The Ceres Solution by Bob Shaw

The halting words gave Gretana an intuitive and empathetic glimpse into a life other than her own, a life claustrophobically bounded by dark palisades of sickness and pain and all the wretched parameters of Earth, yet one which was lit from within by courage and imagination.  And she, Gretana ty Iltha, had once regarded herself as the unluckiest creature in the universe because of a slight disproportion of her features.

I feel like it has been a while since I have read a serious outer space-focused piece of science fiction with space suits and space stations and speculations on what life will be like in the future.  I've had good experiences with Bob Shaw's fiction in the past*, and there is a Vincent Di Fate space station and the invocation (albeit somewhat disparaging) of science guy Arthur C. Clarke on the cover of my DAW copy of 1984's The Ceres Solution, so let's give that a try.

*"Light of Other Days," "A Full Member of the Club," Tomorrow Lies in Ambush, Orbitsville, Night Walk, Fire Pattern, One Million Tomorrows, Who Goes Here?

The Prologue of the 185-page book introduces us to Denny Hargate, a bitter and sarcastic boy who is suffering a debilitating disease.  One day he limps over on his crutches to a clearing in the woods of upstate New York (Shaw is British, but his setting and main character are American, which makes the Anglicisms--like how Denny is intimately familiar with William Blake's "Jerusalem"--that creep in a little jarring) that he thinks of as his special place; there he sees a beautiful young woman and watches while she looks to the sky, waves her hand in the air, and vanishes.

As the main text begins we are introduced to an advanced interstellar human society centered on planet Mollan.  Mollanians live for four or five thousand years, and their culture is Mollanian society has a culture characterized by a rigid definition of beauty, such that our female lead, Gretana, who is a little short and has a face of below average looks, finds seeing her reflection in a mirror or a glass surface disturbing and has developed elaborate and exacting strategies of how to hold her head and manipulate her facial muscles so that she always looks her best.  Because of her "physical shortcomings" she is relegated to a lower social class and will not be able to have children. 

Mollanians are emotionally attuned and intellectually aware of the many "lines of force" which crisscross the universe and can teleport between the "nodes" where these lines intersect by thinking of complex mathematical formulae.  Via "major nodes," of which planets typically have a half dozen or so, people can travel interstellar distances, and almost 200 planets host human populations, descendants of teleport-capable human colonists.  Due to successive collapses of civilizations on both the interstellar and planetary levels, many of these populations, including that of Earth, have no memory of their alien origin and lack the ability to teleport.  The Mollanian Bureau of Wardens studies these planetbound populations secretly, hoping to learn by observing them why human civilizations always eventually collapse, and prevent the collapse of the Mollanian civilization.

Gretana is recruited by the handsome top Warden, Vekrynn, to work for the Bureau on Earth.  Hundreds of thousands of years of independent evolution mean Earth humans and Mollanians look very different, so Gretana will have to get extensive cosmetic surgery so she can blend in.  As a sort of quasi-illegal reward for her service, when her tour of duty on Earth is over and Gretana's face is reconstructed the surgery will not restore her current unsightly facial structure but give her a face that will conform to her society's rigorous standards of beauty--she will have very high class status and, Vekrynn suggests, be able to move in lofty social strata which high status people like Vekrynn himself call home.  Such inducements to serve on Earth are necessary because the Mollanians, among whom poverty, war and crime are almost entirely unknown, consider Earth, where people live for less than a century and want and violence are common, a horrifying place.

Gretana arrives on Earth in 2002, teleporting into that clearing in upstate New York we saw in the Prologue, which is one of the handful of major nodes on Earth.  (It feels special to Denny because his subconcious can dimly perceive the node.)  American society is a total mess due to overpopulation, environmental degradation, and tensions with the still-extant Soviet Union, with rampant crime, terrorism, and endemic labor strikes.  The U.S. government strongly discourages private travel, blocking the highways and striving to relegate all commerce and passenger traffic to the unreliable public nuclear-powered rail network.  

Gretana's cosmetic surgery has made her look like a real Earthling, and, unexpectedly, one of considerable beauty (measured by Terran standards), which causes her some complications.  Her job on Earth is simply to live the low key life of a middle-class person of independent means and no regular job, observing Earth life and every few months teleporting from that upstate NY node to a Mollanian outpost twenty light years away to have her memories downloaded for Vekrynn's files.  It was Gretana whom Denny saw a few years after her arrival on Earth, teleporting away to one of these downloading sessions.  

