{"id":4679,"date":"2018-03-01T20:50:33","date_gmt":"2018-03-02T01:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/?p=4679"},"modified":"2018-05-01T12:42:01","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T16:42:01","slug":"a-back-at-ack-ack-macaque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/a-back-at-ack-ack-macaque\/","title":{"rendered":"A Look Back at Ack-Ack Macaque"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AckAckTrilogy\"<\/a>In 2013 Gareth L. Powell split the BSFA Award for Best Novel with Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice with his swashbuckling tale of a gun-toting monkey who escaped from a video game, and while many of us were all swooning over Ms. Leckie\u2019s pronoun choices, some of us, myself included, missed a book that was both fun and philosophical. True, Ack-Ack Macaque is a non-stop roller coaster ride of a novel, but from the top of the ride you can see some interesting sights. The three novel sequence \u00a0is now available in an omnibus edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Spoiler Alert: This isn\u2019t a review, but a critical look at the book, the difference being that the latter assumes you\u2019ve already read the book and are here for the discussion. In truth, I don\u2019t think that reading this would hurt your enjoyment of the book(s), as the discussion that follows is more about ideas in the book than the plot, but be forwarned: Here There Be Spoilers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t read Ack-Ack Macaque<\/strong>, until I was reviewing Powell\u2019s latest novel, Embers of War<\/strong>. In fact, I hadn\u2019t ready anything by the author, but when I\u2019d finished Embers, which I thought quite well of I wanted to see what I\u2019d missed, and discovered a wealth of short stories and a number of novels; a mix of space opera and alternate history. Looming large among them was Ack-Ack Macaque<\/strong>, which split the British Science Fiction Association\u2019s award for Best Novel with Ann Leckie\u2019s Ancillary Justice<\/strong>. I\u2019d been vaguely aware of Ack-Ack, but also a bit confused. A monkey from a WWII computer game in an alternative history novel? Was this a tie-in? Is Powell serious?<\/p>\n

Even though there should have been a real life massive multiplayer game like the one in the book, no, it\u2019s not a tie-in novel. The game exists within the novel, but it gets some good hits in while it\u2019s there. As to whether Powell is serious, yes, absolutely. It just didn\u2019t stop him from having fun in the process.<\/p>\n

The title character is a monkey, specifically a Macaque, whom we meet in his role as unstoppable WWII ace in a computer game named after him. When we encounter him in the game he\u2019s edging towards an existential crisis, wondering why of all the people around him he can\u2019t seem to get killed. Other players assume that he\u2019s a powerful AI designed for the game, but in a twist a bit like Simon Morden\u2019s One Way<\/strong>, coming out this April, it turns out that it was easier to take a natural mind and hook it into the game than build an AI.\u00a0 Of course, in the case of the monkey, they also had to add some artificial processing power to bring him up to human level intelligence, in the process creating the most enjoyable uplifted simian since David Brin\u2019s Fiben in The Uplift War<\/strong> (1987).<\/p>\n

Ack-Ack\u2019s circumstances are unique in sf. Uplifted in a lab, he\u2019s never known any reality except the WWII conflict that he was groomed to star in, until he\u2019s yanked out of his linkage by activists thinking they were about to free an enslaved AI. That some of the activists lost interest when they realized it was an enslaved monkey is one of the points that makes this novel more than a simple shoot-em up. Whose lives matter?<\/p>\n

The monkey isn\u2019t the only one who\u2019s been uplifted, or at least hacked. The story takes place in a slightly modified history, where the European Union was an actual consolidation of nations, ruled over by a king. Several of the main characters, including the heir apparent, have gotten cyber-implants like the monkey\u2019s. Ack-Ack was as much a test bed for the process as anything, being useful as a revenue generator being a happy bonus.<\/p>\n

The prince turns out to be a clone of the queen, chromosome tweaked, and the upgrades intended to allow her to download and overwrite herself into his body, as part of a plan to take over the world. So, Ack-Ack and the prince wind up having a lot in common, and it\u2019s interesting to see how they sort it out. Neither is who they thought they were, both are creations of the lab as much as of nature, and both are suddenly robbed of the surety of their place in the universe. The monkey no longer at the center of the game, and the prince an heir only in name, his genes not actually coming from the royal couple. Of the two, Ack-Ack\u2019s method of dealing with stress, by blowing things up and killing people, seems the more gratifying, but we can only get away with endorsing it because he\u2019s a monkey.<\/p>\n

