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An All-Too Familiar Future: Restless Lightning by Richard Baker

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An All-Too Familiar Future: Restless Lightning by Richard Baker

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An All-Too Familiar Future: Restless Lightning by Richard Baker

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Published on October 26, 2018

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Space opera is one of my favourite things. I love military science fiction—at least, when I can get it without the requisite dose of awful politics and queer erasure that predominates (with some few exceptions) in military space opera. It’d be really nice not to have to accept thoughtless imperialism, cultures that look a lot like 19th-century-European-countries-in-space (sometimes with added Rome or Stalinist Russia analogues), and a complete absence of queer folks as the price of entry, but in most cases, that’s the best one can hope for.

Richard Baker’s Restless Lightning, sequel to last year’s Valiant Dust, is a cut above thoughtless imperialism, but to be honest, it isn’t precisely what I was hoping for out of military science fiction or space opera, either one.

Valiant Dust showed promise and potential, but also seemed to suggest that we could look forward to a view of the future that reproduced the power dynamics of the 19th century with European analogues as colonial powers, and a military science fiction setting that reproduced a boy’s-own-adventure view of significant female characters—which is to say they exist to be the male main character’s temporary romantic interests, or as secondary antagonists, rather than as well-rounded individuals in their own right. (And, though Baker at least acknowledges the existence of queer people, one might look in vain for named queer characters.) Restless Lightning provides additional evidence that however Baker intends to develop his Sikander Singh North books, they seem set to continue in this pattern.

After the events of Valiant Dust, Sikander’s found his career shunted off to die quietly on the sidelines, far away from everything important. He’s an intelligence officer on a commodore’s staff, assigned to a commerce protection squadron in the Tzoru empire—a vast, ancient and hidebound alien polity that shares significant commonalities with the European view of 19th-century China.

And, as it happens, the events of the novel seem to be much inspired by the Boxer Uprising of 1899 to 1901. Anti-colonial feeling among the lower-class Tzoru leads to an uprising aimed at evicting the foreign interests, which have taken an entire district in the capital as their own. Political factions among the Tzoru elite means that the local response to this uprising ranges from opposed but helpless to actually act to quietly supportive of the anti-colonial movement. The “quietly supportive” faction is in charge of most of the nearby military assets, so when the anti-colonial Tzoru march on the foreigners’ district and put it under siege, relief can only come from foreign military assets based in a different star system. But the various foreign militaries have their own competing priorities, rivalries, and agendas. Even if they can be unified under one command, the question remains: will they be able to fight their way past the outdated-yet-immense Tzoru military to relieve the siege of their embassies?

In the middle of this is Sikander Singh North, minor royalty from a colonial planet within the Aquilan Commonwealth, and in an unusual position as a mostly-but-not-entirely assimilated officer within the Aquilan Navy. His immediate superior hates him for reasons dating back to his Academy days, and she’s determined to see him take the blame for not predicting the upsurge of anti-colonial violence—even though, as the squadron intelligence officer, his brief is military intelligence, rather than civil society.

Just before the violence breaks out, Sikander reconnects with an old flame, Dr. Lara Dunstan, an upper-class Aquilan, a Tzoru specialist, and a senior member of the local Foreign Service. He and Lara get an up-close view of the beginnings of violent reaction against the human presence at the scholarly conference that Lara’s attending, and barely escape. When they separate—Sikander back to the fleet and Lara to the foreign district in the capital—Baker continues to give us Lara’s point of view. We see the siege of the embassies through her eyes, as Sikander gives us a view on activity in the fleet.

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Restless Lightning
Restless Lightning

Restless Lightning

Restless Lightning offers a third viewpoint character in the form of General Hish Mubirrum, leader of the elite Tzoru faction that’s using the anti-colonial movement to effect a transformation of Tzoru society back to its “traditional” values—a society that will value the General and his faction as he believes it deserves. What Mubirrum doesn’t realise, however, is just how technologically overmatched his people are.

