New Scientist - USA (2019-06-08)

32 | New Scientist | 8 June 2019

Views Culture

WHAT happens when our

experiences of reality splinter?

Two new sci-fi novels explore the

idea in very different ways.

The first is XYZT by Kristen

Alvanson, with a very provocative

premise. A new technology allows

volunteers to travel between

Iran and the US, with chosen

“Hosts” providing an authentic

experience of each country. Its

inventors, Amir and Kade, hope it

will lead to a shared understanding

of the world, but the forays prove

more divisive than unifying.

The narrative follows scientist

Estella as she unlocks the XYZT

tech, which plots coordinates

in both space and time. Folklore

and fantasy bleed across newly

opened fault lines in reality,

hinting at worlds populated by

Sasquatches and jinns, eldritch

monsters and gambling demons.

But despite the intrusion of such

elements, make no mistake: this is

high-concept sci-fi. Its exploration

of the limits of cross-cultural

communication makes for

fascinating reading.

The experimental form of the

novel mimics its subject matter.

The bulk of the story comprises

untitled vignettes, which narrate

the wildly divergent experiences

of the test subjects, from Griesen,

who encounters a daeva (a Persian

demon) below the old city in Yazd,

to a surgeon’s gruesome attempt

to remove his own hand so he can

bypass the mechanism scheduled

to return him to Iran.

As a sci-fi homage to One

Thousand and One Nights, the

novel succeeds in creating a

landscape undermined by

alternate realities and mirror

universes. But its structure

also presents challenges. The

sketched-out scenarios can be

so disorientating that they risk

alienating the reader, and it isn’t

always clear that the narrative is

more than the sum of its parts.

What happens when a section

of society retreats from one

Experimental words By its nature, sci-fi deals with weird realities – but when

those realities begin to fracture, things get even weirder. Making what happens

next believable takes an adventurous writing style, says Helen Marshall

“ XYZT is high-concept

sci-fi. Exploring the

limits of cross-cultural

communication makes

fascinating reading”

Helen Marshall is an editor,

award-winning writer

and senior lecturer at the

University of Queensland,

Australia. Follow her on

Twitter @manuscriptgal

Books

XYZT

Kristen Alvanson

MIT Press

Green Valley

Louis Greenberg

Titan Books

Helen also

recommends...

Books

The Sol Majestic

Ferrett Steinmetz

Tor Books

This is a tantalising story of

a starving philosopher who

wins the chance to dine at the

galaxy’s glitziest restaurant.

The Lesson

Cadwell Turnbull^

Blackstone Publishing

A tale of conflict and

colonialism set in the Virgin

Islands where advanced aliens

try to coexist with the locals.

reality in favour of another? This

is the world conjured in Louis

Greenberg’s Green Valley, set in a

near future where most of society

has retreated from surveillance.

The enclave of Green Valley offers

an alternative path: a heightened

VR within a protected compound.

Some chose to enter the

compound, but others, like

9-year-old Kira Coady, have grown

up knowing nothing else. When

two kids sporting Green Valley

tech are found dead outside the

compound, Kira’s aunt, a law

enforcement agent, investigates.

There are excellent examples of

books pairing police procedural

with sci-fi: both genres work to

discover the truth, as layers of

secrecy, deceit and misdirection

are peeled away to reveal a seedy,

often violent, reality.

Take Nick Harkaway’s 2017

Gnomon. There, surveillance and

omniscient AI ensure a seemingly

utopian society of the sort alluded

to in Green Valley. But Harkaway’s

novel takes its time to explore the

advantages, so when the flaw at

the heart of this life is revealed,

the reader senses the cost of

exposing it. Green Valley, however,

shows no obvious appeal in the

sugary, overly-managed VR world,

and while the novel hints at

tension between technophobia

and monomaniacal advancement,

it opts for crime and punishment

to create a fast-paced if

conceptually shallow narrative.

Both XYZT and Green Valley are

sceptical of tech creators who are

self-serving or idealistically naive,

but XYZT is the more adventurous.

Its fractured narrative resists easy

“us” and “them” distinctions

in favour of contradictory

experiences and perspectives. ❚

AL

EC^

SO

TH

/M

AG

NU

M^ P

HO

TO

S

In the novel XYZT, hosts

provide an authentic

experience of a country

The sci-fi column