Jury Duty
Peter Cawdron
289 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 28, 2021
Antarctica has always had a special fascination for me. I grew up with the tales of Shackleton and Amundsen, and followed the exploits of Peary. I watched all the nature specials on the place, including, of course, Attenborough’s. More recently I was mesmerized by Anthony B. Powell’s 2013 A Year on Ice.
This extended to fiction, of course. The place seemed tailor-made for H.P. Lovecraft, and John Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” terrified me, as did the subsequent movie version, The Thing. Of all Kim Stanley Robinson’s novels, Antarctica is probably my favorite of his, and certainly due in part to the colorful characters, ranging from the viewpoint character X to the almost obligatory mad Russian. Viktor’s “Not possible? IS possible!” became a catchphrase in our household, along with “Inconceivable” and “All die, oh the embarrassment!”
So when I realized that the frozen continent was to be the main locale of Jury Duty, I settled in for an enjoyable read. I’ve never been below 35 south (here in California I’m actually closer to the North Pole than I’ve ever been to the South Pole) but I have enough vicarious knowledge of the place to know if the descriptives ring true or not. I don’t know if Cawdron has ever been there, but he’s done his homework.
We meet our hero, Nick as he is trying to shoot his fleeing wife who has disrespected him once too often. Perhaps not his best moment. He tries to shoot at her in her car, and discovers his clip is empty. Oh, the embarrassment!
The authorities sweep in to take him away. Only it’s not the local police, and they aren’t hauling him off to jail, which is what you might expect under these circumstances. No, this is the military, and they are hauling enraged, half-drunk and profoundly feckless Nick off, not to the drunk tank, but to Antarctica, where a jury of ordinary people are representing all of humanity in a jury empaneled to figure out what to do about a large alien ship under the ice cap. Inconceivable! Not Possible!
IS Possible! (OK, I’ll stop now). Nick may not seem well-suited to being an ambassador on behalf of humanity, and he’s the first one to say so. His guards/captors seem somewhat taken aback as well, but they wanted an “ordinary citizen” to fill the United States quota.
Yes, that all sounds a bit hinky, doesn’t it? I know Americans have trashed their reputation internationally, but a guy caught in the midst of trying to murder his wife in a drunken fit of rage still isn’t quite normal behavior in the US. So obviously there are unseen motives going on here.
Cawdron has set the stage for a tense, taut thriller. It’s in Antarctica. It involves First Contract with a completely unknown alien life form. It has a colorful and engaging cast of characters, often working at cross purposes. It becomes a profound tale of fealty, and loss, and respect, and love. The characters are richly drawn and show amazing depth. Even as you turn the pages to see what comes next, you find yourself caring deeply about the characters and regretting that all too soon you must go your separate ways.
Don’t bother trying to guess at the ending. You’ll miss.
Jury Duty seems destined to become classic SF tale both from the immersive sense Cawdron provides for life in a seemingly barren world, but because of the humanity that shines in this most inhuman of places. Certainly it can take its place with the other classics I listed above.
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Comments
Thank you for taking a chance on Jury Duty. It’s a risky story. I’m not sure how many readers will give up on Nick—and I can’t blame them if they do. He’s distinctly unpleasant and selfish at the start of the novel, but that gave him a great character arc. BTW, being originally from New Zealand, this is the first time I’ve included anything of my Kiwi heritage, so that was fun.
I love a story where the ending is totally unexpected but feels right. And risky characters are absolutely the most fun to write. I have one who begins as a military martinet who delights in punishment, winds up as a thoroughly ersatz shaman to a village in Greenland (the Arctic, which I have visited, fascinates me, too) and fifty years in that role humanizes him. But he isn’t redeemed: given the opportunity to restore science to a ruined world, he does so, but by presenting it as a new religion. He’s discovered decency, but not honesty, which raises the question…is it real?