The Wellstone by Wil McCarthy

I group of teenage boys at summer camp, feeling that their parents are never going to treat them like adults and are always going to hold them down make a break for it. They escape the camp, traveling quite a long way. Some of the boys fight with one another; others make up often obscene songs they all sing to pass the time. They have interesting adventures and meet some interesting characters. Sounds like a boys adventure book? Well, in this case, summer camp is on a small artificial planetoid in the Kuiper belt. The kids feel put down because they see that their immortal parents will never clear out of the way. They escape in a spaceship made from a log cabin and powered by a solar sail. Along the way, they encounter a group of stowaways on a huge barge harvesting material to create compressed matter. And, oh yes, the leader of the group is the son of the king and queen of the solar system.

There is a lot to like in Wil McCarthy’s rich and imaginative novel The Wellstone, a sequel of sorts to his Collapsium. In the earlier novel, Bruno de Towaji, favorite and sometime lover of the Queen, had saved the solar system. This book is set several hundred years later, when the heir, Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui – sometimes brilliant, often bratty or obnoxious – has been sent to summer camp the Kuiper belt. There, he first leads an escape back to Earth – to Denver, one of earth’s cities that has a large population of children – to lead a riot. They are caught, but Bruno leads another escape, this time in a cobbled together space ship.

This is a novel filled with marvelous gadgets. “Faxes” act like both replicators and transporters. They can disassemble people, send the information anywhere at the speed of light, and reassemble them. They can repair what is wrong (which is why people are now immortal) and store backups. They can even make extra copies and then reassemble them and integrate their experiences of the copies so that the person has the memories and experiences of several versions of him/herself. I thought the latter was stretching it a bit, carrying the magic a bit too far, but it’s all great fun. Wellstone is the artificial material from which the fax gates can make other things. It is programmable matter, and thus matter programmers can turn it into other substances. Even smart teenagers – including several in our crew of camp escapees – can do so.

Most of the novel follows the small crew of boys – and one girl who tagged along with them as the travel from the Kuiper belt, toward a neutronium barge, which presumably will have fax gates back to earth. While there is some focus on the science fictional elements here, for much of the trip the focus is more on the dynamics of the situation, the hierarchies that develop, and how the various kids cope.

The main character – or at least the focal point character, and the one we most sympathize with – is Conrad Mursk. Conrad is a smart boy – at least in the subjects he likes – who has been sent to summer camp, like most of the other boys, for disciplinary reasons. While at times friends with Bascal, the boy prince, he, more than anyone, is both the voice of reason and the conscience of the crew (even though they – particularly Bascal – ignore him when they don’t like what he has to say). He is more staid, more restrained than the others, and more mature. He is also more likeable.

Bascal, on the other hand, while at times charming, is more often annoying than note. Convinced of the importance of his mission – to act as an example to help free the young people of the solar system – and of his right to rule, he is often callous and reckless. He uses people, often giving important positions to people simply for backing him (including the thuggish Ho, who acts as his enforcer for much of the novel). He’s believable in most ways, but not likeable.

While much of the book is quite good, there are aspects of it that I couldn’t believe or didn’t like. The biggest is something that he continues from Collapsium: the assertion that people really want a monarchy, that we are hard-wired to be happier when we have someone at the top taking responsibility. This is the case of the king and queen, and it is the case with Bascal. He at one point lectures Conrad on this topic, pointing out that he is likely to be right and be accepted because he was raised to be the eventual ruler. And in the end, everyone (including people who should not) except Conrad view him that way. But I don’t buy it. Some people perhaps want to live in a monarchy, but frankly history doesn’t back the sweeping generalization McCarthy makes for the book. Perhaps I’m particularly sensitive to this point because the other book I’m now reading is a long biography of Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson (and Adams, Madison, Franklin, etc.) certainly did not have some hereditary need for a monarch.

In a few places in the novel, he says that most people no longer exercise or even walk around. Several characters express astonishment that anyone would ever want to. Why bother when you can go through a fax and it can restore your body in tip-top shape? Again, I don’t buy this for most people. Sure, some people really don’t like to walk. But many people – me included – walk not only to try to keep somewhat fit but because we enjoy the activity. The good brisk walk is invigorating; it feels good. I can’t imagine people would give up such activities just because they no longer needed to do so to keep their bodies fit.

Beyond this, the novel’s biggest flaw is that McCarthy decided to use the first and last chapter as a framing story, set well in the future of the novel. The indication is that the future, in the aftermath of the novel’s true conclusion a chapter earlier, is not going to be what we might expect or hope. Clearly, he’s setting up another novel to explore this. But the frame isn’t needed for this, since what should have been the final chapter set up a sequel on its own. The frame is both a bit confusing as your read it, and is something you almost forget as you read the novel proper. It would have been a better novel without it.

Despite these misgivings, this was an enjoyable book. McCarthy’s future and the technology in it are fascinating, and the majority of the novel is well done. I note that there is a sequel, which I’ll have to look for.