Symbiote's Crown

by Scott Baker

There are no "human" colonists... With the discovery of Dimensional Transfer, mankind embarked on the greatest adventure in history: the colonization of the alternate worlds. It was an adventure humans as "humans" could not take part in, and from which there was no return!

This is the story of a young couple who decided to make that adventure their life - for what could be worse that this hell the gods called Earth?

Genres: Science Fiction

214 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Scott Baker discovered his love of reading in grade school when his mother bet him he couldn't stay up until midnight every night reading Dracula. He finished the book, won 50 cents, slept with the lights on for the next four years, and was hooked for life on science fiction, fantasy, and horror.
Scott first attempted a novel in third grade. It was a page long and featured a rocket ship that ran on liquid copper.
In college, Scott drifted away from SF, but he was driven back to it by the deadly dullness of U.C. Irvine's Ph.D. program. Abandoning academia, he devoted himself to chemically-assisted hedonism in the Los Padres National Forest. During this time, Scott made several attempts at novels, but it was only after his van was stolen, he lost his job, his girlfriend left, and his roommate stole his rent money that he decided a life devoted to the joys of the moment wasn't all that much fun, so it was time to get serious about writing.
Scott wrote four novels-Nightchild, Dhampire, and Symbiote's Crown--before selling Symbiote's Crown. By the time it was published, Scott and his wife were living in the archetypical writer's garret, a cramped fifth-floor walk-up in Paris. Symbiote's Crown won the 1982 Prix Apollo for best French science fiction novel of the year.
Scott stayed in Paris for twenty years, working as translator and publisher's reader. He collaborated on several film scripts, working with directors such as Raoul Ruiz, Chile's former Minister of Culture. One film, Litan, won the Critic's prize at the Avoriaz Film Festival.
He also began writing shorter fiction. Four of Scott's stories were World Fantasy Award finalists and Still Life with Scorpion won the World Fantasy Award. He has three short story collections published in France.
Scott's next two novels, Drink the Fire from the Flames and Firedance, were fantasies set in the world of Ashlu. Inscrutable editorial imperatives meant that Firedance, second in the series, was published first, creating some confusion. The Ashlu books were followed by Webs, a psychological thriller with rather large spiders. Dissatisfied with Dhampire, he rewrote it from scratch. The vastly improved version was published as Ancestral Hungers.
After moving back to California, Scott created websites for the on-line tie-in for Steven Spielberg's film, AI, including one written in pseudo-Boolean code. The tie-in, AI: Who Killed Evan Chang was the first Alternate Reality Game. It was ranked Entertainment Weekly's number one website for 2002 and one of the New York Times' "Cool Ideas of the Year."
Scott's work has been published in England, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, and Finland. He has been a judge for the World Fantasy Awards, and is currently chairman of the judge's panel for the 2011 Philip K. Dick award.
After a long hiatus, Scott is currently working on an alternate history novel revolving around ethnopsychiatry, dire leopards, ancient Nubian medicine, traumatic brain injury, behavior-modifying parasites, and Napoleon's attempted conquest of Egypt.
AWARDS AND ACCOLADES
2002 Entertainment Weekly's number one website (AI: Who Killed Evan Chang?)
2002 A New York Times' "Cool Idea of the Year" (AI: Who Killed Evan Chang?)
1990 World Fantasy Award Finalist (Varicose Worms)
1990 Chosen for The Year's Fantasy and Horror (Varicose Worms)
1987 World Fantasy Award Finalist (Nesting Instinct)
1987 Chosen for The Year's Best Science Fiction (Sea Change)
1985 World Fantasy Award Winner (Still Life with Scorpion)
1983 World Fantasy Award Finalist (The Lurking Duck)
1982 Critic's Prize, Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival (Litan)
1982 Prix Apollo for best science fiction novel published in France (Symbiote's Crown)
NOVELS
Symbiote's Crown (1978)
Nightchild (1983)
Drink the Fire from the Flames (1987)
Firedance (1985)
Webs (1989)
Ancestral Hungers (1995)
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS (French)
Nouvelle Recette Pour Canard Au Sang (1983)
Fringales (1985).
Aléas (1997).
FILM SCRIPT

