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Conference noted::sf

Title:Arcana Caelestia
Notice:Directory listings are in topic 2
Moderator:NETRIX::thomas
Created:Thu Dec 08 1983
Last Modified:Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:1300
Total number of notes:18728

1200.0. "Frederick Turner" by VERGA::KLAES (Quo vadimus?) Mon Nov 29 1993 15:40

Article: 446
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REPOST: Belated Reviews PS#32: Frederick Turner
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: 27 Nov 93 01:29:13 GMT
 
		Belated Reviews PS#32: Frederick Turner
 
Mid-to-late eighties stretches the scope of 'belated' badly, but I didn't
want to end without mentioning Turner.  He comes under the category of 
"something completely different", since what I'm going to review here are 
his two sf epic poems.
 
If the use of epic poetry is to be more than a conceit, it has to be in
the service of a tale for which it is better suited than the novel.  There
is an sf/f 'tradition' of writing novels to demythologize the heroes of old
tales and explore the people behind the myth, but it is difficult for the
novel to go in the opposite direction and create myth without seeming too
precious.  The epic poem does that better.  The epic poem has historically
also enjoyed a greater freedom to digress, to lecture, to ponder, without
paying the penalty that novels pay for the interpolated lecture or the
expository lump.  The form also has a greater ability to convey a culture's
character and spirit through language.  We can see, for instance, a world
which has internalized the gains of the scientific revolution, in which
poets can sing of double helices or Greek vases with an equal lack of
self-consciousness.  
 
Turner uses the strengths of the epic form to good effect.  His poems
describe and mythologize futures which are more than just extrapolations 
of our present. 
 
(It's good poetry, too.  I'd like to specifically reassure those who find
the prospect of reading a poem a couple of hundred pages long alarming and
unreasonable.  I know that many people come out of school convinced that
reading poetry is nothing but hard work.  Too often they also come out
believing that all poetry is read by the Mother Goose method -- coming
down hard on every other syllable and thudding to a jarring stop at the
end of each line.  If you find reading poems difficult, read these as if
they were oddly-formatted novels.  Turner's poetry flows smoothly enough
that it can be read that way, except that he more pays attention to how it 
*sounds* as well as to what it says, and except that you don't really have 
the option of skimming the slow parts.  And except that, occasionally, 
he'll vary the rhythm, and you suddenly realize just how smoothly it was 
flowing until he decided to get your attention.)
 
"The New World" (****-) is placed four hundred years in the future, and
presents a world that didn't progress or regress along the obvious paths,
but went in a different direction.  Much of the resource exhaustion we 
anticipate has occurred, and technology has followed low-resource paths 
such as bioengineering and microcomputerization.  Humanity has settled 
the stars, and though this fact remains mostly in the background of the 
poem, it has profound psychological consequences:  People can explore 
new possibilities without gambling the survival of the human race.  Nations 
have once more fragmented into smaller polities, a flexible caste system 
has evolved, and new religions have risen.
 
As the title implies, the main interest of the poet is in the new world he
creates, but the world is presented in the context of a somewhat traditional
epic:  The fundamentalist theocracies known as the Mad Counties have settled
their differences and allied in a holy war against the Free Counties.  In
his introduction, Turner describes the Free Counties as "independent 
Jeffersonian aristocratic democracies".  Note the 'aristocratic':  These
are not simple idealized realizations of contemporary American values.  At
this critical juncture they are undergoing a cultural flourishing. 
 
As the war begins, the hero, James Quincy, returns from his exile.  The 
outlines of the story that follows are familiar to us from a dozen historical
epics and myths -- and Turner makes the story interesting in its own right --
but he embeds it in a cultural context which isn't just a familiar one in
disguise, and uses it to illuminate that context.
 
"The New World" is an ambitious work and, in my opinion, Frederick Turner
pulls off what he set out to accomplish:  He's written good science fiction
while creating and presenting a possible future in a way that a novel could
not have accomplished.
 
"Genesis" (***), Turner's second epic poem, is more ambitious than "The
New World", and perhaps for that reason falls somewhat short.  It's more
ambitious partly by virtue of being placed closer to home, beginning as
it does half a century in our future.  This is a future in which the
Ecotheistic Church -- formed from a merger of Green politics and religious
fundamentalism -- is becoming a major force.  Its belief that human
intervention in nature is evil is making it increasingly difficult for the
sciences -- especially the biosciences -- to flourish.  Against this
background, a secret operation is launched to terraform Mars.  (No, it's
not another "Red Mars".  For one thing, it was written in 1988.  For another,
Turner is working to mythologize the actors, not to give them depth.)
 
The poem culminates with the birth, on Mars, of the Sybil, who preaches
the first offworld revelations.  Which brings in the other aspect in which
this poem is more ambitious than the first.  "The New World" is a heroic
epic, and we see the world of the twenty-fourth century through the lives
and actions of its heroes.  "Genesis" is a gospel, written the obligatory
decades after the fact, a tale of prophets and traitors, conflicting 
philosophies, miracles and revelations.  That makes it a tough sell, as
far as much of its intended audience is concerned.  That includes me, I
suppose:  I found the final section, in which the Sybil's story is told,
disappointing after the the first four, which focused upon the greening
of Mars, and upon the people who fought for or against it.  It's still a
powerful epic, but I'd suggest reading "The New World", and seeing how you
like it, before tackling "Genesis.
 
What Frederick Turner does in both books is world building, but it's world
building in a much more interesting sense than that of giving the natives 
quaint customs, making sure the economy makes sense, and trying to create 
a culture that isn't too obviously cloned from a familiar one.  This is world
building in the sense of "tomorrow might be different".  Most important, if 
tomorrow is different, the people who inhabit it will also be different -- 
not just villains who are caricatures of our villains and heroes whose 
attitudes and beliefs are idealizations of our own.
 
%A  Turner, Frederick
%T  The New World.  An Epic Poem
%I  Princeton University Press
%D  1985
%G  ISBN 0-691-06641-8 (hc)
%G  ISBN 0-691-01420-5 (pbk)
%O  $9.95 (pbk, 1985)
%P  182 pages (plus intro)
 
%T  Genesis.  An Epic Poem
%I  Saybrook Publishing co.
%O  (Distributed by W.W. Norton)
%D  1988
%G  ISBN 0-933071-24-B (hc)
%G  ISBN 0-933071-26-4 (pbk)
%O  $19.95 (hc), $9.95 (pbk)
%P  303 pages
 
=============================================================================
 
The postscripts to Belated Reviews cover authors of earlier decades who
didn't fit into the original format -- whether because the author seemed
an inappropriate subject, or because I was unfamiliar with too much of the
author's work, or whatever -- or sometimes just isolated works of such
authors.  The emphasis will continue to be on guiding newer readers
towards books or authors worth trying out, rather than on discussing them
comprehensively or in depth.  I'll retain the rating scheme of ****
(recommended), *** (an old favorite that hasn't aged well), ** (a solid
lesser work), and * (nothing special). 
 
-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com
 
Roses red and violets blew
  and all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew -- Edmund Spenser

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