Subject: REMAKING HISTORY by Kim Stanley Robinson

From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070)
Date: 20 Apr 92 17:15:57 GMT

REMAKING HISTORY by Kim Stanley Robinson
                        A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
			 Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper

        Ghod, I love Robinson's work!

        Okay, everyone who was just looking for a thumbs up or down vote now
   knows where I stand on this collection, so I feel free to discuss the
   stories at somewhat greater length.

        REMAKING HISTORY is the title of the collection, the title of one of
   the stories, and the book's theme as well, with several of the stories
   embodying that theme.

        "'A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations'" (originally
   published in 1991), "Remaking History" (1989), "Vinland the Dream" (1991),
   "Muir on Shasta" (1991), and "A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions"
   (1991) all look backward at history, not forward to the future as SF
   (usually meaning "science fiction") is expected to do.  Yet they're all SF
   ("speculative fiction") in their own way.

        The title story, "Remaking History," is a straightforward alternate
   history: what if the Iran hostage rescue had succeeded?  But even here, in
   what is the first of these stories that Robinson wrote (or at any rate
   published), history is examined on multiple levels: what did happen, what
   might have happened, how what happened is portrayed in the media, and so on.
   These are ideas Robinson will return to over and over.  The interlocking of
   events, how one thing leads to another and the slightest coincidences can
   change history, are themes that Robinson here begins to explore.

        "Muir on Shasta" would appear to be an historical fiction about John
   Muir.  Yet Robinson gives it a mysticism in Muir's visions of past and
   future that makes it something more, while at the same time slipping in a
   subtle reminder that we are often unable to interpret correctly what we see-
   --how much more difficult to interpret things second-hand.

        "Vinland the Dream" is a perfect pairing with "Remaking History"--it's
   about remaking history.  What if all the evidence of Norse exploration in
   Canada and elsewhere in North America had been faked by someone in the early
   1800s?  What if he *had* "remade history"?  In "Vinland the Dream" some
   archaeologists discover the truth, making them sort of Schliemanns in
   reverse, turning fact into myth.  What motive would the hoaxer have?  Was he
   just a practical joker or a Norse chauvinist, or was he trying to give us
   dreams?  In both "Vinland the Dream" and "Remaking History." Robinson looks
   at how our perceptions of history give direction to our lives.

        "A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions" is not a short story--
   it's not fiction at all (though everyone seems to refer to it as such).  In
   this essay, Robinson trys to use the conceits of physics to describe and
   understand history.  Certainly the application of chaos theory (to which the
   title refers) to history is not new, but I think Robinson's use of the
   wave-versus-particle duality from physics to embody the Great-Man-versus-
   historical-materialism duality in history is a new and original approach to
   this ongoing debate.  The only parts of "A Sensitive Dependence on Initial
   Conditions" that might be construed as fiction are Robinson's many scenarios
   for how Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have turned out differently, and how
   those changes might have affected the future, and so on.  The twists and
   turns that Robinson draws give the reader a glimpse of how complicated it
   all is: a writer of alternate histories can pick one scenario and make it
   sound reasonable, even inevitable, but Robinson shows how many different
   paths are possible and helps demonstrate Niven's contention that alternate
   history is just too easy to write.

        "'A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations'" puts into
   practice, if you will, a lot of what Robinson explores in the first three
   stories I mentioned.  A historian is trying to put together a book that is
   "A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations," and as part of
   that is trying to make sense of the century and of the feeling of one man in
   1902 who said, "I believe Man is good.  I believe that we stand at the dawn
   of a century that will be more peaceful and prosperous than any in history."
   Robinson's Frank Churchill tries to reconcile that with the millions of war
   dead, measured--in a series of powerful images--as how many Vietnam
   memorials they would fill: one every six weeks for World War I (which lasted
   220 weeks in all), a hundred and twenty for the Jews killed in the
   Holocaust, and so on.  Most of Robinson's readers will remember Vietnam;
   this takes their image of a horrifying big war and shows them how small it
   was in comparison to the rest of the century.  Again, our perceptions of
   history are shown to be flawed; our lives are shaped by myths rather than
   realities.  Only by returning to a simpler era can Churchill find some
   understanding, but also some humility: we are no longer "Man," but simply
   "man."