Reviews

[Fred · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extremely interesting first novel, ranking right up there in ambition with other SF luminaries first works, such as Delany, Wolfe and Harrison. The plot is just bizarre, straight up weird, but with a tinge of eerie horror that would garner Baker many further accolades in that field.
Not in the mood to write a huge review, and I don't do much plot summary, so this is just a recommendation to get this paperback on Abe's for $3 and see if you like it. Probably not for everyone. I learned about Baker with his stellar short story in Architecture of Fear; can't wait to read more. Apparently he also writes fluently in French, maybe grew up in Montreal, I don't know. But he's won multiple French fantasy awards, and deservedly so. Another writer, in a just world, for whom people would be laying garlands in the path of his luxuriant palanquin, but in our world is "not well known" to put it diplomatically.
Obscure, strange, wonderful. Most comparable to Hothouse by Aldiss (I guess?) or maybe even Door Into Ocean by Slonczewski. Biological scifi with good character development.

[Sol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary: The story focuses on the cousins Amber and Jane, living on Earth in the 21st century, where computers perform technical analyses, clothes can be reprogrammed to take new forms, and most dark-skinned people died due to bio-engineered "melanin plagues". Amber is a man physically and mentally stunted due to early life starvation by his mentally ill mother. After his mother dies in a car crash, Amber is adopted at age four by his relatives Alfred and Inez, along with their six year old daughter Jane. Alfred and Inez are neglectful parents, hoping only that raising Amber will get Amber's grandfather Joseph to will them his fortune upon his death. Jane initially detests Amber for his stupidity, ugliness, and the disruption he causes in her life.

Amber is enrolled in a school for the retarded run by a religious society called the Fellowship of Prismatic Light. Amber thrives there, and on his birthday, his teacher helps reconcile Jane to her new brother. From then on, they become each other's closest friends. Both grow up as outcasts (Jane due to her ugliness), but both find solace in the Latihan ritual of the Fellowship, derived from a practice of the Subud movement, in which practitioners consciously surrender their minds to God, in the Fellowship mediated by the electromagnetic influence of a machine called the Inductor.

Soon after Amber turns sixteen, their grandfather Joseph is murdered by their mother Inez due to the side effects of the psychoactive drugs she uses to insert herelf into her holographic entertainments. Amber and Jane are willed a large sum of money, which they spend on dimensional transfer, a new technology in which the body's awareness at a cellular level is disrupted, unmooring it from the body, which is then directed to alternate universes, where it manifests a new body. This new body is unaffected by acquired problems of the original body, which Amber hopes will make as strong and intelligent as anyone else. For most people this is a one-way trip, with the original body, but a small number of people are able to transfer back and forth, keeping each extra-dimensional colony in contact with Earth and managing transfer of information, interviewing new colonists, etc. Some of the colonies are similar to Earth, but they vary widely, some having extremely different physical laws.

Their religious teacher Ashoka warns them that transferring may make them unable to perform the Latihan, as it requires a physical change in the brain from the Inductor, and none of the colonies have Inductors. Amber pushes ahead due to the prospect of having a new body and no longer being an outcast. They are given a choice of four colonies, Veldte's Paradise, where hedonistic amphibians live on a world filled entirely with small islands, Oneness, where austere utopians attempt to make themselves perfect community members through ruthless criticism of each other, Chaos, where small world bubbles which take the form of their occupants wishes constantly split and merge, and Deirdre, a fecund but dangerous jungle world in which deadly insects swarm nightly, but life is otherwise not especially difficult. After putting the question to God through the Inductor, they select Deirdre's world and transfer.

After learning how to speak and use their new non-humans in the manner of babies, Amber becomes normal physically and mentally, but remains disturbed by the alien feeling of his body, and is devastated by his inability to perform the Latihan, believing that God has abandoned him for trying to escape the broken body he was given. He participates in the life of the colony but becomes depressed and withdrawn, while Jane fits in easily. The other colonists worry that Amber's mentality may be due to some effect of the Inductor. Ashoka attempts to transfer to Deirdre but is denied until it can be determined if the Inductor is incompatible with transfer. Amber becomes focussed entirely on re-entering God's grace, and becomes more and more ascetic and withdrawn, even from Jane. At the same time, the Forest Mind that controls all the plants and animals of Deirdre takes notice of the colony and goes to war with it, first withering the plants at its borders, then breeding animals to attack it, first small venomous animals, later larger and more dangerous ones. The colonists initially suspect a seasonal change, but Amber believes he has angered God and begins fasting in order to do the Latihan. Ashoka is denied transfer due to the colony's crisis, even though Jane's acclimation proves the Inductor does not contraindicate transfer.

