How Bad Could Things Get? Chris McKinney's WATER CITY Trilogy Tests the Answers

Climate collapse, floods and fires, political divisions, wars and devastation—in America, it's not uncommon for people to feel like it's going to take a great leader to get us safely out of these very hard times.

But that's not where Chris McKinney heads in his WATER CITY trilogy. After the earlier Midnight, Water City and then Eventide, Water City, where a synesthetic former detective's been tackling the crushing issues around him in an effort to save his too-talented daughter from being coopted, McKinney and Soho Press collaborate to move rapidly into the last volume: SUNSET, WATER CITY. 

In a radical switch from the nameless not-quite-hero of the first two books, the third one (set in the year 2160) spins from the point of view of that talented daughter, Ascalon, whose experience at age 19 includes both armed resistance and a lot of forms of tech destruction. Battling both her US neighbors in the toxic lands of the Great Leachate, and the overwhelming technological dominance of the near-deity Akira Kimura, Ascalon's courage and defiance take root in her anger at her father, as well as her love for her vanishing family.

As I read SUNSET, WATER CITY a second time, I thought a lot about trilogies. The one I grew up with was The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien); then there's the Hunger Games trilogy. But also there's a trilogy at the start of Ursula Leguin's Wizard of Earthsea books: A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1970), and The Farthest Shore (1972). And I'm one volume into reading Cixin Xiu's formidable Chinese space trilogy right now.

On reflection, I wonder whether world-building requires a bigger canvas than a single book. Building the pressure points needs to extend beyond that first volume, and the most intriguing and memorable characters, whether heroic (Frodo, Katniss) or antiheroic (Ascalon's father and Akira Kimura herself), need years to mature and deepen, in order to provide a meaningful resolution to another world's issues. And maybe that's especially true when, as with McKinney's trilogy, the issues are so clearly unsolved in our own present time: environment, antagonism, excessive power.

So my second reading of SUNSET, WATER CITY looked for how McKinney (who by the way is a native Hawai'ian with ethnic threads that are Korean, Chinese, and Scottish) asserted the solutions to the trilogy, not just to one book. What I found is that this third volume is as much a statement of human value as it is an adventure. Ascalon asks herself, "It this what it always is to be with other people? To not understand each other? To harbor trauma? To bottle anxiety, probe, and flinch before another even responds? I feel lost." When she decides to tackle the bigger issues of her world, she's aware that it's also an escape from this inner lack of certainty; "I will try to bury my grief and rage for now. I will try to fix this. I will take my father and Jon6J to Ascalon Lee. It's time to return to Water City."

A return to Water City demands unusual physical capacities, and many will feel especially strange to "mainlanders" reading the series -- but less so to those who live with islands and oceans. Over time, the presence of this trilogy and the inevitable film versions to follow may bring Ascalon's adaptations to some level of expected adaptation, like Frodo's interaction with the Ring. But expect a first reading to feel uncomfortable; expect to utilize your capacity to "listen" and to "suspend disbelief." Ascalon's discoveries, at first framed in her perceptions of her father, are worth reaching: "He should've known that it's impossible to sleep to the future to change the future. One needs to be awake to change that."

Without spoiling the plot, I can say that Ascalon clarifies her own motives as she battles for what she feels is right. Unlike the three leaders around her -- her father, her mentor Ascalon Lee, and the overwhelming Akira Kimura -- this young woman intends to protect her world, if she can just figure out which elements of it merit that protection.

In a time of chaos and pain, it may seem counterproductive to dip into a trilogy that proposes that Earth's issues are so extreme that only interplanetary settlement and technological unity will pull us through. But McKinney's narrative is so compelling that it's well worth entering his speculative world and his painfully maturing protagonists. Besides ... isn't it time, after so many decades, to step beyond Frodo and Gandalf's solution for Middle Earth?

[For some extra insight from the author, look here: https://www.watercitytrilogy.com/building-water-city.]

Explosive Material: The Young Adult Mystery

Did you ever read Tom Sawyer in the original version -- not condensed or modernized? How about Huckleberry Finn? These are now mentioned often as prototype "young adult" novels, along with To Kill a Mockingbird. And the reason they are classified in this way is simple: The characters in them are not yet grown up, and they experience a marked change in their lives: one often described as a loss of innocence.

I think it's important to notice that these labels and even this "loss of innocence" are relatively recent concepts. When I was a kid, the Mark Twain books were seen as accessible (if you were willing to work hard at reading them), but not sorted into "adult" and "young adult." Life on the Mississippi and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court could be fit reading for anyone who could stick with the pages -- although clearly, you'd get more from Twain's bouts of satire if you were a more experienced reader.

Today's "young adult" (YA) category is generally recognized as especially the creation of librarians (as well as teachers) who wanted to offer worthwhile material for teens without pushing them into emotions they weren't yet ready to experience -- like the self-doubt that can result from reading sexually explicit material at too young an age, or the callous disregard for loss of life that marks some thrillers. YA material also has often involved recognizing the challenges most teens face: how to stay true to yourself in the face of peer pressure, how to avoid the cost of substance abuse, how to separate from parents without losing "home."

