Michael Swanwick
Stations of the Tide

A novel that unfolds simultaneously on three tracks, positioning itself primarily as a genre novel (science fiction) and then in its three different branches as a sort of very, very particular essay on generational conflict; a work with social and geopolitical content, which can also be considered as reflections on the contemporary world context; an adventure novel and at the same time a kind of coming-of-age story where a man in search of another man discovers instead that he is searching for himself.

Above all, however, the captivating settings of the planet where the events take place, Miranda, dominate, along with its superstitions and its culture, which have replaced technology with what we can variably define as esotericism, occultism, and ultimately genuine magic in the most authentic sense and definition of the genre.

But then, what is magic really? I mean, I'm not so much referring to the magician as I am to those who witness or 'undergo' the magical act either as accomplice or passive participants. Magic is something we cannot and do not manage to comprehend. In this sense, how can you differentiate magic from what we define as a trick? Somehow the two coincide, and so it's almost inevitable that where a scientific or technological culture is lacking, other kinds of answers are sought, and where believing (in magic) becomes like believing that airplanes can fly. Because we know they can, even if, ultimately, none of us (except those who obviously have the necessary knowledge and appropriate training) knows how to construct and/or fly an airplane. Maybe they don't even know the basic principles of physics that constitute the foundations of flight.

On Miranda, the planet at the center of the novel's stories, it's gone like this: after a certain misuse of technology, which inevitably led to violent and disastrous consequences for the planet itself, this (technology) has been completely and permanently banned for its inhabitants. More than that: the prohibition against its use is strict for anyone setting foot on the planet, under any title.

This has inevitably resulted in difficult situations for the planet, where most people (if not all) live in poverty and a state of indigence and cultural degradation. Almost as if they've regressed to a 'wild' state like that of a farm left on its own. From another point of view, however, it's precisely the absence of any technology, combined with survival instinct and the myths, beliefs, and customs of what are the 'ghosts' of the population that once originally inhabited the planet, that promotes the flourishing of a different culture that we might call archaic and at the same time arcane.

Miranda is a world where magic reigns and where its power surpasses every political and social organization and the judicial and administrative power both internally and from external planets. Except, of course, for the strict prohibition of accessing technology. Which would otherwise negate magic itself and its absolute value and power because it is evident that the two things, magical art and science and technology, cannot coexist and somehow equitably divide the holding of power.

We're talking about the same technology that could, nonetheless, save the planet from a kind of universal flood (against which not even magic can do anything) which periodically afflicts its population, redefining each time the destiny of the entire planet. The same technology that is believed to have somehow fallen into the hands of one of the planet's most powerful and mysterious magicians. His name is Gregorian, and his magic is as powerful as his history is mysterious, which says he was born through a particular technological process intended to make him both the son and clone of a wealthy, important, and unknown man from another planet. This was before Gregorian's mother herself, after giving birth, decided not to 'return' the son and raise him as a son of Miranda. Without imagining even herself that one day that boy would become powerful enough to hold the fate of the entire planet in his hands.

On his trail, both to recover the undefined and illegal technology that would prevent the inevitable and to identify and somehow stop or limit the power and magic of Gregorian, an important official is sent, whom we will simply know as 'the bureaucrat.'

Here I must make a small personal parenthesis. After all, this clarification is important; there's no sense in revealing the rest of the story which, as is easy to guess, will see the bureaucrat move with great difficulty through the reality of Miranda, where he will inevitably come into contact with characters and forces that at first will struggle to understand, but which will then appear to him in some natural manner (but perhaps that's the way it is with superstition and magic, as if they were something innate and close to instinct; unlike science and technology, which obviously have more to do with the realm of the intellect) but also with that great determination of someone naturally inclined to complete their task.

This doesn't mean, as we will see, that he is entirely immune to the allure of Miranda and its magic.

There are important considerations to be made in this regard. I mean, why does the author choose a 'bureaucrat'? If you think about it, we have a conception of the term 'bureaucracy' that has universally acquired a negative connotation, because we associate it not with a tangible organizational system but instead with procedural slowness and alternatively as laziness or as a manifestation of institutional forces that are instrumental to those in power, who use it as a tool to 'delay us' or ensnare us. But at the same time, if we think of a 'bureaucrat,' take notice, we often think of a naive person: we don't consider them as someone who holds power nor as someone who actually exercises it, but as someone who believes, justified by a complex and architectural legislative apparatus, that they're doing things the right way. Just as they should be done.

