[wildly off-topic] The Next Continent (Issui Ogawa): short, non-spoilery

This is an SF book I picked up on the basis of three random paragraphs and also
because I once promised the editor of the Haikasoru line (which translatates
and publishes Japanese F&SF) I'd check out Haikasoru's books. It occurs to
me space.policy readers might enjoy it despite it being fiction.

The three test paragraphs:

Page 53:

But there was another factor, more deep-rooted and fundamental, blocking
the road to space; the lack of an objective.

[canned history of space exploration, from its ICBM roots to focus on
commercial uses to science budget cuts snipped]

Clearly, the problem was a lack of a fundamental justification for
space exploration. The barrier was the fact that humans did not truly
need to leave their planet. If funds spent on space programs were
channeled to social welfare, education, promotion of international
peace, and environmental preservation, the world would be that much
better for everyone. It was, without a doubt, a valid position.

The proexploration faction struck back with facts of their own.
If making our current habitat more comfortable removed the need to go
elsewhere, then why did humanity spread across the planet in the first
place? Since it had left the forests of Africa two million years ago,
the species had constantly been on the move. The Arabs voyaged with
their dhows along the coast of Africa to India. The Mongols subjugated
Asia. The nations of Europe vied to send ships across the seven seas.
The Japanese attempted to expand into Asia as a whole. And all despite
having a place to call home. For most of its existence, Homo sapiens
had been a species moving ever outward.

But there was a huge hole in this argument. It explained the motivation
of those who wanted to keep moving, but it did not justify demanding
help from those who preferred to stay home. Each side was talking past
the other. The debate always seemed to end in pointless recrimination.


My second test was pages 109-110, involving a discussion with a commercial
rocket company about the cost of putting materials to build a base on
the Moon.

Reika looked at him with a hint of nervousness. "Is getting to the
moon harder than launching satellites?"

"Hard? Do you know how far away that is?"

"It varies between 356,000 and 406,000 kilometers," she answered
brightly. "That's about a thousand times farther than low earth orbit. But
there's no gravity in space, right? Once you're outside the atmosphere,
we thought the distance wouldn't matter much."

[snarktalics] Right. You dug out your high school astronomy textbook and
brushed up for half an hour. And that's about all you know. [/snarktalics]

There's then a one page discussion about orbital mechanics in the real
world and the implication this has for mass ratios and how this means
it will cost as much as has been budgeted for the entire moonbase project
just to deliver the materials to the moon, given conventional rocket
technology of 2025, which is not much better than 2010's (or 2003's,
when this was written).

This is all fun but what caught my eye to begin with was page 35:

As Sohya gazed out on the sparkling waters, he was struck by how bright
the future seemed. Yes, life was good.

Of course by this point he doesn't know he will be sent in the company
of a 13-year-old girl to a Chinese moon base that is undermanned and
extremely dangerous in a Mir-in-1997 sort of way.

And the actual review:

he Next Continent
Issui Ogawa (Trans. Jim Hubbert)
Haikasoru/VIZ Media LLC
416 pages
$16.99/$23.00/9.99 UK
ISBN 9781421534411
May 2010
Science Fiction

This novel depicts the construction by a trio of companies of a small
base on the Moon over the course of 12 years (2025 - 2037). Although the
man who approaches Gotoba Engineering about the project is Sennosuke
Toenji, the chairman of Eden Leisure Entertainment, it quickly becomes
clear the project is actually the brain-child of Tae Toenji, Sennosuke's
13-year-old granddaughter. The primary viewpoint character is engineer
Aomine Sohya who gets drafted very early on seemingly because he is both
talented and much more expendable than his boss.

Although previous attempts to tap into the space tourism market have
failed, Tae believes she has the killer ap; a prestigious wedding chapel
to be built at one of the poles of the moon, for people who have more
money than sense [1]. Much than sense; the price tossed off early on is
200 million yen per person [2]. This price is unavoidable; even with new
technology, the cost to build the base will be well over a trillion yen.

Enthusiasm for the project within the companies varies from Gotoba's glee
and Tae's determination to auditor Reika Hozume's pain whenever the massive
costs of the project are mentioned [3] and what appears to be terror on
Sohya's part when he learns he is going to visit the Chinese base on the
moon.

I think I will look at this from two angles. Wait, three:

From a world-building point of view, Ogawa takes what is a very unfashionable
approach and imagines a 2025 that is in many respects better than 2010
(or 2003, when the book was published; in many ways this should be looked
at as an alternate history with a branch point around 2003). Population
growth is declining (no surprise for a Japanese person to be aware of that),
military conflicts are declining, ecological problems are being addressed
and in general while nations and companies can still be rivals, there has
been an outbreak of increasing reasonableness on the world stage but
without some grand crisis to force this.

