Review: The Dervish House by Ian McDonald

In recent years Ian McDonald has explored near-future science fiction through the people of emerging economies such as India with River of Gods (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound) and Brazil with Brasyl (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound, my review), both of which received huge critical acclaim and multiple nominations and wins for some of the biggest-name genre awards. In his latest novel, McDonald takes on Turkey with The Dervish House (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound).

Because I haven’t found a way to say it better, from the description on the back:

The Dervish House is seven days, six characters, three interconnected story strands, one central common core – the eponymous dervish house, a character in itself…

In the year 2027, another anonymous suicide bomber on a tram in the middle of an early heat wave sets the stage for The Dervish House. The backdrop is a Turkey that is new to the European Union in a world heating up with climate change where Turkey has emerged as a key broker of energy (gas). This is the clash of Europe and Asia, Religiosity and Secularism, history and future, the haves and have-nots.

I’ll not go as far as to call the dervish house a character in itself, for if it is, it’s an incomplete character. But in The Dervish House, aspects of the geography, socioeconomic, religious and political groups do come alive – perhaps not as full characters, but as not-quite separate personalities within Istanbul – a city suffering and celebrating its multiple personalities.

The Dervish House is at its best when telling the simple stories of its people. Whether it is an old Greek economist, brilliant, yet fallen, who dwells on the past and dabbles in the present, a beautiful gallery owner caught up in the search for a legendary mellified man, an ambitious trader orchestrating an ambitious and illegal get-rich scheme, an isolated disabled boy seeking adventure, a visionary young Islamist, or a country girl struggling to succeed, these are the stories that work – at least when the rest of book isn’t getting in the way.

The plot structure is both a great wonder and terrible weakness for The Dervish House. The reader is fully immersed into the world of the characters – their small, insular worlds. By following the stories of six characters the reader sees more, but not the complete picture – in short, you don’t know what the book is about. At halfway through the book, you still don’t know what it’s about. Sure, you have enough to suspect what it may be about, but you don’t have that single, unifying plot to grasp on to. That lack of a central force holding the book together puts distance between the reader and the story. Yes, some of the individual characters are quite fascinating, but with the time spent divided by six, not enough devotion is built up. The book becomes easy to set aside, hard to describe, and at times, a bit boring and uninteresting.

Unlike with Brasyl, when the plot does reveal itself and the threads converge, it’s an altogether satisfying unification. The end makes sense, it feels good, and presents a very optimistic melding of the conflicts tearing at Turkey from within.

The science fiction focus of The Dervish House is nanotechnology. Nanotechnology has permeated society, though the full implication of it has not. Its uses are seemingly endless and people are just beginning to grasp what this means as they begin to catch up to these possibilities. The singularity hasn’t happened, and isn’t immediately eminent; however the foundations for it are being laid.

I suppose it’s debatable if McDonald is using emerging nations as a way to explore near-future science fiction or if he’s using near-future science fiction to explore emerging nations. I also suppose it doesn’t matter since both are achieved; however, it is clear that these are books aimed at a Western audience as they showcase the people of countries who are likely to play a very big role in the future of the world – a much bigger role than the people of the USA in particular are willing to admit. It’s an exotic and fun way to experience near-future science fiction – I can’t comment on how close McDonald comes to getting it right, though it feels as if he gets at the least rather close.

McDonald’s tried and true strategy of exploring the people of emerging economies in combination with the implications of technology on society in a near-future setting succeeds once again. While I found The Dervish House to be a bit uneven at times, an unevenness that once again holds back what could be a truly great novel, I still expect to see it on the short list for multiple awards. It’s at times powerful, informative, and fun and another example of science fiction alive in our world. 7.5/10

Winner of River of Gods by Ian McDonald

With the help of random.org, I have a winner of the copy of River of Gods by Ian McDonald that I had up for grabs. Congratulations to Chris M. from St. Catharines, Ontario (I prefer not to give out last names due to privacy concerns – i.e. it annoys me a bit when my full name gets out on the internet). Thanks again to the folks over at Pyr for making this happen.

Stay tuned for future giveaways – I’ll be announcing a giveaway of The Metatemporal Detective by Michael Moorcock (my review) a bit closer to its publication next month.

Win a Copy of River of Gods by Ian McDonald

A while ago I wrote this blog post about contests, where I declared Neth Space to contest free…until someone offered me a contest. Well, the good folks over at Pyr are the first to offer a book for a giveaway here (which is appropriate since they were the first publisher to send me review copies). So, now Neth Space can totally blend in with all those other blogs doing giveaways – which of course is great for those of us who like free books.

