The Human Front (Hardcover)

The main initial disappointment was the length. Having realised this is a novella, no problem, but it's a bit naughty of Amazon to sell this as "Paperback 208 pages", which certainly implies a full-length novel, whereas this volume contains two independent novellas by entirely unrelated authors - the MacLeod section is really only 90 pages of the 208. The rest of the volume is 'A Writer's Life' by Eric Brown; also good, but not what I thought I was buying.

The book follows John Matheson from a young boy through early manhood, tracing his awakening to the political facts of life. And like many young people, the inequalities and suffering that much of world must live with are open sores that he feels he can and should do something about. This is the entry point for MacLeod's exposition of political/revolutionary solutions, along with some rather sharp satire of figures that are almost deified in our world ("Hey, hey, JFK, how many kids did you kill today?"). These answers will disturb your sense of the correctness of the status quo, perhaps make you realize that there is merit in other political philosophies than your own. Very little of this is presented directly, but is rather shown as an normal outgrowth of Matheson's development and learning, from his days in school and college and later as a member of the revolutionary group The Human Front. MacLeod's envisioned world is believable, and its contrasts with our own highlight just how much the world's and your personal condition depends upon chance happenstances and events beyond any one individual's control.

All of this, about the first fifty pages, is excellent writing, but at the end of the book MacLeod turns away from what should be the logical conclusion to the story and instead chooses what felt to me like a dues-ex-machina resolution, (even though MacLeod has carefully planted clues to this early in the book), and a far too happy one at that. For me, this ending greatly lessened the strength of his earlier points. Those familiar with the various science-fictional treatments of alternate time-line scenarios will recognize in this ending an attempt to rationalize the paradoxes inherent in disturbing the past and will see parallels with books like Asimov's The End of Eternity and Dick's The Man in the High Castle, but what is missing from this ending is a proper resolution to the political questions raised in the earlier portion of the book.

Perhaps this novella should have been given a longer treatment, expanded to full novel length, and with this extra room there would have been space to fill in what I feel was missing to this ending. As it is, I feel that MacLeod has presented a sharply realized different world that can illuminate many of the problems of our world, but hasn't really finished his story within that world.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)