James Nicoll Reviews

1985’s Child of Fortune is the second book in Norman Spinrad’s Second Starfaring Age science fiction series. As both books stand alone, one need not have read the first book, The Void Captain’s Tale, before reading Child.

The Jump Drive transformed the human-settled worlds. Travel no longer demanded decades. Instead, the trip was no more demanding than an intercontinental airplane trip centuries ago. The cultural effects were profound.

For teenage Moussa, the most relevant consequence is the wanderjahr.

A custom common across human space, the wanderjahr is (like its namesake) a journey undertaken by young people on the brink of adulthood. Many find themselves during this journey. A few remain eternal children.

Moussa is spurred to undertake her wanderjahr when her current lover informs her that he is leaving on a lavish, parentally fully-funded tour of the stars. Shocked out of complacency, she informs her parents that she too wishes to undertake her rite of passage.

Her parents’ reaction astounds and annoys Moussa. First, having heard from her lover’s parents about his exit off-planet, they predicted that Moussa would react this way. Second, they have no intention of providing Moussa with the same luxury tour, as they feel that would deny her the benefits of the wanderjahr. Instead, Moussa is provided with a highly-advanced sex trinket [1], minimal funds, and best wishes.

First stop, Ekodu, jewel of the galaxy! Moussa installs herself in a hotel to better consider the path her educational journey will take. Among her first lessons: it is possible to run through limited funds much faster than she anticipated.

Fortuitously for Moussa, her lovemaking skills (aided by the trinket) are as exemplary as she believes. She soon wins herself a place in the Gypsy Jokers as leader Pater Pan’s lover. Or at least, as his latest lover.

When the affair comes to its natural end, Moussa is enticed by a guy named Guy to travel to Belshazaar. While one of Belshazaar’s continents has been transformed into an ersatz Earth, the other continent is covered by the Bloomenwald, a vast forest whose plants produce abundant psychotropics. How better to know oneself than to take a journey into one’s mind?

From the Bloomenwald’s perspective, animals are the means by which flowering plants pollinate each other. The purpose of the vegetative pharmacopeia is to shape animals into effective pollinators. The forest has had geological eras to hone its skills. Escaping the mind-controlling forest may well be impossible.

~oOo~

If your jam is not sex or drugs or sex and drugs or at the least, compatible with those, this is probably not the mid-1980s SF novel for you.

This is a novel about a very sexy teenaged woman written by a mid-forties man. The sex scenes are regrettable but not nearly as regrettable as they could have been. On the subject of regrettable sex, the Jump Drive somehow sidesteps Einstein. It uses the orgasms of anorexic, frigid women. The short supply of such women [2] is the major limit on interstellar travel.

The novel is a bit long for its plot, as was the custom in the 1980s. In particular, the Bloomenwald sequence is interminable.

The novel’s protagonist considers artists the pinnacle of human evolution:

In short, I grew aware that humanity was divided into two subspecies: the famous and the anonymous, the creators of art, music, literature and science, and the mere consumers of same, the elite of the haut monde, and the generality of the vie ordinaire. 

Oh, yay. Another book by an author about how wonderful writers are. Still, as various events reveal, Moussa isn’t quite the paragon of intellectual clarity she believed that she was at the beginning of her journey.

Rather than settle for what’s generally called ​“transparent” or ​“minimal effort” prose, Spinrad has his protagonist tell her tale in a flowery Latinate vernacular. Void Captain’s Tale also featured an evolved English but not the same accent. Readers may have to work a bit to decipher the lingo. At least the prose is not as opaque as either Feersum Endjinn or Riddley Walker​’s.

Child of Fortune is also somewhat unusual in its rejection of the usual SFnal plot drivers. There’s no quest to save the galaxy from the evil empire,(no evil empire for that matter), no exchanges of blaster fire. The plot focuses on personal growth. The closest to an action sequence in the book is a ​“lost in the forest” episode that reminded me of Lost In the Barrens.

It was my impression that this novel sold badly. Bombed. Landed like the asteroid on Chicxulub. Where I got that impression in the 1980s, when information was harder to come by, I have no idea. The Wikipedia article for this book notes several mixed reviews. If the book did sell badly, I suspect that the reason could be found in the two preceding paragraphs: difficult language and no pew-pew-pew action.

Preferring evidence to vibes, I went looking for information to assess how the book was received. I didn’t find it, but I did find a Locus interview with Spinrad. This passage struck me, for some reason. 

”Providing hope is something science fiction should be doing. It sounds arrogant to say it, but if we don’t do it, who the hell will? One of the social functions of science fiction is to be visionary, and when science fiction isn’t being visionary, it hurts the culture’s visionary sense. And when the culture isn’t receptive, neither is science fiction. It’s a downward spiral.” 

The novel certainly isn’t unflawed, but at least Spinrad was trying something novel rather than settling, as so many others do, for another tome of extruded speculative fiction product. Back in the 1980s, this was my favourite Spinrad. I think it still is.

Child of Fortune is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: A ring that induces pleasure in others. The inherent consent issues aren’t really addressed.

2: In part because serving as part of a Jump Drive kills the woman in fairly short order.