A Song of Real Fire and Real Ice
Review: John Feffer’s Dystopian Splinterlands Trilogy is the Paramount 21st-Century Science Fiction Work.
If You Could Read Your Future—Would You?
Like, perhaps, a small mutant child trapped in a government laboratory, a lot of discussion around Science Fiction revolves around its precognitive abilities.
For example, 1984, Neuromancer and, especially, Brave New World (BNW) are held up as prescient in relation to current events. I’ve mentioned (end of post) another classic in that vein, too. And rightly so, for all of them.
For my part, I think BNW works best as prophecy, not just because it seems to have been the most accurate, but also because of Aldous Huxley’s writing style. Huxley uses elegant, incisive word choices throughout to really emphasize the disconnect between shallow and deeper emotions; plus his deft Omniscient Point of View fleshes out a world (in less than 64,000 words) of truly monstrous porportions.
This is why—long before even these latest iterations of AI chatbots were making all our sphincters tighten—everyone already pretty much agreed on BNW’s literary worth.
But it’s important to remember, as Caitrin Keiper pointed out in the article “Brave New World at 75” for The New Atlantis in 2007: 91 years ago, when it came out, “The critical reception of Brave New World was largely chilly. Most reviewers were disgruntled or disgusted with what they saw as unjustified alarmism.” This would seem to indicate that, either its prescience or its merits as literature have been key to catapulting it higher in our estimation since its release. I would say both.
Dystopian Publishing
Similarly, I would not be surprised if John Feffer’s Splinterlands Series is eventually raised to such heights. Unlike Huxley, Feffer was not already a well-known writer. Instead, like so many modern authors, he has a day job. Feffer is a Director of a (lonely) progressive think tank in Washington DC: the Institute for Policy Studies. I won’t insert his full bio here because I chafe at how modern readers are supposed to analyze all written works through the prism of the writer’s bio. But, it’s worth noting that, as dystopian fiction writers go, he certainly might be in a position to be basing his fictional world on current knowledge of today’s bleeding edge technology, climate realities, and geopolitics. I posit that is why his novels ring so true.
Feffer’s relative anonymity amongst modern sci fi authors also might explain his relatively low ratings on the major book sites. Book one of the series, Splinterlands, clocks in at 4.0/5 on Amazon and 3.5/5 on Goodreads—which is fine, but truly shocked me. At least, by book three, Songlands, those numbers move up to 4.7 and 4.2, respectively. So, those who stuck with it maybe learned better.
I also hasten to mention that neither BNW nor Splinterlands are even listed under the “Science Fiction” genre on Amazon in the first place (!). This, of course, is nonsense. I’m not the first to point this out, but I’ll repeat it: to either parse and micro-categorize these tremendous stories (“political fiction”) or to sweep them up in a catch-all (“literary fiction”) does a disservice to them as important works of genre fiction.
A Trilogy for the Ages
Feffer’s important story is a trilogy that consists of: Splinterlands (2016), Frostlands (2018), and Songlands (2021). They occur around 2050, referring back to as far as 2020 and how society started to disintegrate around that time. These novels hit the same tone and overlap much of the same subject matter as Octavia Butler’s epistolary Parable Series. Like that duology, it describes revolutionary efforts during a civilization that is self-destructing. But, frankly, these novels hang together better as stories.
Butler’s second Parable book, Parable of the Talents, reads more like a second chance at rewriting the first. It’s a masterpiece, yes; but it essentially re-tells and continues the same story as the first one, albeit without any of the dragging narrative and sometimes convenient character motivations of the first. It’s essentially a literary do-over.
The focus of each of these series are a little different. The Parable… series focuses on the local dysfunction, haunting and horrible, of nationalistic fascism in the lived experiences of its victims. And the protag/‘savior’ figure emerges from that, with the technology and key family dynamics (mother/daughter) of that character barely playing a supporting role in the story-telling.
