Double Shadow

Originally published in 1978, A Double Shadow is a challenging science fiction novel set on a Terra-formed Mars 1,300 years in the future. The title refers to the strange double shadows cast by the sun, and by Phobos, which has been kindled into a new star by the cosmic engineers. While Turner sets his novel in territory that has been notably explored by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ray Bradbury, his planet is wholly original. The transformed Mars has a breathable atmosphere and comfortable climate, a lush, paradisical setting, different from the dry, desiccated worlds of Burroughs and Bradbury. In Turner's future, scientists have created the ultimate computer, the Vision, which is synonymous with God. While this ultimate computer gives human beings tremendous powers, it effectively renders human aspiration obsolete and achievement unnecessary. Since all wishes instantly can be gratified, human culture slides into decadence, reminiscent of the "dying Earth" scenarios of Clark Ashton Smith, Jack Vance, and more recently, Gene Wolfe. The descendants of the original human colonists devote themselves to a culture based on aesthetic rather than moral values. Mars is ruled by classical goddesses-subroutines, perhaps, of the great computer-who meddle in human affairs. The novel details a "status-war" between two couples: the husband and wife Michael and Snow, whose aesthetic precludes use of the great computer, and the hermaphroditic Narcissus and his sister/lover Cleopatra, who are addicted to use of the Vision. While the Vision can confer youth and immortality on its user, these boons come at a price. The glandular changes the Vision induces in the human body make it both incapable of natural death and natural reproduction. Narcissus, a sterile hermaphrodite, is the product of this addiction. The conflict between the two factions is a conflict between two competing aesthetic stances regarding use of the Vision. As Turner writes, "A status-war is the equivalent, in a society without morality, of a tragic moral struggle. . .A status-war is between styles, not principles, and its rules are aesthetic and psychological, not moral." Each side in the status-war takes advantage of the weaknesses inherent in its opponent's aesthetic system. Narcissus consults a seer who uses the Vision to predict the outcome of the status-war. While Narcissus is vouchsafed a prediction of the war's outcome, he runs into the classic problem inherent in predictions: in response to a prediction, we alter our behavior, which necessarily alters the outcome of the prediction. Realizing that the relationship of Cleopatra and Narcissus is sterile, Michael and Snow decide to conceive a child in order to highlight this weakness in their enemies' aesthetic system; however, using their unborn child as a weapon in the status-war has unexpected and disastrous consequences. Other forces become embroiled in the status-war and influence its outcome in different ways. Each side has alli