So, the giveaway is for the Pyr trade paperback version of River of Gods by Ian McDonald. This Hugo-nominated book has received high praise from numerous sources (unfortunately I still haven’t gotten to my copy yet, but I hope to remedy that soon).

As Mother India approaches her centenary, nine people are going about their business — a gangster, a cop, his wife, a politician, a stand-up comic, a set designer, a journalist, a scientist, and a dropout. And so is Aj — the waif, the mind-reader, the prophet — when she one day finds a man who wants to stay hidden.

In the next few weeks, they will all be swept together to decide the fate of the nation.

River of Gods teems with the life of a country choked with peoples and cultures — one and a half billion people, twelve semi-independent nations, nine million gods. Ian McDonald has written the great Indian novel of the new millennium, in which a war is fought, a love betrayed, a message from a different world decoded, as the great river Ganges flows on.

So, the rules are basically the same as you see elsewhere. Send me an email at

nethspace [at] cox [dot] net

You’ll need to appropriately edit the email so I can avoid the spambots, or you can click on the email link in the sidebar which is coded ‘special’ to block the bots. Use RIVER in the subject and include your full name and mailing address (no P.O. boxes please). Only one entry per person. This contest at least is open to all, since I haven’t been told that international entrees are off limits. The contest is open for a couple weeks – I’ll cut off entries on September 24, 2007 and announce the winner shortly thereafter.

Good luck to all.

Brasyl by Ian McDonald

Imagine a trip abroad where they don’t speak your language, the climate and smells are all different, the rapid pace makes you believe everyone must be on methamphetamines, and all the while you see clear yet seemingly out of place influences from the good old USA. You’ve got your guidebook in hand, but for all the help it is once you step out of the airport you should throw it away.

“You like this car? You like it?” She was shrieking like a shoutygirl-presenter. João-Batista looking pityingly at her. On the car cams the boys looked as if a bomb had gone off under their Knight Rider LEDS. Don’t bail, Lady Lady Lady, don’t bail. “It’s yours! It’s your big star prize. It’s all right, you’re on a TV game show!”

McDonald drops us into a Brazil where the reader is the tourist in a foreign land, McDonald the ex-pat guide fully immersed in local culture, and it’s a constant struggle at first to keep track of what’s going on.

Brasyl begins in Rio in the year 2006, following a morally ambiguous producer of reality-shock TV setting the stage for her next show. Immediately thrown into a high-octane police chase full of the sights, sounds, and lingua franca of Brazil, the reader is left trying to catch up and make sense what exactly is happening. I imagine this approach is designed to grab hold of the reader with an immediacy they are not prepared for, however, this early disorientation made it harder for me to connect and involve myself in the story. The glossary thoughtfully provided by McDonald offers some reprieve, but breaking the carefully constructed rhythm of the prose looses much of its effectiveness.

Each of the three ultimately inter-related story arcs and their main characters embody the time-line they come from and McDonald’s view of the world as it was, is, and could be. The first arc introduces us to Marcelina Hoffman, trashy television producer. McDonald utilizes Hoffman and her pop-culture ties to orientate the reader to Brazil. Her up-to-the-minute fashion sense and stratospheric ambition form a shallow shell around a confidently clueless core as we see Brazil through her distinctive point of view. Marcelina slowly realizes who she is and what she truly desires in life as she is literally confronted with herself.

In the second arc we jump ahead to a mid-21st Century Brazil and the fringes of an Orwellian society. Here we follow Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas, the sixth son of a sixth son, a semi-legit businessman of the slums of São Paulo who becomes enthralled by Fia, a black-market quantum physicist pawning her skills to crack quantum tracking devices in stolen goods. Edson struggles with his identity and sexuality as he cons his way through life as his world overlaps with others, his puppy-love for Fia at the heart it all.

The third arc takes us back in time to 18th Century Brazil where Father Luis Quinn, a Jesuit priest, embarks on a journey to the dark heart of the Amazon to confront a renegade Jesuit missionary. Father Luis is accompanied by the French intellectual and spy, Robert Falcon, a friend and foe. Both are brilliant, introspective, hard and dangerous men with the best of intentions of this dark past.

Brasyl is the first novel by McDonald I have read as the oft-compared River of Gods languishes in The Stack of books to read. McDonald has earned a reputation for his stylistic prose, and he certainly justifies it. Brasyl is a stylistic tour de force where the techno-punk soul of quantum physics permeates his multidimensional Brazil. The emotional response invoked in this American was as otherworldly as any SFF book set in its own created world.

