"A Million Open Doors"

[stoutfellow]

John Barnes' A Million Open Doors is the first of three books in a series about the Thousand Cultures. In this universe, Earth has established many interstellar colonies via slower-than-light travel (apparently involving suspended animation of some sort). Each colony was assigned to a particular culture, pre-existing or newly-created. (A single planet may hold more than one culture, as, of course, Earth itself does.) These cultures have evolved each in its own direction for centuries, with only limited contact with other worlds. Recently, though, a new technology, the "springer", has made possible virtually instantaneous travel between worlds; it is only necessary that a springer be set up on a planet to allow such travel to any other world with a springer. Springers are being delivered to the human-colonized worlds as rapidly as possible (which is still restricted to STL, of course). Therefore, the Thousand Cultures are being forced into more intimate contact, with unpredictable results.

A Million Open Doors is narrated by Giraut Leones, a young man from the world of Occitan, whose culture is based on (a romanticized version of) medieval Provence, complete with an overbred aestheticism and devotion to the cult of courtly love. The springer has recently arrived on Occitan, and their culture is (in Giraut's eyes) being degraded by its contact with the rest of the universe; many of the younger folk are becoming Interstellars, faddists following a distorted vision of off-planet cultures. One of Giraut's friends has been asked to go to the planet of Nansen, to help the recently-springered culture of Caledony adjust to its new situation. When Giraut finds that his entendedora - "girlfriend" is a thoroughly misleading translation - has been dabbling in Interstellarism, he asks to join his friend on Nansen. Caledony's culture is based on something called Rational Christianity; it is, to Giraut, a gray, dull, and repressive society, and he takes it on himself to be a missionary to the Caledons, bringing them Art. And so he does, after a fashion, but the results are not quite as he expects. He finds himself entangled in revolution, which shakes his beliefs concerning both Caledony and Occitan to the core.

The story is one of culture clash; the first-person narrative allows the reader to take an ironic stance, judging both cultures despite the narrator's biases. (Just as an example, Giraut seems oblivious to the fact that, on Nansen, it is he who is trying to establish a local version of Interstellarism.) Caledony is repressive, yes, but it is also free in ways unknown in Occitan. The delicate and ultimately frivolous aestheticism of Occitan stands in sharp contrast to the stark and potent art that arises in Caledony. The very obsession with beauty that fills Occitanian culture is revealed as anti-human, in some respects, and Giraut eventually (as one might have predicted) finds himself out of place when he returns at last to Occitan.

If I have a concern with the book, it is that the ironic stance - as ironic stances often do - invites the reader to feel superiority to both cultures, without necessarily inviting thought about the reader's own culture. A thoughtful reader will take this step, but the book does not, itself, encourage that step. (And here we have the paradox of irony; in that last comment, am I myself not declaring my own superiority? But I don't see any way around it; to refuse the challenge is to fail to fully comprehend the story.)

This book is thought-provoking, at times funny, and deserving of the Nebula nomination it received.

Comments

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

This sounds really interesting. I'll have to put Barnes on my "to read" list. Thanks.