From archive (archive) Subject: THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE by L. Neil Smith From: ecl@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (Evelyn C. Leeper) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Date: 15 Aug 89 21:08:55 GMT THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE by L. Neil Smith Tor, 1989 (1986c), 0-812-55425-6, $4.50. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1989 Evelyn C. Leeper This alternate history novel slipped by me when it first came out. Based on the premise that the Black Plague (actually a variation of it) killed off, not 33%, but 95% of Europe. The result is a world in which there are three large empires: a "Saracen-Jewish" one, a "Mughal-Arab" one, and a "Sino-Aztec" one. Europe is ruled by the Saracen empire, which is currently fighting a war against the Mughal empire on "the island continent." (I never could quite figure out where this was--at times it seemed to be Japan, but that seems an unlikely place for those two empires to interface.) The story takes place at the present time (well, about the year 2000 C.E., though dates are given in the Islamic calendar). The main character, Sedrich Owaldsohn, lives in a Europe ruled by superstition. Technological advances are, for the most part, prohibited and religious groups are in authority locally. The two main groups are the Brotherhood of the Cult of Jesus in Hell (a Christian group run by men) and the Mistresses of the Sisterhood (a Wiccan group run by women). Sedrich develops a new invention and is persecuted by the head of the Brotherhood, who eventually drives Sedrich out. Sedrich then travels to America, where he changes his name to Fireclaw and lives as an Amerind (or whatever the term would be in this universe) on the outskirts of the Aztec empire and gets involved in a mission to deliver a Saracen princess to the Aztec prince. The alternate world is of some interest, though I suspect that had the Spaniards not conquered the Incas, the Incas would have eventually spread northward and overcame the Aztecs. But more importantly, I find it hard to believe the level of technology achieved by the Aztecs while at the same time they retained massive human sacrifice and other cultural attitudes that would seem to result in a stagnant rather than an advancing culture. In part this can be explained by the "Dreamers," six million people who dream of alternate worlds (including ours) and whose dreams are written down as directions for producing new technology. (There was an interesting counterpoint in the opening scene of a medieval pogrom against the Jews of the village with the scenes towards the end of the six million dreamers.) However, I still find the results unconvincing. Some may say my final complaint has to do with "political correctness." Smith has written a very brutal (though not explicit perse) rape scene for no reason that I can discern (the rape scene may be necessary to the plot, but not the manner of it). What particularly struck me about it was its similarity to rape scenes in J. Neil Schulman's RAINBOW CADENZA. Now normally I wouldn't make anything of this, but there are two points worth noting. First, both Schulman and Smith have won the Libertarian Party's Prometheus Award, which would indicate a certain similarity in their philosophies (at least to the people who give the award). Second, Smith acknowledges a phrase of Schulman's at the beginning of THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE and refers to Schulman as an "so-far-unindicted co-conspirator", and thus I think it more than just coincidence that they have written similar scenes. And as in THE RAINBOW CADENZA there is a scene in which the characters discuss this rape and how it's just a manifestation of male violence, the same as warfare and fighting. Now this is not the main part of the book, and perhaps I am over- reacting to it, but I found this offensive, unconvincing, and trivializing. This may have colored how I felt about the book as a whole (though I wasn't greatly enamored of it even before then), but the bottom line is that I cannot recommend this book. Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 201-957-2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com From rec.arts.sf.written Fri Feb 18 14:16:27 1994 Xref: liuida alt.individualism:11661 rec.arts.sf.written:49813 alt.politics.libertarian:24334 Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,alt.individualism,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.politics.libertarian Path: liuida!sunic!uunet!convex!news.oc.com!news.kei.com!eff!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!lerc.nasa.gov!purdue!yuma!lamar!andrew From: andrew@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Andrew Boardman) Subject: Review of _Pallas_ by L. Neil Smith, Review by Charles Curley Message-ID: <1994Feb17.211716.102692@yuma> Date: 17 Feb 94 21:17:16 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: lamar.acns.colostate.edu Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523 Lines: 355 Pallas L. Neil Smith, Tor, November 1993, $23.95 Reviewed by Charles Curley. Pullouts: If this is not the most politically incorrect novel in print, the author will be sorely disappointed. A person without a gun is naked, while a person without clothes is merely nude. Smith is familiar with firearms, as mechanisms and as tools for mental training. Frontier justice, administered at the scene and moment of the crime by the hands of the intended victim... I taught my daughter to read, and among the skills she learned was how to evaluate what she reads. Imagine a world in the not too distant future, where high technology on the high frontier have transformed the asteroid Pallas into home for 30,000 people. There, two contending visions of how man ought to live struggle, in the persons of former U.S. Senator Gibson Altman and collective farm refugee Emerson Ngu. This book is the story of that conflict -- and the visions behind it. Altman is the head of the Greeley Utopian Memorial Project. It is a UN sponsored project. The Project was named for Horace Greeley, who had ignored his own most