Sikander’s Aquilan Commonwealth colleagues may practise a kinder, gentler form of colonial exploitation than many of the other powers, but they’re still imperial chauvinists. A different book might have given us a better argument about the ethics of realpolitick and resistance in amongst its military action: Restless Lightning is not, alas, that book.

This is a readable military romp of a novel. It suffers, however, from Baker’s lack of vision in terms of worldbuilding—this is a decidedly bland and familiar future—and from his decidedly middling gifts with character. Much of the novel’s tension rests on Sikander’s interactions with military office politics. It’s possible to make gripping drama out of this kind of thing, but that requires that the other characters be developed into believable individuals, rather than plot-relevant placeholders. Unfortunately, most of the characters here fall closer to the plot-relevant placeholder end of the spectrum than otherwise. Even Sikander himself sometimes feels more like a collection of tropes than an individual with an believable inner life.

Perhaps I judge Restless Lightning too harshly. But although it’s light and mostly enjoyable, it never succeeds in giving rise to a coherent thematic argument, or in becoming more than the sum of its parts. And when it comes to military action, it comes off the worse in a comparison with Valiant Dust. I wish I could have enjoyed it more, but for me, Restless Lightning fails to build on Valiant Dust‘s strengths.

Restless Lightning is available from Tor Books.

Liz Bourke is a cranky queer person who reads books. She holds a Ph.D in Classics from Trinity College, Dublin. Her first book, Sleeping With Monsters, a collection of reviews and criticism, was published in 2017 by Aqueduct Press. It was a finalist for the 2018 Locus Awards and was nominated for a Hugo Award in Best Related Work. Find her at her blog, where she’s been known to talk about even more books thanks to her Patreon supporters. Or find her at her Twitter. She supports the work of the Irish Refugee Council, the Transgender Equality Network Ireland, and the Abortion Rights Campaign.

About the Author

Liz Bourke

Author

Liz Bourke is a cranky queer person who reads books. She holds a Ph.D in Classics from Trinity College, Dublin. Her first book, Sleeping With Monsters, a collection of reviews and criticism, was published in 2017 by Aqueduct Press. It was a finalist for the 2018 Locus Awards and was nominated for a 2018 Hugo Award in Best Related Work. She was a finalist for the inaugural 2020 Ignyte Critic Award, and has also been a finalist for the BSFA nonfiction award. She lives in Ireland with an insomniac toddler, her wife, and their two very put-upon cats.
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6 years ago

In some books worldbuilding is very much secondary to the plot. Empires Innn Spaace! Is a convenient trope.

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6 years ago

@1 

While that’s true, I think some forethought is still useful. Especially if you pick the Boxer Rebellion, where it matters who you cast as the heroes and who gets cast as the villains. 

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6 years ago

IMO you can make a case for both sides in the Boxer Rebellion being villains. 

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Carl
6 years ago

Why is James Holden in the cover?

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6 years ago

@3

It’s genuinely hard to be sympathetic to imperial powers in general. That’s what the book is asking us to do. 

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6 years ago

But they’re both empires. 

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6 years ago

Well, a few things wrong there.

First, China had been at the mercy of stronger powers for a while. The Opium Wars had broken the back of an already weak government, all in the pursuit of foreign business interests (opium and then later economic exploitation). So, while its fair to say that China was an empire, it wasn’t functioning on the same level as the imperial powers of the Modern period. 

Second, the Boxers are a grassroots response to Western encroachment. Believe it or not, people and government don’t always march in lockstep, nor was China ever really single top down polity. So while the Boxers might have supported the restoration of the Qin, that was in the name of some kind of self rule. The anger was real, and exacerbated by drought and crop failures.

Your trying to hand wave your way to grey, when one side has a clear interest in continuing economic and political dominance at the expense of other’s suffering. 

