Reviewer Praise for COUNT TO A TRILLION
I assume I am allowed to boast in moderation. Here is a rather kind review from the drolly-named Self Awareness:
With wit, charm and a wicked intelligence, John C. Wright’s ninth novel kicks off a series set in both the near and far future of Earth. Polymath Menelaus Montrose rises beyond his poor religious upbringing by becoming an astronaut, winging his way along with thousands of others to a far flung asteroid on a dual mission to gather a highly sought after energy source there and to study its mysterious Monolith. Menelaus injects intelligence-enhancing smart drugs as soon as the mining and science ship leaves orbit, giving him a terrifying intellect but also causing a nearly incurable madness. The other mission staffers lock him away in suspended animation, allowing the novel to take a great leap into its second act, set hundreds of years later, after the landing party from the mission has returned to Earth, becoming masters of all they see, providing free energy to a hungry and grateful humanity. Menelaus rebels, of course, and begins a physical, mental and perhaps spiritual journey to use his intelligence to better humankind.
This is a novel of huge ideas, super-intelligent beings, transcendent mathematics and a Texan who becomes a stubborn champion of humanity.
Wright rides a fine line between the well-trod SF trope of outsider individualist (think classic Robert A. Heinlein) and brilliant speculations on the nature of humanity, artificial intelligence and the potential for contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence. The pace is quick, the science and math are impressive and the big ideas are suitably mind-bending. This is science fiction at its best, and fans of the genre would do well to pay heed to this new master of the craft. –Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor
Discover: A heady balance between far-reaching mathematical and cosmological ideas and humane and witty fiction.
I will, however, warn the unwary reader not to take any reviewer’s comments, either of praise or dispraise, too seriously. I would not have said, for example, that my main character “overcomes” a “poor religious upbringing.” For another example, on the same page, Shelf Awareness calls a retelling of Mallory’s LE MORTE D’ARTHUR “A literature that teaches us about the Crusades and Christianity, the code of chivalry and the bloody brutality inherent in duels, jousts and sword fights” — this is about as accurate as remarking that Columbus was the first man on the moon. The Crusades were five hundred years after the withdrawal of the Roman Legions from Britain, which is the century traditionally assigned the figure of Arthur. And anyone learning about Christianity from Mallory will know as much as tales of Sinbad the Sailor or Aladdin and his wonderful Lamp teaches about Mohammedanism.
But let us not pick nits. To be reviewed at all is an honor, and a flattering review is a great honor.
The greatest honor of all is not merely to be flattered, but compared to writers greater than oneself. Paul D. Filippo of the Barnes and Noble Review has this article on ‘The Overlooked Sci Fi of 2011” at Salon, where he pays my work just such a sterling compliment:
The Future Is a Voyage Without End!
Lately, if we do not find ourselves living through the collapse of civilization in our science fiction novels, we are often just on the far side of such a sea change, inhabiting an “Ozymandias” landscape with the melancholy feeling of Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard.” This mode has noble roots in SF: George Stewart’s “Earth Abides;” Edgar Pangborn’s “Davy;” John Crowley’s “Engine Summer;” Robert Charles Wilson’s “Julian Comstock”. Tales of humble folks in reduced circumstances, oftentimes exhibiting strange adaptive customs, living in the ruins of our techno-Acropolises. Jump ahead far enough in time, and you end up in Jack Vance’s “The Dying Earth,” where our failed era is mere myth.
John Wright’s heady, slam-bang new series kickoff, “Count to a Trillion” (somewhat haplessly released in a season when the attention of readers is elsewhere and many best-of selections have already been solidified), starts out in such a milieu, before moving to far stranger places.
In the 2200s, the remnants of the fallen USA are ruled by the dominant powers of the Hispanosphere and the Indosphere. (The whole globe is a place of diminished expectations, still emerging from various plagues, wars, and Dark Ages.) Our hero, Menelaus Montrose, is a young Texas lad prone to dreaming about past and future glories. (He is particularly enamored with an ancient “Star Trek”-style show called “Asymptote,” whose catchphrase is “The Future Is a Voyage Without End!”) He grows up to be a lawyer specializing in out-of-court settlements: dueling to the death. But he’s rescued from this harsh career by a patron who recognizes his innate intelligence.
After training, Menelaus finds himself on mankind’s first new expedition to the stars. But something goes horribly wrong: he’s put into suspended animation and is awakened after 164 years, when his condition can finally be cured. But this farther-off future is still not up to Menelaus’s lofty dreams, and he sets out to do something about his disappointments, employing his mutant brain, Tex-Mex aggressiveness (cue the ring-tailed roarer antics of R. A. Lafferty), and his love for the beautiful Princess Rania, ruler of the galaxy — or at least mankind’s sorry portion thereof.
With his previous book having been the authorized sequel to an A. E. van Vogt series — “Null-A Continuum” — Wright is still flying high in the recomplicated space-opera fashion. This story is full of million-year-old indecipherable Monuments, ruthless hordes of cruel machines, and deadly intrigue among the merciless technocrats. But overall, Wright has toned down the surreal jargon and bizarre conceits this time around for a less-complex approach. He’s plainly bent on emulating such straight-ahead past masters as Edmond Hamilton and Jack Williamson, whose Golden Age sagas of Earthmen transported to the far future enchanted many a reader. Some Leigh Brackett-style planetary romance can be discerned here too. And Wright resonates beautifully with this tradition, modifying it skillfully for sophisticated twenty-first-century tastes.
But the book features one last layer: the meta-, or self-referential one. Menelaus Montrose is not a naive hero but rather what passes for an SF fan of his era. His first observations upon being revived are complaints about the lack of progress, including the semi-serious, “So no voluptuous green-skinned spacewomen in silvery space-bikinis?” He stands in for all those diehard fans who continue to believe in SF’s bright futures and limitless horizons, despite any short-term roadblocks, however high and seemingly insurmountable. This theme aligns Wright with some recent thoughtful work by William Barton.
“Count to a Trillion” is both a love letter and a call to arms. If you really believe the future is a voyage without end, consider this book the start to the countdown.
Friends, you could not get such kind reviews as this, not even by threatening reviewers with a army of flesh eating Harlan Ellison clones. Nor could I, because I do not own such an army. It is of course John Scalzi, glorious leader of the Science Fiction Writers of America, who controls the clone terror-army. Whether or not he from his dark throne in the SWFA Mansion in New Jersey commanded these reviews written, no one dares inquire. If he did, I am grateful.
Yes, yes, I know that many a young and ambitious writer dreams that he, too, could get good reviews if only he had an army, or even a battalion, of flesh eating terror clones. Ah, but please recall the sad fate of Paul Levinson, author of THE SILK CODE, who was last seen in his burning laboratory as the building toppled from its unsteady cliffside into the sea, mobbed by the uncontrollable creations of his life-vats, shouting, “Back! BACK! I made you! I am your master! AAaaarrgh!”
Fools! Only Richard Curtis can control Harlan Ellison! If you are going to grow terror-clones in your basement, make clones of RA Lafferty. They are just as outrageous as Ellisonoids, but much funnier.
And that is how to get good reviews.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
