Science Fantasy and Other Delightful Surprises

Sometimes, the best things in life just happen, with very little conscious thought, but with a great deal of deliberate grace. I was passing by National Bookstore in EDSA Shangri-La Mall when I came across the books which comprise the Chronicles of Chaos trilogy. And yes, you read it right. It's a trilogy. In this day and age, where second-rate writers churn out as many books as possible to keep themselves in hog heaven, John C. Wright wrote a trilogy. With all due respect to the late Robert Jordan, his success in the high fantasy genre encouraged every second-rate, derivative, pretentious hack to produce some spectacularly awful books in the hopes of replicating Jordan's epic Wheel of Time series. This is why a trilogy is so welcome. Like R. Scott Bakker, another wonderful fellow who penned a thought-provoking epic trilogy The Prince of Nothing, Wright's science fantasy epic has a beginning, a middle, and an ending, which is more than can be said of the many series being published today.

And yes, it is science fantasy. The problem with hard science fiction is that it tries to convey wonder through definition. Science fantasy, on the other hand, conveys wonder through definitions that require an a priori response that questions the rigidity of such definitions. In other words, this genre requires an enormous leap of faith that validates belief in magic of a sort.

Reviewer Paul Di Filippo writes:

Science fantasy is a blend that requires enormous skill to bring off. The author must mix the improbable with the probable, the fanciful with the hard-nosed, the rational with the supernatural. Luckily, John Wright is just the man for the job...he effortlessly blends the two.

Astute readers will detect flavors here of Philip K. Dick (the games with the nature of reality); A.E. van Vogt (the recomplicated shifting alliances); Roger Zelazny (the mythology mixed with contemporary slang); James Branch Cabell (the droll speech patterns of Boreas, the school's headmaster); Clark Ashton Smith (the descriptions of otherworldly realms); A.A. Attanasio (the gnostic interplay between gods and humans); C.S. Lewis (the Narnia-style trope of teens with noble secret identities); and so forth and so forth, with more allusions that I've probably even overlooked.

This kind of homage-laden, deep-lineage fiction can get over-intellectual and stultifying in the wrong hands. But Wright keeps it fresh and sprightly, mainly thanks to never losing sight of the teenage high spirits of his protagonists, especially his perfect narrator, Amelia.

Pick it up. After all, who can resist an author who, after having converted to Catholicism, insists that "If Vulcans had a church, they'd be Catholics." It's refreshing to read the works of a man who knows exactly, in the wonderfully chaotic way that science fantasy makes the impossible possible, where he's heading, be it in fiction or in life. Enjoy!