Story 1, In Which We Review "Across The Universe"

I just finished "Across The Universe", Beth Revis' first novel. Most of my interest in sci-fi novels had stemmed from the cyberpunk works of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Rudy Rucker. Basically, the guys who dreamed up all of the concepts that the interwebs use now. Naturally, you come to expect certain things from your sci-fi when you read cyberpunk stuff like that, so I was not sure how I would feel about this book. I didn't know if I would be able to open myself to a romance novel couched in a dystopian setting. Ultimately, I liked the book, there were some really great parts, and though it flirted with some cliches, it never completely succumbed to them.

The protagonist Amy is a teenage girl whose parents have signed up to terraform and colonize a new planet, Centauri Earth. Their trip is financed by the Financial Resource Exchange, which is basically a New World Order type of conglomo-government that would fuel Rand Paul and Glenn Beck's nightmares. Amy is given the choice of staying behind or making the 300 year journey while frozen in a cryogenic sleep. Amy must watch her parents go through the brutal process of being frozen and stored in a sort of amniotic fluid/Slurpee hybrid, then make her decision.

This scene was probably what sold me on this book. It was raw, emotional, and urgent. Revis really does an excellent job mingling horror and sadness, and I felt that this was a nice break from the normal "let's lie down in a tube and pass out in this white, sterile room" way cryosleep is usually done in books and movies. Amy decides to make the journey with her parents and goes to sleep for 300 years. Or at least, that's what is supposed to happen.

Her sleep is interrupted when someone shuts off her tube and she's thrown into the midst of a bizarre permutation of civilization much different from the one she had in the United States. She finds an ally in Elder, a teenager who is next in line to become the leader of the ship, and Harley, Elder's talented and troubled friend. Eldest, the current leader of the ship, wants to throw her out of the airlock and forget that this happened, but she's spared implosion in the vacuum of space by Elder and the ship's prescription happy doctor. She's allowed to stay in the Ward, a part of the ship's hospital where Harley, Elder, and the ship's other "crazy" denizens live a secluded life.

Amy soon becomes an agent of discord in the ship, as her presence awakens Elder to different ideas than the training he's being given by Eldest, and cracks in the bucolic facade begin to appear.

It's not often that you get a female lead in a sci-fi story that isn't a femme fatale (or at least in most of what I've read). Amy is a normal person, and she tends to react in very human ways. She's emotional and lost and insecure - definitely not someone who would be played by Milla Jovovich in the movie version. It was kind of jarring, when you're used to "Steppin' Razor" Molly from "Neuromancer". I kept wanting her to have a gun or something and to trash the place.

Dystopian futures are pretty predictable in most sci-fi. I guess there aren't too many twists you can put on that. Once you've read "Brave New World", "1984", or "Fahrenheit 451", you've probably seen the best of what you're going to see. Leader rules by fear and lies and basically is Stalin or Hitler or whatever. I was worried a couple of times when reading this that I was in for a pretty predictable ride, but a few twists and an ending that would be unsatisfying by Hollywood standards made the experience pretty satisfying.