McDonald carefully styles the look and feel of each story arc with a rhythm not often found in SFF writing. It’s almost a beat you could dance to (you, not me) that changes from arc to arc. This rousing Latin beat begs a soundtrack and McDonald happily obliges with a set list provided at the back of the book. The beat of 2006 is fast and reckless with the occasional moderation of elderly, more sedate characters.

Gunga spoke the rhythm, the bass chug, the pulse of the city and the mountain. Médio was the chatterer, the loose and cheeky gossip of the street and the bar, the celebrity news. Violinha was the singer, high over bass and rhythm, hymn over all, dropping onto the rhythm of gunga and médio then cartwheeling away, like the spirit of capoeira itself, into rhythmic flights and plays, feints and improvisations, shaking its ass all over the place.

The beat of the future has the same fast and reckless feel of 2006 with an added bi-polar identity crisis and at times, extreme paranoia.

The loading ramp extends, lowers. Steel hits road. Sparks shower around the brothers Oliveira. Black Metal beckons them again: Come on, come on, on the ramp. Sparks peel away round Edson as he lines up the run. He’s a businessman, not a stunt-rider. Edson edges forward: the concentration pill gives him micro-accelerations and relative velocities. Wheel on wheel off wheel on wheel off, wheel on; then Edson throttles hard, surges forward, and brakes and declutches simultaneously.

The 18th Century slows down to a more traditional and introspective classical dance of events while keeping the feel that Brazil is not like any other place.

Luis Quinn sipped his coffee, rapidly achieving equilibrium with the general environment. An unrelenting climate; no release in the dark of the night. A cigar would be a fine thing. After months of enforced chastity aboard Cristo Redentor, he found his appetite for smoke had returned redoubled. The beginning of attachment, of indiscipline?

While stylistically superb, Brasyl falls short with a lack of resolution of its plot. The 18th Century story arc of Father Luis concludes well, while the other two offer more ambiguous conclusions. Ambiguous conclusions often add strength and the feeling of the right kind of completeness to a plot, and if each of the three story arcs existed independently, this would be the case. The problem arises with the inter-relation of the three arcs and their eventual convergence. At the point of convergence the plot just ends, leaving over-arching questions about the nature of quantum universes, human existence, and the mysterious factions in conflict unanswered. Early ascertains for award recognition may be justified, but for me, Brasyl falls flat at precisely the time it should and could have blown my mind.

Brasyl reflects the high-on-meth, ambitious, and paranoid times suffering an identity crisis emerging in the world around us and infuses it with the Latin beat of the Brazilian melting pot. It’s a view of our world and its possible future directions as reflected in a seemingly warped mirror. Brasyl is a good book, but for me it failed to reach its full potential as a great book, an important book. Even so, dust off the thrown-out guidebook and read Brasyl, but don’t don’t don’t lick the frog.

7.5/10

Scalpel Appears to Have Imploded

Well, I’ve been patiently waiting for Scalpel Magazine to get its technical issue in control. And I kept on waiting. Now it appears that Jonathan McCalmont (one of the editors) is giving up on it, so I’m going to consider Scalpel dead to me. There may be a good reason why Scalpel has flopped, but I’m not privy to the details.

Anyway, my review of Brasyl by Ian McDonald which has been in limbo for over a month now is now free to be published. I’ll be publishing it here quite soon (edit: the review is here) – it’s a bit different and more lengthy than my typical review as it is an attempt at meeting the ‘street-level criticism’ that Scalpel was aiming for (part of the manifesto is preserved here). I’d be remiss not to acknowledge the editorial help that Scalpel did provide for this review, and by Gabe Chouinard in particular.

I’m sad to see Scalpel fail and I’ve been both disappointed and frustrated as I’ve hoped and waited for it to survive.

Sagramanda by Alan Dean Foster

One of the more interesting directions sci-fi has taken recently is an emphasis on emerging economies and non-Western societies. Hallmarks of this movement include River of Gods by Ian McDonald and his upcoming novel, Brasyl. Similarly inspired, Foster writes of a near-future India in the techno-thriller, Sagramanda.

We are introduced to a cast of players in Sagramanda, a huge megalopolis of 100 million people in India’s east. Taneer is a brilliant scientist who has developed a revolutionary technology a massive global corporation. He and his beautiful, ‘untouchable’ fiancée, Depahli, are in hiding because Taneer has stolen this developed technology with the intent of selling it on the open market for an unimaginable sum of money. Taneer’s father is searching for his disowned son to perform an honor-killing to end the shame brought on by his son’s association with the ‘untouchable’. Chalcedony Schneemann is the problem solver that has been hired to find Taneer and recover the stolen merchandise. Added to the mix are a farmer-turned merchant who helps to broker Taneer’s hopeful sale, a French serial killer, the chief police inspector searching for her, and a hungry tiger prowling the city’s margin.