famous advice, to "go west, young man." It is the ultimate collective farm, or perhaps "collective plantation" would be more like it. At least Emerson Ngu, plantation, excuse me, *Project* peasant, excuse me, *worker,* thought so. But Ngu lay in his cave, in time stolen from tending crops, and listened on his clandestine radio to the station in the Outside town of Curringer. William Wilde Curringer was a South African multi- billionaire who had read the works of social philosophers Mirelle Stein and Raymond Louis Drake-Tealy. He determined to build a society based on their ideas, and invested his billions in terraforming Pallas and transporting signatories of Stein's Covenant to the asteroid. Just as the Project represents the ultimate in collectivism, the town of Curringer and Pallas outside 21:08 18 November, 1993 1 *Pallas* Review ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Charles Curley Submitted to: _Lever Action_ the Project represent the ultimate in individualism and libertarianism. And therein lies the conflict. It is clear which side the author is on. Indeed, one suspects that if this is not the most politically incorrect novel in print, the author will be sorely disappointed. Not only are the pallatians rampant individualists, but they carry guns. Furthermore, they hunt. Worse, (from a PC point of view) they enjoy it. In pallatian society, a person without a gun is naked, while a person without clothes is merely nude. The author is quite serious. He heads each chapter with a quote, much as Frank Herbert did in *Dune.* Unlike *Dune,* many of the quotes are from real sources, often quite scholarly. The theme is stated in the following quote from Robert Ardrey: "While we are members of the intelligent primate family, we are uniquely human even in the noblest sense, because for untold millions of years we alone killed for a living." Smith's vast eclectic taste in reading shows in his choices of other authors to quote: the screenplay for a *Star Trek* movie, Rex Stout, Rex May, C.S. Forester, Nathanial Blackburn, Barbara Tuchman, Pauline Reage, and others. Add in an article in *Discover* Magazine entitled "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race," and other works on anthropology and sociology. About the only quote missing is one from H.L. Hunt: "If this country is worth saving, it's worth saving at a profit." But not all Smith's quotes are from historic sources. Like Herbert and other science fiction writers, Smith quotes from his own fictional writers: Drake-Tealy, Stein, and Curringer. And like Herbert's Princess Irulan, we find out that two of these are alive and well. Drake-Tealy is Smith's voice for his own conclusions on anthropology and sociology. Stein (who appears partly based on Ayn Rand, Isabelle Patterson and Murray Rothbard) is his voice for comments on economics and politics. And Curringer is a curmudgeon. His title, *Unfinished Memoirs,* evokes Benjamin Tucker's curmudgeonly *Instead of a Book.* But the chapter headings are bits of fat that smooth out and provide pleasant curves to the bone and muscle of the book. These are the thoughts and actions of the characters. Smith gives us a guided tour of his idea of utopia, by the device of having a stranger to that society, Emerson Ngu, introduced to it. This device is at least as ancient as *Probability Broach,* Smith's first novel. Even older: Benjamin Tucker used in in the original *Liberty* magazine. (And anyone who has a problem with reusing good literary devices hasn't read his Kipling.) We learn, via our sympathy for Ngu, that our values are not so far apart from those of the Greeley Utopian Memorial Project. Take the following exchange, which one might imagine having with an animal rights activist: 21:08 18 November, 1993 2 *Pallas* Review ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Charles Curley Submitted to: _Lever Action_ "Come on, Miss Singh! I don't know about you, but my compassion for someone isn't limited to my estimate of their intelligence!" She looked at him straight in the eye. "Mine is." All of the characters are armed, and know how to use their firearms. A lengthy passage is devoted to Ngu's training in the use of firearms. Ngu starts with an L.A.R. Grizzly Win Mag, chambered in .45 magnum. In spite (or, perhaps, because) of that handicap, he goes on to become a local champion in metal silhouette shooting. It is clear that Smith is familiar with firearms, as mechanisms and as tools for mental training. His loving description of the mental processes involved in silhouette shooting shows much experience with the sport. His geography (pallatography?) shows a knowledge and appreciation of the great modern authorities on arms: Grenell's Gulch, Lake Selous, Seyfried Road, and others. (But no Farnam's Freehold, alas.) And his characters know how to use their arms for more than just "sporting uses." They hunt, in accord with Drake-Tealy's (and Smith's) ideas. They use them in self defense. "Don't worry, Emerson, frontier justice, administered at the scene and moment of the crime by the hands of the intended victim, is a selling point to me -- I lived in Washington too long for it not to be -- and it's no news to anyone else on this asteroid!" Even the Speir carriers are armed. Smith uses his vantage point of the near future to lay out some warnings for our own future. He sees that, as socialism has collapsed in Eastern Europe, it has strengthened here in what used to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. While the ex-Soviet Union is busily privatizing and deregulating everything in sight, following the leads of Poland, eastern Germany and Hungary, the U.S. is moving in exactly the opposite direction. A president elected by 43% of the voters wants to effectively nationalize one seventh of the U.S. economy, and take it down the road on which Britain, France and other countries now painfully retreat. Smith predicts that the last place in the world where marxist economics will be taught is the University of California at Berkeley. This is consistent with Vlaclav Klaus' 1989 observation that the only place where marxist economics is taken seriously any