        "The Part of Us That Loves" is an up-to-date look at the Gospel stories
   of Jesus's miracles in a town which seems oddly stuck in the 1950s.  In
   spite of that (or maybe because of it--it gives the story a sort of "soft-
   focus" feel that reinforces the theme), Robinson conveys a strong message.
   What the message is--aye, there's the rub.  To the mystic, it would be that
   the age of miracles is not past, or has come again; to the secular humanist,
   it may be that we make our own miracles.  Given Robinson's attractions to
   the ambiguities of history, I don't doubt for a moment that this ambiguity
   is intentional.  This story also marks a return to the musical theme that
   Robinson had in such earlier works as "In Pierson's Orchestra" and "Coming
   Back to Dixieland," both from the 1976 ORBIT 18.

        REMAKING HISTORY also contains what is described on the dust jacket as
   "Robinson's controversial South African sequence, 'Down and Out in the Year
   2000,' 'Our Town,' 'A Transect,' and 'The Lunatics.'"  What makes these a
   South African sequence escapes me.  The first seems to be a straightforward
   "our cities are going to hell" look at the future--well-done, but having no
   discernible connection to South Africa.  The second is set in Tunisia.  The
   third is set in Montreal and South Africa through a most peculiar space-
   warp.  But then one might expect that of a story titled "The Transect."  It
   seemed similar in some vague undefinable way to Michael Bishop's "Apartheid,
   Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana."  I doubt either copied the other;
   Robinson's is from 1987, Bishop's from 1990 (I believe), but it's probably
   one of those odd coincidences.  Then again, maybe I see a resemblance where
   no one else does.  It wouldn't be the first time.  ("Mark, doesn't that look
   like so-and-so?"  "No.")  "The Lunatics" is also connected to South Africa,
   not by being set there, but by being a parable of what might happen there
   (though recent events seem to make it less likely).  Robinson takes some
   very traditional science fiction trappings and does some very modern things
   with them.

        The five remaining stories form no special "cycle."  "The Translator"
   is a basic science fiction tale of a human negotiating between two aliens
   with the "aid" of a mechanical translator.  One wonders if this 1990 story
   didn't serve as partial inspiration for STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION's
   "Darmok" (first broadcast in September 1991)--both have to do with coping
   with languages having very different structures.  ("Doesn't that look like
   ....?"  "No.") In "Before I Wake" humanity is stricken by a malady that
   prevents a person from staying awake for more than a very short period at a
   time, and how it changes us.  "Rainbow Bridge" is a coming-of-age story
   involving environmental concerns and Navaho mysticism.  "Glacier" is a sort
   of slice-of-life story about the return of the glaciers; Robinson does it
   competently, but it has been done before.  And finally, "Zurich" is about
   one man's (internal evidence suggests a man rather than a woman, though it
   is never stated) attempt to outdo the Swiss at cleanliness.  But I detect in
   this a certain mean-spiritedness against the Swiss (as contrasted with the
   South American musician, for example) that makes the story almost unpleasant
   to read.  It seems to be attacking an entire people--for being too clean, no
   less!--and as such not at all typical of the sensitivity and humanity most
   of Robinson's other works shows.

        In spite of this one small disappointment (even Jove nods, as they
   say), I *highly* recommend this collection.

   %B      Remaking History
   %T      "A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations"
   %T      Remaking History
   %T      Vinland the Dream
   %T      Muir on Shasta
   %T      A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions
   %T      The Part of Us That Loves
   %T      Down and Out in the Year 2000
   %T      Our Town
   %T      A Transect
   %T      The Lunatics
   %T      The Translator
   %T      Before I Wake
   %T      Rainbow Bridge
   %T      Glacier
   %T      Zurich
   %A      Kim Stanley Robinson
   %C      New York
   %D      December 1991
   %I      Tor
   %O      hardback, US$18.95
   %G      ISBN 0-312-85126-X
   %P      274pp

Evelyn C. Leeper   |   +1 908 957 2070   |   att!mtgzy!ecl or [email-masked]