Inward Collapse - my first impressions of Lawrence Burton's new Faction Paradox novella

The story behind this book is almost as interesting as anything its pages have to offer. Early in April, it appeared on the Obverse Books website with no context to speak of. No word from the publisher on Facebook, Twitter/Mastodon, Gallifreybase, etc.. This thing was just... there, its bizarre cover art looming large and coming off like a relic from a world that had no business intersecting with ours. There was a house, and above the house stood Danny DeVito in Adidas, split down the middle and screaming. The description only heightened my sense of confusion, eventually mutated it into excitement. Nostalgia, even. See, I was experiencing something I haven't felt from this series in years: utter bafflement. What the hell did any of these words mean? Coming so soon after April Fool's Day, I had to wonder whether the book existed at all. 

    I bought it regardless. How could I not? A book appearing mysteriously out of the ether, coupled with a completely inexplicable, deranged, occasionally very funny description? That's Faction Paradox as fuck! Obverse Books have never been particularly savvy in terms of marketing their fiction; I think they should lean into gleaning interest out of sheer confusion.

    The official posts from Obverse - which came out weeks later, long after many people had already discovered and purchased the book - added to my excitement and, frankly, trepidation. Many of them posed the same question. In so many words, they asked, "have you ever been so hungry you'd eat your own ass?". That's a hell of a way to sell a book. Seeing those posts as my copy was already on its way did something to me. When it arrived, I took a break from a book I was 197 pages into to read it. You have to understand just how rare that is. In general, I read one book at once and I take my time. This thing had its hooks in me before it even officially existed, and they remained in place until I had finished it two sittings later.

    I'll say this book isn't for everyone, definitely not for a general audience. Aside from being a companion piece to Burton's Against Nature, the book relies on a few concepts and terms that I don't think would make much sense to anyone who isn't familiar with the world of the Spiral Politic. I'm not usually the kind of person who likes Deep Lore; its only real use is as a crutch by writers who understand their shit wouldn't stand on its own. 

    What I love is interconnectivity, and that's mostly what's going on here. This isn't a book of meaningless references, nor a story that only exists to plaster over some tiny insignificant hole in the stories around it. This is a book with its own story to tell, but one whose essential building blocks are the same concepts and themes built up through all the series' best entries.

    Thematically, Faction Paradox is a series concerned above all else with culture. Cultural stagnation; how cultures respond to war; how cultures respond to previously unknown stimuli (technology and drugs especially); pop culture; counterculture; colonialism. Series debut This Town Will Never Let Us Go alone contains comments on all of these things at various points. Literally, it's mostly concerned with two things: spooky visuals (Faction Paradox is 90% aesthetic) and allowing its writers complete freedom to go as high-concept and off-the-wall as they please. This novella, in under a hundred pages, captures all - or at least most - of that.

    Most obviously, Inward Collapse is about a culture collapsing inwardly. It's a book about an isolated culture encountering, for the worst, two groups of interlopers representing advanced political factions. Specifically, the story focuses on the far-future descendants of House Meddhoran (from Against Nature) who live isolated in a pocket dimension called Essentlan. The people of Essentlan have fallen from grace both culturally and biologically, having shed almost every connection to the Homeworld. They have no knowledge of time travel or other worlds; hot-air balloons are a recent development and an invisible wall around the dimension ensures their society will remain entirely stagnant forever.

    Until several groups of time travelers (most from contemporary Earth, or something closely resembling it) arrive in rapid succession, causing the whole situation to - if you can believe it - collapse inwardly. In many ways this is a pretty standard SF conceit, but Burton's execution shines. The culture is totally believable, their complete confusion over who their visitors are and how they even got there was engrossing. There weren't any standout characters, really, but I believed all of them. They struck me as real people inhabiting the strange-yet-familiar settings (we had liminal spaces before they were cool, or at least before they had a name) at which FP seems to excel.

    But Essentlan wasn't even my favorite of this book's high concepts. The story doesn't open with our interlopers already in Essentlan. It switches between Essentlan and both of their perspectives, letting you see exactly how everyone ended up where they did. This gives Burton ample time to develop his lead stars: the timeships. One is a fairly simple thing, a time-traveling car a la Back to the Future. The other, the Something Anyway, is an absolutely tantalizing creation. It's shaped like a school, with classrooms of projected fake students. The ship is steered through giving these students lessons; bookshelves in the classrooms contain material related to wherever they're headed next. It's all kept quite vague as these sections are narrated through the ship's crew as opposed to the two Faction members at the head of the operation. That was a great move, giving the reader enough to understand how it works while leaving the why ambiguous. Modern SFF, even much of modern FP, suffers from a tendency to over-explain things (hard magic systems, like turn-based combat, hold no appeal to me beyond the tabletop games they were intended for). Burton stops just shy of answers at almost every turn here, and that's so fucking refreshing.

    There's also a third timeship, a humanoid model designed after Danny DeVito. He's piloted by a Homeworlder who interferes with both parties at some point prior to their departure. I won't say much about them except that DeVito was handled with surprising taste; the fact that his appearance is a shameless pop-culture reference is rarely commented on beyond his introductory scene. He and the Homeworlder act as a source of humor for much of their runtime, and their bit is pretty amusing. I couldn't help but imagine every scene they were in in the style of one of those weird-animation guys on YouTube - PilotRedSun and Umami in particular. Which is a good vibe for FP, I think (if you're curious, I imagined Essentlan and its people in the style of the old PC game The Neverhood).

    That's about all I have to say about Inward Collapse. All in all, I loved this book, especially after a few Faction books in a row that weren't exactly to my taste. It's reinvigorated my love for the series, and probably for SFF in general. Recommended strongly for existing FP fans and those who prefer to jump in at the deep end.