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blatherskiteJust finished The Incrementalists, by Steven Brust and Skyler White... and I'm not sure how I feel about the book, other than to say that it's interestingly different from what Brust has done before and well worth a look. (I don't know White's work at all.)
The basic plot is that there's a group of immortals who have existed for thousands of years. They do not survive "in the flesh", but rather as memories and personalities that are passed on to subsequent generations via a kind of dreamworld that resembles Matt Hughes' noosphere in some interesting ways. To actually act in the "real" world, they must persuade a living person to take on those memories when they die -- to implant them in the new person's mind, and then see whether the immortal or the current person will become dominant. (The current person survives either way, and all memories are blended, but the original owner of the body may not be the personality who ends up in the driver's seat. Immortals being immortal, they tend to be the ones who win out because they're better at this kind of head game.) This setup assumes that the new host for the old immortal is willing to become a martyr, and sacrifice their existence so the immortal can carry on, which seems a bit hard to swallow.
The group calls themselves "incrementalists" because their mission in life is to make the world a progressively better place in myriad small ways (increments) by meddling with people's minds -- usually by persuading them to do or not do something they were already considering. After hundreds or thousands of years (depending on the person), they've gotten very good at meddling with people and events. Larger interventions have sometimes been attempted, but they often end badly, so they've collectively learned that the incremental approach is superior. It seems a bit odd that so few of them have "gone bad" over the millennia and become (effectively) supervillains -- though villains who started out with the best intentions to save the world despite itself -- but I can buy this given that they've learned to monitor and police each other's behavior. In some ways, they are spiritual and literary descendants of Roger Zelazny's various immortal characters, but with a key difference: they have learned the hard lesson that trying to meddle in really big things often has disastrous consequences. So there are no Lord of Light-style interventions here.
The plot is driven in part by a philosophical conflict between those who want to meddle more agressively despite the lessons of their shared history and those who prefer a slower (incremental) approach. In addition, there is some debate over whether their "secret society of Illumnati" approach is overdue for a change (revealing their existence and sharing their skills with the rest of humanity*). There's also a sweetly told love story, a couple villains you might not expect, and a couple seeming-villains who turn out not to be. And by the end of the story, things work out well, though not without significant collateral damage and a blow to the world view of the Incrementalists.
* Being a misanthrope most days, I think this would be much like handing everyone a fully loaded semi-automatic rifle and suggesting they use it wisely. Brust and White seemingly disagree.
My ambivalence about the book largely arises from the fact that the authors seemed too interested in their fictional dreamworld/memory construct. It's an interesting premise, and it is thoroughly explored, but I found that I didn't buy the premise of how this secret history got started or how the incrementalists found each other and started cooperating. It's also possible I didn't quite "get" how everything worked; some of the implications seem to have been handwaved rather than fully thought-out and understood. But in the end, I found that the exploration of the idea was too much front and center. To exaggerate, it's like a book-length infodump, no matter how well supported this is by skillful writing and interesting characters. In addition, I found an unusual number of sentences that I had to go back and reread to figure out what was intended; more aggressive editing would have helped. But on the other hand, the characters are interesting and generally likeable, the plot moves forward briskly, and there are some nice set pieces. So if you like the writing of either author, you'll probably like this book too.
A few favorite quotes that reveal philosophical depths beyond what I've described above:
Irina turned to Ren. "What does the only other woman in the room say? Does a man get to decide what's offensive to women?"
Ren cocked her head at Irina. "In general, I'm more inclined to agree with you on the subject. And haven't you -- we -- all been both sexes? But if you think the sex of the person making an argument has anything to do with the validity of the argument, you're an idiot."
"You are too eager, my boy, to tell another man's story in just one word. When you assign -ist to anyone, you throw all our years of accumulated nuance away."
"In general, I agree with the author of said trashy sci-fi novel: I don't want to be at peace with myself. I want to be fighting with myself, struggling, looking for answers; I want to be disontented and busy making my discontentment into something worthwhile. It is our discontent that drives us."
