“Journey Star” by John Michael Greer is the sequel to “The Fires of
Shalsha”, the author´s very first published novel. Greer recently described the
sequel as “disturbing” and promised that if he ever writes a third novel in the
saga, it will be even more so. After reading “Journey Star”, I have to say that
it isn´t disturbing enough! I mean, it even has a happy ending.
Or does it?
The plot is set at Eridan, a planet in an alien solar system colonized
by humans fleeing an Earth destroyed by man-made climate change. The democratic
Colonial authority was soon overthrown by mad scientists who killed millions in
slave labor camps in a vain attempt to mimic 20th century progress
on Earth (compare Stalin´s Soviet Union). The Directorate, as the genocidal
regime was called, was in turn overthrown by the Insurgency, the rebels using
nuclear bombs to drive home their point. Post-apocalypse, the occult Halka
order (a kind of samurai with paranormal powers induced by psychedelic plants) took
over control of Eridan, banning most high technology while the surviving
population formed settlements in the wilderness known as Shelters. These were
constantly attacked by quasi-intelligent machines surviving the downfall of the
Directorate, and by Outrunners, humans who refused to join the Shelters and
turned to cannibalism instead.
The Halka eventually managed to defeat the machines and began a brutal
campaign aimed at exterminating the Outrunners, who were forced to cannibalize
each other. Some of the Outrunners carried a mysterious symbiont, who unknown
to everyone is really the surviving brain tissue of Carl Emmer, the genocidal
Director long believed to have been vaporized in the aforementioned nuclear
war. The Emmer brain-worm eventually finds a suitable Halka host and tries to
get to Journey Star, the space ship that took the original colonists to Eridan
and which is still in orbit around the planet…
Disturbed yet?
After a relatively promising beginning (disturbing-wise), “Journey Star”
winds down and becomes progressively more slow-paced and frankly dragging. It
also goes from dystopian pessimism to the cautious optimism characteristic of
most Greer novels (even those involving apocalyptic events). The Halka are
clearly idealized feudal lords who selflessly defend the Shelter population
against external threats on condition that the peasants accept the Six Laws,
who exist for the greater good of Eridan-kind. When the external threats are
gone, the Halka manage to gradually abolish themselves thanks to new
psychedelic revelations, rather than cling to power in the usual fashion of
elite groups who outlived their usefulness. And while the Halka do “genocide”
the cannibal Outrunners, those willing to turn away from eating tender human
flesh are resettled in a different territory and left alone. Indeed, it´s
strongly suggested that the Outrunner bands turned to cannibalism only under
the influence of the evil symbionts. And in the end, even Carl Emmer´s worm-mind
seems willing to redeem itself by refraining from blasting everyone sky high.
Maybe *this* is the disturbing message of “Journey Star”: not that
everyone has darkness in their hearts, but rather that everyone means well and only
makes bad choices due to limited information…which results in some really evil fallout.
Emmer turns out to be a kind of utilitarian who wants to save Earth from runaway
climate change, the cannibal Outrunners could be seen as a strange Native tribe
desperately trying to survive (they have unique cultural traditions), and the early
democracy on Eridan suggests that the humans who survived dying Earth were fundamentally
good guys – and yet, their actions must have caused the climate crisis in the
first place!
“Journey Star” ends with some of the main characters embarking on a newly
arrived starship, Bright Circle, with the intention of visiting another human
colony in the Sirius star system and then return to Earth, seeding its
atmosphere according to the geoengineering formula discovered by the Directorate
and later inherited by a renegade who joined the Insurgency. Also, two young
women get the same man in a female-centered polygynous marriage. As I said, a happy
ending. But ye have been warned: if the Eridan saga ever expands into a
trilogy, the author has promised us a truly disturbing climax…
The way to hell is paved with good intentions.
