By George R.R. Martin.
Oh mah gawd, this book. This is hardcore. This is probably the most hardcore collection of short stories that make a complete novel ever. I've previously mentioned reading some of these stories before. And I highly recommend reading this review.
The setup is that Haviland Tuf, a strange dude by all accounts, is a trader who ends up in possession of an ancient starship with an amazing library of biogenetic science. He decides to become an ecological engineer and fly around the galaxy looking for worlds that could use his help.
This may sound nice, sweet, and inspiring. Holy crap, it's not, but it'll give you something to think about. For one thing, Tuf is a benevolent but really odd dude. He's fat and bald in a world where those things seem rare. He doesn't like being touched. He has no personal attachments except to his various cats, who he adores. He's willing to help others, but for a very expensive free--though to be fair, dude has bills to pay. He has a very interesting, flowery way of speaking. He doesn't lie to you, but watch out for what he's NOT telling you. (Hoo boy, do I mean that.) And whether or not he becomes corrupt when he gets this level of power...you'll have to be the judge. He seems so improbable that nobody believes him, and he gets pouty at that.
For another thing.... I'm going to talk about the short stories in this collection not in the order they are written. Three of them take place on the same world, with five years' duration between then, and I'm going to pull those out of the narrative to talk about separately.
The prologue is a horribly creepy apocalypse log about two people who landed on the world Hro B'rana, which has some kind of plague star that sends a billion horrible diseases to get you if you breathe the air. Then comes the first full story, The Plague Star. A group of super dubious individuals have come together to track down a derelict biowar seedship of the long-dead Ecological Engineering Corps--that's the "plague star" orbiting Hro B'rana. They need someone to take them there, and they hire Haviland Tuf, a meager trader, to do the job.
The team are all a bunch of jerks, though the mercenary Rica Dawnstar is kind of a hoot/the least bad of the bunch for most of it. The most memorably irritating one is the whiny, cat-hating Celise Waan, who Tuf has to tolerate, but gets his own back when she wants meat and he eventually reveals the only meat on the ship is the catfood.
When they find the ship, people scramble for various space suits and invade the thing...and then find lots of fun creatures like a dinosaur and "hellkittens" ready to attack them. And if you're dumb enough to breathe the air without doing a purge first, there's plenty of horrible plagues to catch! Which is unfortunately demonstrated on Tuf's cat Mushroom--but hey, part of the fun of this ship is you can clone your dead cat. In the end, a "And Then There Were None" scenario goes on and you wait for the various villains to take each other out or be taken out by plagues or hellkittens. In the end, well... you know who wins or else we don't have the rest of the book. And Tuf takes up a new profession.
"In fact, I have decided to give up the crass calling of the merchant, for the nobler profession of ecological engineer."
I'm going to come back to the second, fourth, and seventh stories later. I've actually reviewed #3, "Guardians," and #5, "A Beast For Norn," over here previously.
#6, "Call Him Moses," starts with Tuf getting randomly assaulted in a restaurant by a dude named Jaime Kreen. Tuf bails Kreen out of jail and basically owns him until Kreen pays off his bail in labor--and Tuf charges him for every petty thing like using the toilet. However, he finds out that Kreen was motivated to hurt him because he thinks Tuf has been involved in an ecological war happening on Kreen's home world of Charity. Some dude calling himself Moses has been executing various Biblical plagues to force the population into joining his church, which doesn't like technology. Tuf is sympathetic to this plight and offers his services to the Charitans, and deduces how Moses did his plagues by laying plans years in advance--but he can't do real plagues like Tuf could if he wanted to. Ahem.
Now I'm going to go to the S'uthlam trilogy of stories, which are the most memorably whammy of them all.
In "Loaves and Fishes," (#2), Tuf needs some repairs made to his new ship, and goes to the highly technological world of S'uthlam (Malthus backwards....ish). He tourists around the place for a few days and can't help but notice that it's super crowded, there's no cats or any other pets, and the food is rather skimped on. Tuf deduces that the place has too high of a population. Meanwhile, the S'uthlam government is desperate to get a hold of Tuf's ship--pay a fair price or just plain steal it, whatever--so they can bioengineer enough food to feed thirty billion.
Tuf sorta-kinda makes friends a wee bit with Tolly Mune, the portmaster assigned to deal with him. She explains to him that current estimates of the planet having a famine/everyone dying are in 27 years, and the murder, rape, and crime rates are raising every year. Oh yeah, and a few folks have taken up cannibalism.
Tuf is all, "you can solve this by using birth control," which Tolly privately agrees with. BUT the entire basis of S'uthlam culture is the Church of Life Evolving, which 80% of the population follows. The Church believes in unrestricted births so that eventually people will evolve into godhood, and restricting birth may interfere with human evolution. Who wants to abort the next god, proto-genius, one savior? And so far it's working, as when you have billions of people, you have milliions of geniuses, and that's why this place is a tech wonderland.
Tuf doesn't want to sell, but he's willing to offer his assistance. However, dealing with the government becomes complicated, especially when trickery is involved and Tuf makes the mistake of bringing down his kitten Havoc so Tolly can meet a cat. Next thing you know, Tolly's babysitting a very cute hostage.
