James Nicoll Reviews

Walter Jon Williams’ 1985 Knight Moves is a stand-alone¹ science fiction novel.

Eight centuries ago, Doran Falkner saved the world. Falkner Power Systems provided abundant power, which (as science advanced) could be used to build nuclear dampers and relativistic star drives. Thus, the energy crisis, the threat of nuclear war, and access to the rest of the universe, all solved all thanks to one man.

Prudent investment allowed Falkner to deliver another miracle to the world: vastly extended life. This came with a steep price-tag: any would-be immortal would have to surrender their terrestrial real estate to Doran Falkner and move to another star system.

Today, Doran is the proud owner of most of the Earth and very large, very dirty secret.

Doran is a bright fellow but he did not make the breakthrough for which he took credit nearly a thousand years ago. An immortal alien whom Doran calls Snaggles provided Doran with the secret of boundless energy, nuclear dampers, force-fields and so much more, for a very simple price. Doran had to use the vast influence his supposed inventions would provide to convince most humans to leave Earth, so that archaeologist Snaggles could research Earth’s past in peace.

On the whole, the deal worked out well. Snaggles has the material for many tedious monographs and Doran is unimaginably rich. Only those who refuse immortality suffer the traditional three score and ten-year lifespan. The Earth is peaceful (and very quiet). Humans can be found on the surprisingly common Earthlike worlds within some hundred light-years of Earth.

The only flaw in this utopia is that immortality + isolation turns out to be a recipe for stagnation and ennui. Humanity as a whole seems to be on a slow slide towards becoming a species of deranged immortals huddling within comfortably familiar homes. This is not ideal.

The planet Amaterasu may hold a solution. At first glance, the planet offers nothing attractive to humans. The sun is too blue, the life forms primitive. Amaterasu has one lifeform of great interest, the lug. Lugs can teleport. Not only can they teleport, but tests show they move at super-luminal speeds. Work out how lugs manage the trick and isolation will be at an end.

Project Knight’s Move’s physicists failed to unravel the lug mystery. It is only natural for them to turn to the genius who saved the Earth and gave humans the stars.

Doran is hesitant. Joining Project Knight Moves means leaving Earth for decades. More importantly, it will force Doran to work with Mary Liddell. Mary is not just Doran’s former lover, but someone who refused immortality.

There is also the issue that Doran isn’t the man who saved Earth and gave humans the stars. He’s the man who took credit for saving Earth and gave humans the stars. Doran is bright but is he bright enough?

There is a man who might be the genius Project Knight’s Move needs. Jay Zimmerman might have provided the world with all that Doran is credited for, had Snaggles not handed the answers to Doran before Zimmerman could finish researching mysterious z‑particles. Zimmerman is alive. He is also a steadfast recluse.

Given their history, Doran might expect Zimmerman to decline an invitation. The homicidal violence comes as a surprise.

~oOo~

If you’re interested in how the sausages get made, consider reading WJW’s blog. There is an entry for this very novel!

Knight Moves was Williams’ second science fiction novel [2] after 1984’s Ambassador of Progress. It was his seventh novel overall, because before Williams wrote Knight Moves, he wrote five books in the Privateers and Gentlemen series². Given my tendency to start at the beginning, you might wonder why I didn’t begin with The Privateer or Ambassador?

Simple answer: Knight Moves is the novel that put Williams on my buy-on-sight list.

There is a tradition amongst lazy reviewers to compare any particular WJW novel in hand to books by some other author’s fiction. I don’t see why I should reject this time-honored tradition. In the case of Knight Moves, that other author is Roger Zelazny.

One obvious similarity is that Knight Moves is written in Zelazny’s First-Person Smartass. Doran is both snarky and probably almost as smart as he thinks he is. Another similarity is immortality. Doran would fit in well with characters like Prince Corwin, but especially with Conrad Nomikos.

In fact, while the novel seems to be about the Secret of Moving Very Very Quickly, that’s a side issue. Teleportation would be nice to have³ but as the novel shows, isolation is only a symptom of the real problem facing humanity, which is ​“what do we do with our time now that the only problems remaining are the self-actualization issues?” At least in this novel, humans with endless time on their hands go mad in a diverse assortment of ways. Doran is no exception. More worryingly, none of the immortal aliens Doran meets have a good answer.

Maybe there is no good answer to that question. Nevertheless, it is an important question to consider. Watching WJW’s characters struggle with this existential challenge was fascinating and guaranteed that his novels would always have space on my bookshelves.

Knight Moves is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), and here (Chapters-Indigo).

I did not find Knight Moves at Words Worth Books, probably because it is an ebook.

1: I am sure there’s a short story set in this universe, but I am unable to remember the title.

2: Also, while I have not read The Privateer, I believe it focuses on a minor side villain in the Napoleonic War. The fledgling US may be remembered today for its love of chattel slavery, but in Canada what we remember about the early US is that time the US tried to win hearts and minds in Canada by sacking farms, desecrating churches, and setting fire to York. Which very oddly didn’t work much better than the previous time the US tried that. Anyway, best saved for a later, entirely even-handed, review.

3: Except this version only requires a gate at one end, which facilitates wacky hijinks like gating in armies or WMD. So maybe it’s less than a supercool awesome gift to humanity and more an unspeakable horror.