Books Reviews
Featured Review of Tobias Buckell’s Ragamuffin
By Jason Sanford
Aug 15, 2007, 14:01 GMT

In a recent snark-ridden essay in Discover magazine, Bruno Maddox decreed that only sweaty middle-aged men still read science fiction and that the genre has “suddenly and entirely ceased to matter.” His rationale: after years of predicting the future, science fiction can no longer keep up with or predict technological change. To Maddox, that’s why science fiction has been chunked aside for brightly colored fantasy books featuring shirtless bodybuilders fighting dragons with swords.

It’s tempting to dismiss Maddox and his essay. After all, the value of science fiction has never been its ability to predict the future. Yes, some science fiction predictions were correct, but the genre missed a large number of biggies like the computer revolution, the green revolution, the internet, and so on. Instead, science fiction is the literature of ideas and an attempt to understand the unknown (as many others have said). For Maddox to dismiss an entire genre of writing simply for failing to predict the iPhone is silly.

Still, there is a kernel of truth in Maddox’s rant. In recent years science fiction literature has seen declining sales and a shrinking readership even as its sister genre, fantasy, has experienced a new golden age with regards to sales and quality stories (an age defined not only by the Harry Potter series but also the ascendance of great writers like Neil Gaiman and Susanna Clark). However, where Maddox sees the death of science fiction and the triumph of fantasy, I see the typical ebb and flow of human culture. Things go up and things go down. And for science fiction, things are definitely looking up.

As proof of this, I present the newest age of science fiction. Exhibit one: Tobias Buckell and his recent novel Ragamuffin.

Buckell is one of a number of young writers (in the relative sense of “young”) who are redefining the genre. These writers, who include Ian McDonald, Chris Moriarty, Alastair Reynolds, John Scalzi, and Charles Stross (just to name a few) have been creating amazing new books and stories, the likes of which the science fiction world hasn’t seen in far too long. Unlike the previous two high-water marks of science fiction--1960/70s’ new wave and 1980/90s’ cyberpunk--this new rising tide cares little for self-referential literary experimentation and cyber-technology rebellion. Instead, these writers are recreating the “gee-wiz” sense of wonder, excitement, and grand visions of golden age science fiction, albeit with modern characterization,
sensibilities, and top-notch writing. These writers are also at the forefront of a science fiction based on embracing the completeness of human culture, instead of simply reflecting the white-male, middle-class culture which birthed the genre in the mid 20th century.

To the ranks of these exciting new writers I suggest adding Tobias Buckell. In his first novel Crystal Rain, he created the world of Nanagada, a technologically regressed planet populated by Caribbean immigrants cut off from the rest of the known universe. The story focused on two characters, John DeBrun and Pepper, who are life-extended survivors from the high-tech universe. Now stranded on this industrial-age world, they fight against aliens and blood-thirsty humans in a swashbuckling tale of war and survival. Written with an perfect eye toward language, dialect, and characterization, Crystal Rain was rightly named by a number of critics as one of the best science fiction books of 2006.

Now comes the sequel, Ragamuffin. While most second novels jump directly into familiar stories and characters--after all, few new writers dare to upend their readers’ desire for the familiar--Buckell starts this novel on brand new ground. Ragamuffin introduces readers to the 48 planets of the benevolent Satrapy. The Satrapy are an alien race who control the wormholes connecting all these worlds; without said short-cuts through space, travel between the planets is almost impossible. Human exist on most of these worlds, but are second-class citizens, kept technologically repressed or, in the worst case, as pets.

Enter Natasha, a clone from a human world which was cut off from the rest of the “civilized” universe as punishment for daring to be, well, human. Natasha’s body has been biologically and technically enhanced in an attempt to free humanity from enslavement. Suffice to say, adventures and danger follow her every move. Where Crystal Rain read like a 19th century adventure novel hopped up on nanotech-addled speed, Ragamuffin is very much a space opera, with epic deeds and the wages of war painted in blood across the known universe.

One thing I love about Buckell’s universe building is his diversity of humanity. Each character has his or her own motives and goals; each planet has been settled by different human ethnic and cultural groups. All of this creates a realistic view of our human future, where diversity isn’t practiced simply for diversity’s sake, but is instead the basic hallmark of the human condition.

While Ragamuffin is technically a sequel, it isn’t necessary to have read the first novel to enjoy the book (although doing so will increase your understanding of the novel’s second half, when characters like John DeBrun and Pepper from Crystal Rain reappear). The only downside of Buckell’s second novel is that the last third of the book felt a bit rushed. But while I would have preferred an expanded conclusion, it was still an exciting read and left this lover of science fiction wanting more. More importantly, both Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin are excellent places for new readers to discover the current science fiction genre. These books are accessible for readers unfamiliar with the genre, yet deep enough to be enjoyed by even veteran science fiction readers.

Despite Bruno Maddox’s prediction, our world needs science fiction now more than ever. As Buckell says in a Monster’s and Critic interview, science fiction “is a tool to help . . . wrap our minds around the change happening around us. The more complex technology is, the more we need the stories and myths that can help us deal with all that.”

Perhaps it’s too much to ask that the Bruno Maddoxs of the world wrap their minds around science fiction being less about predicting the future than about understanding the changes continually happening to humanity. About preparing our minds for an unknown future in which anything can happen. I predict that in the coming years new readers will enter the genre thanks to excellent books like Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin--books which are fun to read yet also examine life from the big-picture view unique to science fiction.

So let Bruno Maddox make his inane prediction on the coming death of science fiction. For unlike Maddox, I have seen the future--and it’s going to be an amazing science fiction ride!

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Visit the Countdown Interview with Tobias Buckell here.