All the probabilities...

[bibliogramma]

Undertow, Elizabeth Bear

The more of Elizabeth Bear’s work I read, the more I want to read.

Bear has a gift for taking a handful of ideas – each one potentially the germ of an insightful novel – and weaving them together seamlessly, so that her books are not just “what if…” but “what if… and if… and if… and…”

In Undertow, Bear starts with a hard science approach to the notion that thought or will can influence reality – in the person of several characters who are or want to be professional “co-incidence engineers. Add in a system of interstellar transportation based on quantum uncertainty that can transmit non-living matter anywhere in the galaxy, while people are still required to travel in relativistic spaceships – unless they choose to transmit a copy of themselves across space, which introduces a variety of interesting legal and philosophical wrinkles into the mix – what is the nature of personal identity when one or more “copies” of a person, each branching off from the “original” and thus slowly diverging from each other over time? Establish the scene – Greene’s world, a “company planet” where the supposedly primitive aboriginal inhabitants, an amphibious species known as ranids, or more commonly, “froggies,” are employed – or, depending on how you look at it, enslaved – in the mining of a rare mineral with unusual properties that enable the co-incidence engineers to manipulate probabilities. Introduce the extreme callousness to human and other forms of life and blindness to long-term consequences of cut-throat industrial practices and reliance on non-renewable resources that is common to many a mega-corporation operating in an area where there is minimal oversight.

Against this backdrop, play out the story of André Deschênes, an assassin who wants to get out of his present profession and become a co-incidence engineer, preferably by apprenticing with one of the great practitioners of the art, Jean Gris, who has professional connections with André’s girlfriend, data miner Cricket Murphy. Cricket is also a friend of Gris's lover, Lucienne Spivak – who André has just learned is the target of the contract he’s just accepted from the folks who run the tanglestone mines and the planet. What André doesn’t know is that Jean, Lucienne and Cricket are secretly working with the ranid to bring about a rebellion against the company.

The story is tightly plotted, and as full of suspense and surprises as the latest summer block-buster spy thriller. It is, as I’ve come to expect from Bear, well-written, with solid characters, consistent action, and lots to think about.