Tor, 2011, 489 p.
There is not much Science Fiction that deals directly with politics. It’s possibly too contentious a subject. In The Highest Frontier, though, Slonczewski extrapolates from the US situation of the 2000s to present a scenario where a fundamentalist group known as Centrists states baldly that the Sun (and the Firmament) go round the Earth and whose adherents form the core of one of the two main political parties. There has been a sort of balance between those two parties lasting many elections – a statistical tie the last five times – but the results have been accepted, albeit with riots following the count. (Riots apart that is not arguably as grim as things have turned out in the real world where US election results are questioned simply because one side believes that no-one could possibly have voted for the other or else that their opponents’ votes have been inflated nefariously and therefore the elections were fraudulent. No one in Slonczewski’s scenario is claiming election fraud.) A man known as the Creep, due to a medical intervention after an accident leaving only his head and hands as original to him: those hands have a tendency to move away from his body, has been Vice-President for the last several terms. Candidates chose someone else as running-mate but they always got dropped as liabilities just before the vote. Direct taxation seems to have been relinquished – what a USian notion – instead people known as taxplayers have levies placed on their gaming activities.
This is not to say that politics is all that the book concerns itself with, even if Cuba is the fifty-second state of the Union. Global warming has led to Dead zones and migration northwards in the US, a type of plant known as ultraphyte (it ‘feeds’ on uv light) threatens to engulf Earth’s habitat niches and is a further source of political contention.
Jenny Ramos Kennedy is a child from a political family with ancestors and living relatives on both sides of the political fence who have been Presidents. She has been sent to a college on a space habitat known as Frontera to complete her education. Her twin Jordi with whom she was supposed to attend Frontera recently died in an accident and she has been assigned a companĕra roommate called Mary, who is strange. Access to off-world is via a space elevator built from anthrax. Biological engineering is advanced enough to render the material both strong and unharmful. On Frontera, amyloid and carboxyplast are the main structural materials. Resources seem not to be much of a problem at least for the rich. Jenny prints her clothes everyday. Mini versions of Earth creatures provide a simulation of everyday fauna. A political course for some reason leans heavily on Theodore Roosevelt and presumably in his memory the bears on Frontera resemble the toy ones named after him. A version of the internet called Toynet exists. It connects to someone’s personal toybox, is accessed by brainstreaming and usually manifests as an intrusive news service fronted by a reporter called Clive. Frontera’s power source can occasionally be cut off by orbiting debris but does engender the rather pleasing portmanteau word solarray.
There is a ton of such explanation at the beginning of the novel, more often than not clunkily introduced. It slackens off somewhat later on but never entirely disappears.
Jenny’s life is complicated by her family’s political connections. She also is an adept at a game called slanball, a sort of cross between hockey and quidditch only with no magic. The act of slanning instead involves brainstreaming. Her coach is of the strict nothing-must-interfere-with-training type with whom Jenny’s volunteering as a medical first responder and her occasional lack of sleep do not go down well. The game seems to be forgotten about in the latter half of the book, though. Jenny also involves herself with local politics. Voting in these elections includes a ridiculous stipulation that people vote in person, handwriting their choice into the ballot book using a uranium based ink.
Early on in her studies Jenny is told that ultraphyte genes have been found in pileworms. Her tutor leads her into research on plants which can “laugh” due to the introduction of neurons. These are developed into Arabidopsis sapiens and Mary instigates experiments with negative and then reverse controls, which become wisdom plants. Here someone mentions a Greek tag Sophia philai paromen, wisdom is the highest frontier, from which Slonczewski presumably took her title. The plants’ placement onto the stage of a Presidential debate leads to an unusual exchange between the candidates.
Jenny’s attraction to fellow student Tom is par for the course for a tale of an older adolescent – they have the usual misunderstandings and some awkwardness as regards their relative social status – but Slonzcewski’s treatment of such young love and sex is rather coy, in the latter case to the point of blink and you might miss it.
In this future more or less everyone is in effect their own political commentator/extrapolator – a nod to an SF forerunner is provided by a poster of the fictional political predictor Hari Seldon on a classroom wall.
However, the conclusion by some of Slonczewski’s characters that voting is no longer of any utility is a dangerous concept.
Pedant’s corner:- descendents (descendants.) “The faculty were full of expertise” (the faculty was.) “The college ran their own taxplayers rehab” (the college ran its own,) “the amyloid liquified (liquefied.) “The medibot shined a light on his face” (shone.) “A crude pixilated window opened” (pixilated means ‘drunk’, a computer screen window cannot be drunk; ‘pixellated’,) “said Tom said” (either ‘said Tom’ or ‘Tom said’,) sunk (sank.)
