|
Blind Lake
Reviewed: April 23, 2004
By: Robert Charles Wilson
Publisher: TOR Books
399 pages, $34.95
There
are two Canadian books on the nomination list for the 2004 Hugo Award. I
reviewed of them, Robert J. Sawyer’s Humans, last fall. This is the other
one. I owe it to the discussion on the Sawyer chat site that I decided to
crack the cover on Blind Lake when it arrived in my mail box. Wilson was
highly recommended by a number of the members on that site as well as RJS
himself. To complete the connection, this week brought
news of an Alberta research project dedicated to exploring possible connections
between quantum physics and computing. Timely, indeed, since that is the
bit of scientific speculation which underpins this novel. Blind
Lake is a research facility in northern Minnesota. Scientists there are studying
extraterrestrial life without ever having to leave the planet. They don’t
know quite how what they’re doing works. Somehow, after the failure of an
array of long distance exploration probes, images started coming through
to two observatories on Earth, one at a place called Crossbank, the other
at Blind Lake. The images are from two different planets.
At Crossbank the scientists are viewing what appears to be a planet with
no higher life forms. Blind Lake is a bit more exciting. It has lobsters. At
least, that’s what the media has dubbed them. These are vaguely crustacean-like
sentient organisms that walk upright, use tools, live in cities, follow daily
routines and live lives that the observers back on earth are wracking their
brains trying to make sense of. The images from the Blind Lake Computational
Array, commonly known as Eyeball Alley, are baffling in the extreme, but
not nearly as baffling as the events which begin shortly after the book opens. We
follow some insiders and some outsiders. There’s a trio of visiting writers,
each with a somewhat different agenda, who are being allowed to look at the
inner workings of both observatories. Our main focus here is on Chris Carmody,
whose last book had been such a successful account of a life and work that
its main subject had apparently committed suicide. Chris isn’t sure that
the world needs another book from him on any subject. The
insiders are the members of the dysfunctional Hauser family. We begin with
Tessa, who seems to be an 11 year old with a learning problem, or perhaps
something more serious. Her mother, Marguerite, is an anthropologist at Blind
Lake who has radical ideas about the observations they are making of their
central subject. Her father, Raymond Scutter, is an uptight administrative
type who is liked by no one and is used to manipulating situations so that
he wins. Nobody wins anything on the day that the armed
forces lock down Blind Lake solid and tight and send in supplies to withstand
a long siege. No one can leave, and the few who try serve as a deadly object
lesson to everyone else. Something has gone mysteriously wrong at Crossbank,
something that seem to be connected to the work they are doing, or the equipment
they are doing it with. The government fears the problem has spread, or will
spread to Blind Lake, and it is taking no chances. They
are half right. Another part of the story is, of course,
is about what happens to a town full of people trapped together in a hothouse
situation with no options, with a tight focus on a family which already has
problems. Still another section is about Marguerite’s attempts
to understand an almost totally alien life form, which has been designated
simply, the Subject. In an attempt to avoid ascribing human motivations to
a non-human species, the observers on the project have been cautioned simply
to observe behavior, and not to attempt to explain it. In the end, she abandons
this in an effort to understand more than her discipline will allow her.
She has to apply this technique not only to her Subject, but also to the
strangeness that is going on all around her and to the mysterious talent
possessed by Tessa. The novel covers all these things quite
well. There are enough everyday problems for those who don’t like SF, and
enough elements of the puzzle story for those who do. I’m looking forward
to seeing more from this writer, and I’m definitely going to look into his
backlist. There seem to be four earlier novels and a short story collection
to explore.
Print Preview
|
|