mataglap -- an Indonesian word meaning "dark eye" or, probably, "dilated eye." It is an indication that someone is about to go berserk and start killing people at random. Used in Walter Jon Williams' novel Aristoi as the name of a berserk form of nanotechnology that devoured the planet.

You can e-mail Mataglap SF at mataglap@yahoo.com

 
(Analog, October 2009)


Flynn is an engaging writer who always comes up with original concepts for stories, with real characters and unique settings, and it seems each new story is completely different from all the others, no small accomplishment.  This novella has a lot going for it and is well worth reading, but it suffers a bit from an identity crisis.

The opening is somewhat reminiscent of Spider Robinson's Callahan stories, a bunch of characters hanging around an Irish bar in the middle of the afternoon, wrestling with weighty matters like who sang the definitive version of "Mr. Sandman".  In walks one patron's niece, Jeanne, a nervous wreck with a story to tell that no one will believe outside of an Irish bar.  So far so good.  Jeanne is an experienced climber and also a scientist, and her story deals with the search for definitive proof of abiogenesis, that life on earth sprang from something that was not alive.  There are a few pages of dialog with the other patrons, hashing out these concepts before she launches into her tale, which takes up most of the rest of the story.

Jeanne signs on with a group of four young science-types, led by Luke, who's obviously a genius but knows nothing about climbing and isn't very good with people.  She's brought on board more for her experiencing in navigating caves, which is where they're all headed, looking for lifeforms that can only live in the extreme conditions of deep underground, mirroring the conditions of early Earth history.  So now we're into a Jules Verne adventure, albeit with five distinct characters who Flynn embues with individual personalities and varying levels of interpersonal communications.

After much descending and exploring they start coming upon human remains in areas that they had thought people had never been, and it doesn't appear that they died of natural causes.  The "extremophiles" they've been seeking take on the form of weird silicon-based life that, based on their theories, bridges the gap between primoridal soup and carbon-based life as we know it.  But before they can congratulate themselves things get nasty in a hurry, and the last few pages veer into horror movie territory, with a dose of H.P. Lovecraft and a requisite change in the explorers worldview as they realize not only what's been living on planet Earth longer than us, but what's really going on with plate tectonics.

So when it's all over there's a lot to like about this story, including that t's a bit on the short side for a novella, but I wonder if expanding it a little would have helped give these different narrative sections their proper proportions.  Even with that I think the Irish bar seems a little out of place. It's interesting that Flynn chooses to tell it this way, as a story within a story, since I'm not really sure what that accomplishes (the bar patrons don't decide at the end to form a posse and go back to the cave, for instance).  So it comes out feeling like padding instead, a little too much exposition as dialog, among characters who really shouldn't be that interested in the science behind the project.  But still a strong effort that engages the reader from the beginning and gives a modern vision of the old sf trope that there's more going on beneath the Earth's surface than we're willing to admit.
posted by Mark at 11:06 PM