The Currents Of Space

Isaac Asimov’s The Currents of Space takes place in the sort of future where humanity has spread across the stars and, with admirable consistency, carried class systems, colonial economics, political scheming and bad administrative habits along with it. The galaxy may be vast, but people still manage to arrange it into rulers, workers, secrets, experts and someone at the top pretending the whole thing is merely efficient.

The planet Florina produces kyrt, a valuable fibre of such economic importance that everyone involved behaves as if botany has become a form of imperial blackmail. Florina itself is poor and dependent, while the nearby planet Sark profits handsomely from the arrangement, which is how one knows civilisation has advanced: exploitation now has interstellar logistics. Into this tidy little imbalance comes Rik, a man whose memory has been tampered with and whose missing knowledge may involve nothing less inconvenient than planetary disaster.

Rik was once a “spatio-analyst,” which is a very Asimov job title: calm, technical, faintly ridiculous, and clearly designed to hide the fact that the person may know something everyone else would prefer ignored. He has discovered that Florina is in danger, but his damaged mind turns the warning into fragments, fear and confusion. This is troublesome for all concerned, especially those whose profits depend on the planet continuing to sit quietly and produce valuable fibre without asking whether it is about to be destroyed.

Asimov builds the story out of memory, empire, science, power and the deeply familiar habit of suppressing bad news because it interferes with revenue. There are investigations, planetary politics, class divisions, hidden identities, and the gradual reconstruction of a truth that has been inconveniently buried inside a man who cannot properly explain himself. It is a mystery with stars around it, which is often Asimov’s most comfortable form: less laser shouting, more people working out why the official story smells funny.

The irony is that in this glittering galactic future, humanity has achieved space travel but not fairness, scientific knowledge but not wisdom, and bureaucracy on a scale large enough to misplace entire worlds morally if not physically. Florina’s fate is wrapped up in economics, status and denial, which makes the whole thing feel rather less like distant space opera and rather more like a board meeting with a planet attached.

For readers of classic Asimov, Galactic Empire fiction, old-school science fiction mysteries, planetary intrigue and societies where the real villain may be a spreadsheet wearing ceremonial robes, The Currents of Space is fine vintage shelf material. It has the brisk cleverness of early Asimov: ideas first, prose in sensible shoes, and the steady pleasure of watching logic sneak into a room full of people who were hoping it had died outside.

Good copy, as sold by Crappy Old Books. A Panther Science Fiction paperback from 1973, carrying the honest aura of a book that has survived several decades of readers, shelves and probably at least one house with orange curtains. A solid copy of a galactic mystery where the stars are distant, the politics are close, and the future has still not learned to behave itself.

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