Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was an unexpectedly good book. I picked this up mainly because of the author's other works like Spin
and Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century
, both of which are astoundingly original and well-written. This book didn't sound as interesting as either of those. I'm not much interested in Westerns, which is what the description of this book made it seem like to me. I was wrong about that, however. The book begins in the year 2172 in a semi post-apocalyptic world. 21st century civilization collapsed due to a number of reasons, but mainly because the oil ran out. Disease ran rampant (as it would if we lost our modern medicines) and humans suffered from infertility to the point that humans were threatened with extinction. By the time of the events of this book, however, civilization in the United States and Europe has progressed roughly up to the age of steam.
The political situation is set up such that the US has expanded its borders to the equator (either at the Panama Canal or past it) and almost the north pole, although the polar ice cap has melted. The melting of the ice is itself a plot point in that the European powers claim to control the now-extant Northwest Passage, and the US of course denies this claim. The US and Europe are perpetually at war over the issue.
This is the backdrop for the story of the titular character, Julian Comstock. He is an aristocrat exiled to live in the country out west because his uncle, the President, is afraid of having him as a rival, but unwilling to simply kill him out of hand. The story is told by a Julian's friend Adam Hazzard, a commoner but one with an unusual amount of writing ability and education. Adam is with Julian from his exile to his rise through the ranks of the Army (and his eventual end) and details the story throughout.
In reality, this book seems to be an exercise in the craft of writing, moreso than it is an effort to tell the story. The story itself is as simple as it sounds, although it is not without adventure along the way. The episodes in the tale serve both to illustrate points about Julian as well as to spice the story up and keep it from becoming dull reading. It's not as if Wilson is attempting to blind the reader to what it is though; indeed, he tells us over and over again that the writer (Hazzard) is emulating his favorite author, a man named Charles Curtis Easton, in writing a tale full of adventure, humor, and tragedy. Which of course is what Wilson himself is doing. The story hearkens back to an older style of sci-fi novel wherein any science elements served only to liven up the narrative by allowing the existence of ray guns or flying through space. Note that I am not calling this book science fiction other than that futurism falls under the category of sci-fi by agreement.
Although the narration itself is quite serviceable, the prose tends towards a plainness which can be rather irritating. Hazzard's impenetrable naivete is really too much to take at times, even if it is a put-on (which question I pondered quite a bit as the story went on). Of course, unreliable narrators are not necessarily a drawback, as most definitely proven by Severian in Gene Wolfe's Shadow and Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'
. Neil Gaiman (a devoted fan of Wolfe's), while not being prone to giving first person narration, also has a habit of being unreliable in his storytelling, presenting his stories from a third-person limited viewpoint. In other words, one needn't be too bothered by a lack of knowledge on the part of the narrator if the writing is done well enough. Of course, all along, while Adam is writing the story of Julian, he's really telling his own story. Julian's thoughts and feelings were always presented as being opaque to Adam, although he could possibly have presumed to know Julian better than anyone else did. The fact is that Wilson was writing the story of a character who considered himself secondary to another character who was, in fact, secondary to his own story. The question is whether Wilson succeeded in writing an interesting story. I think the answer is yes, although I can see how someone less impressed with Wilson's style may not be as favorably inclined towards a book which is about a writer writing a book. But Wilson (and Wilson as Hazzard) never set out to write a book which is really more than the formula he sets forth as Mr. Easton's model; a boy goes out, has adventures and finally comes home. And I think he succeeds at writing that story admirably.
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