One of the books most recognized as an enduring YA novel is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. It shaped some of my ideas about what it is to be a young woman, a scientist, and a brave person. I still keep a copy on my shelf. In her 1983 Newbery Award acceptance speech for this book, the author said:

Because of the very nature of the world as it is today our children receive in school a heavy load of scientific and analytic subjects, so it is in their reading for fun, for pleasure, that they must be guided into creativity.

She added, quoting from another author, that we help our children avoid a limited universe "by providing them with 'explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly.'"

Even newer than the YA novel is the special genre of the YA mystery.  A good one has to include the elements that make a mystery for "grownups" worth reading: a plot that makes sense, twists that are both surprising and believable, characters who risk something and who make choices that matter. And a good dash of suspense and tension! Plus for the YA area, the mystery also has to be what L'Engle called "explosive material." I can stand behind that statement firmly. "Explosive" in this way doesn't need to mean objectionable or even shocking -- but it must mean that the reader experiences a possibility of change and growth.

With those challenging aspects in mind, I'm glad to welcome two new YA mysteries to the shelf. One, by Michelle Gagnon, is sci-fi crossover, in which a half dozen teens from various nations find themselves abruptly waking up in an emptied world where dinosaur-size monsters are hunting them. Published by Soho Crime, Gagnon's STRANGELETS compels the teens to share their pasts and wrestle with each other, to discover what has pushed them into this frightening situation -- and whether there is a chance to have their familiar world back again, ever. Criminal activity has indeed taken place. And courage is required. I like Gagnon's earlier thrillers very much, both the adult ones and the YA medical thrillers (Don't Turn Around and Don't Look Now). To me, STRANGELETS pushes the boundaries of the medical thriller, with plenty of intriguing science and tons of suspense. Seventeen-year-olds Sophie and Declan became part of my world while the book lasted. I do think this one is closer to sci-fi than to the traditional medical thriller, but ... it didn't bother me after the first few pages. Above all, Michelle Gagnon is a powerful storyteller and if she wants to call this one a thriller, well, I'll bend a bit.

The second is a firmly traditional mystery, in a less conventional setting: Jacquelyn Mitchard's WHAT WE SAW AT NIGHT. If the title evokes a hint of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon), I think that's no accident -- because in Mitchard's book as well as Haddon's, the people we care about are separated from the rest of "us" by conditions of difference that arrived with their genes. In Mitchard's book, Allie Kim and her best friends Rob and Juliet suffer from xeroderma pigmentosum, a "severe allergy to sunlight." (The scientist part of me insists on clarifying: The condition actually means that the body cannot repair damage caused by ultraviolet light. But hey, if we can call alcoholism an allergy to alcohol, I guess the allergy motif works here, too.) The result of this shared disorder is that the three teens mostly emerge at night. Add their fascination with the discipline and daring of parkour -- an extreme sport -- and Allie, Rob, and Juliet take to climbing tall buildings in the dark. Inevitably, they see something criminal. But they're up against a very crafty psychopath with the skills and knowledge to make the teens appear to be the guilty ones. Not only that: It looks like Juliet is being compelled to submit to abuse, with her friends as hostages.

Mitchard demonstrates that the ages of YA protagonists can actually increase the tension and risks of a thriller; the decisions that Allie Kim faces are indeed explosive, stirring up fresh importance of life. I'm glad there's clearly going to be a sequel!

So, let me wrap up this long-ish post by saying: If you have a favorite YA mystery or novel ... is there something about it that's explosive in this way? Share, if you feel so moved.

A Salute to A WRINKLE IN TIME -- and a New Voice in This Year's Fiction

It's hard to believe it, but 50 years have passed since the publication of Madeleine L'Engle's book A WRINKLE IN TIME. "Young adult" fiction before the genre really existed, and providing a powerful journey of spiritual seeking as well as a new definition of courage, this novel is one I've returned to at least every five years or so, to see "how the author did it" -- and why it means to much to me.

Now I'm honored to present a guest post from Ellen Larson, whose November 2013 book, IN RETROSPECT, connected right away for me to the L'Engle classic. Make sure to connect at the end of this post, too -- there's a role for you in what's ahead for Ellen Larson.

A L’Ove L’Etter to Madeleine L’Engle

The Happy Medium. Tesseract. Sport. Magic words to kids like me who read A Wrinkle in Time when it was published in 1962. Such a mysterious, heartrending, and above all inspiring book. My first science fiction read, though I didn’t make that connection at the time. Books were just books to kid me. But I was aware that this book by Madeleine L’Engle was grounded in science, and thus it seemed more real to me than other books I’d read that had a fantasy element, like The Princess and Curdie, or were simply mainstream books like The Lord of the Flies. That bears repeating: More real. Science fiction; more real. What a paradoxical reaction! I was hooked.

