A brief review of Outies: A Guest Review By Carlos

[james_davis_nicoll]

Not having finished Outies yet, I asked Carlos if he would like to review Outies, JR Pournelle's sequel to Mote in God's Eye and The Gripping Hand. This is the result.

I'm reviewing the paperback edition of Outies by Jennifer Pournelle, published by New Brookland Press, a copy of which I obtained from Amazon. Is it a print-on-demand press? The book is solidly bound and well-printed. There is a slight cutting glitch on the bottom edge, but it's not noticeable in handling the book. The cover art is not unattractive, and it pertains to the subject matter. A small depiction of various hands appears on the binding, and a bitmapped version is used to separate sections within chapters in the book. (If possible, this probably should be changed to a vector graphic version for less fuzziness.)

Outies is a sequel to The Gripping Hand, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's unfortunately weak sequel to their classic space opera/first contact novel, The Mote in God's Eye. Because of its status as a science fiction classic, I will assume everyone here has read Mote, or at least its description in Wikipedia. There's not much to say about The Gripping Hand. It brings to light more of the Muslim and Mormon cultures within the Empire, and it shows the Empire of Man coming up with an analog to the birth control pill for Moties, something that in humans was done with Studebaker-era technology.

Outies is an intellectually richer book than either The Gripping Hand or Mote. One of Niven's major talents was to simplify complicated biological or physical ideas and push them to a breaking point. One of, er, JEP's major talents was to simplify political and social ideas in the same way. At the peak of their powers, it made for strongly and forcefully drawn caricatures that hinted at depths below the surface. At other times, well. Mote was written at their joint authorial peak, but it relied on their simplified biological and political models of the universe for its effects.

Jennifer Pournelle reintroduces complexity to the basic setting with Outies, while still being faithful to The Gripping Hand, Mote, King David's Spaceship, and JEP's CoDominium mercenary stories. [*]

Some SPOILERS.



Briefly: a few years after the events of The Gripping Hand, a Neolithic Motie civilization is discovered in the outback of New Utah, which is having difficulties meeting the technical and political standards for admission into the Empire of Man. An eccentric Imperial researcher manages to make things right. No tragically romantic genocide takes place, and New Utah applies for admission to the Empire as a space-faring planet.

Outies works perfectly fine at that level, although the tonal shift from N&P's prose style may catch a reader off guard. (Jennifer Pournelle does capture Kevin Renner's obnoxiousness perfectly.) It's wordy. There are _italics_. The pacing is very different. Of course it is.

There are bits of new detail regarding the Empire: the service class in the Empire of Man speaks Tok Pisin! This is where the global warming criticism on Amazon came from: the people from the flooded lands of the island Pacific became the service worker class of the Empire. (Niven had the Inuit become something of a mechanic class in the Empire, so this actually follows prior thought.)

Outies really fascinates in the dialogue Jennifer Pournelle conducts with the earlier work. For example, JEP wrote stories that idealized mercenary life. JRP has seen security contractors up close. In King David's Spaceship, JEP had the heroes exiled to Makassar to Kiplingize the place. JRP has them end up as ineffectual. One viewpoint character is actively bored by yet another description of the Alderson Drive. There are quiet fixes to Niven's biology and JEP's politics throughout the book that do not contradict N&P's earlier vision. These fixes and complications should not impair a reader's enjoyment of Outies at all... unless what one really enjoyed about N&P's earlier vision was the simplified worldview. I can imagine readers howling then.

Much of the New Utah portion of Outies reads like it could be set in recent Iraq, and I gather that Jennifer Pournelle has been involved with that country for some time. I think this is a strength: we so often see science fiction with military themes do an uncomplicated search-and-replace on, say, the Napoleonic Wars. We don't see more difficult settings used to inform science fiction very often, and we don't see the day-to-day pace of life. We do see this in Outies.

In Outies, there are *five* major Abrahamic religions in the Empire of Man, at least in the Trans-Coalsack. JRP clearly likes that idea. After a few thousand years, they'll start piling up.