“During our last private discussion, I was set upon by men with nerve guns, verbally pummeled, cruelly deceived, deprived of a beloved companion, and denied the opportunity to enjoy dessert. I am not favorably predisposted to accept further invitations.”
But despite that, Tuf's willing to bioengineer up some ideal foodstuffs, and they eventually come to a bet of sorts.
“Tuf is going to take a try at making fish sandwiches for thirty billion. I think he’ll just get flour on his face and choke on a fish bone, but that doesn’t matter. If he fails, we get the goddamned seedship, all nice and legal. If he succeeds, we don’t’ need the Ark any more And the way I got things rigged, even if Tuf does win, he’ll still owe us thirty-four million standards. If by some miracle when he pulls it off, odds are we’ll get the ship anyway, when he comes up short on his damned note.”
In the end, Tuf comes up with pretty literal loaves and fishes...but alas, that only inspires the government to want to steal his ship anyway. Tolly does a traitorous thing and warns Tuf of this, and even returns his cat to him--which is a lot of trouble. Even though she'll probably go to jail for what she's done, she's got her reasons:
“I sat at that meeting, Tuf. I sat there and listened to them talk, and I heard what the Ark had done to them. They were honest, honorable, ethical people, and the Ark had already turned them into cheats and liars. They believe in peace, and they were talking about the war they might have to fight to keep this puling ship of yours. Their entire creed is based on the holy sanctity of human life, and they were blithely discussing how much killing might be necessary-starting with yours.”
“There’s an ancient saying, Tuf. Came out of Old Earth. Power corrupts, it went, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
“The dream of the Ark had already begun to corrupt my world. What the hell would the reality of possession have done to us? I didn’t want to find out.”
In the end, Tuf wields near absolute power. Tolly possibly thinks it's better if he gets corrupted, or maybe he's naive and harmless enough not to...or maybe he's an incorruptible man? We'll see in five years when his first loan payment is due.
Five years later we're on story #4, "Second Helpings." Tuf returns with his psychic bioengineered cat Dax, who operates as a warning system when someone's going to lie to or harm him. He shows up in disguise (uh-HUH) and finds out that not only did Tolly Mune not go to jail, she had a vid made of their...love affair? Hey, it made for a good story, and Tolly tells him she needed to come up with one to get herself out of treason charges. She destroyed the First Councilor, she made herself a heroine, all of his planting worked, and the estimated time of self-destruction is now... 18 years because people are breeding even faster.
Damn people.
Tuf goes to work again, this time insisting on doing a live television presentation of his findings. He comes up with more creatures that will postpone famine to 109 years from now...oh yeah, and you people should REALLY USE BIRTH CONTROL. They end up having to run for it. Tuf leaves Tolly a few parting gifts--two cats, a ship to store them on and five years of cat food--as pets/hostages until he returns. The cats are named Doubt and Ingratitude. Ahem.
And then finally we have the last story, five years later, "Manna from Heaven." S'uthlam is now at war with every other planet in its vicinity, and Tuf has been tried and convicted of being a criminal, heretic, and enemy of the people in absentia. Mostly so now they have a legal excuse to steal the ship...says his old sorta-pal Tolly Mune, now First Councilor because they go through a lot of those.
Tolly has gotten her own psychic cat made, Blackjack, and she claims he's been augmented to be particularly dangerous. Dax and Blackjack don't get along, forcing Tuf to leave Dax behind...heh heh heh. Or uh-oh. Then again, Tuf has his own cat in heat to unleash to attract Blackjack's interest. Tolly also now has a shit-ton of secret cats because Tuf didn't spay and neuter--there's a hint...
The population keeps increasing, and the new estimated time to famine is now 12 years. Crime is up 200%, murder is up 500%, suicide is up 2000% (sounds like people are trying to take themselves out), cannibal gangs are eating the fetuses of pregnant women...EW. They're all obsessed with death, and the government thinks the Ark is their last hope to make enough food.
But Tuf's been thinking about this for five years, and he's engineered the perfect food: manna! Delicious, addictive, fast growing. He'll even give it to you for free (note: watch out for when Tuf offers a freebie), even though everyone is threatening him. He's going to impose peace on these people, dammit. and who does he think he is?
“I am Haviland Tuf, and I have run out of patience with S’uthlam and the S’uthlamese, madam.”
As I've said before: watch out for what Tuf doesn't say. He tells Tolly alone: the manna, once seeded, can't be eradicated. Eating it will sap libido and fertility in all but a very tiny fraction of the population that's immune. Deferred genocide.
Tolly may be secretly for population control, but she's horrified at this idea of taking away everyone's right to choose, and who gave Tuf that authority? Who made him God and gave him godlike powers? The Ark, he says. The crisis was such that a solution could only work through godlike intervention. Which option is worse? He leaves it to Tolly to decide whether or not she'll tattle on him to her government.
The final line is: "Her name was Tolly Mune, but in the stories they call her all sorts of things."
Holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit, this story. The debates about being a god. The ethical dilemmas. The rocks and hard places and hard decisions. The personalities involved. What would you do in that situation?
Five stars. Epic.
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