As a general rule, I avoid anything written by Piers Anthony. I read a couple of his books back in the 1980s and thought them either not especially good or somewhat dodgy. But Macroscope (1969, USA) was shortlisted for the Hugo Award (it lost to Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969, USA), so I decided to give it a read.

The title of Macroscope refers to an orbital facility which contains a device which can use “macrons” to view any part of the visible universe, much like a space-based telescope, except to a level of detail and discrimination impossible to a telescope. It can, for example, focus on a world thousands of light-years away and show its alien inhabitants going about their daily business. But thousands of years ago, as macrons propagate at light speed. It can also view Earth, and act as an extremely powerful spy satellite.

Ivo is minding his own business in a city in Georgia (not the country, but the US state), when he is approached by a man who quotes an obscure line of poetry at him. This tells Ivo that his best friend Brad needs him. Brad, who has a genius-level IQ, works at the macroscope space station. Ivo and the man, Groton, drive south to Florida, and are launched in a rocket.

The macroscope scientists have discovered that someone somewhere in the galaxy is broadcasting a macron signal. Several of the scientists have tried to view it and it has wiped their minds. Brad wants Ivo to contact Schön, who is an actual super-genius, and whom only Ivo can contact, and ask him to help solve the “destroyer” signal. Ivo, Brad and Schön are all products of a project to breed and raise children in an environment that will result in high IQs. It was only partially successful.

Anthony drags out the revelation for more than half the book, but it’s pretty obvious from the first few pages that Schön doesn’t really exist: he is one of Ivo’s personalities. Or rather, Ivo is one of Schön’s. Apparently, Schön decided at the age of five he was bored with life, so he created Ivo and went dormant. Five seems an absurdly young age to do this.

A powerful senator visits the macroscope and falls victim to the destroyer. So Ivo, Brad, Groton and his wife, Beatryx, and Brad’s fiancée, Afra, steal the macroscope. They know there is useful scientific and technological information being broadcast using macrons, but they can’t reach it because of the destroyer signal. Brad tries and has his mind wiped. But Ivo is not affected, probably because the destroyer only affects IQs above a certain level. He manages to bypass it and begins downloading information. They use it to boost the macroscope to Neptune at 10 G, so they can escape the UN’s pursuing fleet. In order to survive the sustained high acceleration they must first convert themselves into protoplasmic liquid. Which they do. After converting themselves back into human bodies, they settle on Triton, and start using more high tech from the macron broadcasts. They decide they need to find the destroyer and, er, destroy it.

I think it’s pretty safe to say John Varley was aware of Macroscope when he began writing The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977, USA). He probably took the idea of the “hotline” from Anthony’s novel. He did, however, do something completely different with it, and The Ophiuchi Hotline is a much, much better novel than Macroscope.

Reading Macroscope, it comes as no surprise the author later wrote a novel titled The Color of Her Panties (1992, USA). Yes, really. And yet there are parts of Macroscope that display a sort of cosmological hard sf that didn’t really appear until the 1980s, and from the 1990s onwards has pretty much fuelled the careers of writers such as Stephen Baxter. For example, having decided on an objective, Ivo, Afra, Groton and Beatryx use knowledge learned from the macron broadcasts to bury their base deep in Triton, and then smash the moon into Neptune, causing the gas giant to collapse and form a black hole, which they use to transport themselves fifty light years from the Solar system. This is genuine sense of wonder stuff.

And then, like a black hole, the story slowly falls in on itself, until the only thing that’s left is the feeling you’ve just wasted however many hours reading a book that didn’t really deserve being read. Because once the four protagonists have left the galaxy, they manage to figure out the destroyer signal is being sent from a series of stations scattered about the Milky Way. They track one down, and board it. It’s empty, and seems to be some sort of museum. Which is handy, as it explains what the macron broadcasts are, what the destroyer signal is, and why it was necessary. The explanation is… not very interesting.

Then there’s everything else in the novel. Anthony tries to discuss misogyny and racism, but his racism and misogyny is so obvious the arguments have no force. In one chapter, for example, Beatryx is sent to a world where whites kill blacks on sight. Ivo spends much of the book lusting after Afra, and only occasionally considering what other qualities she might have. Then there’s this line:

“Even the subtle racism of the educated Southern white had its rules and restrictions; it was not inherently evil” (p 209)

Nope. It is. In all its forms.

And, finally, who can get forget the poetry? Ivo likes to pretend he is the reincarnation of a nineteenth-century American poet called Sidney Lanier. It serves no actual purpose in the plot, but it does allow Anthony to quote some of Lanier’s poetry. And… it’s fucking awful. Complete drivel. For example:

How still the plains of the waters be!
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height:
And it is night
(p244)

Macroscope is a book, to borrow a phrase from Monty Python, for laying down and avoiding. Sadly, it is perhaps one of Anthony’s better books.