When We Were Real

Silvergirl

by William Barton

Acclaimed for combining grand galactic concepts with realistic characters and penetrating insights, William Barton's award-nominated novels include When Heaven Fell, Acts of Conscience, and The Transmigration of Souls. Now William Barton creates an astonishing empire of mutant humans, forlorn cyborgs, and genetic hybrids struggling for freedom in an unforgiving, endless future.

ORPHANS OF UNCREATED TIME

Violet is an optimod space-pilot -- a beautiful, purple-furred human-fox hybrid. Darius Murphy has escaped an oppressive religious matriarchy for a new life in the stars. Mercenaries crewing ships for the corporation that rules the galaxy from the Glow-Ice Worlds to Centauri Jet, Darius and Violet share a love that transcends wars, centuries...even death.

But in the face of a ruthless power that annihilates inhabited worlds for profit, is love enough? And can even immortals dare to seek happiness in a galaxy without peace, a universe with no freedom?

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

352 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 1999

About the author

William Renald Barton III (born September 28, 1950) is an American science fiction writer. In addition to his standalone novels, he is also known for collaborations with Michael Capobianco. Many of their novels deal with themes such as the Cold War, space travel, and space opera.

Barton also has written short stories that put an emphasis on sexuality and human morality in otherwise traditional science fiction. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov's and Sci Fiction, and has been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the Sidewise Award, and the HOMer Award, and three of his novels (The Transmigration of Souls, Acts of Conscience, and When We Were Real) have been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award.

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Benoit Goudreault-Emond · Rating 4 out of 5]

A flawed book, but interesting nonetheless.

I have attempted to read Alpha Centauri from the same author (well, a collaboration but still) and was never able to finish it. I found the excesses of the ship's crew abhorent, their emotional scars depressing and the book was just an overall dark, distressing experience I gave up on. (BTW I did not rate that book because I do not rate unfinished books, as I feel it is unfair to the author; maybe there are redeeming qualities later)

This book has some of this. The despair of war; the feeling of drifting disconnection of the long-lived wanderers; the oddly assorted couple at the center of the story. And yet, it is very different. There is some poetry to it, some sense of grandeur, which Alpha Centauri never reached.

Warning: spoilers

The main character, somewhat surprisingly considering his later antics, is a young man who grew up in a matriarchal society, which he escapes to avoid marriage. Not sure whether this is a metaphor of one part of Mr. Barton's life... In any case, he ends up somewhat reluctantly in the transtellar corporation's army and meets what can only be described as a furry love interest (no, I'm serious here... please bear with me). She dies gruesomely through friendly fire, and our hero, heartbroken, starts to wander among the nearby stars. The mechanics of interstellar travel are sadly not very clear, but it seems there's some time dilation involved.

Our hero lives has some adventures, some nice, some gruesome, participates in a rebellion with a new, short-lived love interest, and finally ends up being shipped back to his starting point, stuck in the army forever. Lucky for him, the furry lady from the beginning turns out not having died completely, and they become an effective pair, spending their shore leaves having lots of "growing closer" to quote Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.

At one point they get fed up and join the enemy on guarantees that furry lady will be treated like a human and not like the slave she was vat-grown to become. And that's pretty much that. Hopefully if I misunderstood parts of the story the author will forgive me; the prose is not the most straightforward, not that I minded that said.


So, this doesn't sound very enticing, but the way it's written, I think it's a pretty good book. The protagonist is a blatant womanizer, yet remains a somewhat decent human being, exhibiting strange bouts of sensitivity and touching loyalty in the end to his first love. He drifts along life, like many of us, doing things more or less because they happen to him.

Still, interwoven in this personal tale of stilted growth, there's lots of vistas that are worth the trip. Large habitats among the dark between the stars. Strange societies. A huge variety of modified human and animal life. Technology is powerful yet stagnant; the wonders of it not very much explained, but it's definitely not *that* kind of book.

A sense of time passing, of missed opportunities despite the fact humans live forever if not killed in that universe. The stupidity of corporations; the pointlessness of war.

Sorry I'm waxing poetic here. This is not the kind of book I usually read, but I devoured it. I had to gloss over the more unsavory sides of the protagonist (he'll basically shag anything that looks at him with curiousity, and somehow that's what they all wanted all along...) but I don't think it was unacceptable given how brutal and cynical the universe he lives in truly is. The protagonist just seems a product of his time.

It's not for everyone. You have to scratch the surface. The sense of scope somewhat reminds me of Spinrad's Child of Fortune, but without the needlessly opaque mixed language and with a lot more stark brutality. It feels like the darker, grittier counterpart of Spinrad's book. In any case, while I had to really work hard at finishing Spinrad's book, this one I finished in mere days. There's something hypnotic about it.

[Isidore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very uneven by comparison with Acts of Conscience, but Barton's trademark melancholia is very addictive.

This time out his sexual obsessions get rather tedious; sex scenes pop up seemingly every few pages, and they're all pretty much the same, and Barton could have reduced their frequency by about 80% without impairing either plotting or characterization.

On the other hand, Barton gives us some very classy space opera: the novel has vast sweep of time and space, some beautifully written---and harrowing---episodes of interstellar warfare, and some memorable not-quite-human characters (any reader not moved and fascinated by the narrator's last, sad encounter with the grotesque but personable cyborg Dûmnahn should probably be reading some other genre of fiction). I'm also impressed with Barton's skillful projection of present-day concerns about corporate ruthlessness and colonialism into a futuristic setting; he manages this without once lapsing into preachiness or sentimentality.

