The Ice Trilogy (Bro/Ice/23,000), published by New York Review
Books in 2011, is by turns intriguing and exhausting. The overarching story, of pure celestial essences,
the 23,000 creators of the physical universe, who have become trapped in their own
material creation is, of course, gnostic in its essence (as was Walter Tevis’ The Man Who Fell to Earth), but the
massive (694 pages) length of the combined trilogy and the numbing repetition
of essential actions – which, I suppose, are illustrative of life itself –
serve to dull both the mind and soul.
It is a conspiracy novel par
excellence, as the liberated essences search out and awaken their companions,
entrapped within impermanent human shells, by means of bone-crushing blows to the
sternum with heavy ice hammers. The origin of this curious practice goes back
to a scientific expedition to Siberia to
investigate the site of the Tunguska event. Alexander Snegirev, born June 30,
1908, the son of a wealthy Russian sugar producer whose family had been
scattered and destroyed by the Revolution (the early pages, told as a first
person narrative, carry the dim echo of Nabokov’s Speak, Memory) signs up for the expedition at the urging of a girl
he meets at university. A lost, drifting
sort of youth, Alexander becomes mysteriously invigorated as he approaches the
site. He discovers - or rather is led to
- a huge mass of ice embedded in the swampy permafrost, and undergoes a radical
change when he slams his naked chest into the ice and his true essence
surfaces. As unremitting as any
biological impulse, the ice “speaks” to him, awakening his heart (in the words of the novel), and his humanity falls away. The narrative grows more alien and
single-minded, as the human race becomes more and more inconsequential to the
young man, now known by his true (and unfortunate) name of “Bro”. He sets fire to the expedition encampment before
he sets out, still naked, across the tundra.
He eventually finds, out on the desolate steppe, a girl who will share his
mission. After Bro liberates her, she is
known as “Fer” and together they embark on a widening scheme of seeking out, by
psychic means, and building a secret society of liberated beings. As the
society grows, human beings come to be known to them simply as meat machines, to be despised for their gross and perishable natures, hidden from, and manipulated
towards the higher end.
The Brotherhood, in a course of history intertwined with
that of 20th century Russia, grows in numbers, harvests their
brethren (under cover of the Holocaust, at one point), and establish a shady
multinational corporation - again mirroring Tevis - by means of which they
manufacture and deploy the ice hammers, which must be assembled and used under
strictly proscribed procedures. The symbol of the hammer in relation to Soviet Russia cannot be mistaken.
As the
Second World War transitions to the Stalinist twilight, the Kruschev era, and
gradually on to post-Glasnost Russia, the Brotherhood becomes less
discriminating in their methods: blond
and blue-eyed humans, the apparently preferred host for the celestial entities,
are abducted and battered with the ice hammers in the hopes of liberating a few
more of the 23,000. The narrative begins
to focus more on the stories of individual humans, with an emphasis on the
seedy and criminal, as they become awakened to their higher selves. The trappings of the Brotherhood become more
cultish, with expensive surroundings, evoking on one hand the higher echelons
of Scientology and on the other the sordidness of the Jonestown massacre. There is also a growing group of former
victims, seeming paranoiacs who swap stories and piece together a picture of a
vast conspiracy.
As the final ascension, by necessity, must involve each and
every one of the 23,000, there is a frenzy of activity as the magic number is
approached. There are secret Chinese
slave labor facilities manufacturing the hammers from the original Tunguska ice, emphasizing the divide
between the Brotherhood, their accomplices, and the downtrodden workers. One moves towards the end of the book
wondering if the great event will even take place, or if the comforts of power
and wealth, even in the material realm, will be too much of a temptation, but
the organization appears to remain steadfast in its determination to gain
escape velocity and leave the shackles of Earth, their most deficient creation,
behind.
In the end, there are perplexities
remaining. One of the necessary
consequences of the ascension appears not to have occurred, casting doubt on
the reality and effectiveness of the enterprise as a whole. I’d have to say the finale, while unexpected,
is a bit of a letdown after such a long and challenging read. It’s up to the individual reader to determine
if it was worth the effort.
