Review - Ted Chiang - "Exhalation" (2008)

This tale takes place in a world which exists in an argon bubble in chromium, inhabited by a civilization of pneumatically-powered machine men, who gain their life energy from spouts from which argon under higher pressure can recharge their reservoirs.  One of them, a scientist who has discovered that their brains and memories are active patterns of argon currents within their heads, is faced with the apparent problem that all their mechanical clocks are now running more rapidly.  Indeed, it appears that everything is running more rapidly.

He invesigates, and discovers that what is actually happening is that the pressure differential between the master reservoir of argon and the atmosphere in the chromium bubble is being equalized.  As the pressure differential drops, the life processes of the machine men have less available energy and thus slow down.  It is not that the clocks are running faster, it is that the people are running slower.

Since their life and memories depend on drawing work from the pressure differential, this equalization will ultimately mean the utter extinction of their race and civilization.  The story is in the form of a first-person narrative, the scientist writing it down so that successors from some hypothetical other world may know of him and his race, and their lives.

The central concept of the story is the doom of entropy.  We humans live in a vastly larger and more complex Universe than do the machine-men (who, despite their confinement, have managed to construct a high civilization), but we are equally sentenced to ultimate death by entropy.  We never learn who created the machine men, or why (their forms, as described, seem exceedingly improbable to have evolved rather than been invented).  But then again, the origins of our own Universe are equally obscure.

If their world is an experiment, it might be judged a cruel one.

Then again -- so might OURS.

This is an awesomely effective and thought-provoking short story that, to me, exemplifies the best potential of philosophical science fiction.  It reminds me of some of Arthur C. Clarke's best work -- not so much in style, but through intellectual scope.  It is a story which I shall remember forever.

Retro Review: Mars Crossing, by Geoffrey A. Landis (2000)

Premise


In the year 2020, Brazil launched the first expedition to Mars.  It failed when both astronauts died of mysterious causes after landing at the north pole.  In the year 2022, America launched the second expedition to Mars, which landed in the northern hemisphere.  It failed on the return flight, when the return module exploded in interplanetary space due to a malfunction of the fuel-control system.

In the year 2028, America lands the third expedition to Mars, a bit south of the equator.  The expedition lands safely.  But then the return module explodes on the surface, killing one of the seven astronauts.  The remaining six astronauts have only one hope of getting back home.  They must take their rovers -- designed only for travel to the relatively-close Valles Marineris -- and cross the Valles Marineris and somehow make their way across thousands of miles of rugged Martian terrain to the north pole, where the Brazilian return vehicle awaits.

But the return vehicle will not take six passengers.  Some of the astronauts have secrets.  And one of them may be willing to ensure being chosen to make the return voyage -- by whatever means it takes.

Critique

This is some of the finest science fiction I've ever read.  It is diamond-hard:  nothing happens which is impossible or even all that improbable based on our current scientific understanding, and the Mars Landis describes is perfectly in accord with what we believe to be possible.  And yet it is full of danger, terror and wonder, bringing to life the beauty and mystery of the Red Planet, and the struggle to survive of six strong human beings lost very far from home, pushing themselves and their equipment far beyond the limits that either were intended to endure.

The basic structure, in which chapters set in the present of 2028 alternate with chapters flashing back to the fictional history of Martian exploration, and revealing the back stories of the six astronauts, is very effective.  The style is excellently clear, moving smoothly while still conveying considerable beauty of description.  The characters are strong, believable, and mostly likeable, without being flawless.  Even the character whom you will like least is well enough drawn that one can understand, if not entirely sympathize, with that character's motivation.  (And frankly, I'm not sure which one you will like best or least!)

I don't want to spoil the surprises in this book, because there are surprises, and they are good ones, despite the fact that nothing at all impossible happens.  Instead, I recommend that one and all read this book, because it will well reward you.

Links

Geoffrey A. Landis' Website   http://www.geoffreylandis.com/
Mars Crossing for sale at http://www.amazon.com/Mars-Crossing-Geoffrey-A-Landis/dp/0312872011

Review of "Guyal the Curator" (2009) by John C. Wright

Introduction

"Guyal the Curator" is a short novella (about 12 thousand words) which John C. Wright set in Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" storyverse, and available in the Songs of the Dying Earth anthology.

