Queen of Angels
Jul. 14th, 2007 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI've said on several occasions that I regard Queen of Angels as Greg Bear's masterpiece. I'd like to put some flesh on that opinion, under the cut. I'll try to avoid serious spoilers.
Queen of Angels is a thoughtful and meaty book. It is a story about mind and self, about evil and temptation, about guilt and responsibility; it looks at each from multiple angles, and leaves the reader - well, leaves me - with much to ponder.
The novel follows four intertwined plotlines. Three of them center on a terrible crime: Emmanuel Goldsmith, a noted poet, has deliberately murdered eight of his acolytes, and then vanished. We follow Richard Fettle, another of Goldsmith's followers, who escaped death by arriving late, as he struggles to come to terms with what his mentor has done. We follow police officer Mary Choy, assigned to find Goldsmith and bring him to justice. And we follow psychological researcher Martin Burke, who must delve into Goldsmith's mind to find out just how this happened.
The fourth plotline involves an AI named Jill - far more intelligent than any human, not yet self-aware, but - oddly - aware that "she" is not self-aware, and puzzled by this and by the very concept of self-awareness. Jill is, among other things, responsible for monitoring an interstellar probe launched decades earlier towards Alpha Centauri B. The probe is controlled by another AI, less powerful than Jill, and its reports of its findings are now reaching Earth.
The story is founded on a psychological theory, similar to the one popularized by Marvin Minsky in The Society of Mind. This holds that what we call the mind is best understood not as a unity but as a congeries of semi-autonomous agents, most of which never emerge into consciousness; what we call the self is merely one of these, and a late-arising one, tasked with organizing and managing the others. Burke's research has led to a technique for directly addressing lower-level agents, in a symbolic context called by Burke the Country of the Mind, and Burke's harrowing visit to Goldsmith's Country is one of the most powerful parts of the book.
Officer Choy's story reveals (in oblique fashion) a substantial amount of backstory: the emerging division of the country into the Therapied and the Untherapied, the latter class largely unemployable; a mysterious interlude involving a President Raphkind, whose reach for power ended in scandal and suicide; a vigilante movement known as the Selectors, who use a perverted form of Burke's discoveries to give "fitting punishment" to those they deem criminal; and the strange figure of Colonel Sir John Yardley, a dictator who has united Haiti and the Dominican Republic into the nation of Hispaniola, and whose friendship with Goldsmith leads Choy on a long odyssey.
Fettle's story is, to my mind, the weakest part of the book, but (on a fourth or fifth reading) I am beginning to see how it fits in. Fettle is a wannabe, like Goldsmith one of the Untherapied, but lacking (though he ardently desires) Goldsmith's poetic gifts. Being a poet (or, at least, a poet manqué), he struggles to write out his response to the murders, trying in his own way to dive into Goldsmith's mind.
Jill's story seems disconnected from the rest, but in the end proves to be complementary to them. Her struggle (beyond that within herself, as she tries to understand selfhood) is to interpret what is happening to the probe AI in response to its discoveries; her conversations with her builder and with herself are, ultimately, very moving. This part of the novel also includes transcripts from a version of the Net, where commentators form something of a Greek chorus, haring off on wrong scents and ending in ironic despair - ironic, because what they hoped to find has actually appeared, just in a different place...
Queen of Angels is filled with intricate little interconnections, subtle echoes of each story appearing in the others. Even the title is mysteriously evocative and equivocal: the tale begins in LA, the city of la reina de los angeles; there is an overt reference to the Pietà, and it is no accident that Officer Choy's first name is Mary; and the title can also be reflected in Jill's direction.
This story has ugly elements - parts of it take place within a mass murderer's mind, and in several places torture is presented (though, mercifully, only from the outside). Still, there is qualified hope in its endings. (That the plural is required is entirely apropos.) The stories of Jill and of Fettle end in resolution and openness (and in the risk that that openness implies), and Officer Choy gains in humanity as a result of her decidedly unpleasant experiences. Burke's fate is nastier, but still somehow fitting. (He explicitly compares himself to Faust, though, significantly, he does so only in the passive voice.)
