Cornell, Paul: The Copenhagen Interpretation
The Copenhagen Interpretation (2011)
Written by: Paul Cornell
Genre: Short Story/Alternate History
Published by: Asimov's
Rating: It's a Gamble
Around 2006 and 2007, I had a subscription to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I started out the subscription excited and eager to read as many stories and authors as possible, while learning about the market all the while. But the more I read, and the more I started paying attention to the table of contents of the other BIG SF magazine, Asimov's (which I read on occasion but not often), I discovered something I didn't care for.
Mind you, the following is a trend I noticed at the time. This trend may not be applicable today.
But what I didn't care for was this: out of ten published issues per year (F&SF had two double issues during the year), I would see the same names three, four, or five times. And of those same names, I would get stories set in the author's pre-existing world. Said world might already have a novel, or said world might be a part of OTHER short stories published previously but I hadn't read. Sure, all of these stories were meant to stand alone, so that new readers, like myself, could enjoy them, but I ran into the same problem over, and over, and over again. I didn't like those stories. I didn't even like the author's writing. And I resented that I was paying a subscription to read stories by authors I didn't care for rather than authors who really spoke to me, which seemed to happen few and far between.
Needless to say, I canceled my subscription.
Paul Cornell, let me say upfront, is not one of those authors. And no, I will not name those authors either. If you're of the enterprising sort and have a lot of research on your hands, you can browse through past reviews and figure it out, but the point of the story is to provide context for "The Copenhagen Interpretation."
I didn't read this as part of the Hugo Voter's packet. Instead, I discovered that Asimov's offered it for free online, so I read it during my breaks at work. The free version, which is linked above, includes Cornell's background and what else he's had published, and the damning sentence stood out immediately:
Paul’s thrilling new tale of daring espionage in a timeline somewhat different from our own is his first story for Asimov’s and his third in a series concerning Jonathan Hamilton.
Unless you're like me, and you're obsessive about reading things in order, I'm not sure you can possibly understand how infuriating this is. I hate coming into a story feeling handicapped, that others know more than I do, feeling like the author is writing for those others rather than for readers like me, who are fresh to the world as well as the story. What's worse is that even if I had a subscription to Asimov's and was faithfully reading each issue every month, I would still be handicapped, as the previous tales were clearly published elsewhere.
Now, if I'd been a good little girl and read the version in my Voter's Packet, this wouldn't be an issue. I wouldn't have been aware of the previous stories, and my view of the story wouldn't have been so negatively colored from the onset. I would have been unbiased, and any faults I found in the story would be between the story and me, not my assumption that the author was taking for granted I already knew certain things. Hence, the rating. I can't tell you how much more or less I would have enjoyed the story without that little disclaimer, but I can tell you the story is one of those people will embrace or not connect to. I'm in the latter camp.
First and foremost, I have to give credit where credit is due: Cornell is a good writer. From the very start, there's some wonderful descriptive detail. The first paragraph ends with:
The wind comes in hard over the Langeline, and after the sun goes down, the skeleton of the whale that’s been grown into the ground resonates in sympathy and gives out a howl that can be heard in Sweden.
And that's just a fantastic way of settling us into this world. And then this description of Hamilton after hearing some rather startling news:
Hamilton had concealed the enormity of his reaction. He was good at that now. His Irish blood was kept in an English jar.
There's some great stuff in here. The author is clearly confident in his characters and his world, and that's evident in the telling of the tale. Yet, it is not newbie-friendly. My reaction initial reaction was immediate: overwhelmed by details, confused by the time period (I thought it was more of an industrialized setting, kind of what we see in steampunk, only to learn this story takes place long after 1958, which hurt my brain. Sure, it's an alternate history, I was warned of that much, but I lacked the proper context to understand the time period, so when I finally did get a clue, I was too far into the story to readjust my thinking. Instead, my brain insisted, "That can't be right," and dismissed it as erroneous information. Bad brain, bad!). The info-dumping, especially early on in the tale, was as necessary as it was disconnecting. I was told too much, yet given the word count of this tale, I would've rather been told than shown, because this story was dense enough as it stood.
But Cornell does throw the newbie reader a few bones. If you're willing to be patient and read carefully, you are shown the nature of the magic/science of this world. So when you hear about folds and have no idea what on earth is being discussed, by the end of the tale, you have a general sense of what they are and what they do, because you've seen them in action a few times. And the details we're given regarding the world-building are fascinating, even though it's equally easy to get lost in all of those details. This is a story that takes place on Earth and within Space (I think…), and the scope of it is rather ambitious for a reader who's not already familiar with the world. I found myself wondering: what exactly constitutes this as an alternate history? What was the thing that happened differently for the world to become this world rather than the world we live in now? And bitterly my brain wondered, "I bet I'd know if I'd read the other stories, ..." which only served to remind me why I so thoroughly dislike reading things out of order. I was also reminded when Hamilton, near the climax of the story, started worrying about a character named Annie, whom I'd never met, and could assume was a loved one (wife or lover), but every time I saw the name, my hackles were raised because she had no part in this story and I hated seeing the reminder that I didn't know everything I should.
But the observer machines sounded really cool, particularly in light of the "observer effect," which seemed to come into play when the villains of the tale were describing the universe's need to be observed, stating at one point that unless it's observed, that tree falling alone in the forest doesn't make a sound after all. It's a fun kind of mind-boggling, though equally puzzling, and I began to wonder what exactly it was the author was advocating. The need to preserve balance started to read like a metaphor for protecting one's ignorant view of how the world works, which seems at odds with all the interesting advances this world has made. Maybe not so odd, if one looks at our own world from an outside perspective.
In any case, while there were certainly some fascinating elements, but ultimately, I felt divorced from the tale being told. Maybe I wouldn't have felt so divorced if I hadn't know this was part of a series (though I would've figured it out by the end, because the final paragraph screamed that a sequel was on the horizon, but in a way that it felt like a set-up; that or I misread the final paragraph entirely, which is highly possible), but I was, and while I can admire the construction of the tale and the confidence in its telling, it just didn't click with me.
Maybe others will have better luck.
Interestingly, and totally unrelated, I discovered that Cornell is also the author of Saucer Country, a new comic book series launched by Vertigo earlier this year. I'm only two issues in and haven't read enough to make any sort of verdict, but I found it interesting that the two stories were so utterly and completely different. That may be due to the format (novelette versus comic book), but still. Different.