The `verse is probably familiar to a lot of my readers, but basically the "Dying Earth" stories are science fantasy, set in Earth's far future (1) -- many millennia, or even millions to billions of years from our time -- when the Sun is guttering out, whether from natural senesence or from having its energy drained by generation after generation of human engineers.  The humanity of Earth, which at one time attained a very high level of technology including interstellar and transdimensional travel, lives among the ruins of of its past scientific and psionic achievements, many of which they no longer understand and treat as magical.  A few humans, called "magicians," have made a study of these lost arts and have learned to channel transdimensional energies through their own minds, through memorized spells (2), or by studying and collecting artifacts of the lost technologies, using them without fully grasping the sciences behind their operation (3).

Description

The city of Old Romarth dates back to that earlier age of lost science, and is literally built on a tell atop its own ruins, some of which were solidly enough built to be essentially intact.  The city has fallen far, and is reduced to selling relics of its own past in order to survive in the present.  Since everyone expects the Sun to go out sometime within or not too far after their lives, nobody really sees any flaw in this mode of existence (4).

Manxolio Quinc is a minor magician and nobleman of that city, whose reputation rests largely on his possession of "the Implacable Dark Iron Wand," a relic weapon from an earlier age, of whose function and command he has very little concept, but which looks very impressive.  One day, Manxolio encounters a stranger, who tells him more in a short conversation about the Wand and the ancient history of Old Romarth than Manxolio has managed to learn in his entire life.  However, the stranger has forgotten his own name and nature (5).  Manxolio offers to help the man, and thus the quest begins ...

Analysis

I don't want to spoil the story for anyone.  I will say flat out that this is one of the best "Dying Earth" stories I have ever read, and this is against stiff competition, including Jack Vance himself, Robert Silverberg and Neil Gaiman. 

Wright makes us care about the two main characters -- including the less likeable Manxolio Quinc, who serves as viewpoint character in limited third-person (6). The incidents are fantastic, the secrets deep, and the ultimate revelations truly awesome, having an immense impact on our concept of the past and future of the Dying Earth, and all this without rendering the story inconsistent with Vance's own work or other authorized fiction set in that 'verse.  Most importantly, it all makes sense -- there is never a moment where something deeply stupid happens that slices the threads of your willing suspension of disbelief -- and is profoundly moving.

Conclusion

With this story, coupled with his work in the universes of A. E. Van Vogt's World of Null-A and William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land, John C. Wright is establishing himself as not merely a great writer and creator of his own fictional worlds, but also as a supremely-talented worker in other people's worlds.  This is harder than one might realize on first consideration:  the writer who wishes to tell effective stories in other people's universes must manage to convey his own message in a manner consistent with the existing setting and themes.  In particular, he must not flat-out contradict anything already established as true in that setting, and he must handle any established characters and other elements of the setting in such wise as not to jar with the mood of that setting, even if his ultimate message is DIFFERENT from that of the original creator.  Not only is this difficult to do, it is extremely difficult to do well, to do in a manner which results in a story which is both true to the old and memorable for the new (7).

John C. Wright had an especially tough row to hoe here because he was using a character from a previous Jack Vance story in the setting, to tell a story whose theme close to contradicts one of the main assumptions of the setting, and he managed to show with reference to other Vance works in and out of setting, exactly why this all made sense in terms of the setting.  He even made an implicit analogy between one of the protagonists and the hero of another very famous Jack Vance series, which was not originally part of the Dying Earth 'verse, by syncretizing the two 'verses.  And it was done subtly -- I didn't explicitly realize the thematic connection between "Guyal the Curator" and the famous Jack Vance series until I sat down to write this review.

Read this story.  Mortgage your home and unimportant family members to get hold of a copy of the anthology in which it appears (8).  Then read John C. Wright's other works.

It's well worth your time.

END.


=== NOTES ===

(1) - An obvious inspiration for Jack Vance was Clark Ashton Smith, whose Zothique series, set on "Zothique, Earth's Last Continent" (a future supercontinent somewhat similar to Pangaea Ultima), is essentially sword and sorcery in a decadent future world dominated by often-evil magicians -- though averaging a lower level of general technology than Vance's "Dying Earth."  Both are classed as being in the "Dying Earth subgenre" of speculative fiction.

(2) - Using the system even more familiar to many from Dungeons and Dragons, in which a magic-user can memorize and cast only a certain number of spells of certain levels per day.  However, Vance did not here copy D&D -- the first "Dying Earth" stories were written in the 1940's and 1950's.  It was actually Gygax and Arneson who copied Vance, and in some cases lifted spells wholesale from his stories.

