alcanza mucho más allá de lo que presenciamos directamente está al alcance de muy pocos y solo puede quitarme el sombrero ante lo conseguido por Ada Palmer. Es francamente impresionante. 

Si Too Like the Lightning era una obra en la que destacaba especialmente lo político, en Seven Surrenders cobran importancia muchos otros elementos y se convierte en una novela mucho más filosófica. Lo que ya se intuía en el primer libro se pone de manifiesto claramente ahora: bajo la fachada de una utopía cuasi-perfecta, la naturaleza humana sigue siendo prácticamente la misma y, aunque reprimidas y ocultas, muchas de las motivaciones siguen basándose en el sexo, en el ansia de poder, en la violencia. 

En ese sentido, Palmer no tiene reparos en plantear dilemas morales de difícil solución y poner a sus personajes en situaciones en las que deben decidir si el fin justifica los medios, incluso cuando estos pasan por el asesinato premeditado y a sangre fría. Además, Seven Surrenders aborda también temas metafísicos y teológicos de una forma increíblemente original y absolutamente fascinante. La dicotomía entre J.E.D.D. Mason y Bridger (y las consecuencias que esta tiene a nivel universal) es uno de los puntos más interesantes del libro y, lo que es aún mejor, promete grandes cosas para las restantes entregas de la saga. 

Quiero dedicar también algunas palabras a la estupenda narración de T. Ryder Smith para la versión en audiolibro de Seven Surrenders. Reconozco que tenía un poco de miedo de abordar la "lectura" de la novela en este formato, porque Too Like the Lightning no es precisamente un libro sencillo y es verdad que en muchas ocasiones (más que en ningún otra novela que haya escuchado) he tenido que rebobinar y volver a escuchar algunas partes. Pero eso se debe más a la dificultad intrínseca del libro que a la labor de Smith, que es pura y llanamente extraordinaria. Me atrevería a decir que Smith no lee el libro, sino que lo actúa, consiguiendo que se distinga perfectamente cada personaje por su forma de hablar (y eso que hay un buen número de ellos).

He llegado al final de esta reseña consiguiendo algo que creía imposible al comienzo de la misma: no emplear ni una vez los calificativos "obra maestra" y "tour de force", pese a que Seven Surrenders claramente los merece. De hecho, no solo es que recomiende la lectura de Too Like the Lightning y Seven Surrenders (que, como decía arriba, solo se pueden entender como una obra conjunta), sino que estoy convencido de que están llamados a ser libros fundamentales en la ciencia ficción del siglo XXI. No hago más que contar los días para poder leer The Will to Battle que, afortunadamente, nos llegará este mismo año.      

Novedad: Seven Surrenders, de Ada Palmer

Hoy se pone a la venta Seven Surrenders, la esperada continuación de la maravillosa Too Like the Lightning, de Ada Palmer. Esta es su sinopsis:

In a future of near-instantaneous global travel, of abundant provision for the needs of all, a future in which no one living can remember an actual war…a long era of stability threatens to come to an abrupt end. 

For known only to a few, the leaders of the great Hives, nations without fixed location, have long conspired to keep the world stable, at the cost of just a little blood. A few secret murders, mathematically planned. So that no faction can ever dominate, and the balance holds. And yet the balance is beginning to give way. 

Mycroft Canner, convict, sentenced to wander the globe in service to all, knows more about this conspiracy the than he can ever admit. Carlyle Foster, counselor, sensayer, has secrets as well, and they burden Carlyle beyond description. And both Mycroft and Carlyle are privy to the greatest secret of all: Bridger, the child who can bring inanimate objects to life. 

Shot through with astonishing invention, Ada Palmer's Seven Surrenders is the next movement in one of the great SF epics of our time.

Too Like the Lightning, de Ada Palmer

Banda sonora de la reseña: Sugiero leer esta reseña escuchando Eternal Source of Light Divine, compuesta por George Frideric Handel (Spotify, YouTube).

Too Like the Lightning, de Ada Palmer, es una novela increíble. Es inteligente, extraña y totalmente hipnótica. Pero, sobre todo, es única y completamente diferente de cualquier cosa que me haya encontrado anteriormente. Al reseñar, siempre intento comparar los libros con otros que he leído en el pasado, al menos para proporcionar una indicación somera de qué se puede uno esperar, pero en este caso es casi imposible. La mejor descripción a la que he llegado es "una mezcla de una historia en clave de ciencia ficción de la filosofía del siglo XVIII y un remake de Rocky Horror Picture Show escrito por Adam Roberts en colaboración con Cordwainer Smith", pero no eso no se cubre ni una parte de lo que podéis encontrar en este libro. 

