VERACITY by Laura Bynum, a Review

Veracity by Laura Bynum

Pocket Books, 2009

376 pages, $25.00

Full disclosure:  My copy of Veracity was supplied at no charge by Pocket Books in exchange for the hope that I might decide to say something about it on my blog.

Veracity is the fourth or fifth book I’ve been sent by Pocket Books for review and the first that I’m actually writing up.  The others were “not my style” and both Pocket Books and I mutually agreed that it would probably be best if I just didn’t say anything.  (That’s not entirely true.  For complete thruthiness, check out the review here of Raising Atantis.)

I would much rather write a good review than a bad one.  If I have to write a bad one, I’d much rather write one for a science fiction piece, where at least I know I have some background, knowledge and experience.

Unfortunately, I’m not able to to write a bad review this time around, nor am I writing a good review of a science fiction novel, as the publisher has apparently decided to market Laura Bynum’s breakthrough debut as (yech) literature – even going so far as to invoke the dreaded Margaret Atwood name.

I can’t offer an honest comparison of Veracity to anything fictional written by Atwood;  before I started reading her lame attempts to distance herself from the genre (and or offer a definitive definition for SF that has eluded all and sundry since Hugo first uttered the word scientifiction) I was appalled at the asking price for her works in trade format and refused to spend that kind of money.  Now, of course the only way I’ll ever bother to read anything by Atwood is if it is provided for free, or if she should suddenly come to her senses and finally admit that her works bear at least a passing resemblance to that pulpy trash called SF.  (I’d also really appreciate it if she’d lay off the veiled sniping at Ursula in her reviews, but that’s probably more from authorial jealousy than anything else and I can’t expect miracles.  They’re the stuff of fantasy.)

With that screed off my shoulders I can now turn back to Bynum, a woman of no small talent who, according to the PR info, polished off her original story and worked it into novel form while being treated for breast cancer.

The story itself received a Rupert Hughes Prose Award at the 2006  Maui Writer’s Conference.

Veracity therefore comes to us with some credentials and an interesting tale behind the tale.

Hyped as being in the tradition of The Handmaid’s Tale (of which I am blissfully ignorant) and of 1984 (of which I am fully cognizant), that the work is entirely science fictional has already been established by Greg Bear (himself one of those rotty SF authors) who’s praise graces the cover: “…impressive novel of technology, control, and pseudo-morality gone mad…”  None other than Elizabeth Moon offers advance praise on the back cover.  (Then they throw in two other names, one of whom compares it to Fahrenheit 451 – a far better comparison than 1984, if only because Ray has the sense to own up to the SF label.)

I surely hope that Ms. Bynum does not fall into the trap of trying to distance herself from genre types – they’re already giving her cudos.  Perhaps she’ll be gracious and smart and accept whatever praise and accolades she receives regardless of their literary origins.  I’d surely hate to have to avoid her next offering.

Veracity treads a very fine line between literary descriptiveness and science fiction ideaness and, for the most part, does so successfully.

The story itself essentially tells the tale of an apparatchik of a quasi-theocracy that has taken over the United States in the not to distant future and who, for personal reasons, willingly joins the resistance and works to over throw that government.

The future imagined is strongly revealed in the first half of the novel (actually the first four fifths): the new government – the Confederation of the Willing – has used the opportunity and necessity of controlling a pandemic to seize power and the forced implantation of a novel thought control device to retain it.

The society envisaged is both quirky and violent and more than strange enough to have kept me page turning to find out what awfully bizarre thing was going to happen next.

Harper Adams, the protagonist, has abilities that border on the extra-sensory (thankfully never fully explained) that make her valuable to both the government and to the resistance.  A series of crises, lost friends and classmates, a divorce and her insider job working as a behind the scenes enforcer of government control eventually awaken her.  She willingly joins the resistance and becomes instrumental in their revolt.

Where the novel lost a little bit of its steam were precisely in those places where Ms. Bynum strayed from generalty into specifics – the computer control systems used by the Confederation, the police methods employed by the Blue Coats and, in particular, the military tactics used by the resistance on the day that war against the Confederation is declared.  (Precisely those places where, in my opinion, an experienced author of SF would have had millions of prior words to draw upon to help them over the humps.)

Indeed, the battle scenes at the very end left me fairly cold, confused and dissatisfied.  On the other hand, we’re talking a mere ten pages or so, a few chapters right towards the end and a first novel, so I’m certainly prepared to let that go in favor of everything that had gone before.

Harper is a fully realized, confused but determined individual.  Most of the other characters are pastiches of known types (Ezra – a cross between the hooker with a heart of gold and the drill seargeant everyone loves to hate, Lazarus – just about every role Morgan Freeman ever played except for the bad guys), but this doesn’t detract.  Instead they serve as the frame for Harper’s canvas.

The BIG IDEA in the novel is that, through various means, the Confederation of the Willing restricts the very words that its citizens can use.  Censorship as a means of control is a familiar trope.  Controlling the actual words you can say is a novel twist.  (Though of course my SF reader eye immediately sees the flaws that are never addressed:  couldn’t folks just use a form of disemvoweling to get around the censorship?  What about learning ASL?)

Such thoughts occur during the reading but are not evaluated until afterwards and, in this particular case they were deemed to be of little, if any impact on the enjoyment level.

My preliminary critical analysis of Veracity is that it is the Bush Administration’s close approach to a real world implementation of Orwell’s Newspeak that served, at least in part, as the genesis for the tale.  The overriding message is that when we allow others to do our thinking for us, we give up control of our lives (this thought is actually expressed in the novel, in almost those very words).  As prophetic warning, Veracity is thankfully a year or so late, at least in some quarters (though I suspect that the high tech propaganda methods employed by some media empires also informed this story; point Veracity at them and you’ll find some traction).

Interestingly enough, the novel that Veracity most reminds me of is Heinlein’s If This Goes On…, the tale of the revolt against the American Pope, Nehemiah Scudder.  The parallels are significant (Lyle/Harper, members of the resistance deeply implanted within the government, deep censorship, sex as a tool of control, giant transport vehicles employed in the battles (landcruisers/T-Units, etc., etc,), which isn’t a bad something to have your first novel compared to – even if Heinlein did handle the military tactics in a much more believable fashion.

Veracity will not be found in the SF section of your local bookstore (if you still have a local bookstore), but find it and read it you should.