THE WATERWORKS

by E. L. Doctorow

Random House, ISBN 0-394-58754-5, 1994, 253pp, $23
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
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It's an all-too familiar pattern: An author not known for science fiction or fantasy writes a book which IS science fiction or fantasy. It is far better than most of the books marketed as science fiction or fantasy, but the SF community doesn't notice it and when Hugo nomination time rolls around, I and perhaps a half dozen other lonely souls are the only ones who nominate it. It happened with Gore Vidal's LIVE FROM GOLGOTHA, it happened with Alan Lightman's EINSTEIN'S DREAMS, and I guarantee that as night follows day it will happen with THE WATERWORKS.

THE WATERWORKS is definitely science fiction, although this is not confirmed until the last quarter of the book. And Doctorow is not certainly not enamored of science, nor are his characters. As protagonist Martin Pemberton describes a scene, "I became aware of the atmosphere of his laboratories, without seeing anything in particular going on there--two or three rooms with doors open between them, and a faintly chemical smell in the air. All the light came from gas jets.... There were glass cabinets for instruments ... stone-top cabinets inset with iron sinks ... boxy machines on wheels with cables and gears and tubing. I remember a square wooden chair with leather straps at the armrests and an iron head brace.... The walls were draped in some brownish napped material, velour or velvet. To me this was the menacing furniture of science."

The novel is superficially about Pemberton's search for his father, whom he spots in a Municipal coach after his (father's) supposed death and funeral. What it is really about is the New York of the 1870s, about people's attitudes towards power, and about the transformations--political, economic, social, and technological--that New York City was undergoing.

I say this is science fiction, but it would also fall, I believe, in the category of magical realism, of which there are not many practicioners in this country. The only two other such authors who come to mind are John Crowley and Mark Helprin. The latter also wrote in the milieu of 19th Century New York, but where Helprin is lavish, Doctorow is spare. But even with few words, Doctorow can paint a complete picture in the reader's mind of the world of which he writes. Painting a picture of an alien world is what science fiction authors are supposed to do, of course, and so this is an aspect that should appeal to the science fiction reader even if there were no scientific Content. I highly recommend this to fans of magical realism, literary, and 19th Century science. (And make a liar out of me by getting this on the Hugo ballot!)