The basic plot is that there's a group of immortals who have existed for thousands of years. They do not survive "in the flesh", but rather as memories and personalities that are passed on to subsequent generations via a kind of dreamworld that resembles Matt Hughes' noosphere in some interesting ways. To actually act in the "real" world, they must persuade a living person to take on those memories when they die -- to implant them in the new person's mind, and then see whether the immortal or the current person will become dominant. (The current person survives either way, and all memories are blended, but the original owner of the body may not be the personality who ends up in the driver's seat. Immortals being immortal, they tend to be the ones who win out because they're better at this kind of head game.) This setup assumes that the new host for the old immortal is willing to become a martyr, and sacrifice their existence so the immortal can carry on, which seems a bit hard to swallow.
The group calls themselves "incrementalists" because their mission in life is to make the world a progressively better place in myriad small ways (increments) by meddling with people's minds -- usually by persuading them to do or not do something they were already considering. After hundreds or thousands of years (depending on the person), they've gotten very good at meddling with people and events. Larger interventions have sometimes been attempted, but they often end badly, so they've collectively learned that the incremental approach is superior. It seems a bit odd that so few of them have "gone bad" over the millennia and become (effectively) supervillains -- though villains who started out with the best intentions to save the world despite itself -- but I can buy this given that they've learned to monitor and police each other's behavior. In some ways, they are spiritual and literary descendants of Roger Zelazny's various immortal characters, but with a key difference: they have learned the hard lesson that trying to meddle in really big things often has disastrous consequences. So there are no Lord of Light-style interventions here.
The plot is driven in part by a philosophical conflict between those who want to meddle more agressively despite the lessons of their shared history and those who prefer a slower (incremental) approach. In addition, there is some debate over whether their "secret society of Illumnati" approach is overdue for a change (revealing their existence and sharing their skills with the rest of humanity*). There's also a sweetly told love story, a couple villains you might not expect, and a couple seeming-villains who turn out not to be. And by the end of the story, things work out well, though not without significant collateral damage and a blow to the world view of the Incrementalists.
* Being a misanthrope most days, I think this would be much like handing everyone a fully loaded semi-automatic rifle and suggesting they use it wisely. Brust and White seemingly disagree.
My ambivalence about the book largely arises from the fact that the authors seemed too interested in their fictional dreamworld/memory construct. It's an interesting premise, and it is thoroughly explored, but I found that I didn't buy the premise of how this secret history got started or how the incrementalists found each other and started cooperating. It's also possible I didn't quite "get" how everything worked; some of the implications seem to have been handwaved rather than fully thought-out and understood. But in the end, I found that the exploration of the idea was too much front and center. To exaggerate, it's like a book-length infodump, no matter how well supported this is by skillful writing and interesting characters. In addition, I found an unusual number of sentences that I had to go back and reread to figure out what was intended; more aggressive editing would have helped. But on the other hand, the characters are interesting and generally likeable, the plot moves forward briskly, and there are some nice set pieces. So if you like the writing of either author, you'll probably like this book too.
A few favorite quotes that reveal philosophical depths beyond what I've described above:
Irina turned to Ren. "What does the only other woman in the room say? Does a man get to decide what's offensive to women?"
Ren cocked her head at Irina. "In general, I'm more inclined to agree with you on the subject. And haven't you -- we -- all been both sexes? But if you think the sex of the person making an argument has anything to do with the validity of the argument, you're an idiot."
"You are too eager, my boy, to tell another man's story in just one word. When you assign -ist to anyone, you throw all our years of accumulated nuance away."
"In general, I agree with the author of said trashy sci-fi novel: I don't want to be at peace with myself. I want to be fighting with myself, struggling, looking for answers; I want to be disontented and busy making my discontentment into something worthwhile. It is our discontent that drives us."