Greg Bear has written quite an array of remarkable novels, and evoked sensawunda better, I think, than any of his contemporaries. Blood Music, Eon, The Forge of God - all of these are great achievements; but Queen of Angels tops them all.
Queen of Angels is a thoughtful and meaty book. It is a story about mind and self, about evil and temptation, about guilt and responsibility; it looks at each from multiple angles, and leaves the reader - well, leaves me - with much to ponder.
The novel follows four intertwined plotlines. Three of them center on a terrible crime: Emmanuel Goldsmith, a noted poet, has deliberately murdered eight of his acolytes, and then vanished. We follow Richard Fettle, another of Goldsmith's followers, who escaped death by arriving late, as he struggles to come to terms with what his mentor has done. We follow police officer Mary Choy, assigned to find Goldsmith and bring him to justice. And we follow psychological researcher Martin Burke, who must delve into Goldsmith's mind to find out just how this happened.
The fourth plotline involves an AI named Jill - far more intelligent than any human, not yet self-aware, but - oddly - aware that "she" is not self-aware, and puzzled by this and by the very concept of self-awareness. Jill is, among other things, responsible for monitoring an interstellar probe launched decades earlier towards Alpha Centauri B. The probe is controlled by another AI, less powerful than Jill, and its reports of its findings are now reaching Earth.
The story is founded on a psychological theory, similar to the one popularized by Marvin Minsky in The Society of Mind. This holds that what we call the mind is best understood not as a unity but as a congeries of semi-autonomous agents, most of which never emerge into consciousness; what we call the self is merely one of these, and a late-arising one, tasked with organizing and managing the others. Burke's research has led to a technique for directly addressing lower-level agents, in a symbolic context called by Burke the Country of the Mind, and Burke's harrowing visit to Goldsmith's Country is one of the most powerful parts of the book.
Officer Choy's story reveals (in oblique fashion) a substantial amount of backstory: the emerging division of the country into the Therapied and the Untherapied, the latter class largely unemployable; a mysterious interlude involving a President Raphkind, whose reach for power ended in scandal and suicide; a vigilante movement known as the Selectors, who use a perverted form of Burke's discoveries to give "fitting punishment" to those they deem criminal; and the strange figure of Colonel Sir John Yardley, a dictator who has united Haiti and the Dominican Republic into the nation of Hispaniola, and whose friendship with Goldsmith leads Choy on a long odyssey.
Fettle's story is, to my mind, the weakest part of the book, but (on a fourth or fifth reading) I am beginning to see how it fits in. Fettle is a wannabe, like Goldsmith one of the Untherapied, but lacking (though he ardently desires) Goldsmith's poetic gifts. Being a poet (or, at least, a poet manqué), he struggles to write out his response to the murders, trying in his own way to dive into Goldsmith's mind.
Jill's story seems disconnected from the rest, but in the end proves to be complementary to them. Her struggle (beyond that within herself, as she tries to understand selfhood) is to interpret what is happening to the probe AI in response to its discoveries; her conversations with her builder and with herself are, ultimately, very moving. This part of the novel also includes transcripts from a version of the Net, where commentators form something of a Greek chorus, haring off on wrong scents and ending in ironic despair - ironic, because what they hoped to find has actually appeared, just in a different place...
Queen of Angels is filled with intricate little interconnections, subtle echoes of each story appearing in the others. Even the title is mysteriously evocative and equivocal: the tale begins in LA, the city of la reina de los angeles; there is an overt reference to the Pietà, and it is no accident that Officer Choy's first name is Mary; and the title can also be reflected in Jill's direction.
This story has ugly elements - parts of it take place within a mass murderer's mind, and in several places torture is presented (though, mercifully, only from the outside). Still, there is qualified hope in its endings. (That the plural is required is entirely apropos.) The stories of Jill and of Fettle end in resolution and openness (and in the risk that that openness implies), and Officer Choy gains in humanity as a result of her decidedly unpleasant experiences. Burke's fate is nastier, but still somehow fitting. (He explicitly compares himself to Faust, though, significantly, he does so only in the passive voice.)
Greg Bear has written quite an array of remarkable novels, and evoked sensawunda better, I think, than any of his contemporaries. Blood Music, Eon, The Forge of God - all of these are great achievements; but Queen of Angels tops them all.