 

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6 years ago

The Boxers were a quasi religious millenarian movement motivated by hatred of Christianity and foreigners. They were quite frankly nuts and very violent slaughtering Chinese Christians as well as foreigners.

It’s worth pointing out that China was also at that time under the rule of a foreign Conqueror, the Manchu Qing, who had imposed a number of racist laws to maintain their power and separation from the Chinese population. The dynasty had been weakened by an incapable emperor and a long minority, problems possibly exacerbated by foreign pressure but not created by it. 

There were certainly victims but no heroes

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6 years ago

You can’t act as if foreigners and the accompanying missionaries just walked out of the cabbage patch one day. Foreign influence in China was won and maintained by violence and coercion. Those missionaries and converts are the human tripwires of imperial systems, whose deaths only served to justify further violence and intrusion. We can denounce the violence of the Boxers, but it was the inevitable outcome of a power imbalance that would never have accepted negotiation.

 

Casting the Manchu as wholly foreign conquerors also denies them a place in Chinese history. They’re distinct ethnic group from the predominant Han, just as the Uighurs are today. It also is a an attempt to turn foreign interference in China into something acceptable, and therefore minimize he violence by which it was won. The imperial powers interested in dividing China into spheres of influence would have provided no relief from discriminatory laws, because their entire enterprise was based on discrimination. 

The ultimate problem with your stance of trying to make everyone the bad guy, is that you try to ignore a system and political situation wherein the Chinese as a whole were considered inferior, managed at best and killed at worst. There was no way to assert common humanity, because that would complete upset the imperial system. There’s no way to negotiate with powers that would kill you if you dissented peacefully. The Boxers were caught in a trap: advocate peacefully and die, or fight and die. 

 

 

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6 years ago

@9 usakar

The Boxers could kill foreign soldiers without murdering Chinese Christians, who were trying to find some solace in their religion at a time when their entire world was going to hell. 

I’m obviously not going to defend imperialism, and the powers who invaded China provoked justified resistance.  There’s no moral equality between rebels defending their country from foreign invaders and soldiers who attack a people who never threatened their homes or families.  But there’s a difference between self defense and religious pogroms.   

I strongly recommend that you read Boxers and Saints by Gene Luen Yang.  He does a wonderful job of showing why people became Boxers or Christians in a country where the traditional order was collapsing and everyone was desperate for answers.   

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6 years ago

Actually all I’m saying is this is a clash of empires and frankly the Europeans were doing no more than the Chinese Empire had done in it’s time. Including ethnocentrism and racism. You don’t get to cast an empire built and maintained by force as innocent victims because a bigger bully appears. And the sins of the victim don’t make the new bullies heroes either.

History is a lot more complicated than heroes and villains. The fact is the Chinese Empire was rotting from within with a whole slew of problems that had nothing to do with the Europeans.

It’s worth pointing out that the Chinese Empire had at this point long history of dealing with foreign influences including Western quite successfully. instability at home and the growing technological imbalance changed that.

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6 years ago

@11 princessroxana

I’ve never been a fan of deflection.  Yes, the Chinese Empire had committed terrible crimes throughout its history. Absolutely none of those crimes were committed against the Europeans or the Japanese.  If Korea or Vietnam wanted to attack China because of China’s crimes against them, that would be one thing.  But there’s no justification whatsoever for Europeans or Japanese people to attack China. 

The Europeans and the Japanese decided to invade China and take their stuff because they could.  Many of the people who suffered as a result of that imperialism were children or defenseless peasants, who had no voice in Chinese policy and just wanted to grow crops and keep out of trouble. 

It’s true to say that history is more complicated than heroes and villains; it’s also true to say that if you invade a foreign country purely to loot them, that makes you a villain.  This wasn’t a “clash of empires” so much as a one-sided beating where foreign empires decided that they could pick on the powerless Chinese.  They were then morally outraged when the Boxers had the nerve to fight back, because they thought that “lesser” peoples should thank their betters for being kind enough to rob them at gunpoint. 

