A Son of the Rock

Ace, 1993, 234 p.

On a future Earth where everyone is genetically designed to be perfect Dante McCall is a misfit. Viral treatments to cure his asthma didn’t take but instead warped his perceptions so that he was unfit for Normal interaction. He escapes a fire in the home where he lived and boards a spaceship about to launch. That ship is picked up by a rogue trader, the Mangueira. On board Mangueira, Dante, being Italian and knowing Spanish, can just about make out the language used aboard, Brazilian Portuguese due to the origin of its large crew. Its occupants are known to the rest of humanity as Malandros. Their ship-board life is dominated by samba dancing and singing. ‘Dancing changes body and brain chemistry and makes us more receptive, more reactive.’ Dante is at first as much of a misfit here as he was on Earth.

Lewitt makes no concessions to the reader at this point. Life on board is presented as it is and the reader has to decipher it along with Dante. As he does, so do we.

A feature of Mangueira is the prevalence of birds, especially hyacinth macaws, which can speak and turn out to be the repository of the Malandros’ history. “All together they form the memory and central processing unit of Mangueira.”

Further plot intrudes when Veronica, a spy from another Trader ship, boards. Her father was Malandro but she can’t remember much of what he told her. As time goes by she gradually assimilates to life on Mangueira and goes native.

There is a lot going on here. The idea of a space faring group making a virtue of singing and dancing, continuing the Brazilian tradition of Carnival, that songs are the records and contributions of a ship’s people, is beguiling. However, we also have genetic manipulation. Malandros were manufactured, like the birds. Altered with a virus so that their genetic structure included bioactive interface chips – invented and made illegal before the first emigrés left Earth. It is bred into them, to go down through the generations. A man called Jorge Almovardo had created the living machine and was later burned for it in a Charismatic Revival.

Dante too has been (illegally) manipulated, subject to perception of time-shift, with which he can change his own past, “all the reality he had ever lived.”

Songs of Chaos is a good, solid piece of Science Fiction all the better for its unusual setting and background.

Pedant’s corner:- Dante lay the cutlery across the plate” (laid the cutlery,) Guimaraes’ (Guimaraes’s.) “None of the structures were identifiable” (None … was.) “picked up the samples and lay them” (and laid them,) “to change he design” (change the design,) imposter (impostor.) “Her Night-dark skin” (why the capital ‘N’ on Night?) Plus marks for ‘autos-da-fe’ though.