Posts Tagged ‘science fiction’
Review of Ninth Step Station, a Serial Box Original
I received a free advance reader copy (ARC) of Ninth Step Station.
I enjoy shared-world writing projects. I started with the Thieves’ World series, read a fair number of the Wild Cards books, and have dipped into various other series over the years. Those projects had a shared setting and permission for each author to use, but not use up, other authors’ characters. Other works trade off chapters among authors, usually keeping the same sequence but sometimes not.
Ninth Step Station, a co-written project published by Serial Box and written by Malka Older, Fran Wilde, Jacqueline Koyanagi, and Curtis C. Chen, follows the latter pattern. Released as a serial, with one episode per week in both written and audio format, the story centers on a murder in a divided Tokyo, split between the United States and China (the “Great Powers”) in a manner similar to the division of Berlin after World War II.
I’m happy to see the serial format making a comeback. Binge watching and reading have disrupted traditional publishing as a result of readers’ changing expectations of when the next series installment will be available. Some publishers release two books at once or in close proximity, while others follow the standard one-per-year pattern. All publishers face the dreaded “series death spiral” where readers buy fewer copies of the second book in a series, which affects shelf presence, which affects sales, and so on until the series isn’t commercially viable.
The serial format is one attempt to fight against this downward spiral. In Ninth Step Station, the authors and editorial team do a fantastic job of maintaining the action and continuity throughout. It helps that all of the authors have novel-length credits and are likely familiar with their colleagues’ work. Malka Older wrote the first installment, which introduces main characters Miyako Koreda, a Japanese detective and judo expert, and U.S. Navy peacekeeper Emma Higashi.
Older manages the character and setting exposition well, providing enough details about the world of Tokyo in 2032 after the city had been ravaged by an earthquake and subsequent war. She handled the cultural differences between the American, who speaks good but accented Japanese, and the Japanese detective who spent a year in Maine during her time at university, with grace. Older worked in Japan following the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, so she has an appreciation for how Americans can go astray in Japanese culture. Unlike the myriad action movies that overdramatize these differences, her depiction of partners who are uncertain of each other but learn to get along is realistic and, frankly, refreshing.
The story starts with the murder of a man who is found without a face or an arm. His missing face prevents recognition software from identifying him; removing his arm took away his sleeve, a mobile computing and communication device. Many of Japan’s records, including fingerprints, were destroyed during the war and can’t be used in this case. The action and intrigue spreads from there, involving underground tattoo artists, multilateral intrigue, and questions of how far to go to prevent a new war.
After Older’s opening installment, Wilde, Koyanagi, and Chen continue the action. As mentioned earlier, I was very happy with how everything held together and with the elements of the work as a whole. I’ve focused on the first installment because it’s available for free in both written and audio format as a teaser for potential customers, but every author did their job well. I imagine editing this multi-author narrative was a bit tricky, but the project came together nicely.
I recommend Ninth Step Station enthusiastically. The series costs $1.59 a week for ten weeks through subscription, or $13.99 if you pay in advance for the entire run. You can find purchase information as well as links for the free written and audio previews of Ninth Step Station on the Serial Box site.
Review of Null States, by Malka Older
Title: Null States
Author: Malka Older
Publisher: MacMillan Tor/Forge
Copyright: 2017
ISBN13: 978-0-765-39338-8
Length: 432
Price: $25.99
Rating: 100%
I purchased a copy of this book for personal use.
Null States continues the storyline Malka Older inaugurated in Infomocracy, where a substantial number of the world’s countries have adopted microdemocracy, a system based on groupings of 100,000 citizens called centenals. Centenal governments include easily recognizable proxies for existing conservative, liberal, green, corporate, and national entities. This book, Older’s second novel, is a well-written near-future thriller with action that ranges throughout the world, encompassing states that adopted microdemocracy and those that did not.
One hallmark of microdemocracy is the adoption of Information, a version of the contemporary Internet that includes easy access to fact-checked information and video feeds from almost every public area within the system. Countries, or segments of countries, that chose not to adopt microdemocracy are called null states. As the book’s title suggests, the action in Older’s sequel includes states that chose to stay outside Information’s coverage.
Middle of the Action
The action starts in a city within a centenal within the DarFur region of the former Sudan. The DarFur government, which controls several centenals, only adopted microdemocracy for the most recent ten-year election cycle. The focal characters, who are different than the leads in Infomocracy (though they do show up later in the book), are part of a Specialized Voter Action Tactics team sent to support the new government. The governor gets blown up on his way to meeting in the town and the action starts.
Older brings her experience as a relief worker to the fore, capturing the physical environment and cultural sensibilities of peoples outside the developed world. For example, even though DarFur adopted microdemocracy, neither the government nor the people have fully embraced it or, critically, Information. This distrust, which provides substantial leverage for the story’s antagonists, invokes themes of cultural imperialism, long-burning conflicts that transcend national or centenal borders, and fierce independence. Switzerland, for example, has remained unaligned and outside the reach of Information’s nearly omnipresent video feeds. Older captures the feeling of unease and threat when Mishima, the female protagonist from Infomocracy, travels to Switzerland to investigate a lead. Outside of Information coverage and easy contact with her usual support team, she’s on her own in unfriendly territory.
Null States also addresses the language of the developed and developing world. At one point in the novel, a character gently corrects a colleague who used the term “null states”, saying that it’s demeaning. The original speaker disagrees, arguing in effect that it’s a neutral descriptive term, but Older’s comment on using the word “null” to imply that otherness equals irrelevance or, worse, non-existence, is spot on.
Conclusions
Null States is a terrific novel by any measure, made more so by the author’s deft handling of cultural issues based on her extensive experience as an aid and relief worker. If you’re new to Malka Older’s books you should read Infomocracy first so you understand the milieu, but be sure to pick up Null States at the same time so you don’t have to wait to see what happens next. I recommend both books without reservation.
Curtis Frye is the editor of Technology and Society Book Reviews. He is the author of more than 30 books, including Improspectives, his look at applying the principles of improv comedy to business and life. His list includes more than 20 books for Microsoft Press and O’Reilly Media; he has also created more than 50 online training courses for lynda.com. In addition to his writing, Curt is a keynote speaker and entertainer. You can find more information about him at www.curtisfrye.com and follow him as @curtisfrye on Twitter.
Improspectives 