Brilliant insights into alternative and possible futures, 16 Jun 2001

I was immensely drawn to Watching Trees Grow by Peter F Hamilton . This is an amazing Inspector Morse episode that takes place over at least a hundred years. We are in 1832, an England still ruled by the Romans, or at least the Romano-Christian elite led by descendants of the Borgias that have maintained their grip not just on England but the whole world. America discovered long ago is now a country of some one and half billion souls. Oxford is still a university town but under Vatican rules. Business and Science are led by prominent families such at the Caesars, Raleighs, or Pitts. The Percys' control London, the Ceasars' Southampton. The murder of a young man is the device which Hamilton uses to show us a world that is much more progressive than our own, repressed perhaps, but obsessed with growth and to find somewhere for human life to expand to. Spanning more than a hundred years we see the total change that comes over them, the exploration of space and technology, the perfection of such techniques as reversing DNA, for this world is obsessed with age. The elite want to live forever, the rest, the 'shorts', live a normal three score and ten. Watching trees grow is a remarkable novella and in a way, I am sorry it is so truncated, ( the idea could have spanned a complete novel and would be more fully realised). Nevertheless it is mesmerising, full of little nuggets of alternative history and asides. It makes you think that if Rome not melted away and we had not wasted centuries on needless wars and stupid disagreements, this Romano Britain should have been the true history of this isle. It is logical, extraordinary and well crafted with some poise. Of course you might already believe an Inspector Morse episode lasts a century but this one truly does and of course, when people tend to live lives three hundred long, no case is ever closed. As technology accelerates, one can gain hints of a seething discontent somewhere in the background of this story as society has to be make a change from being work centred to one of leisure. As the text moves into space and tells of their fantastic ambitions and what their world achieved, we can only be humbled by our reality. Of all the stories this is fully imagined and breathtaking in its scope and vision this one leaves you wanting to know more, to want to return. It reminds me too of the work of Philip Pullman whose Northern Lights is a beacon to follow.

Tendeleo's Story by Ian Mcdonald is a remarkable, poignant, yet vivid novella. To set an alien invasion in Africa is always going to be interesting, to have an invasion that is impossible to defeat, that literally terraforms the land and cannot be engaged with is interesting. It is less an alien, more animated, intelligent lichen of many colours. In reality it is not organic but nanotechnolgy run riot. It lands near Tendeleo's Christian village, Gichici, in Kenya. She is a tender 13 year old girl when it arrives and sets about ruining her life. The microcosmic invader is simply called Chaga, and can only thrive in the southern hemisphere. It arrived in Africa when she is nine and at first it is ignored by her village, it is other people's problems. Later, one dramatic night when the Chaga lands explosively twenty miles from her home, they soon feel the effects. When it finally spreads its tendrils towards her village, her life takes a tragic turn. The UN force the fleeing villagers and towns folk into the Nairobi camps which are cruel, sinister, lawless. Tendeleo grows up quickly, she is resourceful , speaks English and knows instinctively that she has to survive in this UN controlled world.

She becomes a runner, secretly taking samples of the Chaga to the US Embassy - secreted in her own body. She has to learn fast and sees her parents unable to adapt and giving up. All the time the Chaga is growing and will soon engulf Nairobi. The violence is everywhere, cruelty and rape can come at every turn, at any moment. When the time comes, Tendeleo manages to save her own skin but not her parents or little sister. She is mortified and feels guilty for surviving. At age 18, after many refugee camps, she is transplanted to Manchester in England, where Sean, an part-time accountant falls for her when he sees her singing on the stage in a little bar. He takes care of her, she falls for him, but he does not know she is infected with Chaga. But is the Chaga all bad? What is everyone so afraid of?

After a random terrorist bomb in the bar nearly kills Tendeleo, the hospital discovers her secret and she is instantly deported. Sean is devastated. He has no idea of where she has gone or if she is still alive and so begins his awakening and his search for the young woman who has suffered so much in her young life. Tendeleo is a wonderful surprise, beautifully written, tender yet bruising. It does not shy away from uncomfortable truths. This is an African story, but it could have been a Vietnam story or a sixty years ago, a resistance story. There will always be invaders, always others willing to exploit suffering, indifferent to cruelty and this novella is remarkable, poetic and moving. You couldn't ask for more. The entire volume is refreshing and it is great to know that new writers of this calibre are working in this genre.

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