posted on 16 Dec 2020

The Hair-Carpet Weavers by Andreas Eschbach

For some weeks now, prompted by other science fiction reviews elsewhere on Letterpress (here, here, and here), I’ve been feeling that I should read more – or rather, some – science fiction. Perhaps because my father was addicted to sci-fi in the 1960s and read it almost exclusively, and perhaps because of the powerful allure of old classic Penguin sci-fi jackets, I have for some time had the idea that there must be great sci-fi novels out there that transcend their genre and are classics of the literature of ideas. I still think this is the case but my first attempt at proving this to myself turned out to be a rather frustrating failure.

I was delighted when I recently came across the new Penguin Science Fiction series. It seemed to bring together just the kind of books I was looking for – and each with wonderful, modernist artwork. I decided on The Hair-Carpet Weavers by Andreas Eschbach as the first one I would try. Eschbach, born in 1959, is one of the luminaries of German sci-fi; he studied aerospace engineering and worked as a software engineer before his writing career took off and this was his first novel, originally published in German in 1995, translated ten years later into English and republished in this handsome new Penguin series in August 2020. As a parable of imperial power, the internalisation of belief (and of oppression), and in a more oblique sense how power can become ‘ceremonialised’ and morph into ritual and cults of personality, this seemed exactly the sort of thing I had in mind – a direct descendant of classic Eastern European novels, such as Zamyatin’s We.

The Hair-Carpet Weavers opens on a long-forgotten planet in a distant galaxy, part of a decaying imperial empire so vast that no one any longer knows quite how many planets the Emperor Aleksander 11th rules over. On this planet there is a more or less feudal desert society in which it is the sacred duty of every adult male to spend his life weaving a carpet from the human hair he harvests from every female member of his polygamous household. On completion, the carpet is sold to one of the traders who pass through annually in gigantic armoured caravans.

The price the carpet-weaver achieves is the legacy that will sustain the next generation. In this bizarre carpet-economy there must be a male heir in order for the tradition to continue – only men can belong to the imperial guild of carpet-weavers – and there can only be one male heir. ‘Surplus’ male heirs are killed at birth. Female members of the household – both wives and daughters – are more highly prized because only they can provide the raw material for hair-carpets. Each completed carpet sold travels millions of light-years across the galaxy and joins the hundreds of thousands – the millions – of other carpets gracing the infinite rooms of the Emperor’s palace, believed to be the largest single building in the entire galaxy.

But is this what happens to the hair-carpets? Occasionally, travellers reach the planet and their heretical stories spread alarm and despondency: the emperor is dead; far from being an immortal god-emperor, able to rule the empire for eternity, neither emperor nor empire any longer exists; he was overthrown centuries ago by a revolutionary movement and the people – if only they realised it – are free. A priestly caste of enforcers/secret police invariably round-up such heretics and they are tortured and executed.

It gradually becomes apparent – and I’ll resist giving too much away – that a rebel movement does indeed exist and has discovered that not just this planet but hundreds of planets in the galaxy are dominated by hair-carpet economies. Not even the most unimaginably large imperial palace could accommodate so many carpets. Roughly speaking, the second half the book is the gradual working out of the answer to this conundrum.

Impoverished, feudal space societies are not a new conceit in science fiction, I realise that, but the sheer scale and audacity of Eschbach’s imagination and ideas cannot be overstated. I thought the first hundred or so pages were genuinely thrilling in the ideas they explore, the use of the new, the fantastical, to illuminate and interrogate the old. However, if you hear a ‘but’ coming, I’m afraid you are right. I really didn't feel that this quality was maintained throughout. The prose – although well-translated, I’m sure – rarely rises above the adequate; transitions between chapters and episodes (a technique which is central to the construction of the book) are sometimes clunky, and the dialogue frequently wooden. A large cast of characters with sometimes triple-barreled science fiction names adds to the difficulty.

I think a literature of such audacious ideas can’t exist in a vacuum: it has to be supported by brilliantly drawn characters that live and breathe and engage our emotions, no matter how unfamiliar their culture or circumstances; and it has to be supported by excellent descriptive writing that further convinces us that no matter how bizarre, what the author is seeing for us (we mere earthlings) is real and true.

Without these qualities, what’s left is merely fantasy – and I am reminded why I rarely if ever read fantasy: because it isn’t real. That is obvious, I know, but The Hair-Carpet Weavers demonstrated this to me in the most illuminating way: it is a novel that so nearly succeeds in being greater and more fulfilling than its genre. Ultimately, I struggled to finish it. Nonetheless, I am hoping that it has left me with enough enthusiasm to explore some other sci-fi titles. Others will feel differently, of course, and if you are already a confirmed sci-fi enthusiast then you may well find rewarding titles that are new to you in this beautifully designed new series from Penguin.

 

Alun Severn

December 2020