A Kaleidoscope View of Prism
Sentenced to Prism by Alan Dean Foster
Above all, I enjoy authors who surprise me. I am not talking about O Henry-ish plot turns, but I adore reading a writer who is equally facile at multiple writing styles. If you must put a name to the type, think Issac Asimov. The Good Doc could write anything well.
Alan Dean Foster, while lacking some of the late Asimov's academic credentials, is nonetheless one smart man. He holds an MFA in film from UCLA and has been a commercially successful writer for more than three decades. I have just gone through a couple of his stories during some time off and am once again struck by Foster's ease at writing fantasy, hard science fiction and even historical novels.
Sentenced to Prism, as hard as science fiction gets, gives readers a view of a future interstellar union of planets where multi-planet corporations are as powerful as the government. Everyone in the field has done this treatment before, but Foster doesn't dwell on the machinations of the economic-political spectrum in some future time. Rather, we are quickly whisked away into arrogant Evan Orgell's journey to a new planet that his company is seeking to exploit.
Surprise - Orgell is a company man, but Foster will make him a nice round character before shutting the story down. The first few chapters read as though Foster was setting up a Robocop novelization.
Please, I thought. Stop making him talk to the suit. Make something happen on this planet.
My patience was rewarded approximately a third of the way into the story when a whole lot of things happened. We moved from Robocop to a really scary few moments where Tarzan seemed a real possibility and finally ended up with a buddy story with some unique twists. Chief among them, and worth exploring, are the new life forms - the photovores, who live on light. This is a crystalline world, but the creatures inhabiting her are nothing like a little knick-knack that might be on your shelf.
Orgell must work hard to overcome his prejudices towards carbon-based life forms, thus gently scolding the reader with an anti-prejudice platform. There is nothing as moralistic as Star Trek here, however, and the message is a gentle one that forces the reader to finally plead with Evan - Oh, for pity's sake, will you just trust him?
I also found Foster's view of his main character's society to be a call to action for our own. In Evan's society (no spoiler here), people live in suits - pressurized, specialized exoskeletons with a variety of functions. They're self-cleaning, intelligent and just a real nice thing to wear around, well, everywhere. So that's what the world does. There are special suits for swimming (you might want to sip a fresh fruit juice while letting the suit pilot you through the waves), suits for work (a quick glance at caste and status) and all manner of industry-related suits.
Unfortunately, man lives by suit alone, and only when Evan Orgell is forced into a dangerous world without his suit does he find out how much of his humanity is truly missing. In a delightfully wicked twist, Foster rips his hero's new-found humanity away just as he finds what a gift he has been given.
Sentenced To Prism is filled with a solid plot, several likeable characters, and some beautiful descriptions of an alien landscape. Given the special effects technology that now exists, as well as Foster's film background, I would not be surprised to see a film in the local multiplex.
I wonder what Kevin Spacey's doing? Meanwhile, pick up this Foster tale and take a look at the pretty patterns his Prism makes.
