BKALNYRS.RVW   20000130

"The Alien Years", Robert Silverberg, 1998, 0-06-105111-X
%A   Robert Silverberg
%C   10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY  10022-5299
%D   1998
%G   0-06-105111-X
%I   HarperCollins/Basic Books
%O   212-207-7000 fax: 212-207-7433 information@harpercollins.com
%P   488 p.
%T   "The Alien Years"

Silverberg is an experienced novelist.  He has some fairly complex
characterization in this book, although the attempt to make this a
multigenerational work strains the personae a bit.  And, despite an
early disparaging of H. G. Wells' cop out in "War of the Worlds,"
Silverberg's deus recidivus machina is every bit as forced.

The titular aliens come among us with a highly advanced technology,
about which little is said.  Even though almost nothing can be
inferred from the information that is given, there are still a number
of contradictions in the book.

Some of the contradictions seem to be simple carelessness.  One
section of the book, having given numbers for the population of a
specific area, thereafter asserts a number of vehicles that means
there are more cars running around than there are people to drive
them.  Having said that the world's population has been cut in half
(with minor local variations) another section has the number down to
about one percent.  In regard to the population drop, the book
outlines a collapse of government, communications, commerce, and
transport (which even the book finds strangely extreme), and yet only
a relative handful of people die in the kind of disruption that an
event like that would create.  Technology and production plummets,
with car parts and even cloth becoming impossible to obtain, and yet
intermittent times in the book find advanced weaponry, advanced
computers, and advanced car models suddenly appearing.

Let us start with some fairly basic technical problems.  The alien
technology is said to be able to stop electrical devices, including
generators, batteries, and even simple light bulbs, from working.  In
regard to our own technology, this interference with electrical
circuitry is said to stop any kind of transport.  Diesel engines, as
only one example, have electrical systems but do not require
electricity to run: the ignition part of the diesel cycle relies on
compressed air, and not an electric spark.  However, the aliens are
also able to be selective about this electrical impediment.  Modems
are specifically said to be forbidden, while telephones still work. 
(Mind you, later in the book everyone seems to be communicating via
email, so this is yet another careless contradiction.)  Since almost
all telephone switches are digital, this means that codecs
(coder/decoders) work while modems don't.  A. C. Clarke and his
comments about a sufficiently advanced technology to the contrary,
this kind of "magic" still has to obey the laws of logic.  The kind of
differentiation required here strains the limits of the ability to
determine intent in technical devices, which the work of Fred Cohen
indicates is not reliably possible.

Finally, we have a cracker breaking into the aliens' computer system. 
Given the ability to control electricity remotely for an entire
planet, we have to figure that these guys know enough about TEMPEST
technology to shield their computers from transmitting through the
sewer pipes.  Our lone cracker is also able to succeed where thousands
of others, working in concert, with access to more technology, and
knowing that it is possible, fail to follow in more than fifty years
of trying.

But that is probably to be expected.  The computer technology in this
book is Tekwars technology, Lawnmower Man technology, Sneakers
technology: all graphics, flashes, and feeling.  No function.  The
description of being able to "see" over a serial link, "feel" unknown
systems at a distance, and "get behind" access controls that guard the
only connection demonstrate a rather wilful ignorance of the realities
and necessities of computer and communications technology, regardless
of who builds it.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 2000   BKALNYRS.RVW   20000130