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Cavalcade

Alison Sinclair

Millennium hardback, 299 pages, £16.99
Published November 1998
ISBN 185798532X
Millennium paperback, 320 pages, £5.99
Published December 1999
ISBN 1857985648

Review by Mike Don (1999) 

An immense alien spacecraft appears over Earth and sends out an invite. Anyone interested can join them in exploring the galaxy. That’s the story in outline. A new twist on an old theme, and one not confined to SF. Take a selection of humanity, put them in an environment which meets their physical needs but leaves them without the trappings of technology, and see what happens.

Ms Sinclair’s ‘thought experiment’ has certain defining conditions. It’s a cross-section of humanity, but, since all the voyagers are volunteers, not a random cross-section. Apart from a smattering of scientific and military professionals, it’s the outcasts, rebels and loners of the world. This makes for fascinating interactions in a novel driven very much by character rather than plot. Granted, the author’s necessary focus on a few key players means that whole groups of oddballs, from north country Goths to random separatists, are little more than caricatures, but enough is left to hint at a colourful, varied community.

I did twitch at some of Cavalcade’s politics. The self-privatised ‘anarchist’ villains, heroically defeated by US special forces squaddies, are less than convincing. I twitched further at the unfairness of it all, since the feisty, self-sufficient teenage heroine who takes no crap from anyone (fast becoming a Sinclair trademark) is a far more authentic anarchist than the leadership-fetishising villains. Personal quibbles aside, it’s a refreshingly original take on the first contact theme, in which the ‘aliens’ stay mostly offstage and the emphasis is on human interaction.