La primera cosa que llama la atención de Too Like the Lightning es su particular estilo. La novela es un informe ficticio de los sucesos que, en tan sólo siete días, condujeron (¿conducirán?) a dramáticos cambios sociales en el año 2454, relatado por un narrador posiblemente no confiable y contado para personas de un futuro aún más lejano, pero escrito como si fuera la época de la Ilustración. Por tanto, nos encontramos separados no una ni dos sino hasta tres veces del contexto del libro: en el tiempo, en el lenguaje y en el conocimiento de algunos hechos fundamentales. Es difícil provocar más extrañamiento cognitivo, por emplear la terminología de Darko Suvin, con sólo unas pocas páginas. Y, lo que es aún más importante, Palmer hace que funcione de maravilla, sin dejar ni un solo detalle al azar.

El worldbuilding también es excelente. En el siglo XXV ya no hay naciones sino Hives, ya no hay familias sino bash'houses, el género ya no se define (únicamente) por los genitales con los que naces y la democracia ha evolucionado a nuevas y extrañas formas. No explicaré mucho de estos cambios, ya que uno de los placeres de leer Too Like the Lightning es, precisamente, ir descubriendo por uno mismo cómo encajan todas las piezas, pero permitidme al menos que cite un pequeño párrafo para que se aprecie qué tipo de cosas se pueden encontrar en la novela:

“Separately, as the King of Spain, and with no directive from the European Union, I wish to express my personal support for Chairman Carlyle and his ideal that citizenship should be voluntary, not forced. To that end, I hereby call on all Spanish citizens—no, on all people who consider Spanish identity an important part of who they are, to show their support for that ideal by renouncing their citizenship, becoming floating citizens of the EU for twenty-four hours, and then reapplying to become Spanish citizens again, this time by choice. What we choose means more than what is handed to us by chance. I will count every citizen who leaves and rejoins my country a more loyal Spaniard, a more sincere Spaniard, a truer Spaniard, than before, and I will stand proud as the king of a people brave enough to leave our fatherland to show support for those endangered by this war, but loyal enough to return again.”

Palmer introduce sólo unos pocos elementos tecnológicos: coches volantes, trackers (un dispositivo de comunicación portátil) y set-sets (computadores humanos), principalmente. Pero son más que suficientes para proporcionar la base para una sociedad en la que muchas de las ideas de la Ilustración pueden ser llevadas a la práctica. Too Like the Lightning no trata sobre ciencia (aunque la ciencia es una parte importante de su mundo) sino sobre la filosofía y las teorías sociales de Voltaire, Diderot, Carlyle e incluso De Sade. Todas ellas cobran vida en una forma que es a la vez creíble y sorprendente, transformando casi cada aspecto de la vida tal como la conocemos. El lenguaje, por ejemplo, es un elemento central a lo largo de todo el libro y ha evolucionado de una manera muy orgánica:

I wonder, reader, which folk etymology you believe. Is ‘sensayer’ a perversion of the nonexistent Latin verb senseo? Of ‘soothsayer,’ with ‘sooth’ turned into ‘sense’? Of sensei, the honorific Japan grants to teachers, doctors, and the wise? I have researched the question myself, but founder Mertice McKay left posterity no notes when she created the term—she had no time to, working in the rush of the 2140s, as society’s wrath swept through after the Church War, banning religious houses, meetings, proselytizing, and, in her eyes, threatening to abolish even the word God. The laws are real still, reader. Just as three unrelated women living in the same house was once, in some places, legally a brothel, three people in a room talking about religion was then, as now, a “Church meeting,” and subject to harsh penalties, not in the laws of one or two Hives but even in the codes of Romanova. What terrible silence McKay foresaw: a man afraid to ask his lover whether he too hoped for a hereafter, parents afraid to answer when their children asked, “Who made the world?” With what desperation McKay screamed to those with the power to stop it, “Humanity cannot live without these questions! Let us create a new creature! Not a preacher, but a teacher, who hears a parishioner’s questions and presents the answers of all the faiths and sects of history, Christians and pagans, Muslims and atheists, all equal. With this new creature as his guide, let each man pick through the fruits of all theologies and anti-theologies, and make from them his own system, to test, improve, and lean on all the years of his long life. If early opponents of the Christian Reformation feared that Protestants would invent as many Christianities as there were Christians, let this new creature help us create as many religions as there are human beings!” So she cried. You will forgive her, reader, if, in her fervor, she did not pause to diagram the derivation of this new creature’s name.

