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Catherine Asaro's The Quantum Rose is one of her Skolian Empire novels, which, like The Last Hawk appeared in Analog magazine, and is a leading examplar of Romantic SF.
Catherine Asaro is unusual amongst Science Fiction writers, particularly those practitioners of ‘Hard SF,’ whereby scientific laws are rigorously adhered to -- and wherever possible cited to the readers -- in also being a fully-fledged writer of what are accepted as romances. She made her debut in 1993, and first came to wider prominence in 1998, when her novella ‘Aurora in Four Voices’ and her novel The Last Hawk were both finalists for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Further nominations followed for her novella ‘A Roll of the Dice,’ (Analog, July August 2000), before winning the 2001 Nebula Award for The Quantum Rose. The background to The Quantum Rose and to the many other novels in the Skolian Empire series is that humans were abducted from Earth around 4000BC, and that when humans from Earth left our solar system, they found the stars already inhabited by the descendants of those initial émigrés. Kamoj Argali is the governor of an impoverished province on the agrarian colony world of Balumil, betrothed to the brutal governor of another – much more powerful -- province. The inhabitants of Balumil are genetically engineered to be perfect slaves, a fact which only becomes clear to Kamoj after an alien visitor inadvertently buys her hand in marriage by outbidding her fiancée. The disruption this causes brings the two provinces to the point of war, but by this time Kamoj has fallen head over heels with the stranger, and is only the start of an adventure that will take her to his home world and a collision course with the forces of Earth, now occupying his planet. The Quantum Rose betrays its secondary demographic – the romance readers – with the lush language, at times verging on parody and the fact that as is the custom, the men are all handsome (even – or rather especially- the villains), the women all beautiful, and thr love scenes sensuous. While earlier Analog writers such as Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson would use very masculine images in a romantic way, particularly in recounting mythic battles amongst the stars, Asaro’s romance is of a softer, more feminine variety, and at times used deliberately to subvert the masculine traditions of hard SF. .This extends from the use of language – the very title of The Quantum Rose is one huge pun – to the pacifism inherent in the final confrontation outside the spaceport on Lyshriol. It’s tempting, but ultimately meaningless to claim that a male writer would have turned this into an actual battle, but there is definitely an element of nurturing in the way that the Kamoj and Vyrl’s people win by using civil disobedience as their weapon. The Quantum Rose is a clever, powerful, and above all moving novel that richly deserved its Nebula, and warrants repeated re-reading.
The copyright of the article The Quantum Rose in Modern American Fiction is owned by Colin Harvey. Permission to republish The Quantum Rose in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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