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coalescentA little while ago, when I reviewed 'Shadow Twin', I said that most of the novellas I've read so far this year have disappointed me, and asked if I'd missed anything. It turns out that I had. Somehow, I entirely failed to notice a SCIFICTION novella from March: 'The Three Unknowns', by Severna Park (who won a Nebula award for a previous SCIFICTION outing, 'The Cure For Everything'). It's a curious beast. It's a good story, with many strengths...but it's not a very satisfying piece of science fiction.
Events revolve around a classic academic rivalry. Althea Mendez is Chair of the Department of Archaeology at Oxford University, with many of the traits that that position implies. She's an established, eminent member of her profession, and she's reached her position mostly by playing it safe. Her dissertation, we are told, "lacked invention, but it was also rock-solid and worthy of the degree. In the end, it would have looked peculiar if her work hadn't produced a PhD." She's also jealous-scared-angry at being upstaged by her precocious, ambitious ex-pupil, Hoshi Noh. As the story opens, Althea is travelling to inspect a dig run by Hoshi, for the younger scientist has discovered a human finger-bone in the unlikeliest of places: Mars.
It becomes clear relatively early on that Hoshi's expedition to Mars was engineered by Althea as a way of keeping her rival out of the running for the position of department head. Moreover, it turns out to be merely the first gambit in a battle of wills, and of machiavellian schemes, that may, shortsightedly but all too believably, result in the ruin of both women, or at least of their careers. I said that Althea felt upstaged, and that's a relevant description - not only is the story divided into a series of Acts, like a play, but as events progress the feud itself comes to have an exaggerated, theatric, almost lunatic quality to it. Indeed, the nature of the central archaeological mystery, when it is revealed, underlines this reading (and makes me wonder whether 'The Three Unknowns' is a Shakespearean, or possibly classical, allusion that I'm missing).
All this is neatly handled, but seems somehow a little insubstantial. Don't get me wrong: as a character study, a portrait of two rivals driven to conflict by pride, jealousy and ambition, it's excellent. The basic story, the tale of an academic rivalry, is good, and viciously enjoyable. But as science fiction, I think it fails. I think it fails because it seems to me that for all that the story starts on Mars, and for all that it continues to an extrasolar planet, and for all that it concerns alien ruins...for all that, when you get down to it, the setting is irrelevant. There is no central idea, no literalised metaphor or cool-but-nonexistent technology. In fact, I can't find anything in the story that couldn't be done equally well in a mimetic story set in the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth century.
So all in all, a curious beast. I think it's a strong enough piece to be worth reading, and that's more than can be said for a couple of the novellas I've read in the past seven months; but, unlike 'Shadow Twin', I doubt it will make anyone's list for the year's best.
Events revolve around a classic academic rivalry. Althea Mendez is Chair of the Department of Archaeology at Oxford University, with many of the traits that that position implies. She's an established, eminent member of her profession, and she's reached her position mostly by playing it safe. Her dissertation, we are told, "lacked invention, but it was also rock-solid and worthy of the degree. In the end, it would have looked peculiar if her work hadn't produced a PhD." She's also jealous-scared-angry at being upstaged by her precocious, ambitious ex-pupil, Hoshi Noh. As the story opens, Althea is travelling to inspect a dig run by Hoshi, for the younger scientist has discovered a human finger-bone in the unlikeliest of places: Mars.
It becomes clear relatively early on that Hoshi's expedition to Mars was engineered by Althea as a way of keeping her rival out of the running for the position of department head. Moreover, it turns out to be merely the first gambit in a battle of wills, and of machiavellian schemes, that may, shortsightedly but all too believably, result in the ruin of both women, or at least of their careers. I said that Althea felt upstaged, and that's a relevant description - not only is the story divided into a series of Acts, like a play, but as events progress the feud itself comes to have an exaggerated, theatric, almost lunatic quality to it. Indeed, the nature of the central archaeological mystery, when it is revealed, underlines this reading (and makes me wonder whether 'The Three Unknowns' is a Shakespearean, or possibly classical, allusion that I'm missing).
All this is neatly handled, but seems somehow a little insubstantial. Don't get me wrong: as a character study, a portrait of two rivals driven to conflict by pride, jealousy and ambition, it's excellent. The basic story, the tale of an academic rivalry, is good, and viciously enjoyable. But as science fiction, I think it fails. I think it fails because it seems to me that for all that the story starts on Mars, and for all that it continues to an extrasolar planet, and for all that it concerns alien ruins...for all that, when you get down to it, the setting is irrelevant. There is no central idea, no literalised metaphor or cool-but-nonexistent technology. In fact, I can't find anything in the story that couldn't be done equally well in a mimetic story set in the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth century.
So all in all, a curious beast. I think it's a strong enough piece to be worth reading, and that's more than can be said for a couple of the novellas I've read in the past seven months; but, unlike 'Shadow Twin', I doubt it will make anyone's list for the year's best.
