You're Only Young A Couple Of Times

I don't read much mainstream fiction. This isn't because I don't want to read mainstream fiction; it's because I do want to read speculative fiction - as much SF as possible. I want to know the genre, to be able to talk about the genre. Bluntly, I want to be involved in the genre. What that says about me, I leave for the reader to decide.

However, it's one reason why I read Peter F Hamilton's Misspent Youth, despite the luke-warm reception the book has been getting. The other reason was discovering The Body, a short novel by Hanif Kureishi about an ageing writer who has his brain transplanted into a new, young body. This seemed intriguingly close to the premise of Hamilton's novel, which deals with the first man to be rejuvenated, his body returned to the mid-twenties. The difference is - wait for it - The Body is promoted as mainstream fiction. The opportunity to compare and contrast the two, to try to work out why one is SF and the other (allegedly) is not, was simply too tempting.

The template for The Body, at least, is classic SF: An encounter with difference, with impossibility, the implications of which are followed through to a logical conclusion. And yet, it is a distinctly odd flavour of SF. In dozens of hard-to-define ways, it seems very obvious that this is SF written by someone who has no familiarity with the genre; it's hard not to feel that you're experiencing a reinvention of the wheel.

This, in case you are wondering, is a good thing. Disconcerting in places where Kureishi seems to deliberately sidestep some of the societal implications of his story, but nonetheless fresh and interesting - to me, at least. It strikes me as likely that a mainstream audience will find the style comforting and familiar, but the content striking and new. Where the novel fails slightly for me is that very little actually happens, and what does happening is fairly predictable. It is Kureishi's prose and insight that hold the interest, not the plotting. Brain transplants are a secret technology; only a select few have undergone the procedure. This adds tension to encounters between newbodies, but at the same time cuts them off from the world. The story takes place in a vacuum.

To be fair, this is a deliberate authorial choice. The focus of the story is subjective - what would it be like to be young again? - rather than objective - what would the world be like if people could be young again? It is a character study and as such, it works well.

Peter F Hamilton is not a character writer. His characters, such as they are, tend to blur together - all highly intelligent, and all improbably beautiful (usually aided by advances in genetics). He is not a stylish writer. Where Kureishi's prose is enjoyable and enlightening, Hamilton's is merely clear and concise. There are no multi-page bouts of introspection in Hamilton's novels; his stories are driven by focused plotting, epic scale and numerous grand SFnal concepts.

You have to at least give Hamilton credit for attempting a novel which confronts his weaknesses so directly; at times, however, it feels as though he's simply too accustomed to writing the traditional objective SF story to be successful at anything else. Despite his best attempts, there's no real depth to his portrayal of regained youth. Understandably (and as with The Body), sex is prominent, but for a time it threatens to overwhelm the rest of the novel. The best segments of the story are in the incidental moments when Hamilton is writing about others' reactions to Baker, or filling in details about his future Europe (one such particularly appealed to me; the revelation that GM crops did cross-pollinate - and then, a couple of paragraphs later, the revelation that it hasn't made much difference). Baker himself comes across as fundamentally unlikeable. Tim fares somewhat better; every so often there's a truth, a moment of insight into what it's like to be on the cusp of adulthood and frustrated at every turn. Sadly, such moments are not sustained.

Misspent Youth isn't bad. Hamilton's integrated Europe is intriguing, and the last third of the novel is up to his usual standards (if perhaps a little politically questionable). However, it is patchy, and as such likely to appeal only to those who are already fans.

Two SF novels, then, tackling two sides of the same issue. Both use recognised strategies - The Body with its focus on personal experience, Misspent Youth with its eye on the big picture. Of the two, I'd recommend The Body without hesitation; it is a good story, and it is simply better written. And yet, I can't help thinking that it should be possible for a novel to do both - the personal, and the societal, together. I wonder - which shelf that would be stocked on?