Cultures don't clash, people do

kw: book reviews, science fiction, posthumanism, terrorism

It would not surprise me to find out that James Patrick Kelly began life among the Amish or a similar "simple life" people. Then again, maybe he took all his inspiration from Thoreau, whose quotes adorn each chapter of Burn.

An aside about Thoreau. Two of the quotes Kelly uses are, "I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have het to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors" (Journal, 1852), and "I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating" (Walden). I have read Walden and these quotes reinforce the impression I had, even thirty years ago, that Thoreau was a morose 15-year-old who never grew up. Remember the joke: "When I was 15, I thought my Dad was the dumbest guy ever born. Within five years, it's amazing how much he'd learned." Henry David, you just never listened; too self-absorbed to realize your own depression was fed by your solitary habits, you inflicted sorry lifetimes of low self-image on generations of young Americans.

Oh, my, I feel better already! Kelly is a better writer than Thoreau. I hope he outgrows his impressionable youth soon. Burn has a very telling counterplay among three cultures, two of which are at war, though a bit unconventionally.

On one planet among a thousand, named Walden, colonists are striving to retain their original soil-bound humanness, in the face of a hugely dominant humanity, called "upsiders." The upsiders use technology that allows them to transmit themselves across light-years in some quantum way. They have, to a degree, transcended death, for their psyche can be "saved," retained in a form that can live on in (unexplained) machinery. The upsiders have contracted not to mess with Walden.

The planet was bought on the cheap from some folks that expoited it to ecological ruin. They are called pukpuks (if there's a reason for the term, I didn't find it). With all the ores mined out, it is good only for farming...but that's all Walden's residents want to do. For some reason, some of the former residents have stayed on, in remote parts of the planet, and now they object to the re-forestation going on. They fight back using a mid-60s method, self-immolation to start forest fires.

At the cultural triple point between Waldenites, pukpuks, and upsiders, the story plays out. This book is more hopeful than many recent SF offerings.