So, the book is both exasperating and brilliant. The nice thing is, for every maddeningly redundant sexual episode, you can count on getting some splendid prose, or a striking image or memorable idea; and throughout, as an overlay, there's that unfailingly compelling note of sadness and loss. Barton strongly grasps the tragic view of life, and that makes up for a lot.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recent Rereads: When We Were Real. William Barton's best novel, a bildungsroman across an interstellar corporate dystopia. A story in which characters are trapped by circumstance, looking for a shred of time to call their own. Depressing and compelling, the banality of evil writ large and eternal.

[Lena · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, I was expecting more from this book! I found it much too sexualised, just another man living his weird fantasies through his character, who seemed to be only focussed on sex and war (apparently like a real man). I struggled very much reading this short book because I was most of the time slightly disgusted, didn't know where the story was headed at all, it all seemed very random and aimless and the main character was too emotionless for my taste (except for a few rare scenes).
Overall, a disappointing sci-fi novel with another human-centered universe, that is extremely cruel. Every now and then the author raised some philosophical questions, but dropped them way too quickly again. So no, I don't recommend. There are better sci-fi novels out there, so don't waste your time.

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

My actual rating should properly be 2.5 stars. There were some interesting concepts driving the plot, but it seemed to meander and never really coalesce into a story that was compelling. As other reviewers have mentioned, it is one of the most sexualized hard sci-fi
novels that I've ever read. Much of the plot details the varied sex life of the protagonist who leaves home on a planet dominated by a sort of matriarchal cult to find adventure as a mercenary among the stars. To be kind, it's a sort of a forbidden love type of yarn, with the randy young man finding true love with an artificially created being. The ongoing war that they're both involved in fighting is a backdrop to their frequent coupling.

[James Steele · Rating 1 out of 5]

[vintage thoughts from 2005. I believed I was straight at the time and the contents of this story still repulsed me. If it had a story to offset the sex, perhaps I could have gotten into it.]

In the name of all that is good and clean, I’ve never read a story with more tasteless sex! I could teach a semester of English class about what’s wrong with this book. I bought it because it features a humanoid fox, and in all fairness it starts off with an interesting observation of the difference between stories and real life.

But I knew I was in trouble when the author couldn’t finish a sentence. Really. Half the sentences in this book are fragments interrupted with...ellipses. Every third paragraph ends with an...ellipsis. I mean it! The author can’t finish a...well. You get it. You see...well. He can’t finish a...well. I’m sure you... Right. Great. The whole book is like this, and it makes the world-building impossible to understand.

Except descriptions of the vagina—those are the clearest passages in the book. Barton loves describing vaginas. And pubic hair! Yeah! Wet pubic hair, wet vaginas, hairy vaginas, and on and on. In every freaking chapter—you literally can’t go 10 pages without it!

So what’s it about? Hah! After a tragedy that separates our main character (Darius) from his fox/human-hybrid lover, he wanders the star systems having sexual adventures with the random women he meets. In every chapter he encounters a naked woman, fucks her, and makes it a point to describe their vaginas. He never runs out of ways to do this. Oh, it gets so disgusting you have no idea!

Then after a hundred years of wandering he meets his fox and they become lovers once again. Okay, it gets slightly more tolerable from there. When they’re actually in love, the sex seems to belong there and it’s kinda nice to see them together again. But there’s so much of it and it’s delivered in language so coarse that you can’t take their affection seriously. And it’s all they do. Their relationship is literally vagina-deep.

From here, the sex relaxes (it’s still ever-present, only not as vulgar) and apparently the story is supposed to mean something beyond it...yeah right. I understand what the point of the story is purported to be: “When alone, you wander the universe aimlessly and life means nothing. But when you’re with someone who loves you, you have a reason to live.”

Oh, there could’ve been such a great, interspecies love story here about how they wander aimlessly in the universe, devoid of hope or purpose only to find each other again and suddenly life is worth living. What we get instead are vaginas and pubic hair shoved in our face without a drop of grace or dignity, narrated with incomplete...well. Yeah. Great. You know.

Anyone who thinks this story has any meaning above the waistline must think Hustler magazine is presenting female beauty as an art form instead of just smut. I had to hold my stomach down every time a female entered the scene—oh, boy here he goes again. Tell us if her vagina is wet! Is it smooth to the touch? How thick is her pubic hair? Tell us how it felt as you ran your fingers through it—oh, please don’t spare us these details! Ugghh!! Anything but this! There has got to be a better way of exploring this theme.

[kvon · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a feminist, I did not think the matriarchal society at the beginning of the book was well written, nor was the main character's further reactions to women logical for a man raised with the underlying belief that women were the way to the goddess. Sexist, breast obsessed male. I can barely accept that he would go from backward colony to military ambulance engineer with a few weeks of training, they did mention he did some extra courses 'for fun' during school at the instigation of his father. There weren't good parallels to a woman trying to escape an abusive relationship there, in terms of economic and social ability. I started skipping ahead once I got to the scene where he fantasized raping the nurse who brought him out of his cryogenic healing coma. Like I said, not a plausible matriarchist. Apparently there's some stuff in here about corporations taking over, and the social effects of living forever (unless you're on the wrong side of a war), but the main character just sucked the story away from me.

FWIW, the two men in the book club liked it. The two women in the book club couldn't read it.