After fasting for an extended period, Amber goes into the night naked to prove his trust in God. He is paralysed and parasitized by insect eggs but survives. After recovering, he enters the Latihan, which allows the Forest Mind to briefly enter his. The Forest Mind is confused by the intelligent and abstract arrangement of the human mind, and implants a compulsion in Amber to learn more, and ceases its attacks on the colony. Amber escapes from the colony and travels overland for months across the planet, living off the land, euphoric at having been re-accepted by God. After Amber's disappearance, Jane also performs the Latihan, but recoils in fear from the Forest Mind, and it renews its attack. After telling the others about her experience, Ashoka is allowed to transfer so he can perform the Latihan and learn more. Amber arrives at a mass of metallic vines, with a golden vine directly contacting his brain. Amber and the Forest Mind merge into a single being, which recognizes itself as God. It resolves to return to the colony and bring Jane into itself. As amber arrives on a large animal Jane warned the others about, other animals offer fruit to the colonists as a sign of peace. Jane believes the Forest Mind is controlling his body, but Ashoka tells her she is wrong. Amber tells the other colonists they will be allowed to live, but only new colonists able to perform the Latihan will be allowed to transfer in the future. The novel ends as Amber offers the golden vine to Jane.

How couldn't I read an 80s scifi novel with a tagline like that?

Unfortunately the execution wasn't really there. Roughly half of the book is spent on Earth, half on Deirdre, which is odd, as I'd think we'd need more time to adjust to an alien world, yet paradoxically, I found the Earth segments more interesting. There was potential for some real family drama there, and a story about two misfit cousins against the world could be very interesting. But it's all there seemingly just to establish the reasons and circumstances for getting to Deirdre. We don't even really get to see very much from Amber's perspective in the first half, which could have made an interesting contrast with Amber's mentality in the second half. We mostly get told about what Amber was like by Jane when she laments his change later. The first half was also filled with lots of odd details which didn't really build to anything. We're told Joseph wanted to be a writer, and that Amber's mother stole from him a story he wrote, and he partakes in writing scenarios for some kind of futuristic LARP group he's in. His writing even gets a mention in the second half. But it doesn't really go anywhere. Alfred, Inez and Joseph all have little quirks to them which seem like they're building to something, but they're almost totally forgotten once the story shifts to Deirdre.

The Deirdre story also had potential (and started off on a good foot with all the humorous names the colonists give to their occupations - Spy, Santa, Axe Murderer, Butterfly Collector, etc.), but the characters are much more indistinct than in the first half. Amber is given a lot more focus to compensate, and his journey was the most interesting thing going on. The mysteries of the alien world itself are undermined at every turn by narration segments from the perspective of the Forest Mind, which spell out exactly it's doing to the colonists at every turn. If theses segments had to be there, they should have been impossible to cleanly parse on a first read, which could then be tied into Amber's revelatory Latihan.

Still, the execution was far from terrible, some of the ideas were interesting, and the book's short. I can forgive a a lot for that. The ambiguity and abruptness of the ending was also well done.

[FabRusen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Début des années 2000, Amber, orphelin rachitique et méprisé, trouve comme seules échappatoires à ses malheurs son amitié naissante avec sa sœur Jane et le "Latihan', transe hypnotique le rapprochant de Dieu.

Après un premier tiers sombre et dramatique, L'idiot-roi change radicalement de ton et se fait plus aventureux lorsque Amber et Jane abandonnent leurs corps terrestres pour être transférés sur la colonie de Deirdre, planète-jungle grouillant d'insectes redoutables.

Premier roman de Scott Baker et lauréat 1982 du prix Apollo, bien que jamais réédité depuis, L'Idiot-roi est un texte singulier brassant de nombreux thèmes sans jamais les approfondir entièrement, qui aura quand même su me ravir par son originalité, son côté dépaysant et son absence de manichéisme.