Skip to main content

Fire of the Dark Triad (SF) - Asya Semenovich ***

Classic science fiction from the 1950s, such as the work of Isaac Asimov, is rightly criticised these days for lacking characterisation, a tendency to tell rather than show, and an absence of meaningful female characters, even if the ideas were often excellent and the action scenes could be quite engaging. In many ways, this novel takes us back to those flawed classics of the genre.

The problem is worst at the start. The first twenty pages or so takes us from prehistory to the future in such a skimpy way that it is tedious to read. This is the telliest opening I have ever seen in a published piece of fiction. It's often little more than a summary, with a key concept for the book covered in little more than a page. Here we discover  that gateways to parallel universes are discovered where variants of Earth aren't occupied by intelligent life, giving a limitless opportunity for colonies to be set up and develop in their own way, eventually becoming a threat the the Earth.

The other central concept, which the whole storyline rests on, is the 'dark triad' of the title. These are the attributes of narcissism, psychopathy and machiavellianism. It's apparently a genuine term from psychology (though I'm not sure why it's necessary, in the sense that I've never heard descriptions of psychopaths who don't have the other two traits). I admit my knowledge of psychopathy is limited to Jon Ronson's brilliant book The Psychopath Test, but the 'triad' concept does feel a little like someone in the psychology world just looking for an excuse to publish popular psychology books.

In Fire of the Dark Triad, though, Asya Semenovich makes a link that I've never seen, in suggesting that creativity and innovation are primarily the results of being a 'dark triad' person - i.e. a psychopath. This seems distinctly contrary to reality - I could believe it more from other psychological traits, but not psychopathy. However, the whole book rests on this premise. The future Earth, it seems, in breeding and editing out psychopathic tendencies, has become unable to be creative and needs to bring in dark triad people from the parallel Earth colonies to thrive and develop.

The book is by far at its best in the action sections, featuring an Earth agent called Nick (a dark triad person himself, though Earth-born) whose job is to retrieve these useful psychopaths, but who is faced with a huge personal dilemma. This takes up the majority of the rest of the book, and worked well enough to keep me reading, though Nick's technology is so advanced compared to that of the colonies that his AI assistant could sometimes verge on being a deus ex machina.

There was one big plot hole - Nick somehow went from being totally broke to hiring a private island - and there's one oddity in that the main characters are mostly male, with the female MCs defined by their relationship to men, particularly strange in a novel by a female author when most modern male SF authors don't fall into this trap. Also, like the classics, the characters were fairly two-dimensional and those who were supposedly strong on dark triad characteristics seemed no more malevolent and self-centred than anyone else in the book. There's also a distinctly misleading plug on the cover 'As featured in the exciting new film Married to Math', as this refers to the author: it's not saying that this book has been made into a movie.

It was enough to get me to the end, though. A fair holiday read, but nowhere near the best that modern science fiction can offer.

Paperback: 
Bookshop.org

  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...
Post a Comment
Read more

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact: Keith Cooper ****

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...
Post a Comment
Read more