lightreads

Manhattan in Reverse by Peter F. Hamilton

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This collection and I got along fine for the first 80%. I picked it up because it seemed like an easier way to try Hamilton without commiting to one of his doorstops. This was a mistake, since most of the collection is tie-ins to his cifi universes, and without that knowledge they're pretty limp. I did like "Watching Trees Grow," the one about the alt universe Roman semi-immortal who uses progressive technology to solve a troubling murder over the course of several centuries. Cool, if obvious, meditation on truth and technology.

And then we hit "Manhattan in Reverse," the last story. And, oh God. You guys. It is so bad. So creepingly, gapingly bad that I didn't even notice until halfway through, and then I went wait . . . what the fuck?

See, it's supposed to be a future reimagining of an old historical racial wrong. Except Hamilton needs to never ever try something like that again, because it is so clumsy and so badly thought out that what you get is a metaphor that collapses into offensive mush if you think about it with any critical faculty, and a topcoat of White Man's Burden to boot. This is a story that, blatantly but I can only assume unintentionally, draws a direct comparison between the white settlers cheating the native inhabitants of Manhattan out of their island and then forcing them out to what happens to a pre-intelligent and unevolved species when a more intelligent species comes a long and messes with it. For serious. I read that bit four times going wait, he couldn't have . . . no. No, he really just did.

Is Hamilton prone to this sort of tragic overestimation of his ability to tackle complex issues? Translation: should I bother with one of the doorstops?

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