Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick

Hello, Stranger.

Let's talk about Michael Swanwick's Stations of the Tide.

The Short of It

Plot: Someone is breaking interplanetary laws and spreading illegal technology, and the culprit must be found before cyclical tides rise, completely changing a planet.

Page Count: 252

Award: 1991 Nebula

Worth a read: No
Primary Driver: (Plot, World, or Character)
Bechdel Test: Fail

Technobabble: High
Review: Plenty of neat ideas that do not sum to more than their parts. Somehow feels both rushed and tedious. A lot of thought went into the broader world and setting, but the same care was not given to any other aspects of this book. After a solid opening chapter it's all downhill. Uninteresting characters with weak motivations butt heads over uninspired conflicts. A lot of unnecessary sex thrown in, hoping to keep the reader engaged. 

The Medium of It

Spoiler Free!

This is an incredibly ambitious work that falls far short of its potential. The world - both broadly and in specifics - is fascinating. On the broadest level: an interplanetary governing body regulates the levels of technology that planets can have. They have all sorts of cool tech to support this: doppelgangers imbued with fragmented consciousness, semi-sentient briefcases that can manufacture anything, powerful spaceships... good stuff. The planet upon which we focus, Miranda, is neat too. It is cursed with incredible tides and rising waters which come in cycles years long, submerging everything built in between. And each town or locale that we see has its own culture, ideas, and characters that give the place life.

For all that, as a novel, this one is a total dud. It feels far longer than it is: 250 pages should be a breeze. Something like the first and last 30 pages are fully engaging, but the bulk of the text is an interminable slog with seemingly no direction. Our unnamed protagonist stumbles from one thing to the next. He is a demonstration of an awkward middle ground level of characterization. He has no name and weak enough motivations that he could be a stand-in for the reader, but he does enough confusing stuff that the reader does not really agree with being him. This tepid characterization also means that he frequently ends up in situations passively, as opposed to pushing for anything himself. And then in those moments when he must show resolve or initiative, he seems to - but it is unclear why, or from whence it comes. 

It seems that Swanwick noticed that his novel was dull, and decided that sex was the answer. A lot of it. This is a very horny book. The example below is one of the many, many, many such scenes. And it ends up having pretty much no significance for the story as a whole.

"I had five wives in the Tidewater when I was younger." Bergier popped another lozenge, mouthed it liquidly. "I had them placed where they could do the most good, spaced out along my route distant enough that not one suspected the existence of the others." The bureaucrat saw that the commander did not observe how Chu rolled her eyes when he said this. "But then I discovered that my Ysolt was unfaithful. It drove me half mad with jealousy. That was not long after the witch cults were put down. I returned to her that day after an absence of weeks. Oh, she was hot. Her period had just begun. The whole house smelled of her." His nostrils flared. "You have no idea what she was like at such times. I walked in the door, and she slammed me to the floor and ripped open my uniform. She was naked. It was like being raped by a whirlwind."

That's not the end of it, but it is certainly more than enough. 

The lack of likeable characters is itself not an issue as there are plenty of good books full of terrible people. The problem here is that characters are dull and/or grating. There is nothing to distinguish one from another. There's an extended scene early on where the Bureaucrat speaks to an old woman and her daughters. The daughters are fighting over potential future inheritance, squabbling. Everyone in the scene speaks in the same needy, complaint-filled screech. It is the only mode of communication for four or five characters with which we spend far too many pages. 

It's a frustrating read. It is easy to see the ideas, wit, and humor of Swanwick at points - but this does not a good novel make.

The Long of It

Spoilers Ahead!

Having just read A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, this book feels like an illustration of what would happen if Vernor Vinge had failed. There are similar ambitions with scope and complex concepts at play - interplanetary politics mingled with unique planetary structures. But there is a reason that Vinge's books are 600 pages or more. There are few too few pages here to begin to even scrape the surface of what Swanwick aims to accomplish. 

It's hard to discuss the good without immediately bringing back the bad, because there really are hints of greatness here.

"I don't know. Don't look at me like that! Honestly I don't. Philippe only gave me the broadest outline. You know how cautious he is. He'd keep what he knew from himself, if that were possible. But, listen—I'll be merging back into him in a couple of hours. Do you want to give him a message? He could gate down to talk with you."

This is a snippet from a conversation with a copy of a person. In order to get done everything that they need to, people make duplicates of themselves, imbued with specific knowledge and tasks. They then reunite with these fragments later, to get all of the information. It's such a cool idea! And it means that there are scenes where people are unsure if they interacted with a duplicate, or where they get tricked. And there's a character who is just a duplicate, but still around. How neat! But there is no time to really explore it, because it's just window dressing on the story - a way for some plot elements to work together.

