Fans of construct stories will be intrigued by Melissa Scott's latest novel, The Shapes of Their Hearts; Scott presents her readers with possibly the construct of all constructs: the virtual mind of a revealed God.
The story is set on the planet of Idun KSA 1826/GBI, colloquially and significantly known as Eden-a theocracy settled by the Children, followers of Christian prophet Gabril Aurik. As his final act, Aurik consigned his Revelations to a braintape-the Memoriant-which was to serve as scripture to guide the Children after his death. When one of the Children has his own Revelation, finding in the Memoriant a mandate to convert the rest of humanity, copies of the Memoriant are exported. But when it becomes clear that the rest of humanity isn't buying, the real trouble begins: "... it was discerned that force could be used, since persuasion had failed."
One of these acts of force is the offworld bombing of a sport stadium on Jericho. A Jericho mob boss is wounded in the blast, and his right-hand man killed. Dr. Anton Tso, maker of disorderly-market pharmaceuticals and cloned brother of a rival mob leader, is strong-armed into journeying to Eden to obtain a true copy of the Memoriant. Tso is understandably reluctant to undertake the commission-since the onset of Memoriant-inspired violence, the Territories have imposed a real embargo and virtual blockade against Eden. More disturbing, by virtue of being a clone and an FTL traveler, Tso is considered by the Children to be barely human, and doubly damned.Tso takes with him his bodyguard, Renli DaSilva, one of a line of clones optimized as killers. But the theologicians on Eden are tipped off that the offworlder has come gunning for God, and successfully kidnap Tso; and, to all intents and purposes, imprison him in the virtuality, where he is at the mercy of the Memoriant. DaSilva ends up teaming up with a couple of secular security agents, suspended due to their third partner going back to the Children; a web-walker named the Satellite Lady, who gets and distributes information despite the embargo; and her virtual colleague, Ollencastre, who has released a spy into the Freenet. They must save Tso before the Children (or the Memoriant) destroy him; the Satellite Lady and Ollencastre must somehow hold together the crashing Freenet; and in the background is the threat of a heavy storm that may wreak the same havoc in the physical world that the Memoriant is wreaking in the virtual.
Scott has all the elements in place for a cracking thriller; however, the elements never quite come together. Characters, defined by what they do, are not truly allowed the chance to "be" themselves even within this limited definition. The sense of urgency on the part of Tso's rescue team never quite reaches fever pitch; and even the coming storm seems to fizzle out without much effect. The resolution feels too easy, the many characters almost redundant, and the revealed identity of the first-person narrator who begins each of the book's three segments, while surprising, is ultimately not illuminating.
However, the walk through virtual landscapes may be sufficient to reward many readers. The most vivid scenes in the book take place in virtuality, particularly Tso's imprisonment/journey, his testing by the Memoriant and his encounter with the Memoriant's greatest enemy. Here the virtual landscape takes on an appropriately mythic quality (though flawed, as Tso notes, by hard and artificial-looking computer graphics). The conversations between Tso and the Memoriant-condemned and condemner, barely-human and God-are intriguing, and hold a trace of promise that the encounter may have given each a better understanding of the other.
Go to the main Nova Express Home Page
Go to Lawrence Person's Home Page
After almost drowning in a deluge of Korean Spam, I'm now munging my e-mail address, so please remove all the "H"s from the following to e-mail me: lawrencehh@hiho.com
Like every other web page in the universe, this one is Under Construction.