In the opening of the second of the three Ack-Ack novels (Ack-Ack Macaque<\/strong>, Hive Monkey<\/strong>, and Macaque Attack<\/strong>), our hero is interviewed by a reporter that brings up concerns that his hard drinking and fighting style, along with his foul mouth (and hygiene) make him a less-than ideal role model for children, so even a monkey gets called on male toxicity.\u00a0 The prince, in contrast, a former royal marine, shows the restraint that actual military members often possess. To military professionals, violence is a tool to be used to attain objectives, not a method of self-gratification, and the author gives us a potential monarch with considerable self-awareness, even if he\u2019s not sure who he is.<\/p>\n

The other main character is Victoria Valois, a former journalist who suffered head trauma in a helicopter crash and wound up another test case for the cyber-enhancements. Though she is aware of the modifications, she lies somewhere between the monkey and the man in terms of approach. As a journalist, she thinks like in investigator, but as an enhanced creature she\u2019s embraced the killer cyberpunk seminally modeled by Gibson\u2019s Molly in Neuromancer<\/strong> (1984). Her presence checks several boxes, and also serves a a platform for another existential quandary. The book opens with her on her way to the scene of her ex-husband\u2019s murder, and she winds up running a backup copy of his consciousness on her internal cyber-junk. Again, the author asks us, whose lives matter? The copy knows it\u2019s a copy, but with the original dead, sees itself as the last remnant of himself, and interested in continuing his existence, even inside his ex-wife\u2019s head. Fortunately, the didn\u2019t separate because they hated each other, but because his bisexual nature resolved on the other team from her.<\/p>\n

There are geopolitical aspects to the story that deserve mention.<\/p>\n

I often shy away from alternative history stories because I have a hard-enough time figuring out the timeline I live in, and often get the feeling that they\u2019re essentially exercises in moving miniature armies around on tabletops to see who might have won at Waterloo if not for want of a nail.\u00a0 This however, is close enough to our timeline that I can parse it, and it\u2019s useful for the setup it provides. The consolidated Europe lets the author create a force that can would resist the reduction of power that Britain experienced post WWII, while consolidating the power into a structure that can be at risk to hostile takeover by fiat.\u00a0 As the author points out in the article \u201cGareth L. Powell on Why the Ack-Ack Macaque Trilogy Isn\u2019t as Crazy as It Sounds<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

Of all the ideas in the book, this one seems to be the one most readers have struggled with. But it almost happened for real. According to this 2007 article in the Guardian, the French prime minister came to London in September 1956 with just such a proposal. In our world, the British declined his offer; in the world of Ack-Ack Macaque, because of an early and unexpectedly victorious outcome to the Suez Crisis, they said yes.<\/p>\n

But towards the end of the book, the prince winders if the unified structure might have caused it to over-reach, and indeed, nuclear war with China looms over the plot.<\/p>\n

Finally, I think that the marketing for Ack-Ack Macaque missed the boat, though I\u2019m only working off my reactions to it, and may be short-changing it. While the book, and subsequent nooks, are certainly alternate history, they are first and foremost cyberpunk, or if you must, steampunk, thanks to the massive nuclear powered dirigibles that ply their routes through the books. This could have been Gibson, but with a sense of humor that Neuromancer<\/strong> never had, and if the game character angle hadn\u2019t been pushed so strongly on the cover I think it might have gotten more attention for its ideas, rather than for its action alone.<\/p>\n

Or maybe it just made it more accessible to audiences form gamer generations, sneaking all those good ideas in without breaking the flow with a lot of exposition. If so, I retract my criticism.<\/p>\n

As I said at the outset, this isn\u2019t a review, because a review\u2019s job is to let you know if a book is something you might be interested in reading. Still, if you haven\u2019t read Ack-Ack Macaque or any of the other books in the trilogy, I\u2019m happy to recommend them. They\u2019re conveniently available as an omnibus collection: The Complete Ack-Ack Macaque Trilogy<\/a>, \u201cplus a brand new final chapter detailing the monkey\u2019s ultimate fate!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2013 Gareth L. Powell split the BSFA Award for Best Novel with Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice with his swashbuckling tale of a gun-toting monkey who escaped from a video game, and while many of us were all swooning over Ms. Leckie\u2019s pronoun choices, some of us, myself included, missed a book that was both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4679"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4683,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679\/revisions\/4683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}