Game of Thrones in space? George RR Martin book review by Katherine Roberts
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Like many fantasy authors, George RR Martin has also explored other aspects of the genre. I recently discovered in a charity shop his science fiction collection Tuf Voyaging, which combines several linked novellas (previously published in SF magazines) into an entertaining yet deeply unsettling novel of bio-engineering and planetary disaster. Working on the principle that such books appear when it is the right time for me to read them, I couldn't help but read Tuf Voyaging against the backdrop of the past two years, and the comparison caused me to wake in a cold sweat on more than one occasion.
In the first story, our hero - Haviland Tuf of the title - is an independent space trader hired to ferry a motley collection of bounty hunters out to an abandoned seedship of ancient Earth's Ecological Engineering Corps. This vast ship is floating in space around a planet which regularly suffers plagues, and is apparently long dead just like the EEC... except that computers, of course, do not die. This seedship is merely sleeping, as are the cloned monsters kept in hibernation for its immediate defence should it be boarded. Its human crew has long since perished, but a huge archive of living cells collected from different planets survives intact, just awaiting someone who can start the correct processes to clone them. The ship also carries a large collection of viruses and those plagues, as it turns out, are not so natural after all. Whoever controls this ship can literally play god, as is suggested by the titles of the subsequent stories.
In 'Loaves and Fishes', Haviland Tuf (now in sole command of the seedship - read the first story to find out how that happens) performs his first act of ecological engineering to help a planet on the brink of starvation due to its expanding population. His services come with a hefty price tag, for which he is well suited to drive a hard bargain, his previous career being that of an interstellar trader. He returns to this planet in years to come, only to find that his aid has caused a population explosion and that they need his help all over again. In the end, up against the pro-life philosophy of the population, the only thing he can think of to help them is a trick to vastly reduce their population so that the survivors can start over. This takes the form of a delicious and addictive 'Manna from Heaven', the title of the final story in the book.
I won't spoil things for you by going into more detail, but suffice to say there is a modern-day parallel and it is rather unsettling. We are talking biowar and interference with planetary ecosystems which, in the end, comes down to the danger of one man playing god - however altruistic his original intent may have been. But if this all sounds a bit too heavy, don't forget this is one of George RR Martin's creations... there are also playful kittens on Tuf's aptly-named seedship Ark, and (naturally) dragons.
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| Tuf Voyaging by George RR Martin |
"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton.
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Katherine Roberts writes fantasy and historical fiction for young readers.
Her novel about Alexander the Great (another character who liked to think himself a god) is currently on special offer at only 99c/99p for the Kindle edition until December.
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| I am the Great Horse |
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