Mother of Storms

A story about the singularity that happens during a very bad hurricane season. The singularity is going to happen accidentally and during a crisis that nobody has time to debate it.

Thoughts upon reading this novel in 2005.

I have a couple of main reactions to this novel.

First, it’s peculiar to read a near future sf novel (basically defined as anything set less than 50 years in the future -- here the story begins in 2028) which has been rendered, by the 11 years since it’s

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publication, into a sort of double vision of implausible sociopolitical prophecy and correct (and incorrect) technological prophecy. (Of course, prophecy is never the intent of most sf.)

Second, this is one of the few disaster novels which has a definite satiric edge to it.

I seem to recall reading an interview with Barnes that said he was a leftist. That would be consistent with certain elements. The most unbelievable element now (and not too believable in 1994) is the idea that Europe would have the guts and will to expel its African immigrant population. Naturally, American takes those refugees in, a notion that Barnes seems to approve since one of the unambiguous heroes of the story is Berlina Jameson, cub reporter. Barnes also postulates a UN impossibly powerful in the wake of balkanization throughout the world and America crippled after an event that now seems more plausible now than in 1994: the nuking of parts of Washington DC by parties unknown who also cause a depression via an emp pulse -- the Flash -- over Kansas City. (“Racist” Europeans and depressions caused by EMP weapons were also featured in John Shirley’s A Song Called Youth trilogy so the ideas were in the air for about ten years.)

Barnes’ XV technology produces sort of a double vision. It’s like the internet in that it’s ubiquitous and supplants traditional media and allows independent journalists (rather like our news bloggers -- though most bloggers feed off traditional media reporting and do little of their own) and can mobilize large numbers of people internationally (though we haven’t had any Global Riots) and has spyware and virus and trojan horses. However, he misses ads, business to business uses, and postulates, basically, tv economics and products grafted on to the Internet’s robust connectivity. XV is just souped up tv that is international and hard to suppress and populated by large media and independent operators (who, unlike bloggers, manage to get paid based on subscribers) like Jameson.

Barnes is more clever in postulating a bizarre but plausible mixture of reality tv, news, and pornography on several of the XV channels. One of the characters, Mary Ann Waterhouse, is a porn starlet (with requisite body modifications) cum reporter -- she has lots of sex with fellow reporters on those reporting missions. However, I think Barnes makes a mistake in postulating that his XV technology can transmit, via brain implants, emotions and physical sensations. First, this isn’t that novel. It’s not much different than the “feelies” of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Second, he, for a book informed by many cyberpunk concerns (body modification, globalism, the media), he misses the obvious point about all digital technology: the information can very easily be edited and mixed with any other information in the same format. His XV productions seem not nearly as edited as they could be. Finally, I find it hard to believe that pedophiles, sadists, and sexual criminals would relish the emotions and physical sensations of the victims of various snuff XV productions. Yes, sadists and serial killers relish the fear and pain of their victims, but it’s the appearance and the presence of that pain, not the actual pain that they relish. For any portion of the population to revel in that seems evolutionary and psychologically improbable.

Still, there’s lots to like in this novel, particularly it’s satire and it’s determination to undercut -- with the possible exceptions of Jameson and Waterhouse -- virtually all its protagonists and seeming (at least, at times) heroes. The fits in with the explicitly mentioned theory of semiotics which says that the viewpoint character of a narrative is always privileged, that people always identify with that character even if there not supposed to. Putting aside the validity of that theory, Barnes uses the idea here well.

Leftist Barnes has a nifty satire on capitalism and the free market when the independent robots on the moon become totally worthless when inventing markets based on gallium exchange. They also develop a cybernetic version of AIDS and something vaguely described -- and dubbed “industrial ARTS” -- as robots devouring other artificial structures. Capitalism also comes in for attack with John Klieg, pure supercapitalist, who takes pride in not producing any worthwhile good or service but gets fabulously rich via industrial espionage, lobbying, and lawsuits tying productive companies’ patents up until he’s paid off. He sees himself as predicting the road to the future and setting tollbooths up on the way -- but not actually developing the road.

But Barnes undercuts this satire or, more precisely, sort of deconstructs the notion of the evil and heartless capitalist. Sure Klieg tries to blackmail the US government into paying exorbitant rates for using Siberian launch facilities he constructs (all the US ones are knocked out by the lovingly and effectively described superhurricanes that are the center of this novel and, memorably, we remember they are birthed in water more than 24.7 degrees Centigrade), but we also see his genuine joy and concern at dating one of his employees and getting to know her daughter. At story’s end, he has completely changed, but at least he’s using some of his business acumen to supply real needs in rebuilding the US.