The Moties... you know, what does it mean to have a war so destructive that society is blasted back to the invention of the brick? to paraphrase a line from The Gripping Hand. And how does one rebuild? I suspect Jennifer Pournelle has thought about exactly that, because she shows primitive Moties bootstraping themselves up into a Mesopotamian-like terraforming civilization.

The biology for the Moties JRP comes up with is strange and apparently based on a real world model. It rationalizes many aspects about Motie biology without falling into Nivenisms. It explains why simple hormonal control of the Motie life cycle is not an easy option, and it moves past the "sterile mule" explanation for hybrid castes, while still remaining open-ended about deeper details of Motie biology.

I came across Jennifer Pournelle's discussion of Outies and gender first and I read the book with her discussion in mind, so I can't tell what a new reader would see. So SPOILERS again.

The main character, the eccentric Imperial researcher Asach Quinn, is intersexed. This carries a stigma within the Empire, and it is also a plot point to establishing relations with the Moties on New Utah. There's even a set speech that the character has given to backwards Imperials enough times that they're tired of it. There are no gender cues given within the text for Asach's character -- in my opinion, this is unnoticeable and not stilted.

Asach's character gets to a problem with Outies as fiction, however: Asach feels something like a Mary Sue. Given what Jennifer Pournelle has mentioned about her personal history, I think it's safe to say Asach is not supposed to be a direct authorial stand-in. But as an indirect repository for the author's sympathies and abilities... maybe, even probably? On the other hand, it ain't bragging if you can do it. There just isn't that much science fiction written by broadminded, well-traveled polymaths.

Outies uses multiple viewpoints, but it rarely feels like an airport novel. The different points of view are mostly engaging and sometimes darkly humorous. (The weaker ones I would have either strengthened or cut.) I suspect Jennifer Pournelle took Dune apart to analyze as a model. There's the ecological subplot, the Imperial power politics subplot, the religious scholar in the outback subplot, etc. Reassembled very differently, of course. There is even a Himmist hymn in one of the appendixes, which I haven't played yet. It has a reasonably happy ending, with several mysteries left unresolved, but without giant signs saying "HERE BE MYSTERIES" hanging over them.

This is a book I would recommend to people who enjoyed The Mote in God's Eye but not uncritically. I don't think it quite stands alone, but I think it's an interesting and worthwhile sequel, and I look forward to reading more fiction by Jennifer Pournelle in the future. (I am putting her book of poetry on pre-order.)

[*] Two different back of the envelope calculations suggest that a single human warship in the time of Mote had the power output of a Kardashev I civilization. But admission to the Empire as a relatively equal partner requires rather simple spacefaring capacity: a simple crewed orbital capsule suffices. Given the disparity in energies between getting a rocket to orbit and an Imperial warship, this is a little as if the Congress of Vienna gave any tribe that used oars a seat at the table. Upshot: on its own terms, the Empire of Man is surprisingly liberal in its admission policy.

Comments

[monarda-if.livejournal.com]

If you have it to hand, could you provide a link to the discussion of Outies and gender that Carlos mentions in his review?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Outies, Gender Neutrality and Social Science Fiction: an Interview with Jennifer Pournelle (http://archaeology.about.com/b/2011/02/13/outies-gender-neutrality-and-social-science-fiction-an-interview-with-jennifer-pournelle.htm)

[daev.livejournal.com]

1. I am amused to find that she considers Terry Pratchett to be the world's best author of social science fiction.

2. To say that JRP has some political differences from JEP is an understatement.

3. Holy mackerel -- Keri Hulme is not only still alive, but writing on the Net.

[opheliastorn.livejournal.com]

>3. Holy mackerel -- Keri Hulme is not only still alive, but writing on the Net.

Hey, there, she's only in her 60s! And does some very nice online sniping indeed.

[monarda-if.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that. I doubt I'll have time to read it before tomorrow, but it's appreciated anyway.

[zxhrue.livejournal.com]

remarkably positive. thanks.

[wintermuted.livejournal.com]

Sounds like something I'd like, then. Space empires have always been a guilty pleasure and I'd be interested in JRP's fixes to the Empire of Man.

Thanks for the review and link.

[(Anonymous)]

This is a really good review.

Thank you, Carlos, for sharing your thoughts.

TSM_in_Toronto