Reading science fiction like it matters since 1989.
New York: Tor Books, 2015, $26.99 hc; 304 pages
“Lightweight” is not the same thing as negligible, okay?
With that in mind, let’s consider Michael Swanwick’s latest novel, Chasing the Phoenix. As Swanwick commented in a recent Coode Street podcast, the Darger and Surplus stories began not with an idea but an image, a foppishly dressed man meeting a bipedal, vocal, and equally foppishly dressed dog. Aubrey Darger is the man; Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux, who graciously allows himself to be called simply Sir Plus (thus “Surplus”), is the dog. They meet in an unsettled, propitious time for scoundrels. Humanity had achieved Utopia with electronic tools, but it recognized the risk of being replaced by its machines and tried to stamp them out. But many AIs still survive, insanely hating all biological life and anxious to destroy it whenever possible. Besides a general regression to the political landscape of the nineteenth century, the landscape is dotted with survivals of Utopian technology—as seen in the genetically tweaked Surplus himself. Surely such a pair of clever rogues can profitably exploit the many possibilities open to them....
Well, not quite. For one thing, Darger and Surplus are not utterly unscrupulous; they want wealth, comfort, and sex, but they’re not willing to do quite anything to succeed. They’re not, for example, as selfish and vicious as Harry Flashman. For another, they have consistently bad luck, being forced to flee each adventure with only a few baubles though still with undying optimism. As Swanwick himself says, they are “catalysts of change,” eternal innocents who are “putting an end to the old world” while basically hoping to scavenge loot from the rubble. For still another, aware of their own cynical sanity, they can’t avoid the insanity swirling around them. In short, they have a knack for finding themselves trapped in difficult, overcomplicated schemes. And thus they are themselves, usually without knowing it, very funny.
Three early stories in the series are in the 2007 Tachyon collection The Dog Said Bow-Wow, the title story of which, besides introducing the roguish antiheroes and launching them on their unintended tour of the world, won the 2002 Hugo Award. The first Darger and Surplus novel was Dancing with Bears (Night Shade Books, 2011), set in Russia and packing much tension and danger with the humor. Chasing the Phoenix moves to China, where the Hidden King is plotting to bring the whole country under his control. Darger and Surplus join his campaign as Perfect Strategist and Noble Dog Warrior, unaware that his real goal is to complete his glorious destiny by obtaining and detonating a hydrogen bomb, The Phoenix Bride.
Going for them are their grasp of ancient wisdom (“‘The Spider Hero lived his life by this maxim: He who possesses great power is burdened also with great responsibility’—TheSayings of the Perfect Strategist”), by their ability to see through vainglorious pretention (and to encourage it for their own ends), and by an incredible run of good luck as all their plans succeed flawlessly (an unlikely happening that Swanwick uses later in the plot). As the sample of traditional wisdom above suggests, this a book that has a lot of fun with pompous role-playing, with straight-faced mockery and wonderment at how people manage to screw up passionate attachments.
And that’s what Chasing the Phoenix is: a lot of fun. Darger and Surplus do help to prevent the Hidden King’s plan, and to that extent they serve a serious purpose. But that’s incidental to their schemes, and at the novel’s end they are packed off to somewhere else, still optimistic that the next adventure will lead to their big payoff. If you want to see this as an “entertainment” in Graham Greene’s sense of a book that looks lightweight but has serious content—well, okay. All you need to do, though, is relax and simply enjoy a good-natured, well-constructed story, intelligently and wittily told. That should be enough.
Joe Sanders lives in Mentor, Ohio.
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