And then the bureaucrat is a romantic and a dreamer but at the same time also a fool and a nitwit. A good but naive person who's not very practical.

Returning to what I was telling you wanted to be a personal note, you should know that during my life I have loved a woman very much; this for certain very complicated reasons and it’s not worth recounting here, happened twice. She was, is a kind of artist, let’s say, and to tease me and at the same time with that affectionate complicity that can typically be found in a couple (I imagine), she used to say that I was a bureaucrat. The fact is, you see, aside from the joke, she actually understood everything about me (and ultimately that’s also why things ended between her and me, probably), because I am indeed methodical in everything I do. In my insecurity, I cling to what are true and proper procedures that maybe I constructed myself and in which I place a kind of 'devotion' more than faith, but which is still unshakable. In any case, I have a strong predisposition to what we would define as 'duty.'

So perhaps in some way, I saw myself in this character who is sent to an unknown world and at the same time I thought about what happens to Alberto Sordi and his 'accountant' (Bernardo Blier) in that great masterpiece 'Will Our Heroes Be Able to Find Their Friend Who Has Mysteriously Disappeared in Africa?' by Ettore Scola (1968) and where the search in the African continent for Oreste Sabatini (Nino Manfredi), brother-in-law of the protagonist, becomes something completely different and an adventurous journey, and at its end an opportunity for regret that will appear to us as unforgivable. But we must not digress.

'Stations of the Tide' was published by Michael Swanwick in 1991. In Italy, it was published with the title 'Stazioni delle maree' and this here 'Tomorrow the World Will Change.' The novel won the Hugo Award and was recently re-proposed by Urania among the 'masterpieces.' And it probably is a masterpiece indeed, because beyond the content, we're faced with a talented and ingenious author who manages to handle an incredible amount of topics and do so without requiring too much descriptive space and unfolding step by step all the cards in conjunction with the growth on the different planes of the various characters.

Nonetheless, it remains a somewhat difficult book and those who are not particularly familiar with the genre nor have any particular passion for certain 'shades' might find it even unreadable. Swanwick, who comes from cyberpunk, uses a language that at times can appear cumbersome, and in a mixture of ghosts from the past and magic and superstitions and technology, as well as the exercise of the law, we risk, just like the protagonist of our adventures (but isn’t it the same for all the characters in play….) of getting lost or temporarily deviating from the main path, only to find ourselves at the end and make our final and decisive choices and considerations.

We live in a world where just in recent days a small country, dominated by what could just as well be for all we know a kind of mentally unstable individual, launched missiles for the sole provocative purpose against the usual enemy, the United States of America. Governed by a madman like Trump who did not hesitate to respond with an iron fist.

Sanctions for North Korea by international institutions are usually announced. But sanction policies themselves without diplomacy, the ‘magical’ art of words and dialogue, are something that leads to the search for different survival solutions to what is taken away or denied access to. I would love to argue the point at length, but I am sure we would hardly arrive at a compromise that could be in some way universal. Can isolation be an answer to such behaviors? Or instead, could a more 'inclusive' behavior turn out paradoxically to be more profitable, and would such behavior mean indeed having to yield to pressures and threats and violence? I intentionally leave you in doubt, thus allowing each one to have their own opinion on the matter and perhaps share it with others.

The main character of the story still deserves some consideration, as such, he finds himself walking like a tightrope walker on that borderline between science and technology and magic and superstitions.

Do you remember Massimo Troisi in 'Ricomincio da tre'? In his innocence and deep insecurity, Gaetano (Massimo Troisi, the protagonist of the film) tries to move objects with the force of thought. Thinking about it today, even that scene, which seems almost disconnected from the whole of the film, a sort of sketch inserted where it shouldn’t belong, appears instead fundamental and another manifestation of the character’s so cumbersome and complex (let's say ‘bureaucratic’) personality. Lello (Lello Arena) at one point asks him, ‘But do you think, if this power existed, wouldn’t they have given it to those from the North?’ Gaetano answers, ‘Okay, but at this point, they would have given us the factories. We would always gain something!’

Irony aside. When I was little, my father worked on numerical control machines at Alenia - Aeritalia building airliners: here what is superstition and cabal, I hope Jodorowsky won’t mind who firmly believes in psychomagic and has written and developed works of incredible intelligence, has little to do with it. For me, nothing could be more incredible than having a dad who made airplanes fly. Every time I look up at the sky and see one flying, I don’t think of technology, the development of means of transportation, and the world becoming ever smaller, but I think of my father and that I would like, still would want to be like him. And what is this if not at the same time technology and science and true magic?