2015 read #26: Magnificat by Julian May.

Magnificat by Julian May
431 pages
Published 1996
Read from May 25 to June 3
Rating: ★★ out of 5

The concept of a science fiction trilogy exploring the personal and political lead-up to a galactic conflict, rather than the conflict itself, is an intriguing one. Goodness knows there are enough stories of space battles and interplanetary conflict, both romanticizing and deconstructing the concept and practice of war; a story that traces root causes instead could be a bold and illuminating new angle. Once I was reconciled to the fact that May's trilogy about a Galactic Rebellion would dawdle along with dinner parties and sex with disembodied brains, and devote at most a chapter to the actual conflict, I could have been mollified by this perspective -- but only if the groundwork for the rebellion had not been so thoroughly ridiculous.

I don't like the SF crutch of "evil" characters. When there must needs be hostilities and bloodshed, I would much prefer that the antagonists reached their respective positions legitimately, through the workings of character and circumstance and ideology. Marc Remillard, "Angel of the Abyss" and paramount-metapsychic leader of the Rebellion, arrives at his position not through flaws in his character or a sincere conviction of humanity's need for "freedom" from alien oversight, but because a devil, more or less, had been whispering in his ear while he slept. Our two good guys, meanwhile, after getting built up during their two respective titular volumes, get shuffled off to the sidelines until they're shoved into place for the denouement. That devalues the central conflict from a confrontation of character with tangible stakes to an author-directed deus ex machina to get the pieces where they need to be (for a resolution we've known since the third book of the Saga of Pliocene Exile, published thirteen years previously). It is also, in psychological terms, facile and unsatisfying.

For approximately one entire page (slightly less than that, but I'm being generous), Magnificat hints at the sort of story I wanted all along, summarizing the coadunate reactions of the various Milieu species to the human Rebellion. I like the universe May has set up, for the most part; I wish we had spent less time regurgitating the same back-and-forth on Teilhardian unanimization (and far less time on factory-grown metapsychic embryos corrupted in utero by mustache-twirling evil), and more time in the company of the delightful Poltroyans and the intimidating but kindly Krondaku. The only things I'll miss about May's Galactic Milieu are her aliens. I think back fondly to the Saga of Pliocene Exile, but almost all of my nostalgia there is likewise bound up with the setting.

As Diamond Mask and Jack the Bodiless admonished in the climax, I persevered. And now I'm done. Thank the All in all.