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Mark and Gerry's Sci-Fi Reviews continue...
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Pirates of the Universe
by Terry Bisson
review by Mark
Originality has its benefits ......and costs. The benefits are obvious; you are not compared to anyone and you have a field open to yourself. The cost is that your work may be unfamiliar and difficult to understand. Terry Bisson's novel Pirates of the Universe pays all the costs and reaps all of the benefits of originality. Imagine if you will a world in which through a genetic engineering accident, a fuel eating bacteria used to clean up oil spills, goes haywire. Instead of dying when its local supply of oil is consumed, it goes searching for additional fuel until virtually all fuel oil in the world has been consumed. No more automobiles, the machinery of commerce grinds towards a halt. Also suppose that despite this inconvenience, man's knowledge of the fundamental physical forces and engineering continue to grow. In this environment while the benefits of this knowledge spread, the gap between haves and have-nots also grows. High-tech and desperate poverty side-by-side. This is the backdrop for Pirates of the Universe.
Bisson paints a world where the government can readily get people into space, but many people live in an impoverished state. The goal of the privileged is to obtain enough credits to live in a condominium setting, one of which located in Orlando, Florida is named "Pirates of the Universe", instead of the Disneyesque Pirates of the Caribbean. Holy Shrek - everyone takes a swipe at Disney these days.
The protagonist of the story is a character named Gun, a space rangers/hunter on what he hopes will be his last tour of duty before retirement to "Pirates of the Universe". He dreams of settling down with an old girlfriend. Unfortunately, Gun is also obsessed with a holographic girl with an infinite variety of underwear. When Gun is not with his holographic girlfriend he can't remember her face because of copyright restrictions. The final destination of a Windows XP activation nightmare? You can't even remember what you just saw without a code? All thought of settling down vanishes though when Gun's blacksheep brother escapes from prison and the Government steps in. The bureaucratic mess Gun experiences finding out about the his brother's escape would be hilarious if it didn't bear too many similarities to current practice. Bisson shows real imagination in creating new technological methods of bureaucratic torture. Bisson also has original ideas for pacification of criminals and prevention of criminal escape. Let us pray Mr. Bisson never comes to power.
Pirates of the Universe is reasonably well written. There are occasional slow parts and some things are repetitive, but Bisson writes in short chapters to keep any scene from dragging too much (average chapter length is eight pages). For novelty I give Bisson's novel high marks. It's actually a pleasure to say that this novel reminds me of no one and nothing else.
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