Shivering World

I recently read Kathy Tyers’ Shivering World. I enjoyed it. Partway through I said it was “workmanlike” and I still feel that way. If you read mystery fiction, you’ve probably heard of “police procedurals.” It’s a subgenre grounded in quotidian reality, which describes ordinary police officers investigating a case, following regular procedures. Well, Shivering World is the science fiction version of that, except the main characters are scientists, politicians, and colonists, and the setting is a world which is being terraformed about two centuries from now.

Tyers gives the reader a lots of goodies – frequent but digestible doses of science (biochemistry and earth sciences, mostly), political intrigue, frontier life, adventure, personal relationships, ethical dilemmas, and some religious exploration. She’s very effective at illustrating character motivations and interpersonal/familial conflicts. The viewpoint switches back and forth between a number of different characters, and we see how their individual understanding of events, their ambitions, and their fears bring them into conflict or concord. She’s also good at working the science into conversations and everyday life of the characters. Tyers was trained as a microbiologist, so she includes a lot of that science and seems to know what she’s talking about. She has an interesting way of addressing with our current ethical dilemmas while subverting the standard contemporary positions – the people in this story are in desperate need of global warming, for example. Likewise, human genetic engineering is explored, but many of the characters have already been modified, and are now pondering whether it was worth it.

I didn’t feel that there was anything overbearingly ‘evangelical’ about this story (Tyers is a member of an Evangelical Free Church.) If you are a contemporary Westerner who is reflexively hostile to all things evangelical, then there are probably enough hints in this book to make you stomp away in disgust. But for the most part I thought she had a light touch. There are some conversations about God and the Gospel of John, but like the science it’s woven seamlessly into the story. There is a Christian conversion, and even a sinner’s prayer of sorts, but in a believable context for a complex character.

Casual sex is implied but not described. Tyers does not go out of her way to punish the characters which engage in it, though she does indicate some of the less desirable consequences. She’s quite frank about sexual desire, particularly in her heroes.

There is an amoral atheist who is something of a villain, but she is not obviously punished – in fact, she ends up as ally (albeit temporarily) to the protagonists. There is also a villain who’s an amoral religious fanatic. And there are atheists, agnostics, Jews and even a Goddess-worshipper who come off as highly sympathetic characters.

Thanks to die stille im lande, who recommended Tyers to me! I’ll have to read her Firebert... uh, I mean, Firebird trilogy when I get the chance. (Firebert... it's just not a good commando name...)

I’m currently working on Lawhead’s The Dream Thief, and it’s not nearly as enjoyable. Here’s hoping it gets better. I also spent some time rereading bits of The Well of the Unicorn, which continues to impress me.