 |
Swan Songs: The Complete Hooded Swan Collection
by Brian Stableford
(Big Engine, £16.99, 647 pages, paperback, published 2002.)
 This
heavy book contains all six novels featuring the Hooded Swan Spaceship
and its pilot Grainger: Halcyon Drift, Rhapsody in Black,
Promised Land, The Paradise Game, The Fenris Device
and Swan Song, with a modest modern introduction by the author.
Each book is a self-contained mystery that involves adventures in space
and usually in alien habitats. Something of a bargain at less than three
pounds per book and you'd have to do a lot of burrowing around second
hand shops to dig them all up.
So, thirty years on from their first publication, should anyone want
to read this series and would anyone benefit from reading all six one
after the other? According to the introduction, they are the best selling
books of Brian Stableford's career. They deserve to be, despite their
faults, of which he is all too aware. They are still remarkably original,
maintain plot and develop the central character in a believable and
enjoyable way, which is more than just a set of mannerisms and quirks
that can get irritating. They work well as six continuous episodes and
don't get tedious or repetitive in style or content. Because they are
set so far in the future, the books haven't really dated at all and
they are wilfully non-formulaic and capriciously complex at times.
What is so good about them? First, as the author writes in the introduction,
they are pacifist space opera and while a certain amount of death and
mayhem occurs, the plot is generally advanced with more subtle forms
of conflict, including the threat of much death and mayhem, but the
latter are generally seen as bad things by most of the protagonists,
even the badder ones. And ethics are in splendid shades of grey. Second,
they are biology SF rather than physics SF, which I found very striking
when I first read some of the novels in the 1970s. I haven't counted
then, or now, but more hard SF authors seem well grounded in physics
than in biology. Alien ecosystems are generally portrayed in a believable
way and are central to the plots of three of the novels. The novels
are particularly commendable in making writing weaknesses be strengths.
Stableford knew that it would be impossible to portray fully biodiverse
worlds in a believable way, so the ecosystems detailed are each conveniently
fairly simple for different but biologically plausible reasons.
Another related strength of the novels is their convincing portrayal
of aliens. Too often aliens in SF are basically humans in other skins,
whose motives are as scrutable as anyone's, or they are duplicate 'space
invaders' who have certain species traits -- humans bad kill kill kill
etc. -- but no convincing individuality. The aliens throughout Swan
Songs are individuals whose motives are confusing and inscrutable,
but can be glimpsed.
Another good thing is that the galactic politics behind the action
is quite well depicted. As with most space opera, the books are weaker
on explaining how and why society holds together over such vast and
diverse spaces. The drive and navigational techniques of the Hooded
Swan are good fun though. Each book involves some form of mystery that
keeps the reader going, even through the almost unavoidable paragraphs
of exposition. But again, turning weakness to strength, Stableford makes
Grainger a bit of a bore and science nerd as well as a sarcastic but
brave and kindly git. So he's 'allowed' to witter on about the details
that we need in order to understand how an ecosystem or a drive unit
works. Well, we don't really understand the latter at all, but it sort
of sounds good at the time.
I've not even mentioned the stuff they go on about in the blurb yet:
Grainger is a 'laconic anti-hero'. I prefer Stableford's own explanation
that he is sarcastic and somewhat shy, being based on the young Stableford
himself. His shyness extends to a considerable disinterest in women,
although maybe that was Stableford using weakness in the writing as
strength again, for although the female characters are too flimsily
depicted to be believed by anyone, never mind attract anyone, we accept
that this is Grainger's egocentric world view. Grainger also seems very
likely to be suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome (except that
this hadn't been identified in the 1970s), for he lost his engineer
-- who he cared about more than anyone else in the world -- in traumatic
circumstances and shows little interest in forming other human relationships,
although these increase gradually through the novel sequence as he gets
more attached, in his sarcastic and dismissive way, to his new motley
crew, that includes his dead engineer's sister.
The crew includes the alien mind parasite -- the Wind -- who infected
him while he was marooned after the crash when his engineer died. The
Wind and his developing relationship with Grainger make an interesting
subplot to the whole book series, while conveniently giving our hero
some superpowers. Grainger is at first horrified by having another being
in his head who can control his mind and body, but they develop a symbiotic
relationship and the Wind is a fine example of how well aliens are depicted
in the books; a balance of explanation and mystery, with some of the
mystery resolved by the series' end.
Grainger himself makes a lovely mess of character issues and some PhD
student with an interest in a psychoanalytic approach to literature
would enjoy giving him a seeing to: Grainger at one point wonders if
his engineer's sister (who is also a pilot trying to supersede Grainger)
might come to love him, but does nothing about it. He does kindly explain
to her that he didn't even like her brother (so how did they pass the
time on those long lonely voyages?). Twisted but realistic, I think,
and a nice final illustration of how the books in many ways offer more
complexity than the author probably intended when writing them.
Review by Richard Hammersley.
Elsewhere in infinity plus:
|
|