The vice-president of the US is publically seen as heroic (as is the President although we learn that both have the blood of innocents on their hands), but he’s a consumer and commissioner of XV snuff films. We see the extremely clever and persistent (indeed, in his final scene he seems implausibly clever in outwitting Secret Service agents and Siberian assassins) Randy Householder working his way up the ladder over a span of years to see who paid for the snuff film of his daughter’s torture and death. It turns out to be the VP. But vengeance here takes it’s toll. Householder kills VP Harry Diem, but that act of vengeance sets off a chain of events which leads to the death of the innocent Di Callare, chief meteorologist to the US government. It also turns out to be utterly futile in a public sense since Householder is killed and Diem’s body and evidence of his crimes are washed away in a superstorm, and he’s thought a tragic victim of war. Another bit of humorous deconstruction occurs with a Passionet producer contemptuously overseeing a Midwest honeymoon couple having sex at a Hawaiian resort as a hurricane threatens their destruction. At first he mocks what he takes to be their cornball romance and naivety and sentimentality, but he ultimately finds their honest expressions of concern, care, sexual desire, and heroic sacrifice the most sexually provocative production he’s overseen. The jaded producer (tonally, presented as the most unpleasant character of the book and that includes Harry Diem) begins to masturbate -- and then is impaled by a bit of storm debris. There is the theme, in the constantly reproducing copies of the minds of astronaut Louie and scientist Carla, of cybernetic transcendence. The Presidential idea of cracking down on the free market XV catering to bad taste is another example of semiotics. She deliberately sets out to use XV to generate the opposite of Global Riots (a plausible event if you grant the transmission of emotions via the medium)-- global coordination and cooperation.

The use of media for social, political, and personal transcendence is very reminiscent of Norman Spinrad, especially his Little Heroes. Though the storms are caused by global warming -- very accelerated by the release of oceanic methane clathrates, Barnes doesn’t give a simple environmental message or a tirade against technology. As for the many scenes describing the storms’ lives and deeds, they were as compelling as needed for a disaster epic.

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A military action results in rapid escalation of ocean temperatures which seeds superstorms that threaten much of earth's population. But as it turns out, this is more that just a disaster novel. It turns out also to carry a plot that ranges from the realm of cyber-reality to deep space. Despite

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such disparities, the story holds together well. A wide cast of characters hold varying interest, and while there is a startling turn-of-events about 50 pages from the end, the conclusion itself felt something of an anti-climax. Held my attention throughout.

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An interesting sci-fi update of the old Arthur Hailey formula (a bunch of linked characters, some central connecting thread that we learn lots about (e.g. Airports, Banks, Hotels ... or in this case, storms), and an exciting climax or series of exciting climaxes to finish it off).

I was a little

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turned off by the (to-me) gratuitous violence--yes, the storms are bound to be destructive, and I don't mind that, but so often the story was punctuated by grotesque human-on-human violence which seemed unnecessary to me ... the plot was interesting enough to keep me engrossed without having to throw in rape/murder flashbacks, for example.

The singularity subplot made very little sense to me (why wouldn't others experience the same thing? Surely once the cat was out of the bag there'd be hundreds or thousands or people willing to give it a go), but the central concept was enthralling and alarming--I'm sure I'm not the first to have read it and then tried to fined out via Google if this is something I need to worry about in real life.

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Maybe this book gets good later. The little I actually read was so transparently awful as to be almost unreadable. As in, I turned every page with an actual cringe. Ick. Horrid.

This was written in 1994:
"Buildings as tall as forty stories are going over, but the World Trade Center seems to be holding firm." (p.393)
"... and the beautiful Earth is being crapped up by an excess of people--lovely as individuals, towns and cultures, but hideous in such profusion." (p.367)

This

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is a remarkable book, written by someone with a vaster amount of science understanding than I have. I had trouble following the "funnels" of Louie Tynan's ship, but I could get the gist of it. What I did get out of it is the understanding of methane clathrate and what can happen when (not if) our oceans heat up enough to release it from its ice bed. I hope this doesn't happen before my death (~2028-30), but I worry terribly about what will happen to my two daughters when any of the horrible things that can happen because of our"fucking ourselves away from the table" do happen and begin destroying this planet and every Flora and fauna along with it.

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