(3) - This interpretation of the fantasy elements in the `verse developed over time and is the one Wright used in the story under discussion.  It also is one which makes a lot of sense.

(4) - And humans do the same thing in ancient cities and countries of the modern Earth, or otherwise sell off literally-irreplacable resources with no plan for supporting their economies after the deposits have run dry.  The antiquities and oil trades of the modern Mideast are the obvious example:  but there are less obvious ones, such as the mammoth tusk ivory trade.

(5) - Self-discovery seems to be one of John C. Wright's favorite story subjects:  consider the children from his "Chronicles of Chaos" series, or the multiple deceptions that have been practiced on Phaethon in his "The Golden Age" trilogy.  All I can say about this is that it's one of the strongest possible literary themes, and Wright always handles it well, with self-discovery leading to even larger discoveries which turn out to be vital to the whole story setting,

(6) - Which works interestingly and effectively, because Manxolio is the one whose scope of knowledge is most similar to that of his contemporaries, allowing the other character numerous and well-handled opportunities for exposition to the reader as he explains things to Manxolio; but the other character is the one with a moral outlook more similar to men of our age).

(7) - In the good sense of the word.

(8) - Or you could just visit your public library, like I did.  But where's the fun in that? ;-)

FINALLY

John C. Wright maintains a blog at

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/58124.John_C_Wright/blog

which is more than a bit interesting.  I recommend it to one and all.

How Wilful Ignorance of Inconvenient History Ruins Kristine Kathryn Rusch's 'G-Men' (2008)"

Introduction

I recently read Kristine Kathryn Rusch's short story "G-Men," which is an alternate history murder mystery set in October 1964 -- an important month indeed, when I personally entered the world, and also some minor stuff started happening in Southeast Asia.  FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, his personal assistant and possible lover Clyde Tolson, and three other FBI agents have been murdered outside a seedy gay hangout in New York City, and the question is:  "Whodunit?"

The story was interesting and engaging, and a fascinating examination of how attitudes toward crime and law enforcement were different almost a half-century ago.  But it seriously collapsed in its climax, because the author was forced to bend her interpretation of the history of LBJ and the Kennedys to fit the received wisdom as to the JFK assassination, as understood by the modern Left.

Dialogue and Monologue From the Climax

In the climactic scene, RFK (Robert F. Kennedy, JFK's competent younger brother, the Attorney-General) and LBJ (President Lyndon Baines Johnson), are facing-off over the secret political files of the deceased FBI Director.  Historically, J. Edgar Hoover had the dirt on virtually every politician and even celebrity in the country, and used these files both for occasional political blackmail and even more to prevent overreaching Presidents from using these files for systematic political blackmail).  LBJ can fire RFK, whom he hates, and seize the files, but RFK points out that LBJ can't do this without either taking a lot of time to go through procedures or creating a huge political scandal.

Here, LBJ and RFK talk, and RFK muses, about his brother's assassination.  LBJ says:

"... There's a lot of shit running around here that says your brother's shooting was a mob hit, and I know personally that J. Edgar was doing his best to make it seem like that Oswald character acted alone.  But now Edgar is dead and Jack is dead and the only tie they have is the way they kowtowed to your stupid prosecution of the men that got your brother elected."

Kennedy felt lightheaded.  He hadn't even thought that the deaths of his brother and J. Edgar were connected.  But LBJ had a point.  Maybe there was a conspiracy to kill government officials.  Maybe the mob was showing its power.  He'd had warning.

Hell, he'd had suspicions.  He hadn't let himself look at any of the evidence in his brother's assassination, not after he secured the body and prevented a disastrous autopsy in Texas.  If those doctors at Parkland had done their job, they would've seen just how advanced Jack's Addison's disease was.  The best kept secret of the Kennedy Administration -- an administration full of secrets -- was how close Jack was to incapacitation and death.

