“˜Dreamfall’ portrays plight of outsiders
By Daily Bruin Staff
Dec. 3, 2000 9:00 p.m.
BOOK REVIEW Â
Title: Dreamfall
Author: Joan D. Vinge
Publisher: warner Books
Price: $22.95Â Pages:
445
Rating: 9
By Michael Rosen-Molina
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Pointy ears do not an alien make.
Many lazy science fiction writers create aliens who might look
weird, but act completely normal. These extraterrestrial beings may
have compound eyes and antennae or fins and gills, but ultimately
their culture, society and mannerisms are all distinctly human.
In the novel, “Dreamfall,” however, author Joan D.
Vinge defies this sci-fi trend. Her Hydran aliens are creatures who
look almost exactly like humans, but whose psychology could not be
more different.
Blessed with mental telepathy, the Hydrans have little use for
language with all its complexities and subtleties, making them
rather graceless when they try to communicate with non-telepathic
humans.
The humans in the story, as an inherently xenophobic species,
find it difficult enough to deal with another intelligent species
without the Hydrans being psychic as well.
Besides being xenophobic, however, the humans are also greedy
little buggers, constantly in search of new worlds to mine and
exploit. As the Hydrans happen to already inhabit many choice
planets, they suffer the same fate that befalls many unfortunates
who stand in the way of human “progress.” Second-class
citizens, the Hydrans have little say in the human colonization
policy.
Set against this backdrop of strained relations and barely
concealed anti-Hydran bigotry, “Dreamfall” is the third
book in Vinge’s acclaimed “Cat” trilogy, a series
of books about Cat, a half-Hydran, half-human street punk who
can’t fit into either world.
At the close of the first book, Cat was recruited and
rehabilitated by a government program to train
“psions,” telepathic human-alien hybrids, as secret
operatives against terrorists. Cat, however, proved to be too adept
at the business for his own good. When forced to kill an enemy in
self-defense, his telepathy picked up the man’s death
thoughts, the shock of which effectively killed his psychic
abilities.
As “Dreamfall” opens, years after the events of the
original book, Cat, whose mental powers are still blocked, is a
student working with a team of archaeologists.
Cat’s team studies “cloud whales,” mysterious
colony creatures that fill the skies of the distant planet of
“Homeworld.” Incidentally, Homeworld gets its name from
the fact that it is also the original home of the Hydrans, who are
now all but confined to a few decrepit slums.
The real power on Homeworld is Tau Draco, a soulless
megacorporation, ready to plunder the planet of all its natural
resources and crush all who oppose its will.
Cat is thrust into the fray, forced to choose a side between Tau
Draco and the Hydran community, when he unwittingly helps a Hydran
woman kidnap the infant son of a Tau board member. Ultimately, he
must decide where he belongs, whether he is human, Hydran, both or
neither.
First time readers of Vinge’s fiction might find
“Dreamfall” rather confusing. Vinge’s future has
a slang all its own, and the author never bothers to explain what
many of her words mean. However, most of Vinge’s fictional
lingo grows out of real slang; the strange words feel natural
coming out of the characters’ mouths and the unfamiliar
language soon begins to make sense.
More troubling is Vinge’s vision of futuristic technology.
To her credit, she displays an awesome imagination, going into
lengthy descriptions of impossible devices, including a
reality-disrupting suit that allows its wearer to pass through
solid matter.
Luckily, there is not too much confusing techno-jargon to
further confuse the reader. The story is told through the eyes of
Cat, who is just as ignorant of the inner workings of advanced
technology as the reader.
Some of the scientific innovations are difficult to visualize,
but it is a credit to Vinge’s writing style that so many of
her images remain with the reader well after the book ends.
Although the bewildering array of technology dominates much of
the book, Vinge never forgets that it is the characters rather than
nifty gadgets that make a book memorable. She populates Homeworld
with a cast of dozens, humans and Hydrans, archaeologists and
mercenaries, refugees and corporate sycophants.
Perrymeade, for instance, the wishy-washy liaison between Tau
Draco and the indigenous population, is portrayed not as a mindless
corporate drone, dedicating heart and soul to the advancement of
his employer’s interests; instead he is a conflicted soul,
sensitive to the problems of the underclass but powerless to offer
any real help.
Cat himself is a likable character. Tough, yet caring,
he’s an everyday man caught in the Machiavellian power
politics of a ruthless business machine that he cannot begin to
understand. Still carrying the secret pain of the murder from the
first novel, he closes himself off from his fellow scholars. An
outcast from both human and alien societies, his plight easily
earns him reader sympathy.
Through such relatable characters, Vinge expertly crafts a
universe, that, despite being set some several hundred years in the
future, almost feels as if it could take place today. In
“Dreamfall,” Vinge has created an alien universe with a
very human core.
