|
|
| Wednesday, July 22, 2009 07:00 PM |
| (Last updated on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 07:04 PM) | | Book Report - Tuf Voyaging |
 by Fëanor |
Tuf Voyaging is rather an odd book. It's a science fiction novel, but it's told in a series of short stories all about the same character: a tall, fat, enigmatic, mostly emotionless man named Haviland Tuf (it's his name, of course, that gives us the rather wince-worthy pun in the title). He's just your average, unassuming vegetarian trader who loves food and cats, until one day he's hired by a mismatched group of people to shuttle them out to a secret location where they believe they'll find a priceless spaceship - gigantic, ancient, almost mythical, and capable of miracles. It's a "seed-ship," and it was built ages ago by a now extinct empire for the purposes of ecological engineering and biological warfare. It's covered in weaponry, it can clone any of thousands of types of plants and animals from across the galaxy, and it can generate as many plagues and diseases as you can think of. Tuf and his passengers find the ship, but it's harder to get on board and take control of than they'd hoped. Meanwhile, jealousy, greed, and petty disagreements split the group apart, leading some to try to take the ship for their own and screw over the others. Tuf just sits quietly in the background, watching and waiting. Partially through luck and partially thanks to his own cleverness and ability to manipulate others, when the dust settles, he's in sole command of the vessel. The rest of the stories in the book deal with how he decides to use the ship. In fact, he becomes an ecological engineer, roaming the galaxy and solving the complex ecological/biological/social problems of the worlds he comes across by cloning plants and animals for them, or even applying various diseases. He quite likes playing the trickster God, however, and the solution he gives his client is never the one they expected or hoped for; in fact, sometimes it's a solution to a completely different problem than the one they brought to his attention.
The largest problem Tuf comes across, and which he keeps coming back to throughout the book, is the problem of the overpopulated world of S'uthlam. At first he provides them with only stop-gap solutions, but then in the last story he devises a rather terrible final solution, which he talks S'uthlam's political leader, and his sometime friend and partner in crime, into helping him implement, despite how ethically questionable it is, and how much deception it involves. This final sequence highlights the moral quandary at the center of all the stories in the book: does one human being have the right to hold in his hands the power of God? Does he have the right to use it as he sees fit, even if his end is always the greater good?
I almost gave up on this book right at the beginning, because the first story features some characters that are so hideous, hateful, and stereotypical that they're practically unbelievable. Martin clearly wanted us to dislike these people, so he made them so impossibly awful that they become parodies of themselves. It's clumsy and unsubtle. Still, those characters don't hang around for long, and it was fun to see them each be defeated by the seed-ship, and by their own weaknesses, in their own special way.
Another character I really despised at first was Haviland Tuf himself. He's so sure of himself and so dryly sarcastic that he's really rather insufferable. As the book went on, I warmed up to him a little bit and started chuckling at his bitter asides to his cats, but I never fell in love with him. I don't think I was supposed to, though. After all, he's the puzzle at the heart of the book that we're meant to keep worrying over throughout. What's really in his heart? Is he a God or a monster?
Some of the stories are weaker than others. I rather liked the one about how Tuf completely dismantles an entire society that's based on fights to the death between giant beasts, but it's paced a bit too slowly and takes too long to get to its inevitable payoff. The story about the giant sea beasts rising out of the ocean's depths to massacre the people of Namor is particularly disturbing and effective, even if the ending is a bit contrived.
The book is peppered with the occasional illustration, and these are all quite good; the portrayal of Tuf seems particularly accurate and effective.
The strongest and most interesting concept in the entire book is definitely the seed-ship itself, with its years of dark history only hinted at, and its ability to bring life and death in equal measure. It's almost a character in and of itself - massive, mysterious, eerie, deadly, haunted.
But ultimately I don't think the book lives up to the potential of its ideas. A more subtle writer with a better grasp on character could probably have done more with the premise. Still, as it is, it's interesting, thought-provoking, and it kept me entertained for some time. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jim Genzano's books on Goodreads