Analysis

Now, this exchange and interior monologue makes literally no logical sense -- and worse, it makes LBJ out to be a virtual traitor and RFK out to be a coward, which is probably not what the author intended.  Note that LBJ is saying that he thinks the Mafia has decided to kill Presidents and FBI Directors of which it disapproves and he isn't going to do anything to stop them from continuing to do this (a blatant violation of his Oath of Office) and RFK is thinking that he had to acquiesce to letting go the people who had not merely killed a sitting US President  but also HIS OWN BROTHER because he is afraid that otherwise people would have learned the JFK was seriously ill (which is a fact that would have become entirely irrelevant the moment JFK died).  At a minimum, one would have to assume that both LBJ and RFK were imbeciles incapable of logical planning -- for instance, wouldn't it occur to LBJ that his number-one priority should be to take down this dangerous conspiracy which might target him next?

This makes no sense on the face of it.  If this were a story set in an entirely fictional world, one would accuse Ms. Rusch of an incapablity of handling basic reasoning as it applies to political maneuvering, conspiracies and even common sense.

But of course this isn't set in an entirely fictional world, and that's the reason why Rusch's logic here stumbles.

Two Assassinations

It is part of the received wisdom of the modern Left that JFK was secretly an enlightened Leftist who if allowed to remain President would have avoided the Vietnam War, ended racism in America, and accomplished all sorts of great Leftist things such as would have pleased the hippies of 5-10 years after his death -- and that for this reason he was murdered by a Right-wing conspiracy, probably including the CIA, Mafia, and (depending who you ask) everyone else from the Dixiecrats to the Boy Scouts.  It is also part of the received wisdom of the modern Left that RFK was also such a Lightworker who would have made the hippies happy, etc. etc., and was bumped off by the same people.

This is called "retconning" when applied to fiction.  JFK was a hardline anti-Communist -- he was in short on the right wing of the Democrats on every issue other than race (the real right-wing Democrats on race were the Southern Democrats aka "Dixiecrats," who then and for the past century had worked hard to keep blacks down).  He didn't merely talk an anti-Communist line, he practiced it -- he invaded Cuba, upon the failure of this invasion repeatedly tried to assassinate Fidel Castro, and ramped-up American intervention against Communists everywhere from Central America to Southeast Asia.  He was one of the architects of the American involvement in the Vietnam War.

When he was murdered in 1963 -- based on overwhleming evidence, by a Castro-sympathizing Communist ex-US Marine by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald, who if he did not act alone was probably taking orders from Fidel Castro (who actually had a very good motive, means and opportunity) -- his Presidency was aborted.  And the kids who grew up admiring JFK, who then went to college and became the proto-Counterculture -- were free to imagine that their childhood hero believed and would have done any old thing that they wished he believed and would have done -- and those mean old Establishment types killed him to prevent him from doing so.

And so began and proliferated the conspiracy theories.

Amusingly, Rusch misses the most obvious conspiracy theory, the one which RFK if he had decided his brother was killed by conspirators including US Government officials and/or the Mafia helped by a US Government coverup, would likely have believed.

Who profited the most by JFK's death?  Why, his Vice-President, Lyndon Baines Johnson.  JFK hated LBJ and the hatred was cordially returned.  LBJ was going to be dropped from the ticket in 1968, but JFK's assassination instead catapulted LBJ into the Presidency.  And LBJ was the one man whom, if any other conspiracy was plotting to kill JFK, had to be brought on board in at least passive acceptance of the plot, because otherwise he would have been in a position to punish the conspirators for the murder of an American President -- a crime which his own power and safety demanded he not permit.

Yet in the confrontation, RFK does not even show a hint of suspecting that LBJ may have had his brother murdered.  Why?

Because LBJ is also a hero to the Left because of his Great Society program (they tend to forgive him the Vietnam War, because after all it was just a lot of redneck Americans and swarthy foreigners who got killed in that little fracas).  They can't have one hero of the Left getting mad at another hero of the Left for murdering yet another hero of the Left -- why, that might imply a certain degree of insane violence on the American Left, and we can't have that.  Better to blame the Mafia -- who really expects any better of the Mafia, anyway?  And as for the CIA ...

As for RFK, he was murdered in 1968, by Sirhan Sirhan, who was the prototype and first American example of the Angry Arab whom we all have to sympathize with because George W. Bush was such a meanie to them.  Even worse, Sirhan was a Palestinian, who killed RFK because RFK was sympathetic to the Israel (as was the whole Left, before the PLO started hitting Western targets and this scaring the Western Left into croaking "how high?" when the PLO asked froggie to jump).  This makes Sirhan Sirhan doubly sacrosanct and hence obviously the stooge of some Evil Conspiracy involving, um, the Mafia, the CIA, the Phone Company, and the Boy Scouts.  Or something like that.

