Shallow characters are little more than props, a disjointed narrative jumps about with no ballast to keep it focused, and a satirical bent that too often comes across as mere sarcasm. Couldn't finish it.

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2016/05/review-of-super-state-by-brian-aldiss.h... ( )

Les ouvrages d'anticipation sont toujours tenus pour d'aimables plaisanteries de la part des auteurs dits "sérieux". De ce faits ils semblent rarement prophétiques à de rares exceptions près. Cependant, ce qui nous atteint dans le monde "réel" leur donne souvent un arrière-goût de raison. Si nous nous complaisons à nous plaindre que les sociétés humaines sont souvent au bord du gouffre, ces oeuvres nous font faire un grand pas en avant.

Brian Aldiss est un auteur de premier plan, auteur d'Helliconia (Le Printemps d'Helliconia) et inspirateur du film AI(A.I. Intelligence artificielle). Son oeuvre tourne autour des utopies. C'est l'objet de ce livre dont le titre sonne comme un rapport officiel. Il n'incite pas à l'optimisme. Tout va à la dérive dans ce conglomérat dont le président est un mégalomane excité et où la guerre est source de distraction. La démocratie y est inexistante et l'état moral de la société varie au gré des comportements les plus douteux. L'art suit la même pente, la télévision assure la cohérence culturelle. A la suite d'évènements anodins, le grain de sable va se mettre dans la belle mécanique et transformer cette construction politique en un pandémonium terrible.

Ce n'est pas le meilleur livre d'Aldiss. Le style est banal, la lecture hachée. On pourra préférer des livres plus sombres sur le sujet, comme ceux de Norman Spinrad (Jack Barron et l'Eternité, Rock Machine) ou Robert Silveberg (Les Monades urbaines). Cependant, le livre d'Aldiss est parcouru de dialogues percutants d'androïdes qui cherchent vainement à comprendre le monde humain. L'humour est caustique. Nul ne souhaiterait que ce roman soit prémonitoire mais en ce domaine, il se peut que la fameuse loi de Murphy trouve encore à s'appliquer. Quelle époque formidable. ( )

This book should have been longer, possibly 900 to 1,000 pages. At 230 it only provides a snippet of what could have been. Aldiss has created a pantheon of characters from the rich and famous, through the political elite to the struggling poor and embittered immigrants harassed by state inspired xenophobia.
He has raised the giant themes of government driven intercultural strife and the growing impact of global warming. These are the two aspects of this book highlighted in many reviews, but they are not the only ones. Aldiss brings in the socio-religious impact of the discovery of extraterrestrial life; he shows the effect on family life of fanatical religious belief; he presents the good intentions and well meant actions of the well-to-do who want to make a difference to the lives of the less well off while juxtaposing these with the lives of the super-rich who are quite happy to be the super-rich to just enjoy their privilege without any detrimental pangs of conscience; he plays with the issue of Artificial Intelligence and its relationship with humanity, nowhere more obviously than where one android explains to another that humans would never hurt an android as, “they have three laws preventing them from causing us harm”; and he continually reminds the reader of the “human condition”, whatever that is.
The book opens with an opulent social event, in a dramatic geographic and constructed setting, with the social elite of the European Super-State attending in their hordes, the more elite arriving in helicopters and the less elite arriving by luxury coach (a term deemed an oxymoron by anyone who has experienced their particular form of luxury).
Victor de Bourcey, son of the President of the European Union, is marrying Esme Brackentoth, Queen of the Restaurant Profession. Unfortunately, due to weather conditions over the Himalayas, Esme can’t get away from her recently opened new restaurant, located on top of Mount Everest, and her part in the wedding ceremony is understudied by an android. (Well, they didn’t want to disappoint all the guests who had travelled so far.)
Behind the scenes were are informed of the every growing belligerence of a small state in Asia called Tebarou, which is blamed for the nuking of two cities in the eastern European State. Tebarou claimed this to be an accident but the European authorities are treating it as an aggressive response to Europe’s sinking of a ship with 2,000 refugees trying to get into the supper state.
Also, we discover that there is a space mission to Europa, the Jovian frozen moon. This is an expedition with the primary purpose of seeking life under the frozen surface of the satellite. The impending arrival of the manned mission to their destination prompts discussion amongst the populace, media and politicians of the moral, economic and political impact if life is discovered. (This is a backdrop discussion to the main “Super-State” story but parallels the main theme of Carl Sagan’s “Contact”.)
The opening scene serves to introduce many of the characters, some of the technology (androids) and to outline elements of the geo-political jig-saw that is so important to the story.
Throw into this a tsunami that devastates the western coast of Europe, and you have a concrete case for Europe to attack Tebarou.
Now, imagine all the above in just 230 pages. It just doesn’t make sense, until you look at the timing of the book’s publication. It is copyrighted and was first published in 2002, the year the US and Britain were making all their preparations for a little excursion into Iraq. If the book had come out a year later it would not have been as prophetic as it turned out. Also, Brian would not have had the chance to release a book posing the questions implicit in Super-State while the invade Iraq/don’t invade Iraq debate was still raging.
“Super-State” is anti-war and anti-racism. It’s war setting reflects the current cultural conflict of the west against the Islamic world and yet, through its philosophical inputs, provided by the “INSANATICS”, it blames such conflicts on the human condition, implying they, and many other problems of life, are inevitable.
It would be easy to pick holes in the detail of this book, but that would take away from the important overall messages and would therefore be petty. Had the author taken the time to make this the 1,000 page epic it could have been, and there was certainly enough in it to support such a tome, it would have been an excellent book; but its conscience pricking elements would not have been as timely as they were and Brian Aldiss might have been accused of writing an after-the-event allegory rather than producing a socio-political commentary and a health warning about the human race. ( )

Playful, but uneven, this seems more like a sandbox of futurology, political comment and satire than a cohesive novel. I liked a lot of it, but it falls short of the invention of Ballard, or the accuracy of Bruce Sterling. Aldiss clearly writes with a colour and life, but most of the characters are there to represent his ideas, rather than grown as individuals. It's hard to empathise with such shallow figures.
Good fun, but I would direct readers to such Sterling novels as "Holy Fire" or "Distraction" for some high quality crystal ball gazing.