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The Light Ages
by Ian R MacLeod
(UK editions: Earthlight, £17.99, 456 pages, hardback, published
2 June 2003; Pocket Books, £6.99, 456 pages, paperback, April 2004.
Pocket Books, £6.99, 456 pages, mass market paperback, 5 April 2004.
US edition: Ace Books, published 1 May
2003.)
The backdrop for Ian R MacLeod's rather good  new
novel (his first UK-published novel, his previous novel inexplicably
only ever appearing in the US) is immediately familiar, immediately
establishes a rough date, and yet also immediately other. The
street-names are familiar, or subtly altered, and "...the Thames spreads
her fingers through tidal mud"; the new iron bridges, the smog and the
Dickensian poverty imply something late-Victorian, or possibly a bit
later; but then, apparent anachronisms (or they would be if this were
our own timeline) intrude, along with vivid assertions of the fantastic,
as elegant grandmistresses walk their feathered, crested, winged-but-flightless
pet dogs on the city streets.
Where this world differs from our own is the discovery of aether some
300 years previously, a mystical fifth element that bleeds light where
it is dark and dark where it is light, and which is tamed and exploited
by the spells of specialists in the various guilds of this rigidly stratified
society. The protagonist, Robert Burrows, is raised in the northern
town of Bracebridge, a town that has grown up and prospered, after a
fashion, around the vast subterranean engines which mine and confine
the aether. But aether has a darker side: too much contact with it can
turn people into trolls or changelings, their visible external changes
indicating the more-feared inner changes. And what of the neighbouring
town, ruined by aether and now largely abandoned? Yes, every advance
has its darker side, but this is no crude Luddite parable about the
evils of technology and big industry, but more a realistic view of the
gains and losses that go hand in hand with progress.
Aether, it appears, is not a perfect technology by any means. MacLeod's
characters realise that it has actually stalled the development of better
technologies, such as electricity, as the large vested interests stifle
any alternative in favour of the established technology which sort-of
works -- "lazy engineering", as it is described here. It's an interesting
proposition, but our own experience of innovation nearly always finding
a way out into the open, tends to throw into doubt the credibility of
this scenario, where a society that is chronologically near-contemporary
with us has standards of living that are barely Victorian. Could vested
interests really delay things to that extent? Then again, think of computer
technology, where lazy engineering (and skilful control of the market)
means that a huge proportion of computers run bloated, bug-ridden operating
systems rather than more reliable, streamlined alternatives; or the
energy industry, where huge vested interests nearly convinced us that
nuclear power would be too cheap to meter... Maybe MacLeod has something
after all.
The tremendous power of MacLeod's allegory, though, lies in that moment
of understanding when the reader makes the intuitive leap: if this fictional
society is stuck at this level, what does that mean for us? What wonders
are we missing as we struggle, blinkered, up our own industrial
blind alleys?
Robert Burrows moves from his northern childhood to London, discovering
that the streets are not paved with gold, Frenchmen do not, in reality,
have tails, and so on. His gut recognition that the greatest horrors
are those we inflict on each other in the name of civilisation grows
into a political awareness and activism. He doesn't accept for a moment
his mother's plea -- that of the resigned-to-it-all working classes:
"Things can't be changed ... Everything is as it is ... We all wish
it was otherwise." MacLeod does a good job with the Dickensian layering
of society, although perhaps he does not take it far enough. When Burrows
is struggling at the poorer end of the spectrum, thieving and scheming
in the lowly Easterlies of London, things come just a bit too easy for
him and life is never as harsh as it appears to be for others. Indeed,
wherever he goes, things tend to fall into place for Burrows. If MacLeod's
intention was to show his protagonist's journey through the extremes
(he also spends time mixing with the upper ends of the social scale),
then Burrows never sinks quite low enough for this to really work.
There's a sense in MacLeod's writing of the everyday, his deft descriptions
of, for example, a country fun fair come to visit, have the realism
of autobiography: one might easily imagine that the author has witnessed
just such a fair (along with its pathetically modified dragon) and is
merely re-using the experience in his fiction. This isn't sf with the
shock of the other striking you from every page, it's intimate and humane
sf that convinces from the outset and carries you along, so that you
take for granted the other that is, indeed, threaded throughout.
A strikingly different novel, and one that should be on the awards
shortlists come next spring.
Notes: Do try to ignore the many typographical errors missed
by the proofreaders (if there were any), such as: "You were just talking
about you." (p 244)
And don't read the too-revealing cover blurb, whose writer seems to
think readers are so stupid they have to be spoon-fed the first few
plot developments in advance. Honestly, why does a fine author like
MacLeod spend a hundred pages creating a careful portrait of his alternative
world and skilfully building the storyline when some smart-arse in marketing
can tell us all we need to know in a hundred words?
Review
by Keith
Brooke.
Elsewhere in infinity plus:
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