En la novela aparecen muchos personajes intrigantes, muchos de ellos más grandes que la vida (Thomas Carlyle sin duda lo aprobaría): Bridger, J.E.D.D. Mason, Sniper, Dominic Seneschal... Y, por supuesto, Mycroft Canner, nuestro humilde narrador, que es uno de los personajes más misteriosos que me he encontrado nunca. Mycroft, encantador y repulsivo al mismo tiempo, inteligente y astuto, santo y pecador. Su voz es, sin duda, una las cualidades más destacables de la novela y la decisión de Palmer de convertirlo en el narrador de la historia es un acierto pleno.

Pero el mayor éxito de Too Like the Lightning es la forma en Palmer guía al lector, pasito a pasito, desde la completa confusión inicial hasta un entendimiento de hasta las más sutiles consecuencias de la cultura y la organización social del mundo de la novela. Se trata de una utopía, pero como en Los desposeídos de Ursula K. Le Guin, es una utopía muy ambigua, en la que aquellas cosas que parecen haber sido superadas (nacionalidad, género, religión, crimen, guerra...) son todavía muy importantes y se han convertido, en muchos casos, en tabúes. Esto se hace especialmente notorio en el momento en que se revela el verdadero nombre de cierto personaje y el lector se ve tan sorprendido por las implicaciones como los propios protagonistas. Admiro profundamente el maravilloso trabajo de la autora, que consigue sumergir completamente al lector en el mundo de la novela. Simplemente impresionante.

Too Like the Lightning es un libro que me ha enamorado desde la primera página. Me ha hecho pensar, me ha sorprendido, me ha explotado la cabeza. Ciertamente, es una novela compleja y con muchas capas y estoy seguro de que no será del gusto de todos los paladares, pero creo que todo fan de la ciencia ficción debería darle una oportunidad, porque también es extremadamente gratificante. Yo, personalmente, quiero más libros como éste. No, tachad eso: necesito más libros como éste. Seven Surrenders, la segunda parte de la historia, llegará este invierno, pero desearía tenerla ya para poder empezar a leerla ahora mismo.

(You can also read this review in English/También puedes leer esta reseña en inglés)       

Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer

(Disclaimer: English is my second language, so I want to apologize in advance for there may be mistakes in the text below. If you find any, please let me know so that I can correct it. I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.)

Review Soundtrack: I suggest reading this review while listening to Eternal Source of Light Divine, composed by George Frideric Handel (Spotify, YouTube).

Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer, is an incredible novel. It is intelligent, strange and utterly mesmerizing. But, above all, it is unique, completely unlike anything I've found before. When reviewing, I always try to compare new books with others I've read in the past, at least to give a rough indication of what you can expect, but in this case it is almost impossible. The best description I've come up with is that it is 'a mash-up of a science-fictional history of 18th century philosophy and a remake of Rocky Horror Picture Show as written by Adam Roberts and Cordwainer Smith', but that does not even begin to cover it. 

The first first thing that strikes the reader is the particular writing style of Too Like the Lightning. The novel is a fictional report of the events that, in just seven days, led (will lead?) to dramatic social changes in the year 2454, as related by a possibly unreliable narrator to people from an even further future, but written as it were the Age of Enlightenment. Thus, we are not one or two, but three times removed from the context of the book: in time, language and knowledge of some crucial facts. You can hardly provoke more cognitive estrangement, to use Darko Suvin's term, with just a few pages. And, what is even more important, Palmer makes it work like a charm, with no detail left to chance. 

The worldbuilding is also excellent. In the 25th century there no longer nations but Hives, no longer families but bash'houses, gender is no longer defined (only) by the genitalia you are born with and politics and democracy have evolved to new, strange forms. I will not explain any of these changes for one of the pleasures of reading Too Like the Lightning is, precisely, to figure out for oneself how every little piece fits with others, but let me at least quote a paragraph to give you a taste of the society you will find in the novel:

“Separately, as the King of Spain, and with no directive from the European Union, I wish to express my personal support for Chairman Carlyle and his ideal that citizenship should be voluntary, not forced. To that end, I hereby call on all Spanish citizens—no, on all people who consider Spanish identity an important part of who they are, to show their support for that ideal by renouncing their citizenship, becoming floating citizens of the EU for twenty-four hours, and then reapplying to become Spanish citizens again, this time by choice. What we choose means more than what is handed to us by chance. I will count every citizen who leaves and rejoins my country a more loyal Spaniard, a more sincere Spaniard, a truer Spaniard, than before, and I will stand proud as the king of a people brave enough to leave our fatherland to show support for those endangered by this war, but loyal enough to return again.”

