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Meaney is regular Interzone contributor. Volume 1 of a new British space opera trilogy introduces Tom Corcoran (similar to Paul Atreides from Dune) and his cat Paradox.
Paradox is the first volume in John Meaney’s epic Nulapeiron Space Opera trilogy. Meaney’s first short story appeared in Interzone in 1992, alongside Greg Egan, amongst others. It was competent enough, but it needed later, better stories, such as the wonderful British Science Fiction Award short-listed ‘Sharp Tang’ to slowly bring Meaney to prominence. Then he seemed to fade away. Much of the last decade has been spent on one enormous trilogy. This year he finally finished off – after six years and fifteen hundred pages – his colossal Nulapeiron Sequence comprising Paradox, Context and Resolution. With two distinct story-lines running in tandem for almost the entire trilogy, the books are both prequels and sequels to Meaney’s first novel, To Hold Infinity, and include a 1994 short story, ‘Parallax Transform’, as well as sharing a fictional universe with a novella, ‘The Whisper of Disks.’ All three books are set on the subterranean caverns and tunnels of Nulapeiron, at the beginning of the 35th century. Paradox – the first volume – tells the story of Tom Corcoran, a young man growing up in the rigidly stratified society of the planet Nulapeiron. The society is quasi-feudal, with Lords and Ladies, their servitors and guards, as well as the Oracles, who, like the Bene Gesserit of Frank Herbert’s Dune, can see into the future. Tom Corcoran witnesses the execution of a fugitive Pilot, a member of an almost semi-mythical order. Unknown to the guards who killed her, she had passed Tom a small statuette the day before. That figurine replays in installments the story of the pilots more than twelve centuries earlier, in the strand that predates To Hold Infinity. Soon afterwards, a Lord takes Tom’s mother as his lover, and Tom’s father dies, as much from despair as from any physical cause. That the Lord was an Oracle and predicted Corcoran Seniors death fuels Tom’s anger, and he becomes driven by revenge. His eviction and homelessness further focuses his anger, and he becomes driven, gradually rising through society’s ranks. Before the novel is half-over, Tom has become elevated to the nobility as well, but in taking his revenge on the Oracle, suffers a mental collapse that leaves him literally at the bottom of society. The second half of Paradox is all about Tom’s recovery in time to abort a counter-revolution, and reunites him with the woman he has always adored. To be fair, Meaney does many things well. Corcoran is an effective lead in the Paul Atreides (from Dune) role, and he shows sincerity and heroism. If the reader likes their space opera big and fast and laced with a genuine whiff of the future, then they could do worse than give Paradox a try. Things seem to be finally coming together for Meaney’s career, with the completion of the Nulapeiron Sequence, the re-issue of To Hold Infinity by Pyr, and the new novel Bone Song published in March 2007. Not before time.
The copyright of the article Paradox by John Meaney in Space Opera is owned by Colin Harvey. Permission to republish Paradox by John Meaney in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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