The Story So Far

Leo Graf has been assigned to the Cay Habitat, orbiting the planet Rodeo, as a safety instructor, his students being an artificially created race of people known as quaddies—people with four arms and no legs. The first of these quaddies were born out of test tubes a couple decades ago in order to work in deep space permanently, since zero gravity presents a problem for normal humans. Leo has to deal with Bruce Van Atta, consummate asshole, former student, and now his supervisor; Dr. Sondra Yei, a psychologist who has been working to “socialize” the quaddies; and of course the quaddies themselves, the oldest of whom are barely out of their teens. GalacTech, Leo’s employer and the company behind the Cay Project, have no qualms with creating a race of people for slave labor (the quaddies are not considered human) that they can then legally murder if deemed necessary.

Quaddies Tony and Claire conspire with their close friend Silver to leave the Habitat, and it almost works—only a mix-up results in them almost being taken to Rodeo in what would amount to a metal coffin; thankfully they find refuge in a warehouse station orbiting the planet, but unluckily Tony gets injured in an encounter with a security guard. Tony gets taken to a hospital on Rodeo, Claire nearly commits suicide after being separated from her partner, and Silver is traumatized from a drug-addled interrogation led by Van Atta. To make matters worse, Leo hears through the grapevine that an anti-gravity device has not only been patented but is now market-ready, meaning the quaddies are about to become obsolete. What do you do with outdated tech when that tech is people? The only options given are sterilization or outright extermination. The only way the quaddies can get out of this is to escape.

Enhancing Image

My initial concern about Leo becoming metaphorically a white savior for the quaddies has mostly subsided, because it becomes clear quick enough that even with his ingenuity, Leo can’t save the day by himself. Even the assistance of a couple sympathetic humans like (now former) pilot Ti Gulik, much of the work necessary to convert the Habitat into a colony ship must fall into the hands of the quaddies; and why not, they’re supposed to live on it regardless of who’s in charge. Taking apart the Habitat and putting it back together is a bit of a cracked idea, but it’s the best Leo and company can come up with. After all, if they can’t reason with the higher-ups at GalacTech then the next best thing would be to get out of that company’s reach. Space is unbelievably vast, such that no government or company would have infinite reach, and anyway the quaddies were made to live in space indefinitely. Thus Part 3 is largely concerned with cutting off Van Atta and other GalacTech people as Our Heroes™ work out their plan.

I hate to inform you that you’ve just been punk’d, because I’m not really gonna be reviewing Part 3 here. For one I don’t have a lot to say about it, but also I’ve been more weary than usual about reviewing novel serials—not this novel’s fault, it’s pretty good so far, it’s more that I’ve gotten to thinking about the weird nature of serialization and how modern readers basically don’t even know what a serial would look like. I sure as shit didn’t know until just a few years ago, when I started getting into reading scans of old genre magazines. I remember distinctly the first serial I read front to back was Clifford Simak’s Time Quarry, AKA Time and Again, and it was a fundamentally different experience than if I had read the same novel in book form. I would ssay this is something only the most recent generation of SFF readers would know, but even by 1987, when Falling Free began its serial run, serialization in the industry was becoming increasingly old-fashioned. Indeed it was one of the last novels to win a major SFF award to have first appeared in serial form.

There are two major schools of throught with regards to reading a serial: you either read each installment as it comes out or you wait for the serial to finish so you can read all installments in close succession. Now, the way I’ve been reading installments for my reviews does not really fall into either camp, although naturally it falls closer to reading each installment as it comes out, since I take a few days after finishing one to continue to the next. This, of course, is not how you normally read novels; maybe you take a day off when in the middle of one but generally you (and by “you” I mean I) go at it every day, be it 30 or 50 pages at a time. Incidentally an average installment in Analog would run about 40 to 75 book pages, closer to 20 to 50 in Weird Tales. Thing is, taking your time between installments can give the at-times false impression that what you’re reading is longer than it is; you may even experience some fatigue with a novel that, when in book form, is not long at all, especially by modern standards.

Sometimes when tackling a serial I experience such fatigue, and I have to admit that Part 3 of Falling Free was the most recent case. There are a few plausible reasons for this. We’ve now reached the point where the action has picked up and there will be no stopping it, such that character development has been put to the wayside. It’s a bit of an ensemble, but there’s a sizable gap between the characters who matter and those who only exist to push the plot forward. Strange as it is to say, but if anything I wish this novel was longer and that it meandered more; or rather I wish it took more time to ponder the many questions that would arise from its premise. Also, while the love triangle between Leo, Silver, and Ti being a fake-out (the latter two always seeing each other more as friends with benefits) is an amusing subversion of our expectations, I’m less amused by Leo’s crush on Silver. The age gap is an issue, but also we really don’t need romantic tension like that in a narrative where interpersonal drama is already ripe enough. I would probably be feeling less weary if I was reading this as a book, hence what I had said earlier about the differences between the forms.

A Step Farther Out

I can guess as to how this novel will end, but I’m still curious. Again I’m surprised this won the Nebula, because it doesn’t strike me as a novel a fellow writer would like; rather it strikes me as a crowd-pleaser. Then again the SFWA have previously given the Nebula to novels like Rendezvous with Rama that don’t have much merit as pure literature but which function more as adventure fiction of an old-fashioned sort. (I love Rendezvous with Rama, I’m just saying that even for 1973 it must’ve struck people as retrograde.) Similarly there’s almost a pre-New Wave pureness to Falling Free that, except for some sex stuff, could paint it as having been published close to thirty years earlier than it was. What stops it from feeling too old-fashioned is that while Bujold is not a prose poet, she is undoubtedly a humane writer, and that honestly might be more important.

See you next time.