Palmer introduces just a few technological elements: the flying cars, the tracker (a wearable communication device) and the set-sets (human computers), mainly. But they are more than sufficient to provide the basis for a society in which many of the ideas of the Enlightenment can be put into practice. Too Like the Lightning is not about the science (although science is an important part of its world) but about the philosophy and social theories of Voltaire, Diderot, Carlyle and even De Sade. They all come to life in a way that is both believable and surprising, transforming almost every aspect of life as we know it. Language, for instance, is a key element throughout all the book and has evolved in an organic fashion:

I wonder, reader, which folk etymology you believe. Is ‘sensayer’ a perversion of the nonexistent Latin verb senseo? Of ‘soothsayer,’ with ‘sooth’ turned into ‘sense’? Of sensei, the honorific Japan grants to teachers, doctors, and the wise? I have researched the question myself, but founder Mertice McKay left posterity no notes when she created the term—she had no time to, working in the rush of the 2140s, as society’s wrath swept through after the Church War, banning religious houses, meetings, proselytizing, and, in her eyes, threatening to abolish even the word God. The laws are real still, reader. Just as three unrelated women living in the same house was once, in some places, legally a brothel, three people in a room talking about religion was then, as now, a “Church meeting,” and subject to harsh penalties, not in the laws of one or two Hives but even in the codes of Romanova. What terrible silence McKay foresaw: a man afraid to ask his lover whether he too hoped for a hereafter, parents afraid to answer when their children asked, “Who made the world?” With what desperation McKay screamed to those with the power to stop it, “Humanity cannot live without these questions! Let us create a new creature! Not a preacher, but a teacher, who hears a parishioner’s questions and presents the answers of all the faiths and sects of history, Christians and pagans, Muslims and atheists, all equal. With this new creature as his guide, let each man pick through the fruits of all theologies and anti-theologies, and make from them his own system, to test, improve, and lean on all the years of his long life. If early opponents of the Christian Reformation feared that Protestants would invent as many Christianities as there were Christians, let this new creature help us create as many religions as there are human beings!” So she cried. You will forgive her, reader, if, in her fervor, she did not pause to diagram the derivation of this new creature’s name.

The novel features many intriguing characters, most of them really larger than life (Thomas Carlyle would certainly approve): Bridger, J.E.D.D. Mason, Sniper, Dominic Seneschal... And, of course, Mycroft Canner, our humble narrator, who is one of the most mysterious characters I've ever encountered. Mycroft, charming and repulsive at the same time, intelligent and cunning, saint and sinner. Their voice is, without a doubt, one of the strongest points of the novel and Palmer's decision of making them the narrator of the story is right on spot.

   

But the biggest success of Too Like the Lightning is the way in which Palmer leads the reader, step by step, from the utter confusion of the beginning to understanding even the most subtle consequences of the culture and social organization of the world of the novel. This is an utopia but, as in Le Guin's The Dispossessed, a very ambiguous one, in which those things that have apparently been superseded (nationality, gender, religion, crime, war...) still are very important and have become, in many cases, taboo. This is especially notorious when the real name of certain character is revealed and the reader is as struck by the implications as the characters of the novel are. I profoundly admire the amazing work that the author has done to so deeply immerse the reader into the universe of the novel. Simply impressive.

Too Like the Lightning is a book that I loved from the very first page. It surprised me, it made think, it blew my mind away. It is certainly a complex and multi-layered novel and I am sure it won't be everybody's cup of tea, but I think that every science fiction fan should at least give it a try, for it is also extremely rewarding. I, for one, want more books like this one. No, scratch that: I need more books like this one. Seven Surrenders, the second part of the story, is coming this winter but I wish I had it now to begin reading it as soon as possible.

(You can also read this review in Spanish/También puedes leer esta reseña en español)       

Novedad: Too Like the Lightning, de Ada Palmer

Hoy se pone a la venta Too Like the Lightning, la novela de debut de Ada Palmer. Ésta es su sinopsis: 

Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer--a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away. 

The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labelling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world's population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competion is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life. 

And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destablize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life...