We follow the various players through the seething streets of Sagramanda – some hunt, some are hunted, and they all converge at a clandestine meeting one night. Of course, not all of them leave it alive.

Sagramanda becomes a character all its own as we see a microcosm of India – the poor, desperately poor, the rich, the tourist, the huge population, the filth, the decadence, and the contrast of old and new – through the eyes the hunters and hunted. The portrayal of India is fascinating – especially for someone like me who has never been there. As I said about John Burdett in relation to Bangkok 8, I don’t know if Foster gets it right, but it feels like he does.

The underlying narrative to this story of Sagramanda is merely serviceable. Yes, it’s interesting, but it’s not particularly memorable and is quite often rather predictable. In a city of 100 million, there are a few too many conveniences of the plot to be believable. The value of Sagramanda is the representation of India – the vehicle is reliable if not remarkable.

Sagramanda rates a 6.5 on the 10-point scale. It’s a fascinating portrayal of near-future India with an average techno-thriller plot holding it together.

Fast Forward 1 Edited by Lou Anders

Lou Anders has a very ambitious goal – to start a new anthology series in the tradition of past landmarks like Damon Knight’s Orbit and Frederik Pohl’s Star SF. I have not read those series, but it’s safe to say that Anders is on the right track with Fast Forward 1. This start to a knew series contains stories by such genre big names as Gene Wolfe, Larry Niven, and Mike Resnick and hot, newer voices such as Kage Baker, Robert Charles Wilson, Justina Robson, Paolo Bacigalupi, Ian McDonald and many more.

In the Introduction: “Welcome to the Future”, he provides another essay in a long tradition of essays lauding the importance and relevance of science fiction to our world. Honestly, it doesn’t say anything really new, but reiterated much of what others have said, however, he does say it well.

Anders speaks to science fiction’s ability to show us something new, to make us think. He goes on to remind us that so many important people behind advances in our society don’t just stand on the shoulders of previous scientists and engineers, but also on the inspiration provided by early science fiction writers. Science fiction is critical thought, it is skepticism, and it is rationalism. In that spirit, I’ll let Anders’ own words from the Introduction speak for themselves.

Here, then, are twenty-one windows on the future, as seen through the imagination of twenty-three different talents. Their collective visions take us from the far future to the day just after tomorrow. In their hands, science fiction is indeed a tool for making sense of a changing world. It’s not the only such tool, but it is an amazingly effective one. Who knew enlightenment could so much fun?

Each of the twenty-one stories accomplishes these goals in some way, each in their own way. “Small Offerings” by Paolo Bacigalupi shows us the poison of our society and its direct affect on the next generation in a dark, highly symbolic story that is so disturbing because we can envision it happening. “Aristotle OS” by Tony Ballantyne provides an equally saddening view of what our world could be, if only just…

Humanity of the far future is visited in “Plotters and Shooters” by Kage Baker, “Time for the Snake” by A.M. Dellamonica, and “The Terror Bard” by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper. Humanity of a less distant future is visited in others.

Consequences reign for many – whether it’s the rather obvious consequence of rescuing a genetically derived saber-tooth tiger in “Pride” by Mary A. Turzillo or the less obvious consequences of the world’s greatest swordsman in “The Hour of Sheep” by Gene Wolf.

Consequence’s eternal companion, choice, follows right along. In “Solomon’s Choice” by Mike Resnick and Nancy Kress a doctor is faced with two unacceptable choices – is their a third? Will humanity choose to accept help from an unknown origin in “Settlements” by George Zebrowski, or will simply nuke the perceived enemy?

Elizabeth Bear brings attention to the teen ‘choking’ or ‘pass-out game’ in an interesting combination with quantum computers. Robyn Hitchcock provides two poetic interludes and “Sideways from Now” is beautifully told novella of love lost and telepathy by John Meany.

What science fiction anthology could be complete without satire – it’s no surprise to me that my favorites of the collection would be here. “Jesus Christ, Reanimator” by Ken Macleod relates the story of Christ’s second coming through the eyes of a reporter covering the event all the way to its inevitable conclusion. Anders appropriately chooses to conclude the anthology “Wikiworld” by Paul Di Fillipo. The wonderfully witty prose and plotting allow the anthology to end in a humorously satisfying stalemate.

Short stories are always difficult for me to review, and collections even more so. Certain stories always exceed those around them, and others can be total failures. Anders has done well to avoid the failures, though some are as forgettable as the page number. Of course others still keep me awake at night. Fast Forward 1 is better than most – 7.5/10.

EDIT: A short update post and a link to the Introduction.