threemonkeys | Plot, Character, whatever...

Getting a conceptual tool into your attention can be a bit like having a song stuck in your head. I'm having trouble getting Chronotopicality out of my brain. Well if not getting it out, then letting it go back to its place as just one of the many ways that fiction can be examined.

It really hasn't helped that I just read Odyssey by Jack McDevitt. There is no mistaking that the times are affecting McDevitt's themes. No more does his regular hero Priscilla Hutchins just fly around the universe chasing after the aliens. Now she is in a desk job dealing with senators who want to cut the science budget. Yes there is some flying around and some rescuing to be done, but the balance has changed to favour political themes which can be read from today's papers. In McDevitt's previous book Seeker, there was more politics than there had ever been in earlier work but I thought that the balance between message and story was pretty well maintained. That time, the political message was important to the story but didn't overwhelm it. This time, there is a lot of talking and a lot of message strung around a rather more predictable than usual plot. By the authors usual high paced standards this one is treacle. Standards are relative of course - McDevitt is a very competent storyteller and so does not make it so dull as to be unreadable or even close to that. It still rolls along pretty well really all things considered but it never reaches any great heights.

I was recently asked to recommend some classic style SF adventure writing and McDevitt was pretty much at the top of the list. But now I have to add a conditional "look to the earlier stuff", because I won't be recommending this to anybody but the established fans of his work.