I recently read two novels which very nearly fit into longer stories.
Mona Lisa Overdrive, dating from 1988, is sort of about a lot of things. Poking around the endpapers the reader can discover it belongs to the same setting as William Gibson’s earlier Neuromancer and Count Zero. While Mona Lisa Overdrive has its own plot, I suspect the book’s ending might be slightly more comprehensible, though probably not significantly more conclusive, if I had read the earlier novels.
Gibson’s prose is striking but his imagination seems stuck on the darker aspects of human motivations. The themes of Mona Lisa Overdrive are reality, appearance, and happiness. Gibson’s world includes a more extensively realistic virtual reality than exists yet: perhaps the most interesting idea from today’s perspective is the suggestion of connection or similarity between drug use and the appeal of or escapism found in the virtual “stims”. There’s also organized crime and an obscure revenge plot involving the heiress of ill-gotten millions and a somehow-related quest (by one deranged genius, as seen through the eyes of another) to understand how the virtual reality world works.
The setting itself is poorly defined. Japan and London seem fairly well-off, but the northeastern US is “the Sprawl” and some kind of shambles after what must have been another World War. Space colonization has been tried but it’s unclear if it was or remains a success. Of all the characters, the one Gibson seems to me to identify with most is the not-entirely-with-it artist/sculptor/robot-maker: it seems to me that what he suggests about the creative process as a catharsis is probably the best explanation for the book’s tone and sheer weirdness.
In my head, the novel got mixed up with Samuel Delany’s short story “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones”, the title of which has even less to do with its plot than that of Mona Lisa Overdrive does but which I was reading at the same time. Delany’s world is in much better shape, or maybe just more hopeful, but his Singers could fit right in with Gibson’s commentary on reality. More importantly, I suspect Gibson’s novels were a significant influence on the Otherland series Tad Williams wrote about a decade later. Williams is perhaps less concerned with the real world; but has the advantage of a better idea of the impact of the internet where Gibson’s VR experiences are – except for a very wealthy or obsessed few – individual units delivered on vaguely described media analogous to VHS or DVD.
Williams’ magnum opus would also be worth re-reading, if I could ever find the time; it would be much easier to set out time to go through Mona Lisa Overdrive a second time, but I’m less certain it deserves the attention.
Ball Lightning, on the other hand, leaves no questions about its quality. Its publication in 2004 (and subsequent translation) made Liu Cin a breakout science fiction star, although it took the Three Body Problem series to really bring Liu to Western (and my) attention.
Ball Lightning belongs to the speculative side of science fiction. Liu in his afterword considers himself to be writing in an older Chinese tradition of science fiction, which I know nothing about, but his approach will also be recognizable to readers of authors such as Larry Niven.
Liu’s characters are well-drawn and his plot fairly straight-forward, but both are, on the whole, less important than the ideas they serve to detail about his speculation regarding the titular phenomenon, which is a real and really so-far unexplained occurrence. Liu suggests an explanation tied in to certain observations or theories made about quantum states, and so also has some comment to offer on reality and appearances.
Other than Niven, Ball Lightning reminded me forcefully of Tom Clancy’s early novels, with his careful use of real or plausible military research and institutions. Somewhat odd from my American perspective is that in the international tensions and eventual conflict that occurs the United States is clearly the rival in view – down to referring to specific units which can only be American – but the United States is never named, even when the protagonist travels to Oklahoma (which is specifically identified). I don’t know if this reflects Chinese censorship or some odd aspect of Liu’s own understanding of American polities or a weird translation decision (and if so, what that obscures).
Ball Lightning concludes with the suggestion that evidence of aliens has been discovered in the course of the experiments detailed in the novel. Whether Liu already had his future work in mind or not is hard to say. At any rate the quality of this book has made it virtually certain I will eventually read Liu’s later work as well.
Romance of Victory 