more is on the campuses of American universities. He also has some choice words for the cultural near-war now waging between the East and the West of this country (of which gun control and grazing reform are but a part): Westerners had often complained bitterly of what they felt amounted to colonial treatment by the Northeast, of 21:08 18 November, 1993 3 *Pallas* Review ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Charles Curley Submitted to: _Lever Action_ three quarters of their land being perpetually tied up for the sake of a future which somehow never arrived, of their involuntary status as the Northeast's dumping ground, its bottomless food, water and mineral reserve, its hiding place for the Pentagon's most dangerous toys. (And, like searchers for Asimov's Second Foundation, we should look at the labels "east" and "west" in social terms, not physical directions.) Smith does in his novel does what Jeffrey R. Snyder has done in an essay in *The Public Interest* for Fall, 1993. In _A Nation of Cowards_, Snyder clearly and eloquently lambastes the people of this country for being unwilling to take responsibility for their own self defense. *Pallas* is the fictional statement of this same point of view. Snyder takes the negative view: here is what is wrong with American society. Smith takes the affirmative: here is what society would be like if we took responsibility for ourselves instead of trying to foist it off on the welfare state. It is doubtful that either knew of the other's work in progress. That two widely different works should show up at the same time to say the same shockingly radical thing has to make one wonder. The action of the novel starts with 14 year old Emerson Ngu's escapes from the Greeley Utopian Memorial Project, first mentally (by listening to his clandestine radio) and them physically, as he passes the barrier wall around the Project. The second part of the book is Emerson's introduction (and ours) to Pallatian life. He finds his way to Mrs. Singh's boarding house, where he meets Judge Brody, Mrs. Singh, and several other characters. Emerson is also introduced to Pallatian cuisine: Gulping bile, Emerson looked down at his bowl, scraped nearly clean with the spoon that still lay accusingly beside it on the table. first it had been poor Bambi, murdered and mutilated by those gloating savages back on the road. and now it was cute and furry Thumper, here in this very stew he'd found so delicious. Emerson had never eaten meat before. What kind of surrealistic nightmare had he escaped to, anyway? He is introduced to Pallatian education: I taught my daughter Gretchen to read, and among the skills she learned along the way was how to *evaluate* what she reads. That's the last thing schools want kids to be able to do, but it's a matter of self defense as important as knowing to focus on the front sight and squeeze rather 21:08 18 November, 1993 4 *Pallas* Review ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Charles Curley Submitted to: _Lever Action_ than jerk the trigger. Turned out pretty well, I think, and now she's educating herself, from the same books you see all around you. Gretchen Singh turns out to be an excellent shooting instructor. She teaches Emerson that, when squeezing the trigger, to "Remember to take your time. It isn't a race, you know." Later, they become lovers, and she teaches him that the same advice applies to sex, only more so. The next part of the story is Ngu's conflict with Altman. Shortly after Ngu and Gretchen become lovers, Altman comes into town, and sues in Judge Brody's court for the return of Ngu. Altman claims that he is a minor, and can't opt out of a contract signed by his parents. Brody makes his jurisdiction clear, in terms that will pale the Wyoming State Bar Association: "First off, the Curringer Trust, in which all Pallatians are shareholders under provisions of the Hyperdemocratic Covenant, is all the government Pallas has or wants or needs. Its only responsibility is t'maintain the atmospheric envelope over our heads. Every manner of dispute, even those held elsewhere t'be of a criminal nature -- providin', of course, the criminal has survived the initial encounter -- are settled by professional intermediaries like meself, where the idea of restitution, rather than punishment or 'rehabilitation,' is the accepted custom. "...It's me duty to inform y'both that the arbiter, meanin' meself. may be supplemented, should either party insist, by a jury of individuals fully informed as to their thousand-year-old obligation t'weigh the law itself, as well as the facts of the case." Brody rules that Emerson is self-supporting, and so an adult under the Hyperdemocratic Covenant. He also rules that under the Covenant, parents cannot contract away the rights of their offspring -- echoing Thomas Paine, among others. Altman responds that next time he will be back with "the requisite resources to make good *any* claim." I.e. his U.N. Education and Morals goons. Altman has revealed the iron fist behind the velvet glove of government beneficence. Worse, from Emerson's point of view, is that Gretchen has disappeared. To tell about the resolution of that thickening of the plot would be a cruelty. Like a Pallatian, the reader of this review 21:08 18 November, 1993 5 *Pallas* Review ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Charles Curley Submitted to: _Lever Action_ will simply have to take responsibility for herself and find out by buying the book. So if you are hunting for a good book to read, with lots of philosophical meat on its bones, go down to your bookstore and stalk the science fiction section. If you set your sights on a copy of *Pallas* you will flush out a good read. But if new ideas frighten you off, and you are afraid to think for yourself, stay away from this book. It is not for either the weak-stomached or the weak-minded. You are what you think. *Charles Curley lives in Gillette, Wyoming, where he is a computer mechanic, firearms instructor, software engineer, and a writer.* --- 30 --- 2144 words Charles Curley Box 2071 Gillette, WY 82717-2071 303/962-1464 21:08 18 November, 1993 6 *Pallas* Review