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6 years ago

@11

All you do is deflect. You can’t even approach the idea that the predominantly western powers that wanted to divide China up into spheres of influence were in the wrong. You’re maintaining this air of grey cynicism that sounds deep but only comes off as edgy. You blame the Chinese for their desperation, because they awful things happened in their history, regardless of the centuries of history and context or changes in dynasty . It doesn’t matter that they lost two wars against Britain to try and stop the opium –cousin to the shit killing so many Americans–  from being forced into their country. You’re playing the “they’re no angels” card to justify the violence done to them. The Boxers did horrible things. If I haven’t said that enough, I’m sorry. But their crimes don’t erase the same crimes inflicted on their country. 

 

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Jeffersonian
6 years ago

So has anyone besides Ms. Bourke read either of Mr. Baker’s works in this series and have an opinion?

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6 years ago

@14 Jeffersonian

I read the first book, and I wasn’t impressed.

The hero wasn’t that interesting, the villains weren’t scary, and the plot was meh.  It was a solid C book, where it was just engaging enough to finish.  If you’re looking for something to read at the beach, Valiant Dust is not a bad choice.  If you’re looking for more, then this is not your book. 

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Natalie
6 years ago

Yeah DNF’d the 1st book in the series – i enjoy military scifi that is more focused on characters rather than very detailed hardware explanation and military minutiae. I didnt connect with the Sikander Singh character at all, and if i dont care, im not going to invest my time in a book.  A military sci-fi i enjoyed recently is the Poor Man’s Fight series by Elliott Kay. Your mileage may vary but I enjoyed it enough to recommend it to people.

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Jeffersonian
6 years ago

15, and 16 – Thanks both of you. Appreciate the responses.

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6 years ago

I’ll 2nd @16 for the Poor Man’s Fight series. I like the protagonist and I like the world building. I think there is a good balance between looking at individuals and the set-up of the world. 

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6 years ago

I finally got what bothered me about princessrolaxana’s philosphy of “there are no heroes or villains in history”. It makes all sides equally to blame for everything. It’s moral relativism for the lazy. There’s no need for nuance, for taking more than skin deep look,  when all sides are bad. A slave owner might be wrong, but by pr’s position, so must an escaped slave. After all, the escaped slave broke the law by seeking freedom. And that means any punishment they suffer is just, because they and the slave owner have the exact same moral standing. 

That’s why the suffering of the Chinese is fair, by pr’s standing.The various Chinese dynasties across thousands of years of history “were no angels” and the Boxer’s didn’t tick the impossible boxes that would have elevated them to good. Does that justify Boxer violence against Christian converts? No, and I know I’ve made that argument in a lazy fashion. It was never acceptable, even it was the inevitable outcome.  But that doesn’t magically make the imperial powers interested in dividing China into their personal fiefs good. It doesn’t make them right, or give them some kind of moral standing. Their entrance was based on violence, and so was their continued operations. 

It’ why PR’s argument relies on the lazy handwave of “clash of empires” for the Boxer Rebellion. It conveniently ignores the Opium Wars, because then that may lay down some context for the extended destabilization that made the Boxers possible. that would be nuance. And we can’t have that. 

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6 years ago

A slave owner might be wrong, but by pr’s position, so must an escaped slave

That’s a straw manning of princessrolaxana’s point.  She’s not saying that — she’s saying that a violent popular uprising that slaughtered both foreigners and Chinese Christians in service of an autocratic and quite violent empire isn’t the hero of any story, even if the other side is *also* a collection of violent and oppressive empires.

But that doesn’t magically make the imperial powers interested in dividing China into their personal fiefs good

Well, then, it’s good that PR didn’t say that, then, isn’t it? (“There were certainly victims but no heroes”)

 

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6 years ago

@5 it’s super easy to support imperialism in spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace! take a look at the rooting for the empire TV tropes page.