#3
Beyond The Sun
By Matthew Jones
Anyone up for a change of pace? After the efficient (if slightly empty) genre box-ticking of Dragons’ Wrath we come to Beyond The Sun, which is much more interested in laying out ideas and exploring characters than just getting to the explosive finale on time.
This approach has its ups and downs. I love a bit of characterisation, and I wouldn’t be reading sci-fi if I wasn’t in the market for thoughtful concepts. But take your time too much and you risk the reader wondering if there’s anything more important they could be doing right now. In other words I enjoyed Beyond The Sun, but it seemed to take forever.
We open with a spot of world-building that would make Paul Leonard sit up straight. On the cordoned-off world of Ursu people are not born like mammals or laid as eggs: they are grown in enormous crystalline Blooms, eight at a time. The Ursulans have no parents, are not always the same species, and are ushered into existence by caretakers like Kitzinger. (No one knows who built the Blooms.) One day she is confronted by mysterious, shaven-headed beings called the Sunless, who promptly murder one of her infants and whisk her and the Blooms off to a different world. Ursu is now under their control – and the Sunless carry on in the same vein, brutalising anyone who disobeys.
Meanwhile, Bernice is on an archaeological dig (fancy that) with a couple of slightly annoying students, Emile and Tameka. Matthew Jones goes to some pains to introduce these two, Emile glaring at his spotty complexion in a mirror, the Hispanic Tameka revelling in her “Vampire Chic” appearance and “yeah but no but yeah” speech patterns. (She’s… a lot.) Then into an otherwise unremarkable dig comes Jason, and after a night of I’ll-give-you-three-guesses-what with Bernice, he goes missing. Concerned for his welfare, and despite herself, Bernice goes in search of Jason. Her only clue is a figurine he left behind which points to Ursu. Emile and Tameka tag along.
An unhappy landing on Ursu leaves Errol, their pilot, fighting for his life; a surprising chunk of the novel is then spent trying to find help in the uncooperative Ursu cities. I didn’t mind this at all, as it allows you to get to know Emile and Tameka better, plus it allows for observations of Ursu, its strange multi-species people, the occupying Sunless and the collaborating Ursurians. There’s something charmingly offbeat about placing so much stock in the welfare of a minor character through the simple plot mechanism of the characters arriving where they need to be – badly. However, I think there is a tacit understanding here that such a lengthy digression will be worth it. If you spend all that time traipsing across a planet not achieving much in plot terms, and then (as a totally hypothetical example, you understand) the bugger dies anyway, I think you’ve got grounds to say that your time has been wasted. Just sayin’, don’t do that.
Ursu is at least interesting. I love that, wherever possible, Jones fills this story with aliens; it feels diverse and colourful. This also goes for the Ursurians and their relationships, which due to the unique birthing process are more equal and less focussed on one person (e.g. a parent or a partner). This makes them markedly different from Bernice and co., although it arguably makes them a bit dull as well, always being above everything and yet confounded by humanisms like asking what a person does for a living. (This feels like a very Star Trek gag; what is this thing you call, “the 9-to-5?”) Their sexual politics are a mixed bag: they’re open to pretty much anything, again because of how their society works, but the likes of Chris Cwej already act like that so it doesn’t feel like too much of a departure from the norm. Scenes of sexual awkwardness between Emile, who is gay but hasn’t come out, and the handsome Ursurian Scott are certainly reminiscent of Chris out gallivanting in Damaged Goods.
That said, I like the inclusion of a gay character and his internal struggles. This is obviously important to Jones, who did much the same thing with Jack in Bad Therapy. He has acknowledged (over on TERMINUS Reviews) that Jack and Emile are essentially author stand-ins, but that he didn’t realise that at the time of writing. Knowing this explains a few things, such as the ultimately small impact Emile has on the story, and it lends an almost Mary Sue-ish air to the bit where Emile and Scott finally broach the awkwardness and give it a go. (It’s hard not to think of very earnest stories about whirlwind holidays with handsome strangers.) At the end of the day though it’s still something you don’t see much in genre fiction, so even if it’s a little heavy-handed it added to the novel for me.
