Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Books 5 and 6 this year are also by John Varley, the continuation of the Titan series, Wizard and Demon.

I enjoyed these books obviously enough to continue reading them, but they weren't... great.

In Wizard, we continue the story of earth-born astronaut, Cirroco Jones, and her sidekick, Gaby Plauget, about 100 years after the events of Titan. Cirroco is well-established in her role as Gaea's Wizard, basically being more of the public face of Gaea's 'rule' amongst the people of Gaea. Cirroco's most important, and soul-sucking, role though, is that she is the arbitrator of who amongst the Titanides are allowed to breed. In order to keep the Titanide population under some form of control (as they have no natural predators, they would quickly overrun Gaea if they were allowed to breed unchecked. So, every year or so, the Titanides hold elaborate 'Carnivals', where they all present Cirroco with their breeding plans (Titanide genetics are extremely complicated given that Titanides have both male and female genetalia, and Varley seems inordiantely pleased to explain just how complicated this whole thing is) and she decides who's breeding plan will produce the strongest offspring, and these pairings (or quartets or whathave you) are rewarded with a 'fertilized' egg. But the weight of having an entire species depend upon her for their existence has taken its toll on Cirroco, and she spends much of her time drunk so as not to have to deal with the pain she causes most of the race in denying them their right to procreate.

So this is the state that two newcomers to Gaea, Chris Major and Robin, find Cirroco in when they arrive. Both Chris and Robin have come to Gaea to be cured of their mental afflictions. Chris seems to be a bit schizophrenic, he has episodes where he can't remember what he did, but basically, during these episodes, he looses all his inhibitions and can become rather dangerous. Robin, a young woman from an all lesbian outpost called the Coven that is in Earth orbit, seems to have a severe case of epliepsy. Both of them have an audience with Gaea, where she basically tells them that she will cure them, but they have to do something 'heroic' first. Gaea only rewards heroes.

Chris and Robin set off on an epic journey with Cirroco and Gaby to basically circumnavigate Gaea, as Cirroco, in her duties as Wizard, must touch base now and then with Gaea's 'sub-ordinate' brains, one governor for each region. Some of these regional brains are now openly hostile to Gaea (the one called Oceanus having led a rebellion against Gaea some eons ago), while others are allies of Gaea, and some are just insane at this point. But Cirroco must visit them all, and it turns out they are being visited for another reason as well, Cirroco and Gaby are thinking about instituting their own rebellion and would like Chris and Robin to be a part of it.

So, its basically another epic journey where we learn more about Gaea (specifically her regional brains), meet some new Gaean creations (buzz-bombs, which are like organic, WWII fighter planes) and are given yet more insight into Titanide sexual practices, including human-titanide relations. Also along the way, a main character is killed and Cirroco resigns her position as Wizard, killing Gaea's 'earth mother' incarnation of herself.

Book three in the series, Demon starts on Earth, where a particularly vicious nuclear war is raging, killing most of the Earth's population and rendering the planet pretty uninhabitable. No one really knows how or why the War began, but it doesn't really show any signs of stopping. We meet Conal, a young Canadian who is going to Gaea for one purpose; to kill Cirroco Jones.

He doesn't manage to do this of course, in fact, he finds Cirroco fairly quickly, but she gets the best of him, and after a round of 'torture', she also wins his undying loyalty. Cirroco is no longer the Wizard of Gaea, she is now in fact Gaea's sworn enemy, and given how insane and senile Gaea's acting of late, this is probably a good move. Gaea has become obsessed with movie making and watching Earth movies. She has adopted, as her latest incarnation, the form of a 50ft tall Marilyn Monroe, sexy and frightening at the same time. She has created countless new creatures all for the purpose of making movies. She doesn't seem to care about anything else. Cirroco knows Gaea must be removed.

Rejoining us again is Robin, this time with her two children in tow; Nova, 19 and Adam, 18 months old. Both are basically 'virgin' births, as Robin went back to the Coven, where everyone is a lesbian. But the fact that Adam is a boy is problematic and he (and Robin) are viewed as abominations. Knowing that Gaea is somehow responsible for both pregnancies, Robin returns to Gaea for some answers.
So basically, this novel deals a lot with sprituality, belief, free-will, and what to do when 'god' is insane. There is a lot of war in this novel, from the backdrop of the devestating nuclear war on Earth (discovered to have been manipulated by Gaea) to the overthrow of Gaea herself through Cirroco building herself an army of Earth refugees and Titanides, there is a bit of 'might makes right' questioning as well. But of course, there is a happy ending and Gaea is overthrown and basically a lot of questions are asked, but some are never answered, but that isn't annoying as you might think.

They're a good read overall, not too science fictiony for me and decent enough characters. Varley's internal consistency is well done though, he's obviously put a lot of thought into the world of Gaea, and it shows.

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