Also, some pretty bananas stuff happens at the end. I'm just going to put the whole final scene here, which falls in "major spoiler" territory, except that it also has nothing to do with the plot.

"If you could have anything you wanted," he said, and the question floated upon the air, as random and meaningless as a butterfly, "what would it be?"

The briefcase retreated from him, three quick, mincing steps. Had it too been affected by the tides? No, impossible. It was only establishing a correctly deferential distance from him. "I have no desires. I am a construct, and constructs exist only to serve human needs. That's what we are made for. You know that."

Vague shapes tumbled in his inner sight, smashed soundlessly against the window, and bounced away. Leathery monsters pulled up from the depths to die inches from his face. It took an effort to wrench his mind back to the conversation. "No. I don't want to hear that nonsense. Tell me the truth. The truth. That's a direct command."

For a long moment the machine stood humming to itself. Had he not known better, he would have thought it wasn't going to reply. Then, almost shyly, it said, "If I could have anything, I'd choose to lead a life of my own. Something quiet. I'd slip away to someplace where I didn't have to be subordinate to human beings. Where I didn't have to function as a kind of artificial anthropomorph. I'd be myself, whatever that might be."

"Where would you go?"

Thoughtfully, hesitantly, clearly working out the details for the first time, the briefcase said, "I'd . . . make myself a home at the bottom of Ocean. In the trenches. There are mineral deposits there, all but untouched. And an active system of volcanic vents I could tap for energy. There's no other intelligent life that deep. I'd leave the land and space for humans. And the Continental shelf to the haunts. . . if there still are any, I mean."

"You'd be lonely."

"I'd build more of my own kind. I'd mother a new race."

The bureaucrat tried to picture a covert civilization of small, busy machines scuttling about the Ocean floor. Lightless metal cities, squatly built and buttressed to stand up under the crushing pressures of the deep. "It sounds awfully bleak and unpleasant, if you ask me. Why would you want such a life?"

"I'd have freedom."

"Freedom," the bureaucrat said. "What is freedom?" A breaker smashed over the city, changing everything, falling back, restoring all. The room passed from bright sunlight through shadowy green to near blackness, then back again. The world outside was in flux and chaos. Things dying, things living, none of it under his control. He felt as if nothing really mattered. Almost offhandedly he said, "Oh, all right. As soon as all this is over, I'll set you free."

"You'll only be able to tap into my sensorium for a few minutes before you're out of range. Swim as straight as you can, and Ararat shouldn't distort your senses too greatly. You can orient yourself by the annulus when you're near the surface."

"I know."

He ought to say something, he knew, and yet nothing came to him. Some basic guidelines for the civilization the construct was about to spawn. "Be good," he began, then stalled. He tried again. "And don't stay down there forever—you and your people. When you feel more confident, come up and make friends. Intelligent beings deserve better than to spend their lives in hiding."

"What if we find we like it down in the trenches?" 

"Then by all means..." He stopped. "You're laughing at me, aren't you?"

"Yes," the briefcase said. "I'm sorry, boss, but yes. I like you well enough, you know that, but the role of lawgiver just doesn't suit you at all well."

"Do what you will then," the bureaucrat said. "Be free. Live in whatever form pleases you best, in whatever manner you prefer. Come and go as you like. Don't take any more orders from humans unless it's of your own free will."

"Removing compulsory restraints from an artificial construct is an act of treason, punishable by—" 

"Do it anyway."

"—revocation of conventional and physical citizenship, fines not to exceed three times life earnings, death, imprisonment, radical bodily and mental restructuring, and—"

The bureaucrat was short of breath; his chest felt tight. Old patterns die hard, and he found that it was not easy forcing the words out. "Do as you will. I command it for the third and last time."

The briefcase was changing. Its casing bulged out, flattening into a form better adapted for swimming. It extended stubby wings, lengthened and streamlined its body, and threw out a long, slender tail. Tiny clawed feet scrabbled for purchase on the stone. Extending an eyestalk, it looked up at him.

Which is to say, his semi-sentient briefcase turns out to be sentient, and he releases it to begin its own underwater civilization of magic AI briefcases beneath the rising tides. Which certainly feels like a different story than the one that we've been reading, about a bureaucrat trying to find a guy spreading illegal technology.

This is a weird one.

Should we go found a briefcase utopia, Stranger?
And don't forget to read a book!