Richard K. Morgan: The Steel Remains

To break my string of "complaining about relatives" posts, I'll go ahead and talk about my impressions of the latest Richard K. Morgan book. I've read everything he's written. I like him a lot, and my dad is also a fan.

What's good about Richard K. Morgan? He's sort of a Marxist, and like China Mieville, the economic and political environment is not just window-dressing... it's absolutely essential to the plot. A lot of mainstream science fiction is set in extremely boring, poorly imagined worlds, and you can tell the author knows absolutely nothing about how economies really function, or else they're relying on a naive libertarian framework.

C.J. Cherryh is another writer I'm very fond of in this respect, although she's not particularly leftist. Her worlds are incredibly realistic and three-dimensional. You get the point of view from the starship captain, and also the point of view of the starship deck swabber third class whose main career goal is to move up to starship deck swabber second class.

Star Trek is an example of a poorly realized, not very complicated world. I really enjoyed the latest movie, but I enjoyed it for what it was... space opera. What does it mean to have an economy where you can create things with materializers and teleportation is commonplace? Who cares! The world in Star Trek is there so bold men in fast ships can zoom around and blow up stuff.

Richard K. Morgan's worlds are beautifully realized. I wouldn't want to live in them -- they're also brutal and dysfunctional. But they reflect/project our current global power system in very, very interesting ways.

He writes intricately-paced plots -- periods of long reflection punctuated by periods of intense action -- that contain generous servings of ultraviolence. His heroes are brooding, cynical, tormented. There's a lot of masculine cliches going on, but he also has enough sensitivity to have female characters criticize these cliches.

I didn't like his last book (Thirteen) all that much. It was based on some anthropological theories that I thought were kind of stupid. I did appreciate the ambition behind the book: it was set in a near future where a lot of modern-day conceptions of race and religion and sexuality were still strongly present and influenced the plot.

The Steel Remains is his first fantasy book. I'm almost done with it, and I've enjoyed it so far, although I don't think it's perfect.

Good stuff:

As usual for Morgan, the world is innovative. I cannot stand reheated Tolkien. It was good the first time around, but not the ten thousandth. Fantasy books with Tolkien-based geographical racism -- the dark swarthy evil lurking to the South and East of the map -- especially irritate me. The Steel Remains introduces two major civilizations and one collection of barbarian tribes, and they don't have instantly recognizable modern-day or Tolkien-based analogues. The civilization of the Empire is united by a religion that roughly resembles Islam, whereas the other one seems more like European-style feudalism under a polytheistic religion. There are some non-human races, a couple of which are vaguely elf-like (long-lived, magical, attractive). You can never escape elves!

Innovative characters. The main character is gay. Of the two secondary characters, one is a middle-aged barbarian guy and the other is a half-human, ebony-skinned woman who is probably a lesbian, and 200 years old. I'm especially impressed by the age of the woman. Commonly, men in fantasy novels can be hard-bitten and world-weary, but leading women don't get to that stage -- they're usually all fresh-faced and princessy. For a great reversal of the pattern, see C.J. Cherryh's Morgaine novels.

Economic themes. A major plot driver in the book is the recent legalization of debt slavery. This is not the same thing as the kind of slavery we had in America, but it's still incredibly brutal. Debt slavery had a huge impact on the culture and economy of the Roman Empire so there's a lot of little-known, interesting history for Morgan to draw from. The intersection of morality and economy is obviously going to be a major theme. It reminds me of Steven Saylor's historical detective fiction, the Gordianus the Finder series, before they deteriorated.

Not underestimating the intelligence and imagination of the reader. Most fantasy books are geared for a lazier reader than science fiction. They'll begin with a map, a list of characters and maybe even a glossary. In more serious science fiction, authors don't do this... they throw out the unfamiliar names and terms and let the reader put them together on their own. There are many exceptions, of course. For example, in one of the Titan-Wizard-Demon books, John Varley included a detailed glossary of neo-centaur reproduction that's just mind-boggling in its bizarreness, but a lot of fun to read. The glossary wasn't even all that necessary to the plot! I'm not totally against the relying-on-glossaries approach, but the way Morgan does it -- throwing out names and terms and religions and leaving it up to the reader to imagine the context -- results in a world that seems richer, if more confusing.

Bad Stuff:

The pacing seems a bit off. I'm 3/4 of the way through the book and things are just starting to heat up. The book has a non-standard structure: it's set nine years after a major battle that changed the world and affected all three characters. A lot of the setup involves reminiscence about the event. We're getting present-day exposition through flashbacks. However, the links between present day and past action are taking a long time to coalesce. This book is planned as part of a trilogy, so I guess I'll be doing a lot of waiting.

The sex. I hate Richard K. Morgan's sex scenes, and they're not any better in this fantasy book than they are in his science fiction. They're too long, and the body fluids are described in way too much detail. I'm more fond of the Tanith Lee approach to writing weird supernatural sex: focus on the atmosphere, include just one or two highly charged details. Morgan's sex scenes are just not sexy to me, in fact they make me want to put the book down and go wash my hands.

Cursing. I think he's relying on the word "f**k" a bit too much. I don't mind that it's there, I just would have liked to see a bit more variety.

I may update this post within a couple days, after I've had time to finish the book.