Moriarty, Chris: Spin State
Spin State
Writer: Chris Moriarty
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 597
Back in January 2007, the SF/F/H writers were given a sheet of paper with a list of SF novels on it and the descriptions of said novel. We were supposed to choose the novel that captured our interest the most and that we thought would make for a good SF read for the whole WPF program (which obviously includes a good number of non-SF readers). On that list was the following:
Michael Flynn's A Wreck in the River of Stars
Peter Hamilton's Pandora's Star
China Mieville's Perdido Street Station
Chris Moriarty's Spin State
Dan Simmons's Hyperion
Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky
June 2007's residency read ended up being Hyperion, which I enjoyed but felt was a poor read for the program as a whole. I'd voted for Spin State, not knowing at the time Chris Moriarty was a woman, because it was the plot that sounded most interesting to me and it had a self-contained story, unlike the Simmons and Hamilton books.
Obviously, I marked all of these titles down for later reading, even though I already had read Perdido Street Station. I haven't picked up any of the other books on the list, but what finally nabbed my attention in regards to Spin State was the fact it was nominated for the Phillip K. Dick award, that people were praising the sequel, Spin Control (which WON the Phillip K. Dick award), and that Chris Moriarty was a woman writer.
Of course, I bought the book as soon as I could and stuck it on the shelf where it has waited and languished until I found the proper time to read it. And the proper time seemed appropriate when I put my required reading list together for the term, and I must say, my required reading just keeps getting better and better. Spin State is my favorite off my list so far.
Spoilers ahead.
The book's opening threw me just a bit. It took me a little while to get my bearings in Moriarty's universe and to figure out the rules. This is SF stuffed to the brim, a great blend military SF, cyberpunk, with a splash (just a splash) of SFR. We've got terraformed planets. Space stations. Emergent AIs. Genetic constructs. I was swimming in confusion until the raid on Metz, and after that, I found I was just fine.
Spin State is told from the single point of view of Catherine Li, a UN Peacekeeper who forgets more than she can remember, thanks to the faster-than-light jumps she's made during her career. She's a genetic construct, an outsider even among her own kind because she's wired for the military, and her own kind isn't viewed favorably by humankind. There was a war when constructs way back when broke from the UN and created their own government, the Syndicates, and now constructs of any kind are viewed with suspicion. Li's lucky she got into the military, but she went to great lengths to get there undetected.
But enough of that. The heart of this story is a murder mystery of a famous physicist who happens to be Li's genetic twin. The murder takes Li back to her homeworld of Compson's World, where Bose-Einstein condensate (crystals) are mined to power FTL jumps and communications. What she finds is far more complicated than the death of the physicist, whose missing dataset could reignite the war between the UN and the Syndicates.
This plot is rich. Complex. Detailed. And for that matter, so is the world-building. Once I understood exactly what Cohen was and how he operated, I found him to be a fascinating character, and his interactions with Li were fantastically charged. This book definitely raises the question of what it means and what it takes to be "human," and when one of the central questions is whether or not an AI can feel love and whether or not a human (or genetic construct) can return that love, what it means to be "human" becomes a big question indeed. Don't get me wrong: romance is NOT the focal point of the plot, but it does in its own way streamline it by the end.
This is the kind of book that's so overwhelmingly good that it's hard to talk about. I was fascinated. I was engaged. I kept trying to put pieces of the puzzle together even though I knew I didn't have a chance in hell. The science, possible/probable or not, was so intricate that I found myself pulling a Damon Knight and saying "THIS is science fiction," and therefore feeling horribly inadequate in regards to my own novel. I would love, love, love to be able to pull off the kind of scientific grounding in my own work that Moriarty has in this. Of course, the "further reading" section in the back of the book tells me I'd have my work cut out for me, since Moriarty clearly did a SHITLOAD of research. But hey, I have one of those books she listed! I haven't read it yet, but I've got it!
Fictional scientific aspirations aside, the core of Li's dilemma at the end and where she finds herself when this is all over rang resoundingly true with my own work and what I'm trying to accomplish. And another thing I loved was the gritty realism of the setting, particularly the mines, and the easy, casual, everyday attitude towards sex and partners.
I did have specific points of confusion. I got the impression no one was allowed on Earth, but yet, there was talk that some people had gone down there since the Evacuation. I wasn't sure where some of these space stations were located exactly, nor the planets they orbited. Granted, Moriarty has a header over each chapter with place and time, but that doesn't tell me where in the UNIVERSE these places are, just the names of the places. It tripped me up, but not so much I got lost.
I also had some difficulty grasping what it meant to maneuver in a VR type world versus the real world and the real, physical sensations that accompanied that. Also confusing were moments when Li was clearly in the real world, but she could interact with a VR version of a character, like Cohen. That was one of those cases I chalked up to my lack of education in cyberpunk, but it did trip me up.
There were also times when I wasn't sure what to interpret as metaphor or literalism, particularly in regards to Li and her body. She makes it sound like she's a different person every time she comes out of a jump, which she is in a way, since she's lost memory, but I kept thinking that she kept getting uploaded into different bodies, which turns out not to be the case.
I can't say that this book would have been a good choice as a residency read. The beginning was hard enough for me to tackle, and while I'm lacking in my reading of SF, I'm no beginner either, and I can imagine someone whose only exposure to SF is Star Wars (or worse, who has no exposure at all) would simply throw this book across the room after the first couple of pages. The first couple of pages aren't exactly reader friendly for non-SF readers, but I'm really glad I got a hold of this and I'm super-glad I read it.
But what I really want to know is why the HELL this book wasn't originally published in hardcover so it could've been nominated for a Hugo or a Nebula. This book is better than some of the Hugo/Nebula winners I've read, and the fact it was published in trade first (both of Moriarty's books, mind you) really starts making me wonder about the statistics regarding women publishing SF, particularly in hardcover.*** Yes, they're out there--Elizabeth Moon and Sandra McDonald spring to mind--but when I consider all the fantastic work that's being published by women, particularly this book, which looks like it was written by a man and should appeal to both men and women readers, I don't understand why this book wasn't pushed as a hardcover. Not at all.
If not for the fact I have some specific books to read by specific deadlines, I would've jumped straight into Moriarty's sequel, Spin Control. I already have it, so it's just waiting for when I don't have those deadlines.
But I'm telling you, Spin State is complex and fantastic. A definite for SF readers, especially those fans of military SF and cyberpunk (IMHO). It's one of those books that forces you to slow down and take your time in the reading, and trust me, this book is so detailed and complex you want to do just that.
*** = I stand corrected in the comments, but that brings up a different question: why don't we see more trades or mass-market originals nominated for the Nebulas or Hugos?
Next up: Carnival by Elizabeth Bear