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Mark and Gerry's Sci-Fi Reviews continued
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Strangers a novel by Gardner Dozois
Review by Mark
If you cruise internet chats on SciFi.com you probably have met Gardner Dozois in the
author chats. Also, if you are really hardcore (like Gerry), you read Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and the collections of short stories titled The Year's Best Science Fiction, then you see the results of Dozois' work on a monthly and yearly basis since he is the Editor of those. As an author in his own right Dozois is probably best known as a short story writer.
Strangers by Gardner Dozois is a very nice little novel (190 pages, but everything
seems little after Cryptonomicon) and I enjoyed it immensely. If you've read FrederichPohl's masterpiece, "Gateway", you've got a feeling for the fundamental elements of this story. The story is about Farber, a less than admirable artistic waster, and his story in the years following first contact between Earth and other worlds. Dozois' aliens hold us in contempt as an inferior species, though they seem pretty disgusting themselves (except for that travels faster than the speed of light feature). Naturally we are contemptable compared to a technologically superior race, but the "Enye" don't take the expedient route and destroys us like Pelligrino and Zebrowski's aliens in The Killing Star. No, instead they act superior and treat us like:
"a dog with fleas, doggy breath, and had recently been rolling in something nasty".
Inspite of our uniquely human combination of arrogance and ignorance, humans like
Farber who take passage on the Enye ships as paying passengers over time become:
"....stripped of most of his original assurance. Most of his pride had been leached
away, and he was unable to retreat behind a wall of defensive snobbery, and cultivated
disdain....The path of his life, once so straight and obvious, had been lost in a
morass of confusion. His career-once the vital, central thing in his existence-now
seemed insipid, unimportant, meaningless."
Getting off on the planet of a semi-humanoid alien race called the Cian, Farber loses
himself initially in his art, and subsequently in the arms of an alien girl. Obviously the
mixing of the races is complicating for both humans colonists on the planet, and the
Cian. The Cian are themselves a strange mix of wizards of biological manipulation and
arch ludite conservatism. The non-science fiction aspects of this story are a kind of
Romeo and Juliet doomed relationship experience for the reader. However, this book
is hard science fiction. The unexpected twist at the end of the story is explained in
reasonable scientific clarity and plausibility.
I strongly recommend Strangers to readers of science fiction as I would a less
commonly travelled road with very nice views on the way. I had a true feeling of regret
at the end of this novel. When I finish a novel I usually put it down and start scanning
my next possible novel for review, but when the worlds, aliens and situation that
Dozois created in Strangers evaporated, I knew that there was no sequel to follow up
with. Kind of sad. Perhaps it's not late for Gardner to turn on his word processor and
continue Farber's story.
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