Bernice gets a little left out of all this, which is odd since it was her relationship with Jason that jump-started the plot. Ah yes, that guy. I know I’m on a hiding to nothing here, but can we just… not? Their marriage was a deliberate (if highly enjoyable) rush job that the reader just had to go along with in order for it to work. Not long after that, Eternity Weeps pistol-whipped the reader for being so silly as to think such a thing could work, and then said marriage imploded on the spot. It’s hard not to feel a little messed around. Now we’re back to the two of them being so attracted to each other they can’t not jump into bed, with Jason (somewhat improbably) making moon-eyes at Bernice in the end. Jason is almost completely absent from the book, which maybe explains why he’s so unconvincingly written here – to the extent that we know the guy, he is What If Chris Cwej Was More Of A Prick – but I’m a bit disappointed to see Bernice going weak at the knees so easily. Guys, I know human beings are flawed and contradictory and you can absolutely love and hate someone; of course you can still be in love with your ex. But this thing is a hot mess, it always has been, and I really wish they’d just pick a lane.
For the rest of it, Bernice mostly safeguards the two teens – whose dialogue, particularly Tameka’s, often tries too hard. (“Hey, I’m, like, sorry.” / “’S OK. Don’t worry ‘bout it.”) But despite sharing some of the climactic cleverness with Kitzinger, who we cut to occasionally throughout the novel, it’s Bernice’s smarts that ultimately round it all off. Earlier, a plan to locate Jason’s last known contact (and obviously, paramour) Iranda by crashing a collaborators’ party as a drag act is loads of fun, particularly the bit where Bernice tries to convince the locals that she is pro-Sunless: “‘Wear more grey!’ Bernice screamed. ‘Support your local coup!’” There’s plenty of good Bernice writing here, with hits including: “‘I’m afraid being shot at has become a bit of an occupational hazard.’ ‘I thought you said you were an archaeologist?’ ‘Yeah... well, academics can be the harshest critics.’” / “‘We are going to die,’ [Bernice] whispered to herself. But at least we are going to do it in sequins.”
She also makes some keen observations that get to the heart of the novel’s themes: “It was so much harder to keep a hold of who you were without the accessories of your identity. But that was what uniforms were for, after all: to whittle away your uniqueness and individuality. To mortify your personal self.” As in Bad Therapy, Jones seems interested in ersatz people. The Sunless don’t seem human, their collaborators trade in their identities when they suit up in grey overalls, and the Ursurians seem disconnected from any biological reality we recognise. But again, these things don’t necessarily make them monsters; the collaborators and even the Sunless may not be black-and-white villains. “‘I wonder what happened to them to make them like this. Sometimes colonies get cut off...’ ‘Does there have to be a single reason?’”
Admittedly the “villains might not be all bad” angle is a hard sell this time. The Sunless make a point of beating people to death without registering any emotion at all, so they can quite frankly eff off, and their collaborators – particularly Iranda and Nikolas – are the worst kind of one-note, moustache-twirling gits. On more than one occasion they threaten to harm Character A unless Character B co-operates, at which point they kill Character A anyway. Two of these occasions happen so close together I really wish Jones hadn’t repeated it. (We get it. These guys are horrible. Ho, ho.) The biggest effort in the “not evil” direction is the Sunless’s actual plan, which involves finding a power “beyond the sun”. There are dark hints about a weapon of incalculable power, but so little is actually said to back this up that you can’t help wondering what else could be going on here. I’ll simply say that we are dealing with baddies called the Sunless, and their planet’s sun is dying. Sooo, what might it be…? Really, if no one involved, including the power-mad collaborators, has connected these dots by now then god help them. (Even more incredible is the idea that, suddenly in possession of a constructive “power beyond the sun”, these guys won’t just continue battering people to death. What, are they really nice now? As if.)
In many ways, I liked Beyond The Sun. It takes its time, it’s thoughtful, it has good ideas. I still consider myself a fan of Jones and I wish he’d written more of these books. But ultimately this one doesn’t justify its lackadaisical pace (which again I’m fine with in theory) and the surprises in the plot don’t take too much guessing. The urge to revel in new characters often leaves Bernice looking like a chaperone in her own book, which suggests some more work is needed to get the balance right in this Doctor-less world.
6/10
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