RFK, of course, had decided to "get out front and lead" the New Left, much to the dismay of the actual New Left leaders, who were especially upset that their followers were forgetting that they were supposed to be rebelling against society, not joining the bandwagon of a rich Democrat who was very likely to become the next President of the United States of Amerikkka.  One could concoct a conspiracy theory involving the American New Leftists, except that those bozos clearly couldn't have organized a group of horny sailors on an outing to a whorehouse (as the Weathermen were shortly to begin demonstrating).

The Actual Denounement

I won't spoil the story, save to mention that the Mafia didn't kill J. Edgar Hoover -- and that the author sets up the real culprit quite professionally.  Which is to say, all that stuff in which LBJ and RFK are made to look like fools, cowards and traitors was just a red herring -- but of course Rusch didn't realize she was making LBJ and RFK look like fools, cowards and traitors.

She thought she was telling real history, the way she imagined those people actually thought.  They come off as imbecilic because she is resolutely avoiding confronting any historical truths which might blow the lid off just how imbecilic is the modern Left's version of the history surrounding the LBJ and RFK assassinations.

Conclusion

When one corrupts data, one corrupts the information one can construct from the data.  A lie or severe mistake regarding history will corrupt historical fiction derived from that history.  (Imagine if I believed that Europeans had possessed good maps and sailing instructions to the New World from AD 750 on, and then tried to comprehend the strategy of expansion of European polities under that belief!)

Here, the lies and mistakes which are required to keep JFK, LBJ, RFK and simultaneously Communists and the Palestinians as sympathetic historical actors, when it was a Communist (Oswald) and a Palestinian (Sirhan) who murdered JFK and RFK respectively, and LBJ who did nothing to avenge either death.

Truth will out.  Sometimes, by corrupting the conclusions of the liars.

END

Review - "The Fulcrum" (Gwyneth Jones, 2005)

SF Story Review: "The Fulcrum,"

"The Fulcrum"
 2005 by Gwyneth Jones

Review

(c) 2008, 2011 by Jordan S. Bassior

 I read this in Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005 (ed. Jonathan Strahan) and was astounded by how little sense it made. Furthermore, it seemed to be (in its setting) copying a much better story by George R. R. Martin, which also made very little sense but whose superior style papered over the less egregious logical flaws.

General

The story is set on a manned Kuiper Belt outpost in the 24th century. Two oddly-sexed "extreme tourists" are visiting this outpost, ostensibly for the experience, in fact because they are hunting rumors of treasure.

Introduction


Dubious Economics

Now, the first strange part of the setting is that this supposedly occurs in a future in which there has been no manned colonization of the Solar System. This is odd, because they appear to have manned spacecraft capable of reaching any part of the Solar System (as shown by the existence of the outpost). According to the author:

In the close to four hundred years since spaceflight got started, the human race had never got beyond orbital tourism, government science stations, and wretched, hand-to-mouth mining operations in the Belt ...

... and, as another character explains:

"... Eventually, yes, a few fools managed to scrape a living in the deep. But the gravity well defeated us. We could not become a new world. There was nothing to prime the pump, no spices, no gold: no new markets, never enough materials worth the freight."

As Gwyneth Jones clearly fails to grasp, the two statements are contradictory. If there is even orbital tourism, science stations, and mining operations, then there clearly is a market, which space-based producers could supply more cheaply than ground-based ones. This is because "the gravity well" is an obstacle to transit between Earth and other places; it is not an obstacle between (say) the Moon and the Asteroid Belt. The gravity wells of objects considerably smaller than the Earth are so shallow that it is easy to blast off from their surfaces and achieve Solar orbit, especially assuming nuclear-powered rockets (which they must have if they are planting outposts in the Kuiper Belt).

To serve as a centuries-long obstacle to interplanetary colonization, there must be virtually no manned operations beyond Low Earth Orbit. If there are any, then these (originally subsidized) operations logically would perform the economic function of "priming the pump." Once you get a complex economy beyond our atmosphere, it builds on itself, in a virtuous circle.

