Book #53

Conquistador
by S.M. Stirling


You know, it's hard to say why I didn't like this book. Well, no it isn't, but I can almost justify every problem I had with it -- almost. Conquistador is the story of an alternate Earth, which becomes accessible through a freak accident which opens a dimensional portal from our Earth to the new one. In this new land, European settlers never made it to the New World, and so when the portal's discoverer -- he-man and Southern Gentleman Extraordinaire John Rolfe -- steps through from Oakland in 1946, he finds himself in a California populated solely by Native Americans, and incredibly rich and bountiful wildlife. It is a paradise, the perfect place that California once was and hasn't been for a very long time, and Rolfe does what any he-man and red blooded American would do with this opportunity: he Manifest Destinies himself right the fuck over there, starts bulldozing, and builds a new nation the way he thinks it should be built, damnit. The main story takes place 60 years later, and focuses on the efforts of his granddaughter, Adrienne Rolfe, and of a Fish and Game warden from our side of the portal named Tom Christiansen, to protect this other-dimensional nation from a hostile takeover by an evil faction bent on world domination -- both worlds, that is. That's the basic concept, though the novel is much broader in its scope, covering everything from ecology to politics to world history to modern warfare; it's epic in every sense of the word.

First of all, on the positive side, it has amazing descriptions, particularly of natural scenes and the actions and habits of animals. The action scenes were great, and only marred by the ability of the heroes to do anything and everything well, and to take on overwhelming odds and win the day, but what the heck? That isn't uncommon in adventure novels like this one. I liked that he didn't dwell on the actual functioning of the dimensional gate; he makes some references to string theory and the multiverse, but for the most part, they just deal with what they've got, without obsessing over how they got it. The author obviously knows his stuff and has done huge amounts of research and planning, which makes for a better reading experience. But there's too much: on some level, this book felt like the author showing off his knowledge and planning, and while I'm impressed, I'm not terribly entertained by erudition. Plus, I think he's wrong: wasn't it just an urban legend that "Kemosabe" means "asshole," and "Tonto" means "idiot?"

Anyway, the serious problems I had with this book were with the larger-than-life characters, the sheer length of it, and the ethnocentrism of the setting and general attitudes portrayed. Okay, larger than life characters: the hero is hugely strong, and much is made of his 6'3" frame, his great slabs of muscle, his enormous strength; that's all fine and good, but he's also intelligent, sensitive, environmentally conscious, and one of those smug Libertarian survivalist type that can go into the woods with a large Rambo knife, kill a bear, skin it, cook it, and then build a log cabin to eat it in while he discusses politics and history and philosophy, in at least three different languages. It's a bit much. But at least his love interest is the feminine version of him, in every way: also large and remarkably strong, though in her case much is made of the buxom curves on top of the muscle; also a master of all trades and a jack of none, also humble enough to throw sheaves of wheat with her peasants and yet dictatorial enough to kill without remorse in protection of her homeland. What a woman. Oh, and both of them are humbled by her grandfather, the founder of the new nation, and as smart as they all are, everyone is hard-pressed to keep up with the heartless Machiavellian plotting of the bad guy. Fortunately he's dead when the main action happens, thus allowing the heroes to brilliantly exploit the weaknesses left by the poorer planning of Satan's hellspawned children, and win the day. Oh, by the way, the Machiavellian guy? Yeah, he's Sicilian.

The second issue I had with it was the length. Out of 600 or so pages of novel, at least 300 of them were descriptions of wilderness and wildlife, of settlements and farming and social order on the other side of the Gate, in Rolfe's Commonwealth of New Virginia. And almost every word of that boils down to this: in this world, there are too many people. Stirling goes on and on and on about how much more beautiful and majestic, and healthy and useful and just -- good -- the world is when the total population of California is under 200,000. And I agree, and the world as it is depicted here does sound absolutely wonderful. You can stop telling me, now. It just got obnoxious; it felt like I was being lectured, yelled at, for the things I have done to screw up this world and ruin it for people who would have preferred it the way it is in the book, and hey, I didn't do it, so quit yelling, okay?

The last problem I had with it was a certain, mm, callousness about the characters. Now, Stirling makes the point that the characters who found this world of New Virginia are from a less touchy-feely society than ours, and it's a good point; realizing the truth of that made me accept their casual racism. They use a number of racial epithets fairly early on, and you find as the book goes on that New Virginia not only doesn't have anyone but white members (basically -- they do have Jews, so, y'know, that's multicultural and stuff -- but then, they treat them like crap in some ways, so never mind), it includes Nazis and South African Boers along with the Southern Gentlemen. But, the founder is unapologetically racist, so that was reasonable, at least; but then, these characters are seen as sympathetic, as heroic, as being in the right -- so even though the author distances himself from this archaic viewpoint, it seems pretty clear he'd rather be on the far side of that divide than here on the politically correct side. Then it bothered me that the characters, all of them, were so indifferent to the fact that the coming of these extradimensional honkies caused a repeat of history: they brought diseases that wiped out 95% the Native American population. And while I understand that this is just something that happens in history, with the way people become separated from other populations and thus susceptible to their germs, I think it should be treated with some sympathy, some sorrow and respect for the victims who died. These people effectively say, "Pshaw; they died, tough luck. No crying over spilt milk. More room for us. Hey, somebody shoot that renegade Indian over there!" Though the point is made that our heroes are fighting against a group that plans even more horrible things for the non-white peoples of the world, and even though there is a token black character, still the white settlers exploit the native people in every possible way -- and the system of exploitation is seen as very clever, if a bit heartless.

Come to think of it, that's a reasonable description of the book: very clever, if a bit heartless. I'd like to read something else by this author and see if it measures up, both in the positive and negative ways.