We readers catch up with Denny in 2024.  Now in his early thirties, Denny is confined to a wheel chair, half of his face is paralyzed, and the doctors think he only has a few years to live.  Inspired by the way the beautiful woman in the clearing had waved her hand in the air, drawing a series of curves, Denny has become an expert in the mathematics of curves, and lands a job on Earth's single space station, an international project of the Western powers.  There is hope that living in a low-gee environment will extend Denny's life span.

As the middle third of the novel begins it becomes evident that there is a diversity of views among Mollanians about Earth.  Verkynn, head of the Bureau of Wardens has a strict policy of nonintervention--Mollanians are to keep their presence secret from humans and observe, not interfere, as any effort to help the Earth will spoil the data they are collecting.  (Shaw directly refers to the "uncertainty principle.")  But we witness a Mollanian sabotage the space station, forcing its evacuation and an end to the Earth's space program (the Western governments are too cash strapped to finance any repairs.)  And a fellow Warden breaks all of Verkynn's rules and contacts Gretana--Lorrest is the leader of a pro-intervention faction of Wardens who want to help Earth people--while Verkynn and Gretana have refused to become emotionally involved with Terrans, this guy admires Earth people and has gone native.  He wants Gretana's help, or so he says, but Gretana, like almost all Mollanians, is a conservative rule-follower and implicitly trusts her benefactor Verkynn, and, instead of joining the rebels, hurries to the upstate node to report her contact with Lorrest.  When Gretana gets to the node she finds Denny there--with the possibility of living in space denied him, Denny has come to his special place to commit suicide by exposing himself to the elements (it is winter.)  Gretana does something no Mollanian has ever done before--she teleports the near-death Denny along with herself to the Mollanian outpost 20 light years away.   

In the final third of The Ceres Solution Denny and Gretana become directly involved in the struggle between the mainstream Wardens led by Verkynn and Lorrest's interventionist faction.  Which faction will Gretana side with when the leaders of both seem to be acting kind of crazy?  How will wheelchair-bound Denny fare on alien planets?  The dramatic "solution" of the title is revealed to us.  One reason Earth humans have so many problems is because the Moon is so big and so close to Terra that it interferes with those networks of force that are such a prominent feature of this novel, causing all kinds of disruption to our genetic make up.  Some Mollanians want to take Ceres and propel it into Luna, blasting the moon to bits and regularizing Earth's relationship with all those lines and nodes of force.

Shaw is a good writer and The Ceres Solution is a good novel.  The personalities of Denny and Gretana are are interesting and believable, and the worlds they inhabit, crisis-ridden early 21st-century Earth and the Mollanian culture of people who live to be 5,000 years old but are paralyzed by a fear of death, are well-drawn and absorbing.  Shaw's speculations about such things as how lifespan drives culture--for example, how Mollanian buildings have only one story because nobody wants to risk falling to his death and thus forfeiting thousands of years of life, but we short-lived Terrans cover our planet with towering skyscrapers--and the philosophical issues he addresses--is a brief life of challenge or a long life of peace to be preferred? to what extent should the superior interfere in the lives of the inferior?--are clever and thought-provoking.  I am sick of those SF stories in which the aliens are treehugging greens or utopian pinkos or free-lovin' swingers or peace-lovin' peaceniks and are used by the author to denounce how Americans or Earthlings in general are despoilers of the environment or money grubbing capitalists or uptight prudes or warmongering war pigs, and so I liked how Shaw tried to portray both virtue and vice among, and pros and cons about, both Earth people and the Mollanians.  The network of force and the attendant system of teleporting, the van Vogt-style two-competing-secret-factions-of superior-beings-are-deciding-the-fate-of-Earth plot, the various high-tech devices, and the wish fulfillment elements (you are both a total loser and a genius and then a gorgeous girl comes out of nowhere to make life worth living) are all fun.  The action and suspense scenes are successful.  There are many reasons to praise this thing.

So a big thumbs up for Bob Shaw and The Ceres Solution!

Don't let these Continental covers fool you:
Mollanians have almost no interest in sex or family, and Denny Hargate has
been rendered impotent by disease