47 pages • 1 hour read
Burning Chrome
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Story 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 5 Summary: “Hinterlands”
Toby Halpert works as an inspector on an international space station, sometime in the near future. Strange, unexplainable events have been happening to other crewmembers who are exploring a strange area of space called “the Highway.” Most notably, a Soviet cosmonaut named Olga Tovyevski disappeared while on an expedition. She returned two years later, in a catatonic state, holding a seashell of a species not known on Earth. Intrigued by the prospect of life forms on another planet, the team sends out another probe to the same area. It also disappears. When it is finally found again, the crew discovers that the cosmonaut inside has killed himself. More expeditions are sent out, and more meet disastrous ends.
One more expedition is sent out, and once again the cosmonaut inside returns dead. An inspection of the body reveals the Frenchman is wearing an iron ring encoded with strange data. When it is examined closely, it appears to be a “Rosetta stone for cancer” (73). This leads the crew to believe that a distant and hyper-intelligent life form is trying to contact them and is ready to share potentially miraculous information and technology. Scores of crewmembers ready themselves to volunteer for expeditions to visit the area, despite the deaths in previous probes.
Halpert and his girlfriend, Charmian, do not take part in the expeditions and remain at the station. Their job is to take care of returning cosmonauts. Reflecting on the buzz of excitement around the expedition, Halpert likens it to houseflies on airplanes inadvertently flying around the world without understanding what is happening. Similarly, “Charmian says that contact with ‘superior’ civilizations is something you don’t wish on your worst enemy” (73), likening the situation to a cargo cult seeing something unknown as meaning more than it does.
Word gets out to Halpert that a cosmonaut is set to return, supposedly alive, prompting him to call the ship a “meatshot.” As he prepares to open and inspect the capsule, he is suddenly stricken by an attack of what the crew calls “the Fear.” This debilitating paranoia that is connected to the isolation of being in space and the effects of whatever alien force is out there causes crewmembers to go mad. Halpert is forced to open the capsule despite the Fear. Inside, he discovers that the supposedly live passenger is dead inside the capsule, which is covered in an “insane frieze of ballpoint scratchings, crabbed symbols, thousands of tiny crooked oblongs locking and overlapping” (79). The markings seem significant but are incomprehensible, confirming Halpert’s and Charmian’s suspicions that the crew has little idea about what is going on in the Highway.
Story 5 Analysis
Gibson’s “Hinterlands” revisits a classic science fiction scenario in which a species from some distant part of the universe seemingly attempts to contact humanity. In some cases, those species turn out to be hyper-intelligent and benevolent; in others, they are bent on destroying humanity. In the case of “Hinterlands,” the civilization appears to be benevolent when one explorer returns dead along with the information explaining cancer, presumably from the alien culture. Gibson, however, inverts this classic scenario. For one, the explorers seek out the civilization instead of its representatives visiting them. In addition, whatever is out there remains unknown, but the dangers of attempting to reach it are clear, as expedition after expedition returns with crewmembers dead.
The unknown nature of the civilization coupled with the deadly consequences of attempted contact heighten the sinister backdrop of “Hinterlands” even as it explores Halpert’s personal problems; he and Charmian are rejected for expeditions, for example. The perpetual mystery around this force makes the conflict of “Hinterlands” primarily psychological. This is underscored when Halpert is crippled by an attack of the “Fear,” “the long finger of Big Night” (79). This inability to accurately perceive reality, or to mentally handle the reality that is perceived, is a concept that appears in the next story of Burning Chrome, “Red Star, Winter Orbit.”
The episode positions Halpert as a flawed hero. Stories like “Johnny Mnemonic,” “New Rose Hotel,” and “Dogfight” depict protagonists who are antiheroes because their actions and motivations are morally ambiguous. Halpert’s flaws, however, stem more from his inability to handle a terrifying situation. In any case, “Hinterlands” continues Burning Chrome’s trend of introducing protagonists who stand in sharp contrast to the confident, idealistic, and morally simplistic heroes of some classic science fiction works.
“Hinterlands” also exemplifies Gibson’s prose style. It is rife with neologisms, jargon, and metaphorical language, like “meatshot,” “the Highway,” “Heaven,” and “the Fear.” The use of terminology like this efficiently creates a vernacular of space travel and exploration, realistically suggesting how the characters would experience and interpret space as a long-term, isolated, and even dangerous home.
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By William Gibson