Oil is running out; the effect of this is that fuel prices are slowly
increasing and people are taking steps to manage this additional expense.

I am afraid that once or twice the Americans come off as perhaps not quite
as cooperative as they could be and that apparently GWB's adventures
in Asia developed not necessarily to the USA's advantage. That said, the
US is still a powerhouse, the source of many useful things and a valuably
ally when they see being one as in their best interests (and also, nations
are not monoliths; America has more than one conflicting agenda, as for
that matter does China).

I did get the impression that Ogawa may have some odd ideas about
Christianity; for one thing, that word seems to be mean Roman Catholic.
Fans of religious themes in SF may be interested in the case for Shinto
being the best faith for people going into space.

I am sure if I assert I don't recall the last SF recent book I read set
in 2025 where 2025 was better than the year the book came out, people
will flock to remind me of all the examples I am forgetting and yet it
seems to me that this is one of the most up-beat SF books I have read
in the last decade. Although there are setbacks and tragic deaths,
Sohya's comment

As Sohya gazed out on the sparkling waters, he was struck by how bright the future seemed. Yes, life was good.

does accurately convey the tone of the book.

From a technical point of view, this is one of the better Let's Go to
Space novels in the last few decades. When I first mentioned it, I
compared it to Fountains of Paradise, one of the last Clarke novels to
very nearly have a plot and I'd stand by that. There are any number of
common misapprehensions in the space-fan crowd; Ogawa brings many of
these foolish beliefs up only to point out why and how they are wrong.
Ogawa gives every indication of being a hard SF author who can actually
calculate mass ratios and orbital periods and who actually bothers to
do so.

It is true lunar helium three gets mentioned but not by anyone working
on the Sixth Continent. Also, it's mentioned in the context of the
glorious market that will exist after commercial fusion is developed,
a development that is a generation or two off.

This is the strongest aspect of the book. Happily for me, it's an aspect
I value highly.

The story part of the novel covers twelve years in 416 pages (ten days
per page). It is necessarily somewhat episodic. Unlike The Man Who Sold
the Moon while the dreamer behind the project is a major character, much
of the focus is on the people who have to turn a young woman's dream
into reality and what this effort entails. The advantage of this is that
Ogawa gets to go into the technical details rather than focusing on
boardroom dominance rituals.

I did quibble a bit over a plot development near the end of the book but
it is foreshadowed early on and I've seen similar developments in other
thrilling tales of space development. There must be some logic to its
inclusion that I cannot see but which authors can.

To be honest, I think I was supposed to find Tae more adorable than I
did and at one point I may have muttered "but surely therapy would have
been cheaper" but I should point out she has a moment of clarity when
she realizes the real-world implications for lesser people of her little
project.

I was a bit worried when Tae announced that Sohya was her boyfriend,
Tae being 13 and Sohya considerably older at the time, but the author
then added

That was the real beginning of their relationship. Still, Tae was
mature enough for her age not to fall into a girlish infatuation, and
Soyha was not naive enough to lose his head over a girl a dozen years
his junior.

You can imagine my relief.

The story was competent [4]; the characters can carry the story they are
called to carry and there weren't any WSB-killing moments. The relationships
are perhaps a bit conventional but they are not really the focus of the
story despite being its motive force.

This aspect of the book was much stronger than one would expect in
Anglospheric hard SF, from a Sargent, a Clement or a Clarke.

1: It's apparently significant that Tae comes from Nagoya, which is
seemingly notorious for the lavish weddings its people favour.

2: The author fits in a conversion for Americans and those familiar with
US currency but not Japanese: 80 yen = 1 dollar.

3: It's probably for the best that Reika is not within earshot when Tae
admits to Sohya that Reika was only included in the project because her
presence would help to create the plausible illusion that Sixth Continent,
as Tae calls the project, was intended to make a profit.

4: I need a stronger word for competent. For me, competent is praise.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)

On 10/9/2010 12:35 PM, James Nicoll wrote:
This is an SF book I picked up on the basis of three random paragraphs and also
because I once promised the editor of the Haikasoru line (which translatates
and publishes Japanese F&SF) I'd check out Haikasoru's books. It occurs to
me space.policy readers might enjoy it despite it being fiction.

The three test paragraphs:

I always thought the driving need to explore space was to be ready to
battle The Comet Empire when those *******s showed up. :-D

Pat