Atomic Turquoise Bat Mitzvah
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I always felt a little out of place with other kids my own age. So when birthdays came by, my parents usually invited the neighbors' kids over. There were a lot of them, some whose names I barely knew. They were all very nice, and they all brought gifts. So I stayed. I blew out the candles. I opened the presents. I smiled a lot. I can't remember most of the gifts because all I could think about was getting out and trying that bicycle.
With only a few exceptions, the rest of Sleeping Giants is presented as files in the workload of an undisclosed interviewer. Neuvel immediately jumps forward seventeen years, to when Dr. Rose Franklin is a senior scientist with the Enrico Fermi Institute of Chicago University. She's serendipitously taken over research of the twenty-three foot hand (with NSA funding) after the military failed to decipher the glyphs and true nature of the object. They did determine that the hand is composed mostly of the rare heavy metal iridium, weighs thirty-two metric tons, and is at least five thousand years old.
You'd want to know when they reached a sufficient understanding of the universe for you to be able to communicate with them in a meaningful way. It would most likely have to be measured technologically. It seems reasonable to assume that most or all species similar to humans would go through more or less the same evolutionary steps. Make fire, invent the wheel, those types of things. Flight might be a good criteria, or spaceflight......being able to harness nuclear energy would also be a pretty good criterion. Now—and this is the clever part—if you designed these things to react specifically to argon-37, they could only be discovered once that civilization managed to tap the power of the atom.
An underground nuclear test will turn atmospheric calcium into argon isotope 37. This fact helps Neuvel introduce U.S. military helicopter pilot Kara Resnik, whose vehicle shorts out and crashes while searching for evidence of nukes in Syria. The interviewer teams Rose with Kara and another military pilot, Ryan Mitchell, after locating the giant's forearm in Turkey. Rose creates an Argon Rich Compound for Aerial Nocturnal Application (ARCANA) to help the mechanical segments activate and rise through the Earth, anywhere they're buried. Aside from the chaos this may cause in populated areas (including Tennessee, Vermont, and Kansas), the activation creates electromagnetic disturbance, which makes flying vehicles near the segments hazardous.The final player introduced is linguist Victor Couture, who must decrypt the panels' symbols and later help with the puzzle of animating the assembled robot. By the time we meet him, it's clear that the interviewer is here not only to psychologically sound out these characters, but continuously needle them—often with the same assumptions that the reader has. He says to Victor, who's behind in his contributions to the team effort, “In my experience, people with superior intellect have a tendency to react poorly to failure. Do you ever think you might not succeed?” The interviewer also broaches the subject of sexual attraction between chilly Kara and noble Ryan, an element that Neuvel nurtures from plot distraction to vital propellant.A novel that's almost pure dialogue would implode if the writer couldn't churn out crackling reams of it, page after page. Thankfully, Neuvel can. Like a keen-eared student of the best thrillers and modern television, he saves his most dramatic pivots for when the curtain closes on a scene. Better still, Neuvel knows that when verbal exchanges float independent of third-person descriptions, their potential voltage skyrockets. Here's the interviewer (whose speech is always in bold) and Ryan finishing their first discussion about his role in the giant-assembling enterprise:
—Do you think what we're after has military applications?—That is not my primary concern. I do believe we might learn something—a lot, actually —from it's discovery. Whether what we learn is of military interest or not, only time will tell. I am absolutely certain, however, that this project has a better chance of success with you and Ms. Resnik on board.—Thank you, sir. I just don't wanna find out I was part of someone's secret agenda.—Do you think I would tell you if you were?—Probably not.—Then rest assured, Mr. Mitchell we are all in this together for the greater good.
I'm in. The room is still well lit. The light is very... cozy, like a room with a fireplace. I just closed the inner hatch. I'm off the barstool, now approaching the top station. Rose, I know you think this looks like a straightjacket, but it's pretty badass if you ask me. Take it off that pole hanging from the ceiling and I think it would make Batman proud if you spray painted it black. I'm sliding my arms in...
Not quite the dramatic equivalent of, “Duuuuuude,” but because Kara herself is no poet, it certainly feels like an instance in which Neuvel cedes the imaginative lifting to a storyboard artist. Comparisons to World War Z, however, make no sense except in stating that both novels feature news reports and a fractured global narrative. Where Max Brooks dispenses with a character-driven plot and emotional arcs, Neuvel speeds into those writerly curves, making Rose, Kara, Ryan, Victor, and the interviewer, distinct personalities who shape the story.The latter half of Sleeping Giants explores the geopolitical ramifications of a singular, walking weapon residing on Earth, and features some satisfying nods to history. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” says Kara, quoting both Oppenheimer and Vishnu, from the Bhagavad-Gita. Between barrels of popcorn, this summer's filmgoers may want to experience a robot story that's come of age, that doesn't revel in CGI whiz-bangery and property damage. Regarding humanity, the interviewer is told by a secret contact that, “this is your bat mitzvah. You can play with atoms, you can sit with the grown-ups.”Giant robots, while psychologically complex and visually astonishing, have yet to sit with the grown-ups at the literary table, either. Neuvel brings them as close as they've ever been, though he doesn't quite invest them with the cinematic heft that Daniel H. Wilson gives regular-sized bots in Robogenesis (2014). Ironically, Del Rey and Sony film executives contacted Neuvel about his self-published novel simultaneously. With a full-blown trilogy planned—and a Hollywood incursion eventual—we can hope that whatever comes next will follow in Sleeping Giants's thoughtful footsteps.____Justin Hickey is a freelance writer, and editor here at Open Letters Monthly.