For instance, the current boom in commercial spacecraft construction is feeding both on orbital tourism and on the desire to make money supplying the International Space Station and other scientific manned space ventures. The motive of the venture being supplied is irrelevant -- it may be scientific, military, or recreational, but its personnel and purposes will need supply, and it can much more be cheaply supplied by contracting from private suppliers whose operations are, ultimately, based near the subsidized venture. And, once enough such suppliers are in place, they can produce and sell to each other, and export some products even to the Earth.

Ironically, "gold," mentioned on her list as one thing not available, is one commodity likely to be present in bulk in the Belt. Along with lots of other precious and industrial metals, and rare earths. It would not be economical with current technology to export them to Earth, but with a technology capable of manned flight to the Kuiper Belt?

Back in the 1950's to mid 1970's, when science fiction writers had seen the immense aerospace advances of the period from 1903 to 1969, there was a tendency to assume very rapid expansion into space, far more rapid than 20th century rocketry actually could have supported. Gwyneth Jones is obviously making the opposite mistake, postulating a period of some 350 years without significant interplanetary colonization.

The Fulcrum

The Kuiper Belt station, "The Fulcrum," is located at a special point in spacetime from which it is possible to tunnel matter transmitter like hypertubes to other planets, which is why this station is maintained so far out from the Earth. Prospectors travel to these planets to try to find ones suitable for colonization. They can claim the planets themselves or sell the coordinates to developers. For no obvious reason, they can only transmit humans and what gear they can hold on them. It is in hope of buying and reselling the coordinates to an Earthlike planet that the weird couple (who call themselves "aliens" for no comprehensible reason) has come there.

Crime but no Punishment

They have spent months there without getting a bite. Then, for murky reasons connected to the plot, their exercise bike is stolen. They go to the station's security chief, Eddie, but he can do nothing. He is a coward, there is no effective law on The Fulcrum, and the real power is in the hands of two rival gangsters, one of whom has a gun, a knife, and a (very) few followers; the other of whom has a knife and a (very) few followers. The first gangster's possession of a gun is a major advantage for him, because it is illegal to bring guns onto the station.

Effective Gun Control?

Here the story runs into another gaping logical flaw. If there is no effective law on the station, and there is a considerable risk of lethal violence, why are guns so rare? Sure, the "world government" mentioned in the story could prohibit exporting guns from Earth to the station, but because there is no law on the station, they could not prevent the Deep Spacers on the station from making guns themselves.

The Fulrcum is only visited at months-long intervals by the Slingshot, a sort of space transport, which means that it must house extensive machine shops. Therefore, intelligent and technically-trained people could improvise guns, swords, body armor, etc. Yet for some reason, nobody thinks of this (including the space tourists, who go through all kinds of stupid convoluted actions rather than simply obtaining their own weapons and defying the gangsters). This seems like Euroweenie "gun control" elevated to the status of some physical law!

Hull Breach!

One apparent justification is given when it's pointed out that the knives the gangsters are carrying could puncture the station hull, and (by implication) heavier weapons would be Right Out. But this is just plain silly: first of all merely puncturing a station hull would not be lethal, assuming that in 400 years of space travel someone has invented and deployed patch kits (Jones seems not to realize just how long it would take a small puncture in a large compartment to evacuate the air in the compartment). Secondly, The Fulrcum as designed is big, and presumably contains numerous sealable airtight compartments (the reall ISS, far smaller and more primitive, certainly does).

Finally, how much would such considerations stop anyone who had real fear of deadly attack? I'd shoot the gangsters and patch the hull leaks when my foes were safely dead! So, I'm pretty sure, would most Americans.

The Point of It All

Anyway, it turns out that on the station there is a secret source of exotic matter, which could be used in some undefined way to build FTL starships, which would enable the Deep Spacers' dreams of large-scale interplanetary colonization to become a reality. This, and revenge, drives the whole rather silly film noir plot.

Conclusion

This was a potentially good idea that became a very bad idea because Gwyneth Jones had to bow in reverence to the gods of Only One Earth and Gun Control. C. L. Moore or Leigh Brackett would have done this so much better -- come to think of it, they basically did do this basic plot much better, more than once.

Oh, the specific story, with similar logic holes which worked better because George R. R. Martin was a better writer? "Starlady," which features wackily stupid ID verification procedures and a similar sort of "gun control" (everyone fights with vibroknives and stunsticks, but no better weapons for no obvious reason because the port is lawless), but which manages to work as a story, because Martin's style is so damn poetic.

Gwyneth Jones' style isn't.

END.