Worlds Apart by Joe Haldeman

The system she'd grown up in was a crazy-quilt of electronic democracy, communalism, anarchy, bureaucracy, technocracy.  She knew the anarchy was largely an illusion, a formalism that the actual power structure tolerated as a safety valve.

We recently read Joe Haldeman's 1981 Worlds, and today we tackle the sequel, 1983's Worlds Apart.  I own the Ace paperback, which quotes a New York Times review that compares it to William Golding's Lord of the Flies, one of the more memorable books we were forced to read in school.  (If you've got an itch to read about one of Golding's very literary novels, consider checking out my blogpost on Golding's Pincher Martin.)

Worlds in some ways reminded me of the work of Robert Heinlein, and Worlds Apart is dedicated, in a slightly oblique way, to Heinlein, the dedication presented as being to a list of famous Heinlein characters.

After two pages of setting the scene and reminding us of what happened in Worlds, we are in hard sf territory as smarty pants Marianne O'Hara is learning how to wear a space suit--New New York, the asteroid in Earth orbit where a quarter of a million people live, was damaged in the war that just wiped out civilization on Earth and even bookworms like Marianne have to pitch in with the repairs, going on spacewalks during which they must manipulate girders and other building materials in zero gee.  We also learn various things about the changing demographics and economics of the satellite that result from an influx of refugees from more severely damaged Worlds (as these big inhabited satellites are called) and because there are no more raw materials forthcoming from the blasted Earth.

My copy, front

In Worlds we got like 30 pages on New New York and then Marianne was down on Earth, getting mixed up in various social entanglements and dangerous espionage jazz.  Worlds Apart starts in a similar way--Marianne does that zero gee work, enters into a group marriage with two men on the station whom we met in Worlds, and then on page 29 she gets sent on a dangerous mission to Earth!  Marianne may be a scholar in her early twenties, but she is one of the very few people on New New York to have ever been on Earth or been in a gun fight...or even held a gun!  So she is handpicked for the mission.

The war that destroyed civilization on Terra was triggered by a revolution, and the revolutionaries launched their catastrophic uprising when the American economy was already in crisis because of a trade dispute with the Worlds.  So some Germans blame New New York for the holocaust, and they want revenge!  There is one last space shuttle at the spaceport in Zaire, and these jerries are making their way south from the fatherland to it, bringing with them a nuclear bomb which they plan to detonate on the surface of New New York kamikaze-style.  New New York doesn't have any pistols or rifles, much less a laser cannon or ballistic missile launcher, so they can't just bomb the Zaire spaceport and be done with it--instead they are sending down to Africa a commando squad of eight people armed with four jury-rigged flamethrowers less deadly than a revolver, and Marianne carries one of the flamers.

On the Earth's surface, Marianne and the rest of the squad from New New York have to wear their spacesuits, because the air is full of a biological weapon unleashed on the world by the commies during the recent war.  This virus has killed almost everybody on Terra over the age of twenty, so all the groundhogs the team from New New York runs into are kids!  Back when Marianne was a transfer student on Earth, sub-Saharan Africa was more civilized than the USA--like on New New York, ownership of firearms was verboten in Zaire.  (Libertarians might like the attitude towards sex of the Worlds books, with legal prostitution and a wide variety of forms of marriage, but Haldeman's apparent position on the right to keep and bear arms will make them groan.)  But now the place has reverted to savagery, and the kids attack them with spears and bows--these orphans blame the Worlds for the war that killed their parents.   

The mission is a success: the shuttle is seized, along with some valuable nitrogen from a cryogenics lab at the spaceport--nitrogen is one of the critical raw materials New New York used to import from Earth.   They also pick up some stowaways, two African kids, one of whom survives the shuttle's acceleration; on New New York scientists take samples of the virus from her and synthesize a cure.

My copy, back

I am tempted to see this Zaire spaceport episode, in which Marianne has to shoot some kids who are attacking with primitive weapons and a bolt action tranquilizer rifle loaded with poison darts, as a sort of allegory or microcosm of Western imperialism--an advanced society, pursuing resources and participating in military competition with a second advanced society, finds itself fighting primitives and carrying off not only valuable resources from the primitive people's place of residence but some of the primitives themselves.  I thought a theme of Worlds was admiration and sympathy for black people, who have suffered in a world created by whites, and I think I see that theme in this sequel as well.

Four years after the start of the war, two years after the Zaire mission, New New York receives a weak signal from the SouthEastern USA--it is Jeff, Marianne's boyfriend while she was on Earth, the rogue FBI agent who saved her life repeatedly with his fighting and survival skills.  Apparently his acromegaly has rendered him resistant to the virus that has killed almost all other adults.  Employing his first aid training and knowledge gained from old medical books, Jeff has become a travelling doctor, trading his services for food and other items of value.  Haldeman devotes a quarter or a third of Worlds Apart to chronicling Jeff's adventures as he travels around a world full of hideous mutants, dangerous bandits, and adherents to a religion that reveres Charles Manson, helping people and fighting for his life.  This is real post-apocalyptic stuff, lots of violence and grue, lots of scavenging and ruins.

As the years go by, Marianne rises in the ranks of the administrative apparatus ("Having attained Grade 15 in only five years of service made her something of a prodigy....")  We learn all about the way New New York is managed in Worlds Apart, and find it is a collectivist technocracy run by headshrinkers!  There is said to be no politics, with personnel decisions being made by a Board of experts based on "exhaustive psychological testing" (there is little private property on New New York and so no market incentives or competition.)  At times I thought Haldeman was trying to have his cake and eat it too, dressing up the rule of an unelected elite with liberal trappings--we are told there is freedom of speech on New New York and there are plenty of references to referenda on public issues and elections for "Policy Coordinators"--but Haldeman does show us some of the dark side of this rule by unaccountable bureaucrats when Marianne is called in for questioning one day by a member of the Board who refuses to give her name.  This member of the ruling class administers a drug to Marianne and hypnotizes her into having the right attitude--satisfaction with the work the Board assigns her, an eagerness to obey them, and a willingness to snitch to them about her husbands!

