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Stableford, Brian. The Omega
Expedition. New York: Tor Books, 2002. 544 pages, cloth,
$27.95. ISBN 0-765-30169-5. |
Stableford, Brian. The Omega
Expedition. New York: Tor Books, 2002. 544 pages, cloth,
$27.95. ISBN 0-765-30169-5.
Reviewed by Bill Dynes
Brian Stableford's sweeping future history reaches its conclusion with this sixth novel, a thoughtful and absorbing work. More concerned with ideas than with action, the novel explores our fears of death and the consequences &endash; some horrifying, some quite magical &endash; of asserting the value of life. Drawing together a number of hard-SF "big ideas," including space arks and galactic colonization, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, the interaction of economics and ecology, and of course the extension of human life, Stableford delivers a powerful climax to his series.
In a helpful introduction, Stableford recounts the plots of the other five novels that comprise this series, while at the same time asserting that each was designed to be readable on its own. That may be the case; while knowing the back-story of its characters is useful, The Omega Expedition certainly holds the reader's interest easily. The overarching story follows Adam Zimmerman, born in 1958, whose unyielding refusal to accept the inevitability of death gives rise to the quest for "emortality" that radically transforms human society and, for that matter, humanity itself. The Omega Expedition is set in the year 3263 as Zimmerman is awakened from cryogenic storage into the strange new world his monomania has helped create.
Stableford distinguishes "emortality" from immortality, defining the former as "a state of being in which an organism does not age," but remains susceptible to death through violence; "immortality" implies a divine-like inability to die (10). Nanotechnology can cure disease, cryogenics can preserve physical existence, but the search for true emortality is a search for the meaning of consciousness and the self. Yet arresting the aging process risks the "robotization" of the individual, who becomes more and more attuned to particular repetitive patterns of behavior and perception. Constant change, on the other hand, risks overwhelming one's memory capacity; if we cannot remember our past, can we truly claim to be the same people we once were? "Posthumans" have sought a wide variety of solutions; we meet a centuries-old prepubescent child, an infinitely adaptable shape-shifter, and artificial intelligences that offer a permanent escape from the tyranny of the flesh. One of the fascinating elements here is the manner in which Stableford connects this search with the narrative patterns of the novel itself. The art of story telling itself is implicated in profound ways with the quest for an emortal identity.
While the series as a whole centers upon Adam Zimmerman, The Omega Expedition is told in the first person by Madoc Tamlin, who appears to have been awakened from a cold storage that has lasted more than a thousand years. Understandably, Madoc struggles both to make sense of the world in which he finds himself and with the plausibility of the situation as a whole. Advances in "virtual experience" make it impossible for him to accept with absolute confidence that anything he is seeing or feeling is real, with the result that he is in constant search for the truth &endash; true experiences, true motives, true reality &endash; that may be lurking beneath his experiences. This skeptical, analytical narrator makes for long passages of frequently tortuous speculation and explication, but Stableford maintains an energy and wit that keeps the reader closely engaged. Madoc's status as skeptic and analyst, in fact, becomes crucial to the series of arguments that serves as the climax for the novel and for the series as a whole.
An important pattern in this weave of identity and awareness is Stableford's use of a variety of story types that help illuminate Madoc's perspective and experiences. Madoc is fascinated by the symbolic power of names &endash; his own connects him with medieval Welsh legends of metamorphosis and immortality. His narrative style draws upon Judeo-Christian religious tradition, European and Greco-Roman mythology, fairy tales, and children's literature. In less able hands this variety might be divisive or confusing, but Stableford successfully uses this wide range to suggest that the story he is telling, the questions he is asking, are rooted in the deepest parts of our collective histories and consciousness. Alice, far from her familiar Wonderland, leads Madoc and Zimmerman to Vesta, named for the Roman goddess of the hearth and home. The search for a lasting and meaningful identity culminates in a community where each member tells his or her story, where the creation of meaning is both a personal and a public act.
I don't want to give away the central plot twist that precipitates the characters' journey from the microworld in counter-Earth orbit where Madoc first awakens to the asteroid Vesta and draws in companions and combatants from the reaches of the solar system and beyond. Mirroring Madoc's efforts to make sense of both "real" and "virtual" experience, Stableford surprises with new characters and new expectations in often unsettling ways. The plot, clearly, is not incidental to this thoughtful and philosophical novel. Yet it is decidedly secondary, a means of organizing the increasingly complicated search for a satisfying answer to death.
Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of the novel is that this search, begun as an act of defiance and denial, reaches its climax in ways that are affirming and productive. In his introduction, Stableford admits that "utopian fiction has a notorious tendency to be boring" (15), but he also knows that "the future is a big place" (18), and is more likely to get stranger than otherwise. As a self-contained work, The Omega Expedition successfully engages its readers with concerns that are both timely and timeless. It's clearest mark of success, however, is that it will encourage readers who haven't had the pleasure of the other books of the series to discover them for themselves.
