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Rating:
Greg Egan is universally considered the most popular Australian science fiction writer in circulation.
Born in 1961, in Perth and with a degree in mathematics, the author won the prestigious Hugo Award with the novella 'Oceanic' and has received numerous accolades over the years from critics for his very particular works.
Greg Egan's science fiction is what we can define as 'hard' science fiction, which is increasingly gaining recognition in a field that seems at this moment, at all levels (even the most mainstream, I think of films like 'Interstellar' and 'The Martian'), to favor scientific training and therefore science over fantasy, and in any case, often surpass and go beyond even sociological and/or conceptual content as could occur in the sixties and seventies.
Greg Egan is a very imaginative science fiction writer, that is undeniable, and this becomes evident while reading his works, but at the same time, he boasts a particularly high level of scientific education, which itself becomes a constant in his works regarding the language he uses.
Concepts of biology, mathematics, and concrete physics become central and form elements of the storyline itself, giving his works a purpose that is also purely scientific before that of science fiction and entertainment.
The same happens with this very peculiar 2011 novel titled 'The Clockwork Rocket' recently proposed by Urania Mondadori.
Set on an imaginary planet with beings physically completely different from us due to their biological structure and consequently what could be their mentality and culture under certain aspects (even though some coinciding situations are intentionally crafted by the author to open a breach for reflection even in these aspects), as well as having a technology less advanced than ours, the novel tells the adventures of the protagonist, the physicist Yalda, and how her existence from childhood to the end intertwines inseparably with the fate of her planet.
Born of humble origins and raised in the countryside, Yalda is an exception in a social system where offspring are systematically generated in pairs (generally each couple produces two pairs, hence four children, each pair is in any case composed of a male and a female who will in turn give life to another two pairs and so on...) and where the role of women is, besides traditionally submissive to that of men, much more painful and particular due to their peculiar genetic and biological structure.
Their existence, in fact, that of all women, is marked from birth, as they literally dissolve (in practice: die) after mating with their 'co', simultaneously giving life to their own children who are subsequently raised by the fathers.
Since childhood, however, Yalda seems to have clear ideas and wants to pursue a different path from what her species has taken up to this moment. Granted permission by her father to leave work in the fields for study, Yalda will become both one of the brightest physicists on the planet and an independent woman reclaiming her autonomy from the social norms imposed by the structures of her planet.
All of this until her destiny changes radically and definitively.
The planet is constantly threatened by meteoroids, here termed 'stellanti', and only an ambitious plan devised by her former student Eusebio could ultimately save the entire species. But to complete the mission, Eusebio will need her and all her support, as well as her knowledge.
'The Clockwork Rocket' is an ambitious novel. Its ending can be considered as open as every expectation of the reader is nonetheless satisfied in the content presented throughout the narrative, leaving room for reflections and considerations of various types, specifically of a purely sociological nature, as well as reflections of a particular space-time nature, recalling some concepts that have recently been brought to the big screen by a film like 'Interstellar'.
The mathematical and physical content, recurring and even depicted graphically within the text, are objectively difficult to grasp and understand in a reading that is primarily dedicated to entertainment.
Whatever your preparation on the subject is, and despite the author's good faith in explanation, who reveals himself to be not only adequately prepared but also what we might consider a good teacher (thus practically coinciding with the protagonist Yalda), this technicality inevitably affects the fluency of reading the entire work because clearly, the majority of readers (including myself) cannot surely read and understand such arguments with particular ease, and it can often happen to have to literally 'retrace one’s steps' to fully grasp certain concepts. However, at the same time, they constitute an inseparable content from the text for what is the structure of the novel.
And so, for me, the score must necessarily take this determination into account: we are faced with an intelligent and daring work. Too much, perhaps? Possibly the excessive technicality ultimately becomes a sort of literary exercise, useless and self-serving? As I explained earlier, supporting this thesis is not exactly accurate in this specific case. But this work is not exactly an essay. Or is it not? Consequently, we rate it as it is presented to us: a science fiction work with a lot of science and a lot of fantasy, where both components are evidently pushed to the maximum.
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