This ambiguity, the tension between the vision of New New York as a collectivist tyranny and the vision of New New York as a peaceful sexually liberated utopia, reminded me of the tensions we see in the body of work of Robert Heinlein, who we often think of as a libertarian but who also stressed in much of his fiction the idea that a ship can't survive unless the crew obey the captain slavishly--New New York, a city in a hollowed-out asteroid orbiting Earth, is, of course, much like a huge ship.

The novel also follows New New York's various high tech projects, like building a starship capable of reaching Epsilon Eridani in 50 or 100 years (which involves mining for fuel an antimatter star that lies nearby) and sending drones with plague cure down to Earth.  Jeff is sent some of the cure, but people who worship Charles Manson have come to accept death at the age of twenty as a divine mandate and refuse treatment!

Both of Marianne's two husbands, they being among the top engineers on New New York, are prominent among those working on the starship project, and Marianne herself ends up getting an important post as an administrator on the project, the responsibility of selecting who will be heading to Epsilon Eridani.  The star ship will carry ten thousand people, and she must carefully chose them based on measures of physical and mental suitability and with an eye that all the many skills a new colony out there in orbit around another star will need be represented among them.  But thanks to the mass death brought on by the war, many occupations have become the preserve of a rare few, with only a handful of people, or even just a single individual, educated in their ways, and many of those people are too old or unhealthy, or unwilling, to leave New New York.

Marianne, working with a psychologist, develops a solution to this staffing issue that some may suspect is an offense to human dignity.  A computer program is developed that can examine your brain and record your personality.  (A side effect of this is computer software that simulates your brain at a certain point in time with which you can hold conversations; Marianne is the first to have her personality reproduced and she talks with her simulacra--it is like having a conversation with herself.)  Parts of these recorded personalities can be written into some other person's brain, so, if it is felt that the star ship needs an expert in the fashioning of lab equipment, but the only dude who is well-versed in producing test tubes and beakers refuses to volunteer, a reading can be made of his brain and then a passion for test tube manufacture can be implanted in the brain of some adventurous bloke champing at the bit to take a one-way trip out of the solar system.

One of the recurring themes of Worlds Apart is how Marianne is torn between different courses of action, must decide between different roles and life paths.  As in Worlds, she has to make decisions about the many men in her life.  Decisions perhaps more exciting to dedicated SF fans are her career decisions--does she really want to fly off to Eridani Epsilon with her husbands, or stay in our Solar System and become a diplomat working to build a productive relationship between the Worlds and the Earth, the job which all her education and experiences have prepared her for perfectly?  Eight years after the war she takes on the leadership of an expedition down to Westchester County (the county directly north of New York City), which her experiences on Earth ably suit her for.  Of course this job gets in the way of her work selecting and recruiting the crew of the star ship.  The object of this mission is to help some young people there in Westchester start a functioning farm, and Marianne spends months on the Earth's surface, including dangerous forays into Manhattan in search of equipment and supplies where she has to confront feral dogs and rival scavengers.       

The expedition is not exactly a success, and, as with the Zaire commando op, I have to wonder if this humanitarian mission is some kind of commentary on white intervention in nonwhite territories/societies.  (The leader of the Westchester group, and the more memorable Westchester characters, are black, and the mission, though well-intentioned, arguably caused the Westchester residents as much trouble as it solved, as well as getting some spacers killed.)

Worlds Apart is 227 pages long, but the print and margins are pretty big (compare page 75 of Worlds Apart to page 75 of the 1972 printing of A. E. van Vogt's The Beast below) and there is a lot of brisk sex and violence, so it never feels slow or long.  The Westchester expedition and Jeff's success in organizing a sort of stable settlement in Florida form a sort of climax around page 200.  The last 10 percent or so of the book briefly let us know what happened in the period from ten through 24 years after the war.  Disillusioned by all her trips to Earth, each of which has ended up with her fighting for her life against dangerous characters and experiencing the death of people she cares about, Marianne embraces the star ship project.  Twelve years after the war, the star ship leaves New New York with her aboard, and twelve years after that it becomes clear that the new antimatter engine is efficient enough that they will reach Epsilon Eridani within Marianne's lifetime.  Marianne receives a message from Jeff, who is achieving success in expanding civilization in the SouthEast of the former United States, squashing the Manson religion and introducing forms of democracy and the rule of law.  Thus the novel ends on twin notes of hope and with the good old "sense of wonder," the idea that mankind's future is ripe with astounding, limitless, possibilities.

Worlds Apart is a smooth and entertaining read--I think I enjoyed it more than Worlds.  All the hard sf stuff--living and working in space and figuring out how to staff and supply a star ship, et al.--and the action scenes, which involve many different types of weapons and lots of gore, are good.  I also thought the human relationship scenes were more effective here in Worlds Apart than in Worlds--in particular the scenes suggesting that, as they separately go about their busy and at times horrible lives, Marianne and Jeff are quietly heartbroken over their separation, each having been the love of the other's life.  I also liked that Marianne was less of a passenger and more of a driver of the plot here, that she actually had to make decisions and live with them.

A solid book I don't hesitate to recommend.  Soon I will read the final book in Haldeman's Worlds trilogy, 1992's Worlds Enough and Time, and you'll hear all about it here at MPorcius Fiction Log.