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This is a fantastically-rendered story. And McDonald knows it. The audacity of his prose and the poetry with which he relates this story will have you shaking your head. It's almost too much, but you'll still respect him in the morning. He's an author who challenges you to find fault in his observations, who makes sweeping statements about culture and the human condition and then waits, expectantly, for your acquiescence. Damn him, he's good. I enjoyed this book immensely, though a number of shortcomings keep it from greatness.
It starts and ends with the Ganges, "Mother Ganga", the metaphorically rich river that so captures the Indian imagination. India has balkanized during the 43 years after McDonald wrote this. The year 2047 is significant for marking the centenary of India's independence from the British Empire; this setting is thus an apt axe for McDonald to put to his post-imperialist grindstone. The city-nation-state of Varanasi is in a tight spot at the novel's outset: an ongoing drought has occasioned a water war with the neighboring state of Awadh. Varanasi has improbably purchased a chunk of glacier to float across the ocean to tide them over until the next monsoon. Warring robots of all shapes, sizes and abilities punctuate the narrative flow of the novel, which is spread dissociatively across nine character perspectives. Combined, they give a cross-section of a culture still entering the 21st century while coping with the environmental effects of it, a culture at once modern and ancient.
But wait - there's more! We knew it was coming... it's the stuff of the future... no work of SF would be complete without it... the novel's crux: artificial intelligence. Referred to colloquially as 'aeais' (AIs), these digital beings have permeated every aspect of daily life - they pilot aircraft, trade stocks, manage playlists and even play roles in India's favorite soap opera, Town and Country. Aeais are classified on a rating scale according to intellect and self-awareness, with 1.0 being for basic gruntwork and 3.0 representing near godlike capability... within their own subjective digital realities, of course. McDonald uses this metaphor to play with the exploration of consciousness, the ego of "self", the perception and creation of reality. At times it's profound, at times too self-conscious, occasionally a bit ego-feeding, but always intelligent. He has done extensive homework and would probably hold his own in a roundtable discussion of quantum physics and Jungian psychology. He contrasts the proliferation of digital consciousness with India's robust mythology and asks the reader to equate the two. This played to both my Hindu-Mystical upbringing and my interest in computers, making it a very topical read for me.
If there's one thing India is known for, it's the crowding press of people, and this novel did make me feel a bit claustrophobic. Nine narratives to follow? It feels a bit greedy coming from an already ambitious premise, and I'm calling the author on it. Three of the plotlines felt mundanely ancillary, providing little more than downtime and minute background detail for the exploits of more interesting characters. I read through these segments impatiently and raised nary an eyebrow at the ho-hum conclusions of their stories. This novel is like a double LP: there's a fantastic plot in here, provided you make your own playlist composed of the narratives you personally enjoy. The attempt to juggle so many different perspectives results in the dilution of the potency of any one perspective; personalities bleed over and lose distinction. Though this *could possibly* have been a deliberate and topical meta-narration of the author's central exploration of Hinduism's unity of consciousness, that's a stretch I'm not willing to afford.
I find this to be reflective of a trend I'm not happy to witness in SF today: one of trying too hard to be sexy, topical, sophisticated, "meta". Every sentence must be pregnant with perspective, every observation dripping with the glee of knowingness. SF authors are too damn smart for their own good. I'm also tired of an apparent assumption that 'nerdy books need sex to sell'. I'm no puritan when it comes to sex and find it to be as worthy a subject to write about as any regular human experience, but this book forces it, sensationalizes it. No character in this novel is able to stave off the offending arm of sexualization. Shiv the street urchin is constantly popping boners - he even dies with one. Najia the journalist gets aroused by watching catfights. We don't get more than two pages into Krishna-Cop Mr. Nandha's story before being briefed on his sex life with his wife. Tal, the androgynous-and-objectified gender-neutral being, engages in some racy electric sex at the end of his first chapter, and Vishram is coming midway into his. The novel's unlikely couple, the heady scientists Lull and Durnau, screw like rabbits the moment we learn of their association. I am left wondering whether this is a fixation of McDonald's or indicative of the influence of a larger trend. Do writers of SF still feel their work has to have sex appeal to sell? Sex is a worthy inclusion in any novel so long as it fits within the plot context and furthers the development of the characters, but it becomes a cheap thrill all to quickly. I wish McDonald had resisted the urge.
River of Gods concludes as improbably as it starts, and may leave you wondering whether it was all really worth it, anyway. McDonald thumbs his nose at you, and then you either read more of his books or you don't. It's good, but as is often the case with speculative fiction, the highlights are in the little details - telling observations that reflect on the state of things now, or soon to be. The overarching narrative felt at once too large and a little weak; meanwhile, the individual threads lacked the cohesion I was hoping for. Read it for the flourishes, of which there are plenty.
It's a good thing McDonald is of a higher caliber than just about anyone else writing science fiction at the moment. He gets away with murder. Often.
