Oliphan Oracus by Neil Robinson

In 1995, Kate Wallis, a young scientist working for a pharmaceutical company, is accidentally exposed to an experimental longevity virus which results in her falling into a coma for 262 years. On waking, she learns from a computer in the military hospital in which she has been kept that the Western world was overcome by a plague of mental illness in the early 21st century. Now, in 2257, the forest has taken over outside and a simpler form of human society prevails. Kate falls in with the inhabitants of a small settlement named Streamside; most notably Keef, who is a 'television', able to create visions in the minds of other people; visions sent (so the Streamsiders believe) by Oliphan Oracus, who may be a god, of sorts.

What to make of Neil Robinson's début novel? On the one hand, we have a superbly depicted future society: with a few choice words, the author creates a convincingly alien culture from the ashes of our own. This comes through especially in the Streamsiders' speech, with its unusual abbreviations ('pologies' for 'sorry', or 'comp' for ‘comprehend') and striking transformations of twentieth-century terms (at one point, Keef says of Kate, 'She swallowed the Big Mushroom Cloud and she's been in Televisual Heaven for two hundred and sixty-two years'). On the other hand, we have to grapple with imagery like this: 'she found it as irritating and exhausting as attempting to tear open a litre carton of life-long orange juice.' Sometimes it feels as though one is reading two different books.

Oliphan Oracus is a very self-conscious novel: as narrator, Robinson often refers to what happens in 'science fiction stories' – for example, the hero travels to the future and proceeds to show the poor ignorant inhabitants how superior his (or her) time is. The implication is, of course, that this sort of thing is not going to happen in Oliphan Oracus, and indeed it doesn't; all Kate's efforts to introduce twentieth-century technology to Streamside fail. One of the novel's main themes is how Kate struggles to adapt to her new environment and lifestyle, and comes to accept that 'modern' technology is not appropriate for the society in which she now finds herself.

There are some problems here, though. For one thing, it is hard to believe that Kate would take almost the entire book to realize something the reader understood early on (perhaps even after reading the blurb on the dustjacket). Another problem is that Robinson's contention about 'science fiction stories' is flawed: there are a good number of time travel stories whose protagonists reject their own time (Jack Finney's Time and Again springs to mind). Factor in all stories which involve encounters with another culture (which is what Oliphan Oracus is at heart), and you find plenty more examples which undermine the idea that Robinson's novel is a radical departure.

Still, as I noted earlier, the life and society of the Streamsiders is vividly depicted; one gets the feeling that Robinson has a great love and respect for nature. Unfortunately – indeed, frustratingly – having created this society, he doesn't do much with it. There is not much human drama in the book, until near the end; and what there is feels awkwardly tacked on. Furthermore, the Streamsiders are not as sharply differentiated as they really need to be; too often, it's hard to see them as distinct personalities. The business of reading it becomes a great chore.

In the second chapter, Robinson writes: 'In the spring of 1995 Kate could never have guessed that she would soon find herself living the plot of a science fiction soap opera.' And a soap opera is what this book resembles: not only in its focus on relationships and its episodic nature, but most especially in its ending: there's no true sense of closure: the novel ends 'out of frame'. Now, this can be a very effective technique, if it's handled correctly, as characters set out for wider horizons that the reader only glimpses. But Oliphan Oracus just stops abruptly: it's a deeply frustrating and unsatisfying denouement, and a late guessing-game over the narrator's identity fails to make up for that frustration.

So, what we have in Oliphan Oracus is a well-realized future in need of the right vehicle to do it justice. Robinson's ideas would probably work better as a novella or a series of short stories; but as a novel, they are spread too thinly. It's a great disappointment.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:
Immanion Press