Some skill fiction book devotee have a dark mythology in their heads about literary poaching : literary author vacate bad ideas and themes , handle them clumsily , and then insult the literary genre they ’re pillaging . It ’s a paranoid fantasy , and mostly not true . But I have a feeling Jeanette Winterson ’s newest novel , The Stone Gods , will become something of a posterchild for that viewpoint . It ’s too unsound , since once you get past Winterson ’s clumsiness around speculative themes , you find something stranger and more provocative than either SF or literature . Spoilers are in the offing .
The Stone Gods tells the history of two characters , three different times . The first clock time , Billie is a cynical human who gets lasso into help colonize a novel planet , and Spike is the beautiful slutty android who falls in love with her . The second time , Billy is a cabin boy who gets marooned on Easter Island , and Spikker is the Dutch crewman , also marooned , who compete with natives to reap a precious seagull testicle . And then the third time around , Spike is a female humanoid again , but she ’s under building and is just a top dog so far . Billie is a software engineer helping to create Billie . And then there ’s a twist at the end of the al-Qur’an that brings the three narratives together . It ’s cute , even if you see it amount a recollective way off .
Winterson has dabbled in science fictional themes , so it ’s not surprising that her newfangled novel The Stone Gods is full of android , blank space colonization and position - apocalypses . Her 2nd novel , Sexing The Cherry , had a sorting of fourth dimension - travel motif . But Stone Gods is probably Winterson ’s most scifi book so far .
Too unfit she ’s so clueless about how to dish out with bad public - construction . Chances are , most skill fiction readers wo n’t make it past the first 20 pages of Stone Gods before the itch to start tear the pages gets too overwhelming . Winterson depart for the “ massive info - shit ” hypothesis in plant her future circumstance . And just in case you do n’t understand how brave and newfangled her humankind is , she starts right smart too many paragraphs with a unearthly first principle biz . “ F is for future tense . ” “ R is for golem . ” Etc . etc . ( No , I ’m not kidding . She really starts a paragraph “ R is for robot . ” )
It ’s sad , because the dystopian futures she creates are really highly compelling — at the start of the book , we see a more dissolute variant of our world , where everyone is genetically “ fixed ” to look young and beautiful , and pedophilia is becoming accepted . ( Early on , we run into a char who is seek to have herself genetically modified to become a 12 - year - sometime “ Lolita ” for her hubby , who confab a sexual practice club have zooerastia and paedophilia . ) And then towards the end of the script , we take on another next dystopia , where a atomic state of war has left the worldly concern under the domination of the MORE bay window , which owns everything . ( human beings ca n’t own property , but they can lease thing from MORE , in a weird sort of corporate communism . )
In all three of the linked stories , Winterson explores the idea that humans are destroying the planet through not just greed , but the chase of dazed status symbols . ( Like the “ stone gods ” of the account book ’s championship , which are the Easter Island statues that the tribespeople ruin the island ’s ecosystem to produce . ) And just in case we miss the significance of her subject matter , she includes some prospicient rambling lectures towards the remainder .
I have a feeling Stone Gods could have been a great novel — and a great bit of speculative fable — if Winterson had only been cut more to a great extent , or ram to do a total rewrite . It ’s full of great ideas , and every clock time I was about to give up on it completely , I hit on another bewitching setting , or another patch of beautiful lyric writing . Winterson ’s major comfort zone is obviously write “ queer romance , ” so when the various permutations of Spike and Billie have a tender moment , the character of the prose suddenly goes right smart up .
And Stone Gods has instant of echt cleverness — like the sequence where the expedition to colonise a new human homeworld fucks up spectacularly . It reminded me of the tremendous turn point in The Sparrow where the humans erroneously institutionalize their shuttle to cull up some of their crew — and then realise they do n’t have enough fuel to get off the planet any more . I like reading science fiction where people make fatal fault , because this happens a portion in real life and not closely as often in regular science fable . It ’s interesting to me that both The Sparrow and The Stone Gods were sold as lit — I ’m gouge my brains to think of novel published as scientific discipline fiction where human error by the good guy plays a major role .
But as it is , the Stone Gods does n’t just break down as science fiction . It go wrong as metafiction as well , and for much the same reason . Winterson use a whole passel of postmodernist tricks ( most notably the three permutations of the same story , but also a host of stylistic prank ) . But she ’s not engage enough to use them all that well , and you ca n’t get off the feeling that all of the cleverness ( like the main character of the third section regain a holograph of the relief of the rule book ) is a direction of covering up a sure disengagement from the tale and characters .
It ’s hard to worry about these people , because you get the feeling Winterson does n’t quite wish about them either . They ’re just a political platform for Winterson ’s musical theme . All three rendering of Billie are sort of disaffected and unsympathetic . And all three versions of Spike are sweet and naive , but a little superficial .
For another point of thought on Winterson ’s novel , here’sa paying attention reviewby brilliant Ribofunk author Paul DiFilippo .
Daily Newsletter
Get the beneficial technical school , scientific discipline , and culture news in your inbox daily .
intelligence from the future tense , pitch to your present tense .
