Review - Turbulence, Giles Foden

[major_clanger]

Many years, there is one book on the Clarke Award shortlist that the author probably doesn't think is science fiction, or at least not sf in the sense commonly understood by the so-called literary establishment. If there's any justice, I'd like to see Turbulence be that book next year. It is as much sf as Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, a book it very much resembles in subject if not style. Both books feature rather geeky protagonists drawn by the Second World War into a situation where their hitherto abstract field of research has suddenly assumed deadly importance. Rather than code-breaking, Foden concentrates on meteorology, and in particular the need for the Allied command to forecast the weather in the run up to D-Day. Accurate forecasting is bedevilled, however, by its inability to cope with the chaotic effects of turbulence, and a young Henry Meadows is sent to Scotland to try to extract hints from the one man believed to have meaningful insight in the area. But Wallace Ryman - an incredibly thinly-disguised Lewis Fry Richardson - is a devout Quaker unwilling to countenance any application of his theories to war; indeed, he is far more interested in trying to model and understand the statistical dynamics of war itself.

Turbulence is superbly written, and Meadows is well drawn as a character whose intellect is let down by his immaturity. If it has faults, they lie in the plotting. The book seems to finish rather abruptly; one feels that having reached the point he wanted to, Foden felt obliged to wrap up with almost indecent speed. And the framing story, featuring a much older Meadows, is rather odd - without giving too much away, it seems to be set in an early 1980s that featured one rather spectacular project that never happened in our timeline. Mind you, that's another reason to consider Turbulence as sf.

My prediction: expect to see a somewhat Merchant Ivory style film, dropping the framing story, upping the love interest, and emphasising grim wartime London and idyllic Scottish Highlands.

Comments

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

I picked this up in Waterstones this afternoon... and put it down again. You make it sound much more interesting than the cover blurb does so I may have to go back for another look.

[whotheheckami.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'd seen this book in Waterstones and was tempted. I'll definitely get a copy now, but save it for a month or two or it'll blend with Cryptonomicon, which I'm currently rereading.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Ooh thanks. I loved that aspect of Cyptonomicon and that sounds good too. (It finished too abruptly too if I recall, yes even after all those pages..)