davidkm

We lost Bruce a few days ago. Folks who knew him better than I have written about him elsewhere. I wrote this review of his second novel quite a few years ago.

Boston, Bruce, 2007, The Guardener's Tale, Sam's Dot publishing, cover by Jan Lillehei, trade paperback, ISBN 1-933556-78-1 and 978-1-933556-78-9, 273 p., $19.95, signed and numbered edition of 200 copies.

Bruce Boston's second novel is a dystopia á la 1984. That's the comparison the advertising copy makes at the Genre Mall. Of course 1984, like many dystopian novels, was told from the viewpoint of one of the victims, whereas Boston has tackled the same problem from the point of view of an enforcer. The book has the form of a detailed report of how one citizen, Richard Thorne, strayed from the path of righteousness. He lives a good life but is dissatisfied, and begins to do the sorts of things that just are not done. He visits squatters in unreconstructed slums, has sex with illegal prostitutes, and reads banned books. Soon he is infected with the ideas of rebellion.

He is observed by Sol Thatcher, Guardener. The Guardeners protect society by gardening the populace and their interactions. The story, in part, is the tale of Thorne's descent into what remains of the underworld in a tightly controlled high-tech society, but one that has not yet exerted its hegemony over the entire populated world. Behind and interwoven with Thorne's story is that of the Guardener who observes and ultimately has the job of apprehending him and his shady associates. The form of the book resembles that of the society it describes. Just as the society consists of two linked elements, the tightly controlled dominant society and the undocumented world on its fringes, the book consists of two interwoven parts: the story of Richard Thorne's disintegration wrapped in the story of the watcher who became involved.

We are meant to be sympathetic with the outlaws. They live in what's left of our society, a society in which one can consort with anyone, read any book, and think any thought. At the same time, their existence is squalid and they aren't going anywhere. They are still thinking about fighting a war that they have already lost. The Guardener has the job of protecting society by making sure its members conform to established norms. Although personal freedoms are limited, Thatcher's world is safe and the citizens are healthy and well taken care of. But this is not just the story of the destruction of the old world by the new. It is the story of their mutual interaction, and when all is said and done we may become sympathetic with the Guardener too.

The book can be seen as social commentary, but this is not its strength. The comparison between freedom and autocracy is far from new. The gardened world, especially the sanitized picture presented in the novel, is more literary construct than representation of anything that could actually be created by humans anyway. The Guardener's Tale is a story of people, people who live beside each other but not with each other, despite the complexity and intensity of their interactions. In this way The Guardener's Tale is much stronger than Boston's earlier novel, "Stained Glass Rain." Boston has been working on his craft during the many years since publication of that book, and Sam's Dot got lucky when he submitted The Guardener's Tale to them.

The Guardener's Tale is a Prometheus Award nominee and is on the Stoker preliminary ballot.

This is the first I have seen of Sam's Dot's ventures into trade paperback publishing, although it's not the only trade paperback they have produced. It looks nice, and I hope they do more substantial books like this one in the future.