The Splinterlands Trilogy, on the other hand, covers an entire family that manages to be instrumental, in various ways, in ‘doing well’ within this new world, and then redefining what ‘doing well’ means when the world is dying. It shows both a single family and the human family both working to figure out a way to come together and make it work.
Feffer’s series also completely incorporates the technology into the discussion: climate change mitigatiion, AI, virtual reality—all of this is woven into the narrative as subtly as other writers use dialogue tags. As Marshall McLuhan taught us, each new tehnology recreates our environment. These novels actually demonstrate which portions of us might and might not remain human as we move from environment to environment, at increasingly breakneck speeds.
The overarching plot contrasts some of the ultimate choices that need to be made in the face of our impending climate disaster. I’ll say it again: can our human family come together, or is it to be the Billionaires, with their ‘longtermism’, after all?
Another difference between the two series is, of course, the time frame. Butler’s series was a dystopian future (she was writing in the 1990s about 2024 moving forward) and, frankly, most everything she puts forth is a continuation of our nation’s brutal history of racism. So, it is entirely plausible in the said time frame, which is to say: NOW. This is so much so that comedian Marc Maron, in his most recent standup special says (about modern fascists and the politics of today) ‘I guess all we’re waiting for now is to find out which color they choose for their uniforms’.
Meanwhile, Feffer wrote his series in the 2010s and 2021 about the early 2050s. Due to no fault of anyone, this makes Feffer’s crystal ball seem a little more sinister—as though it’s more of a betrayal of ourselves to not get better with all that sweet, sweet tech right here, now, on the horizon.
Splinterlands was, technically, not Feffer’s debut novel—under the pseudonym of Jon Berson, he wrote Foamers: A Novel of Suspense in 1997. I haven’t read that one (yet), but it apparently was about terrorists that use train derailments and then disguise them as fake; so, hell, even that book maybe echoes a chord with current events.
But, Splinterlands was his first ‘sci-fi’ dystopian novel. And, as such, this is a tremendous success. He makes no—and I mean, zero— of the typical ‘first novel’ missteps the genre authors (myself included) make in their freshman effort. Each character has a unique voice. No characters having fewer dimensions than they deserve. No plot holes. None of the resolutions are tidy, nor are they telegraphed. It’s all quite remarkable.
But, beyond just playing error-free ball, there are many ways in which these books really are exemplary:
1- For example, each one is a self-contained story—with internal and external stakes, tragic foreshadowing, and, most importantly, a resolution. This last bit is most unusual, I think. These days it seems that many authors get strong-armed into making each book of a series end on a cliffhanger.
2- His prose is exceedingly efficient. Each book is really a novella. In fact, all three books combined are not even 40% as long as A Dance with Dragons, Book Five of George R. R. Martin’s epic fantasy series con-game called “A Song of Ice and Fire”. (PERSONAL NOTE: for me, it was half-way during book three of ASOIAF when I realized I was being had and stopped reading…feel free to leave your “A Song of…” stopping point in the comments below…the biggest Fantasy of that series is that it will be finished, AHEM!). /end rant
3- Like many ‘Milieu novels’, the world is the “main” character in all these books; but, family dynamics, community dynamics and, yes, geo-political dynamics all are simultaneously engaged and resolved in these stories.
Finally, in my cursory skimming of other reviews, I noticed one pattern. Many folks claim that Feffer’s writing is “academic”. You can safely ingnore such reviews. It’s another example of people substituting (perceived) identity for actual critical reasoning using empirical metrics. No doubt those reviewers looked at his bio and, finding it somehow wanting (What? He’s a political wonk and not a scientist-techie? Bah!), and therefore, a priori, dinged his writing with it.
But for actual authors academic writing is really associated with passive voice, and these novels most certainly do not use that. Feffer’s prose is very crisp. It’s both taut and emotive, sometimes bordering on noir (which maybe befits his previous experience with the crime novel, who knows?). But, it suits both the subject-matter and this reader just fine.
I seldom give FIVE STAR reviews, even less so with modern novels. But all three of these books deserve maximum star reviews. Enjoy them! Starting with Splinterlands.