In the years that followed, I read Andre Norton, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov with increasing fervor and preferences. I was never too fond of Heinlein’s big metaphysical hit, Stranger in a Strange Land (didn’t like the sexual politics—though again, I was too young to give my uneasiness a name), but I absolutely loved his lesser known The Door Into Summer, a whimsical love story that hooked me on time travel for life because of its elegant pair of time travel devices. First Heinlein uses have simple cryonics, which allows the hero to go forward in time without aging (hey, it counts!). And second, upon finding himself thirty years in the future, when such things just might be possible, Heinlein introduces a mad genius scientist who has invented a time-travel machine.

What I found compelling about the book—what I find compelling about the best time-travel stories—was that I could literally feel my mind bending as I tried to follow reality as it twisted and seemingly changed. I like that a lot.

As both a writer and a reader I am a fan in intricate plotting, a preference that led me to mystery reading and writing as well, but there is no plotting more complex than a well-told time-travel tale. I crave that moment in the story when reality shifts and appears to rewrite itself, exposing the power of the writer as the plot at last unfolds and the perceived complexity is revealed to be elegant simplicity. And that is only one model of time-travel structure.

In addition to plots like that in The Door Into Summer, in which events remain constant and only perception changes, there are equally mind-boggling tales of parallel universes, altered timelines and epic crossroads in history. This structure generally involves the inevitable happening even though history has indeed been changed by the time-traveling characters. The delight comes from watching the efforts of protagonist or antagonist to cause or prevent the inevitable, in ways we never expect. The iconic Star Trek episode, The City on the Edge of Forever, written by the great science-fiction author Harlan Ellison, is a prime example of this structure. Though she has earned Kirk’s love and our respect, Edith Keeler must die; Kirk must choose between saving her and upending history, or letting her die. All that needs to be answered is the question of how—and how the moral question will be answered.

The Prioress from IN RETROSPECT

When I came to write my own time-travel story, In Retrospect, I started by choosing the structure that would best suit the idea (the conflict) that was bubbling in my head. The Infinite-Number-of-Parallel-Universes approach works great to explore characters. The Door-Into-Summer approach lends itself to deliciously evil plotting. The Edith-Keeler approach leads to great moral conflict for the characters. I excluded parallel universes first, because while tremendous fun in its way (my first run in with parallel universes came with the iconic Dark Shadows in the 1960s, btw) it doesn’t include the mind-bending aspect I crave.

With apologies for skipping Kurt Vonnegut, this left me with a choice that can best be summed up by the question: In my futuristic world, can history be changed via time travel (Edith-Keeler) or not (Door-Into-Summer)?

I made my choice—but I’m not gong to elaborate here, because in fact the answer to the question is germane to the plot itself. It is also the topic under discussion when my protagonist, Retrospector Merit Rafi, first meets Eric Torre, a wave-aspect physicist with whom her life will be forever entwined:

The boy with the wavy yellow hair gave an argumentative snort. “But you haven’t addressed the question! Why can’t you change history?”

“Because you just can’t. Trust me. I’ve been there.” Having settled that issue, Merit raised a paper cup to her lips. Damn, the Rasakans made good wine. She breathed in the sweet summer air and let her gaze roam across the rolling meadows of Bergama. It never ceased to amaze her. Though half the Earth had been destroyed eight hundred years ago by the insanity of their forebears; though the coasts had been redrawn and the climate changed, this land called by the ancients Anatolia, then Asia Minor, then Turkey, had survived, flourished, and—eventually—regained its plenitude. It was a fine day to be sitting on the grass beneath an almond tree drenched in blossoms, a fine day for shooting the metaphysical breeze with new colleagues over a bottle or two between seminars. A damned fine day to be alive.

But the boy didn’t seem to have noticed that the debate was over. “That’s pretense, not proof,” he insisted.

Merit’s attention snapped back into place. “I beg your pardon?” She peered more closely at his freckled face. It looked mighty stubborn, in a cheerful sort of way. “If somebody asks you why she can’t walk on water, don’t you simply roll your eyes and say, ‘Trust me, you just can’t?’ ”

“No.” He shook his finger back and forth—shook it at her, Merit Rafi, graduate of the Oku Science Conservatory, officer of the Civil Protection Force with a full nineteen months’ experience, Select. “I tell her that water molecules are not cohesive enough to support the mass of a human body, nor is the surface tension high enough to resist the static shear—but that if she were a waterbug she could do it.”

It’s been a long journey from the day I first cracked open A Wrinkle In Time—the day that set me on the road to writing a time-travel book of my own. I think a thank-you is long overdue. So thank you, Madeleine L’Engle, and Happy Fiftieth Anniversary!

Beth adds: Ellen Larson is currently running a Kickstarter project to fund the making of the book trailer for IN RETROSPECT. Take a look at this exciting project -- the art is amazing, thanks to concept artist Mike Sissons (that's his painting of the Prioress, earlier), the video is close to completion, and there's a role for supporters right now ... and to salute this author and her work, which in my office will go on the same shelf where  A Wrinkle in Time now stands.