In the 32nd Century, a crew of misfits blasts off from an obscure corner of our solar system on a quest to the heart of an exploding star.
Delany’s prose does justice to the awesome premise. Here is the moment of take-off: ‘And the moon fell into Neptune; Neptune fell into the sun. And the sun began to fall. Night exploded before them.’ (p 41)
Much later in the quest, the crew arrive at a sun known as the Dim, Dead Sister. It is described as follows: ‘the explorer who decided to name the outermost of the Dim, Dead Sister’s planets Elysium had indulged a poor joke. With all the planoforming devices available, it was still a frozen cinder ellipsing at trans-Plutonian distances from Her ghost-light, barren and uninhabited.’ (p 181)
It is no spoiler to throw in these two lines from the climax of the novel. A ship ‘received the shuttle boat like a cannon shot in reverse.’ (p 225) A while later, I won’t say what page, ‘the star went nova. The inevitable is that unexpected.’
Humanity has spread out across many stars and worlds, forming three distinct polities. A key contradiction of capitalism has been overcome by means of a technological innovation that makes labour fulfilling rather than alienating. But at the heart of the plot is a battle between corporations for an extremely rare fuel, Illyrion – so yeah, there are plenty of contradictions left in capitalism.
By attempting to harvest a massive quantity of Illyrion from the heart of a star as it goes nova (that is, explodes catastrophically!), ship’s captain Lorq Van Ray is not only risking his life and his senses, and not only attempting to settle a feud with some powerful enemies – he is also blasting wide open the economics and politics of interstellar humanity.
For the most part the novel follows through on its promise. Along the way, there’s a lot of food for thought, particularly in the discussions between two crew members, Katin and Mouse.
This is a novel set in a new interplanetary society, where people feel rootless – like the 20th Century with its urbanization. Someone complains (p 46) that ‘We live in an age when economic, political and technological change have shattered all cultural tradition.’ This is a platitude, but it’s deliberate; Delany is well aware that people in every age have said similar things. In this age as in others, people who say such things are mostly wrong, and the novel is quietly demonstrating this to us throughout.
This is a story about a sudden, revolutionary change, and that is offset by Delany’s focus on a deep human culture thousands of years old. The story blasts off, but the setting has a certain weight and grounding. Mouse, the artist, represents a cultural continuity. Before his mission across the stars, we get page after page about his adventures on Earth – an Earth that is not so different from our own.
This is also where the tarot cards come in. Katin, the educated man, thinks that to be ‘skeptical about the Tarot’ is ‘a very romantic notion’, linked to ‘petrified ideas a thousand years out of date.’ (p 123) The people of this world believe in the scientific efficacy of tarot.
The flashback which explains Lorq Van Ray’s motivations is very strong. The climax of the story is exciting and really pays off. I love the syrinx, a musical instrument belonging to Mouse, an object which earns its keep in different and unexpected ways for the entire novel.
But Nova suffers from a slow middle – one of the most obvious cases I’ve seen in a while. Out of 240 pages, it meanders from about page 120 to page 200. There seems to be little purpose to the characters’ itinerary and activities. Katin’s lectures are interesting but not always relevant. My attention sagged when Delany began to dwell on the Tarot cards and picked up again when the bad guys suddenly showed up to crash the good guys’ hiding place.
I have a few other complaints. Sometimes the descriptions aren’t clear enough to do justice to an action scene – there was a fight involving nets and gas on a flight of steps which I just couldn’t visualize. On page 202 we are told, ‘a hand slapped Lorq’s sternum, slapped it again, again. The hand was inside.’ What does this phrase mean? Whose hand? It was inside his sternum? How?
Lorq, Katin and Mouse are good characters, and their rapport facilitates a lot of exposition, most of it neat. Katin seems confident and Mouse seems taciturn, shy. But Katin over-thinks and, beneath it all, he’s anxious. At one point Mouse has to reassure him, ‘Hey […] It’s all right. I like you. I was just busy, is all.’ (p 177) It’s rare for Mouse to speak, so it’s telling that when he chooses to speak his words are kind. But while the other members of the crew have their interesting quirks, they never really live up to their potential.
The slow middle didn’t put me off, and had enough interesting ideas, conversations and images to keep me reading. But it lacked that rocket fuel which powered the beginning and end. The premise, the beginning and the end are more than strong enough to compensate. In hindsight, too, there are motifs and undergirding ideas running through the structure of the story – the idea of sensory overload, and linked to it the image of a person walking into fire like a bug drawn to a light – that lend the story power and coherence.
The 1919 Review 